Star Wars Legion Unit Review: Yoda

Good morning gamers,

Today, we're turning our attention to the little green man (well, alien dude) who is easily the most powerful Jedi in the prequel trilogy: Yoda. I got started with Obi-Wan and tried out Yoda with a proxy in one game before I was like, "Wow, this guy plays REALLY differently from Obi-Wan!" Sure, you can use Force Barrier and spam out dodge tokens with both of them, but if you want to have someone who can sit back OR fight competently, you want Yoda. If you want some command cards with both power and longevity, you want Yoda. If your opponent plans to head-hunt your characters . . . you probably want Yoda in that matchup too. So let's dig in and find out what this guy is all about!

Yoda: The Profile

There are three Force Users currently available to the Republic in Star Wars Legion: Obi-Wan Kenobi (who we've already viewed), Anakin Skywalker (who I don't have any plans of getting any time soon), and Yoda (who is really fun to use). We've had a preview (just concept stuff) for generic Jedi models that can be added to ARC Troopers and ARF Troopers (probably more on them at the start of 2025) and Ahsoka (Commander and Operative versions), but for now, your Jedi options for the Republic are Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Yoda. If you just go off what we know about these guys in the films, you'd expect Yoda to be a powerhouse character and clearly better than the other two. Yoda is probably the better choice overall, but there are trades that you have to make when taking him.

Two possible load-outs for Yoda: 230-245pts
Photo Credit: Legion HQ

First with the pros: Yoda is Courage 4 instead of your named-Republic-hero-standard of 3 and has surge for Crit and Blockinnate in his profile (with the stereotypical red defense die for Force Users). With a solid lightsaber attack (4 red dice with Impact 2/Pierce 2 and surge for crit) and a Force Wave range 1-2 attack (4 black dice with Blast/Suppressive), Yoda has some excellent options for dealing damage, getting all his actions, keeping his units from pannicking, and just generally resisting damage.

Like all Force Users, his lightsaber gives him Immune: Pierce and while about half of the Force Users in the game have Master of the Force 1, Yoda has Master of the Force 2 (which is only available at the moment on Count Dooku and Emperor Palpatine). While this isn't innately better than Master of the Force 1, being able to reset two of your exhausted Force upgrades at the end of your activation is awesome and gives you a lot more play in what upgrades to take.

While Obi-Wan's Soresu Mastery can allow him to use Guardian better and Anakin's Djem So Mastery does damage back in melee, Yoda's Ataru Mastery allows him to use both of his actions to perform attacks - and each time he attacks, he gains a dodge token. Since the attack doesn't have to be a melee attack, Yoda can perform his Force Wave attack up to two times, all while boosting his defensive tokens for the round.

Finally, Yoda has the Guidance: Trooper ability as a special action. With it, he can have a friendly Trooper unit at range 1-2 perform a non-attack action - which includes having Padme perform Quick Thinking to pick up some extra tokens, having a nearby ARC Trooper Squad perform a move action to pick up an aim token with Tactical 1, or have a Phase I Clone Trooper squad with a ton of suppression and Emergency Stims perform a recover action to clear off their suppression and prevent the damage on the Stims from being handed out. Yes, there's a lot you can do with this ability (and even more options open up depending on what command card you played).

But Yoda isn't all joy and good news. Unlike Obi-Wan and Anakin, Yoda only has 5 wounds - and while being able to surge on defense without spending a dodge/surge token is great and all, 5 wounds can go down surprisingly quickly if he's left alone and unsupported. Additionally, Yoda is (by default) only Speed 1, so unless he has a way to get some extra oomph, he's probably hobbling along behind the gunline providing support to them. Finally, he's base 180 points, which means if you put Force Push and anything else on him, his final cost will be over 220 points, which cuts into your available points for the rest of your army (you've probably got no more than 450pts left after picking up your three required Corps units unless you took some bare-bones Clones).

Finally, while Yoda has 3 Force upgrade slots and 1 Command upgrade slot, he has no training slots - this not only limits his damage output, but it also prevents him from doing what you can do with Obi-Wan and Anakin by taking Defensive Stance for 5pts and allow him to mass generate dodge tokens (that might even be borrow-able on certain turns). This isn't a hard critique, but if you're used to the other guys sitting in the battle line buffing their friends while waiting for the enemy to close, it'll be a very different feeling playing with Yoda.

