Star Wars Legion Unit Review: Chewbacca

 Hey Reader!

Following up on our last post on the Rebel Officer [LINK], today we're looking at Chewbacca, which also means we're almost done with the profiles from the Echo Base Defenders battleforce (and we get to move on to other great things!). 

Today we'll be looking at his stats (and what makes him appealing), his synergies with other units (as well as his command cards, and some tactical use for him in your rebel force.

I.  Stats: Giving and Taking Damage

From a stats perspective, Chewbacca offers great value to you: not only has his cost dropped from 110pts to 90pts (probably the single greatest points reduction in the game to date, as far as I recall), but his baseline offensive and defensive stats are excellent. While most units in the game have pretty even melee and ranged damage, Chewie takes this to a whole new level with 4 dice in both, which is insanely balanced.

And his dice pools are really good: with an average of 3-4 hits in melee (with Lethal 1, so if you can put Pierce 1 on that if you have an Aim token you don't want to spend) and 2-3 hits at range (with Pierce 1 and Impact 1 all the time), for a single-model activation this is not bad at all. And with Range 1-3 on the bowcaster, his threat range is good.

And like most named hero characters, since he can surge for crits all the time, getting hits past armor and dodge tokens is pretty easy to do, which is excellent. And thanks to having Scale, if he wants to get into melee or stay at range, scaling terrain is something he can do without danger of injury, so from a positioning standpoint he's excellent.

Defensively Chewbacca is a rebel, so he gets a white dice for defense, but without the innate surge for blocks. With 9 wounds, 2 Suppression, and Enrage 4, though, Chewie is quite survivable for a Rebel unit. And when he's taken 4+ wounds, not only is he immune to suppression, he also gains Charge, making him even more effective in melee (as he can attack in melee as a free action as part of a move action).

But that's not all when it comes to Chewie's defensive loadout: he has two more special rules that help him. First, he has Guardian 3, which is part of what slots him into a defensive role for other units as well, taking advantage of those sweet, sweet 9 wounds and his Enrage ability. But he also has Teamwork with Han, allowing him to get aim/dodge tokens if Han is nearby.

And this is really good, because Han has a lot of ways to get Aim and Dodge tokens. Between the Hunter training card, Up Close and Personal, and access to the Take Cover card action all over in the Rebel faction, not to mention his own 2 training slots and his upgrade slot, getting Aim and Dodge tokens onto Han and Chewie is very easy to do.

And there are other options as well - Electrobinoculars on an officer or comms tech nearby, Portable Scanners on similar units, and of course various command cards that can add Aim/Dodge tokens on people who are issued orders (and thus a Comms Relay on a nearby unit that can pass an order to Chewie or Han becomes pretty handy), there are many ways to get Chewie loaded up, even beyond his own profile. It's worth noting, though, that at that point you're probably taking about 60-100pts worth of investment just to load up your big bruiser, so consider carefully whether this is a worthwhile expense.

So Chewbacca can both dish out and absorb quite a bit of damage. And this leads to several synergies, most of which are pretty obvious, but some of which surprised me.

II.  Synergies: Crushing Defender

Perhaps most obviously, Chewie synergizes with Han Solo. Not only do they share tokens and benefit from several command cards (choosing Chewie as your other trooper with Reckless Diversion is a great way to funnel enemy fire toward a damage absorbing operative, for example), but Han and Chewie both play the same way: punch at range, but get in pretty close to the enemy. And then it's just a matter of when Chewie opts to charge (and whether you gave him Tenacity as a training upgrade), and whether Han can soften up the target first.

And with both of them starting at 90-100pts, and after upgrades probably not getting above 110pts each, taking the two of them together is about the same cost as a big hero for another faction once you factor in their upgrade cards, so it's really not that bad from a cost perspective.

Another natural assumption for synergy are Wookiee Warriors, as Chewie is, in fact, a wookiee. And actually he does have really good synergies with them: if he's near a melee-centric Wookiee Warrior Freedom Fighter unit, his Guardian 3 helps to make sure they get more bodies into the fight (plus he gets stronger after taking some hits for them). If he's near a range-centric Wookiee Warrior Kashyyyk Resistance unit, he can keep more of that suppressing fire going for longer, which means moving him and the other wookiee unit off an objective is very, very hard to do. But even here, it's a fine synergy, but nothing beyond what you'd expect for other rebel units.

Perhaps the more important synergy is how Chewie can help and benefit from the Mk2 Medium Blaster Trooper. Since Chewie already starts with a 4-die attack pool with his bowcaster, having another 4 black dice (with a likely Aim token, as noted in our article on them) from Fire Support on the Blaster Trooper is really, really good. And since Chewie has surge for crits, you can turn any surge results to criticals when performing that attack, which is crazy.

Now this does require some positioning, though if you have a Medium Blaster Trooper and Chewie parked on an objective, being able to keep the Blaster Trooper around with Guardian 3, and then never activating him because he's always just giving Fire Support to Chewie, is really not that bad. You will need to take a squad of Rebel Veterans to pull this off, but I happen to think that Rebel Veterans are the best corps unit the rebels have, so that's fine.

From a command card perspective, Chewie's cards are all...interesting, as they're tied to specific characters. This personally makes me think that his cards are one of the weakest sets in the game, as they require you to invest quite a few points in other units in order to gain any benefits from them, and the people he synergizes with are not cheap. His 1-pip synergizes with Luke, and is very straightforward: when Luke activates, you can then activate Chewie if he has a faceup order token (and vice versa). So effectively, you get two back-to-back turns, which can be very useful. 

Personally I don't think this is particularly amazing (especially since Luke + Chewie is 250pts or more, and you're not likely to get that much damage out of these back-to-back turns unless you're doing Fire Support with a Medium Blaster Trooper, in which case you're using up a lot of resources to make this command card work), but the big bonus on this one is that it hands out 2 order tokens, when most 1-pip cards only hand out 1. So that's nothing to sneeze at.

His 2-pip synergizes with Leia, and it is also simple: when Leia attacks, if Chewie is not engaged (so can't be in melee) and is within Range 1-3 of the defender and within line of sight, he can add a ranged weapon to the attack. Now naturally, most of the ways you'd run Chewie, you'd be adding your bowcaster. But if you're in the Bright Tree battlehost, you can take Chewie in an AT-ST, and as far as I can see, there's nothing keeping you from triggering his AT-ST with this command card. Which is pretty sweet.

The other nice thing about this command card is that Chewie doesn't 1) need to have a face-up order token, so you can activate him before Leia goes as long as he doesn't end up being engaged, and 2) he doesn't flip his order token face-down, so this can give you two shots with Chewie in a single turn. Just for that, I rate this higher than his 1-pip in utility, as it really takes advantage of his abilities.

And finally, his 3-pip synergizes with Han, and is also very simple: you can fish out one of Han's command cards from your discard pile. This is great because it's one of the few situations where you can use a command card twice, and if you like Han and position him to get a lot of use out of him, his command cards can be really good. Heck, even if you just fish out Sorry About the Mess and "shoot first" twice per game, that's a great way to make sure you go first when you really want to. But personally I don't like this: it only activates the two of them (so you activate less units than you typically do on a 3-pip card), and it doesn't actually give you anything on the turn when you use it, so I'm not a huge fan of this command card.

So I think Chewie synergizes really well with basically every Rebel trooper unit (thanks to Guardian 3, plus a reliable damage baseline), and his command cards are "meh." So let's talk about how to maximize his potential in your force.

III.  Tactics: Angry Carpet

When thinking about tactical uses for Chewbacca, it's important to remember that he is a capable ranged character who is also a capable melee character, so you need to think through how much you want to lean into one or the other. We're going to begin with a ranged focus, and then look at a melee focus for how you upgrade him, but naturally you can also mix and match between the two.

From a ranged perspective, the best training upgrades for him are Up Close and Personal and Hunter (which we mentioned above): now whenever he attacks a unit that has been hit by, say, your Laser Cannon Team, or one of your infantry squads, or an Airspeeder, or whatever, he's getting an Aim token every turn, which is awesome for making those white attack dice work (or fixing the odd miss on a red attack die).

In addition, thanks to Up Close and Personal, if you find you're taking shots at Range 1-2 (instead of your full range of 3), you also get a Dodge token. So now you're able to reliably put out 1 Aim Token and 1 Dodge Token every turn by just shooting at enemies, and if you are near Han, you can give him those same tokens for free as well (which is awesome). And if you stay at Range 3, you may not get the Dodge tokens every turn, but you are more likely to get a cover bonus due to the extra 6" of terrain in the way between you and the attacker.

There are other good upgrades (Duck and Cover can help you with your survivability, though I don't think it's that useful on him), but in truth a high number of the tech and training upgrades don't actually help you all that much, as you're already able to move through difficult terrain, clamber without penalties, and Guardian away several hits, so you effectively have like 3-4 upgrades already equipped before taking others.

Add onto this Targeting Scopes for your equipment upgrade slot, and you're now rerolling 3 attack dice at range, and you're in very good shape to get 3-4 hits (and very probably 1 crit) on all of your attacks. You can increase your resilience by taking Prepared Supplies instead, so determine whether you want to be more offense-minded or defense-minded. Personally I'd take the Targeting Scopes just because I think it's so easy to make Hunter work that it's more likely you'll get more use out of the Targeting Scopes than anything else.

And that's all of his slots - with this build, Chewie runs at 108pts, which is pretty expensive for an operative, but not too bad. One of the arguments for running him more melee-focused is that you can cut his cost by a good bit, as the melee upgrades we will highlight below are less expensive. But of course, if you're on a budget, you can run him without full upgrades, and he'll still do fine. I would highly recommend Hunter, though: the 6pts for a possible 6 Aim tokens during the game is quite spicy on a 4-die attack at range.