Given all this, let's look at some upgrade options for the little green dude . . .

Yoda: Recommended Upgrades and Command Cards

As was just mentioned, Yoda has three Force slots and one command slot - and unless you're trying to save points for the other units in your army, I'd always fill all four of them. In my mind, there is one really solid build for supporting a gunline for Yoda, but there are other upgrades that can be useful too. Let's start off with those Force upgrades . . .

Force

Any Republic gunline is going to want to have Force Barrier around - and most gunlines in the game period want Barrier around. If your opponent is chucking gobs of dice your way, you want Barrier; if your opponent is throwing small pools of dice at you, you want Barrier. No matter what kind of list you're playing against, you want Barrier. Chances are good that you won't be fielding Yoda with another Jedi, so Yoda's taking Barrier.

Additionally, most really expensive Force Users (perhaps excluding those that lack Master of the Force) should take Force Push because it's incredibly useful for controlling what units are touching/near objectives in certain scenarios, it can drag units out from behind cover (to be slaughtered by your gunline), it can force a unit to disengage, and it can move a unit that wouldn't otherwise be in charge range into charge range . . . I mean, Yoda's gonna like having this upgrade (and if your opponent is staying away from you, you can keep this in your back pocket and just reset your other two upgrades). Now that Force Push is 40pts, the reduction in Yoda's base cost will offset the expense of this upgrade a bit, but he's still going to be expensive (and more expensive than he used to be with Push).

The third upgrade is the one that I think is most up for grabs - Burst of Speed is good if you plan to use Yoda to jump into the action (and be Speed 3 on one turn, followed by Speed 2 on the next turn - more on that shortly), while Force Guidance not only sounds appropriate for Yoda, but also hands out tokens to units who can probably share them (either with one of Yoda's command cards or with the Clone Trooper unit type). Depending on the force you've built, you could easily pick one or the other and not have a bad build.

There are probably niche arguments for Force Reflexes (because dodges are always useful), but I think the four listed above are the most common upgrades you'll see on Yoda and should consider taking. There might be a place for Jedi Mind Trick since Yoda can also do a suppressive ranged attack, but picking up Inspire 1 with Hope or being able to use his melee weapon as a ranged weapon with Saber Throw just doesn't seem that valuable to me (and Battle Meditation doesn't seem to be all that useful when you have Luminous and . . . well, you probably want your order token on every turn).

Command

When it comes to Yoda's command slot, there's really only two upgrades that I'd consider taking: Esteemed Leader and Aggressive Tactics. Esteemed Leader is great on any unit that has a Command slot and is expecting to be targeted by the enemy. By being able to shuffle damage off to nearby Corps units, your main target can avoid rolling dice - and as a result, can avoid taking damage. Yes, rolling off this damage onto other units might mean that your Corps units lose some models, but if they have access to surge tokens (on Yoda during a Luminous turn or from Padme/nearby Clone Trooper units), they have as good a chance as Yoda of blocking the hit . . . which is still a better-than-not proposition. If you paid for Yoda, it's best if he doesn't accidentally disappear because of a streak of bad rolling.

Yoda, however, can be run in the Wookiee Defenders Battle Force, which isn't going to have many (if any) Corps units in it - while Wookiee Warriors/Noble Fighters will count as Corps for list building/battle card requirements, they still use their Special Forces tokens and so won't trigger the Corps requirement for Esteemed Leader. With these guys in particular in mind, we can get some great use out of Aggressive Tactics on a turn we play Luminous Beings Are We, flooding the board with six surge tokens (or eight surge tokens if Chewie is in our list) to make sure that our defensive surges actually work. It's pretty great.

You can certainly get use out of other Command upgrades - Strict Orders is always nice if you need to clear a single suppression off a unit who has an order (great on a Luminous Beings Are We turn), while Inspiring Presence can extend Yoda's panic-protection range just that little bit farther that could make all the difference for your army. Improvised Orders is situationally useful, but it's probably unnecessary in a Wookiee Defenders Battle Force (since basically everything will be Special Forces) and is probably better on Padme or a Clone Commander in a standard Republic list. Vigilance looks good, but is also really expensive (albeit not as expensive as Aggressive Tactics). Lead By Example would ONLY be useful if you were also taking Hope so you get Inspire 3 . . . but honestly, clearing three suppression tokens seems like pretty small potatoes compared to what those two slots could otherwise be doing.

When we get to his command cards, Yoda goes from good-but-possibly-overpriced to downright-amazing-and-possibly-undercosted. Yoda is currently the only character in the game that has command cards that ALL fish out previously used command cards from your discard pile. While Chewie can fish out one of Han's cards with his three-pip command card (Notorious Scoundrels), each of Yoda's command cards fishes out a different one.

Yoda's one-pip card is Size Matters Not, which boosts his maximum speed to 3, gives him Jump 1 as an action, Charge (so he can move/Jump 1 and then perform a free melee attack with his lightsaber), and Disengage (so he can charge into a unit, deal some damage, then leave it and do some damage to someone else). Yoda is also allowed to perform his special actions (like Jump 1 or Guidance) or his free actions (like Force Push or Force Guidance) up to two times that turn - though for the free actions, it will require him to spend one of his actions to perform a Recover action, but theoretically, you could double-Force Push a unit and double-Force guidance with a single Guidance in one turn . . . pretty slick, especially if you're not in a position to attack. You can also use it to perform one Force Push, one Force Guidance, and have Padme perform Bolster 2 twice . . . so yeah, there are options. Playing this card fishes out Yoda's two-pip. Speaking of which . . .

There Is No Try is a two-pip command card that gives Yoda and one friendly Trooper unit a dodge token, Outmaneuver (so the dodge token can be used to block crits), and Relentless (so Yoda can move and perform a free melee or ranged attack). Since Yoda is able to use Guidance to allow a friendly unit to perform a move action, you can actually trigger a Relentless attack with the unit you issue the order to - neat, huh? (and doubly so if it's an ARC Trooper unit that will pick up an aim token from Tactical 1 or a Corps unit that is queued up for a big shot). There's a lot of solid play options with Yoda - but this command card is one of his best and requires some patience to learn how to use really well. When played, you fish out Yoda's three-pip card, which is my personal favorite . . .

Luminous Beings Are We is a three-pip command card that prohibits Yoda from performing attacks this round, but it also stacks him with 2 aim tokens, 2 dodge tokens, 2 surge tokens, and allows him to issue orders to all friendly units and allows all friendly units to borrow his aim/dodge/surge tokens if they're at range 1-3. It's simple and easily Yoda's best gift to a gunline on a turn when he can't perform an attack (though There Is No Try is also good - and in its own way, Size Matters Not can be used well too, especially if Padme is nearby). When Yoda plays this command card, he fishes out Size Matters Not.

In case it wasn't immediately obvious, there's a cycle here - your 1-pip fetches your 2-pip, your 2-pip fetches your 3-pip, and your 3-pip fetches your 1-pip. Because of the way this works, a simple strategy for planning out Yoda's command cards might go like this:

• Turn 1: Luminous
• Turn 2: Try (fetch Luminous)
• Turn 3: Size (fetch Try)
• Turn 4: Luminous (fetch Size)
• Turn 5: Try (fetch Luminous)

Obviously, this assumes that Yoda is alive every turn, but the pattern is simple enough. On the first turn, you'll probably have perfect order control (and lots of tokens to prevent early long-range chip damage), then change to giving out free Relentless attacks while helping Yoda and a strategic other unit from taking damage from crits, then either dive-bombing in Yoda or using Guidance twice/Gudiance + Recover to build up your token stores. After that, you're continuing the cycle based on what your opponent does.

This cycle can be a bit predictable, so you might alternatively want to do something like the following:

• Turn 1: Size
• Turn 2: Luminous (fetch Size)
• Turn 3: Try (fetch Luminous)
• Turn 4: Luminous
• Turn 5: Size (fetch Try)

By playing Luminous on Turn 2 and Turn 4 (with There Is No Try in between), you're giving your gunline three successive turns of high-token/maneuverability. After Turn 4, though, you'll only have one Yoda card in your hand, so you become more predictable - but also the game will be nearly over, so hopefully it won't matter.

One final variation you can do capitalizes on the order control and token generation that you can get on a Luminous turn - and that's front-loading the tokens by playing Luminous really, really early:

• Turn 1: Luminous
• Turn 2: Try (fetch Luminous)
• Turn 3: Luminous
• Turn 4: Size (fetch Try)
• Turn 5: Try (fetch Luminous)

Like the previous strategy, we've gotten predictable (after the third round, we only have one Yoda card), but if you can have an untouched gunline after three turns, chances are good that you've blown chunks out of the enemy and a little predictability will be fine. Yoda is really powerful and if your opponent isn't clued in to which strategy you're running, you could get some quick wins.