So from a melee-focused standpoint, some of the upgrades remain the same: we can still take Hunter, as it doesn't require it to be a ranged attack, and getting an Aim on 4 red dice is a great way to get 4 hits, and if you don't have to spend it you can always use it to give your attack Pierce 1, thanks to your Lethal special rule. So not a bad choice (and again, why I recommend at least taking Hunter, even if you don't take anything else).

The other big one everyone talks about (so we won't dwell on it for too long here) is Tenacity. It has a wookiee in the picture, so unsurprisingly it works well with wookiees (and most wookiee units take it): when he's wounded (which is likely, thanks to Guardian and having a white dice), you add 1 red die to your melee attack pool. That brings his melee attacks up to a spicy 5 red dice, which is a really good chance of getting 4-5 hits (especially if you have an Aim token rerolling things, or if you only miss with 1, maybe just adding Pierce 1 to the attack instead of rerolling).

If you didn't want to take Hunter and instead worry about your survivability, you could take Into the Fray, which gives you a surge token (which you can use for defensive surges) when an enemy within Range 1 is activated. Personally I don't think that's as useful as Hunter (as you're unlikely to roll more than 1-2 surge results on a dice before you suffer 9 wounds, whereas you can easily make sure you can use an Aim token just about every turn), but it's an option.

From a tech perspective things get interesting: you already get the benefits of Environmental Gear, Ascension Cables, and Grappling Hooks, so you don't really need any of those, and that means most people, if they take one at all, go for one of two options.

First, they'll look at Recon Intel: the only thing better for a melee-focused character is getting closer to the enemy, and this allows you to perform a speed-1 move before the game even begins. So you get to move into the neutral space beyond deployment zones before anything happens. Pretty nifty.

I don't think this is a particularly good use of your 2pts (though admittedly, it's just 2pts), mostly because 1) it's only a 4" move, so it's not a huge change, and 2) this can make you easier to hit early on, and while you are supposed to absorb hits, you do have a limit, so if you take this be very careful.

Another option is you can take Targeting Scopes, as nothing in the text of the upgrade says it only works with ranged attacks, so if you want to be able to reroll 3 dice with an Aim token, you have that ability. You probably won't need to with 4-5 reds, but in case you roll well below average, this is one way to make your rolls more reliable.

And of course you can also take Prepared Supplies if you want a banked Dodge token for a rainy day. All of these are decent options, but I'd be tempted to just not take a tech upgrade and save the points: what you get is pretty minimal, and you're already at 102pts with Tenacity and Hunter, which is a lot as it is. So maybe in this case less is more.

The next thing we need to discuss is positioning: where you place Chewie dramatically affects how effective he is in-game. My general theory is that he is a good midfield unit: you want him close enough to the guys up front that he can shield them from damage and then close to melee, but you also want him to be far enough back that you won't be removed in a single turn by a lightsaber-wielding warrior.

If you are running Leia it's a good idea to keep him in range of her Take Cover action, as she can 1) give him a Dodge token to keep him alive longer, but also because 2) if Chewie gains a Dodge token he can also give one to Han for free, so as long as one of the two scoundrels are in range of her, that's ideal for keeping them in the fight.

And of course if you're running wookiees, consider putting him behind one of the wookiee squads but at Range 1 so he can Guardian for them (to get them all in the fight) while not being as easily focused and removed himself.

In terms of how to make him most effective offensively, I can't stress enough how useful the Medium Blaster Trooper is: doubling your dice (especially if you have an Aim token, and if the Medium Blaster Trooper has an Aim token) is really good, especially when you're adding black dice to the equation. And remember, if you've taken Hunter, to hit units you intend to attack with Chewie with something else to deal wounds before he engages, thereby increasing his odds of being more effective.

In terms of maximizing him defensively, remember that Guardian is optional: you don't have to use the ability every time it can be used, and you certainly don't need to take all 3 hits. I'd recommend making 1-2 at a time, but thinking more within the context of how many wounds you're letting slip into the unit that's under fire. If a wookiee unit (where models have 3 wounds) gets hit with 3 hits, take 2 so that their numbers stay up to get into melee, for example.

Also, if your opponent is doing a lot of shooting, I definitely recommend getting him into melee as quickly as possible, even if you didn't build him that way. It's a lot harder to remove him in melee than it is at range, though I caveat this advice by saying that if they have a lightsaber wielder nearby, be very careful: you're very likely to suffer 4-6 wounds in a single go from one of those, so don't rush into melee near them.

And finally this bears repeating: stack Dodges on Chewie with Han. Make sure that Han takes care of his old friend, because that's one of the most reliable ways to keep Chewie in the fight.

Conclusion

I don't use Chewie often; I tend to find that Rebel Veterans squad costs about the same amount to field as him, and I get more work out of them even though I have less wounds between them all. But if you are looking to keep something safe, adding Chewie to the group is a really, really good way of making sure that unit stands a fighting chance of surviving the battle.

Watching the stars,

Centaur

"I watch the stars, for it is mine to watch, as it is yours, Badger, to remember." ~ Glenstorm, Prince Caspian