Note of Caution: Han Solo and Chewbacca

Yoda's command cards are really, really good - and really, really predictable. If you're taking Yoda to a gun fight, you want to be very careful of a list that features Han Solo and Chewbacca in it. Han has a three-pip card (Change of Plans) that allows him to discard that card and pick a different one - and force the opposing player to take back the command card they played and pick a different one. If you played Size Matters Not on the previous turn and planned to play Luminous this turn to pick it back up and your opponent says, "Pick something else," the only other Yoda card you have in your hand is There Is No Try (which will fetch Luminous . . . which is already in your hand). Just like that, we've got a one-Yoda-card-in-hand situation.

But it gets worse, because if your opponent plays Chewbacca's three-pip command card (Notorious Scoundrels), he can fish out one of Han's command cards that's in your discard pile . . . you know, like Change of Plans. Then on the following turn, you play Luminous in an attempt to get one of your Yoda card back and he says, "Nah, take that back and play something else." At this point, you're probably playing a Padme, Wookiee, or generic Republic card - and really missing what your Yoda cards can do. Your card playing then becomes completely predictable starting on Turn 2/3, like this:

• Turn 1: Size
• Turn 2: Luminous Try
• Turn 3: Luminous <something that isn't Luminous>
• Turn 4: Luminous (fetch Size)
• Turn 5: Size (fetch Try)

Now that Legion games only last for five rounds, the Rebel player is going to know your Yoda playbook - and there's nothing you can do about it. Oh well . . . on that happy note, let's look at some lists!

Yoda: Sample Lists and Strategy

Our first list explores using Yoda in a Wookiee Defenders Battle Force. While this only has 9 activations (something has to give if you want heavies on basically all your Wookiee squads and take an over 200-point hero), it packs a punch and can reduce the damage it takes from a distance (you can view the list in Tabletop Admiral here):

• Yoda with Force Barrier and Force Push
• Chewbacca
• 4x Wookiee Warriors, Noble Fighters with Battle Shield Wookiee and Recon Intel
• 2x Wookiee Warriors, Kashyyyk Defenders with Long Gun Wookiee
• ARC Troopers with Clone Commander and Smoke Grenades

The list is focused on speed, allowing Yoda to burn Burst of Speed to perform Speed-3 moves on a turn he plays There Is No Try (where he picks up Relentless), followed by performing Speed-2 moves with Size Matters Not on the next turn (where he picks up Charge). If he's doing this level of devastation while his Wookiee buddies hit the same targets . . . I mean, that's a lot of damage. I've also taken an ARC Trooper squad because . . . they're basically Noble Fighters, but they're cheaper, throw more dice in melee while at full strength, have a better save, and have Scout 2 baked into their profile. Why wouldn't I take these guys?

In a Republic gunline, a Yoda build looks quite different. While I could have built a list for you to view, there are TONS of example lists that feature Yoda/Chewie in a normal GAR list, Yoda/Clone Commander, or Yoda/Padme - any of these list archtypes are good since they all basically rely on shielding the Clones in their lists from taking damage. If you'd like to see what these lists look like, I'd recommend just perusing the Star Wars Legion articles on the Fifth Trooper blog - it's all good. These articles are all pre-version-2.6 (aka, Legion 2.0), but the ground rules for using Yoda haven't changed much (except in relationship to Padme, who we'll cover later this year).

Yoda: Final Review

Yoda is an expensive focus piece but a really solid choice for any Republic list (and an expensive but possibly good choice for a Wookiee Defenders Battle Force . . . if you don't mind being short on activations or going hard into your support choices). While his command cards are amazing, he's also predictable (with some wiggle room, but eventually none). All told, a really great profile but not a given by any means.

Overall character review: 5/5 stars. I love how he plays and wouldn't change a thing. In our next post, we'll be sticking with the Republic and evaluating a unit that has taken me a long time to like (and honestly, I still don't like it that much): the BARC Speeder. It's an affordable support choice and can be very fast (with or without the side car option), but it's also competing with the Republic's well costed and token-sharing Corps and Special Forces choices. Find out next time what's to like about BARCs (and what upgrades to look for on them - if any). Until then, happy hobbying!