The Jar Jar Cup, Part 2

Good morning gamers,

Round two of our four-round escalation event was this past weekend and it was a blast! We were going to pair off winners and losers from last time, but the organizer decided to do a full random allocation again, so I wasn't all but guaranteed to face my son (which is good, because after facing him four times in practice, I still hadn't won a game). 

This time around, we were playing with 650-point lists, Standard list building constraints (though we used the "Team" option in Tabletop Admiral, since that's a 600pt limit), but instead of playing with POIs and the standard scenarios, the tournament organizer decided to have us play what he and his brothers usually play: "total annihilation" (or as I will be calling it, "King of the Hill", since it's actually pretty hard to totally annihilate someone's army in five rounds). Let's look at the lists and then see how we did!

List #1: 9-activation Rebel Alliance

This is my list - and I'll be honest, while I dabbled with an Empire list and a Republic list that I thought could be fun, I knew there was a good chance I'd be facing my son Gorgoroth's list and that meant that Impact was gonna be necessary. Also, people in my group have been talking trash about Commander Luke, so golly I needed to take him this round! 

• Luke Skywalker (Commander) with Burst of Speed, Offensive Push, and Recon Intel
• 3x Rebel Troopers
• 3x AT-RT with Laser Cannon
• 2x X-34 Landspeeder with RPS-6 Rocket Gunner, Unstable R5 Astromech, and Mark II Medium Blaster

While I played a lot with an alpha-strike version of the list that had M-45 Ion Blasters on the X34 Landspeeders along with Rebel Vets with CM-0/93s and a squad of Rebel Troopers with MPL-57 to lean hard into anti-armor, I really wanted to get Luke into the list and I got a clear signal from Centaur that he wasn't using Luke. 

The Landspeeders are really great on the first turn, since I can shoot twice with 1 red/5 black/3 black at range 2 with BOTH Landspeeders . . . hopefully this gives me a quick lead with only minimal damage suffered from the Astromech upgrade. All this piles in with the damage from three AT-RTs. Turn 2 opens up Luke as an attack option, along with any of the remaining armored units.

All told, I have 3 activations that can shoot at range 4, 2 activations (technically three with Luke/Long Shot) that can move up to range 3 and crack through armor, and all of these units are equally happy if armor isn't in the mix and we just have to clear "guys upon guys."  I also have three Corps units . . . yeah, I didn't have the points for SX-21s or MPL-57s to make them dangerous against armor (or unarmored) matchups. I'm really happy with the list and glad that I got to use Luke since Centaur didn't need him. Speaking of Centaur . . .

Math Hammering: Ranking Rebel Corps Units

Good morning gamers,

I played a lot with the Republic at the beginning of 2024 and then moved to Rebels as the summer hit. With Legion 2.6 changing a lot of things, I went back to the Republic for a while, got into a good swing with them, then moved back to Rebels. Their play style . . . is very, very different from the Republic.

One of the advantages of starting my plunge into the world of Star Wars Legion is that every unit in the Republic is not only elite (especially since the Phase I Clone Trooper profile got merged with the Phase II Clone Trooper profile to get the Courage/Reliable boost from the latter profile at roughly the same price as the former profile), but their costs are also heavily optimized for value. Whether it's Clone Trooper Infantry, ARC Troopers (both full squads and Strike Teams), Clone Commandos, and Anakin (my son's preferred cup of tea)/Obi-Wan (my preferred cup of tea), it's not hard to find a "good" unit in the Republic - and you can build your list around any number of the aforementioned choices and you'll do just fine.

Rebels . . . don't have that simple of a calculus. In fact, part of the reason why Republic list building is so easy is because you can pretty much pick one unit in each unit type (Corps, Special Forces, Support - and to a lesser extend, Commander) and if you just run those, you're going to get a very optimized list. Until ARF Troopers and Clone Marksmen are released later this year (ARFs are on pre-order right now), the Republic really only has one Corps option and one Special Forces option (with a Strike Team variant) that can "do the Clone thing", so list building is easy. Rebels have TONS of choices and to activate some of them, you might have to tailor your list in other unit types to really get the benefit of the juice.

Today's post kicks off a six-part series on Rebel list building where we'll be wielding the "math hammer" to understand what units - and upgrade suites - are the "best" option for Rebel players. Because you have to take at least 3 Rebel Corps options in your list, we'll begin with Corps and then move on to the other unit types (Commander, Support, Special Forces, Heavy, and Operative - probably in this order).

Taxonomy Overview: What Is "Optimal" for Legion 2.6?

Because the objective conditions (both primary and secondary) are so heavily skewed towards having more activations than your opponent in pre-defined (and often stationary) parts of the board, Legion 2.6 is about both taking enemy units off the board (whole units - not just rendering a unit inert by killing off most of its models) and keeping your own units on the board. This means there are two measures of effectiveness (MOEs) that we can use to determine if a unit is "good": average expected damage (AED) and average expected health (AEH).

The Jar Jar Cup, Part 1

Good morning gamers,

The Wretched Hive team is helping to run an escalation tournament for some local guys in our area. We're all pretty new to Legion, so if our stuff isn't as competitive as it could be, that's just us being green. Our tournament director is allowing proxies, which is good for a group of guys who are just getting into it (but as far as we can, we're trying to use/acquire the real things). We have eight participants and we'll be running the event over four weekends, each day with an increasing number of points (500/Skirmish, 650/Standard, 800/Standard, 1000/Standard).

I'm not organizing this event (hooray), though I have become the point of contact for terrain (and have provided feedback on lists that have been submitted to help our newer guys think through how list building for the actual scenarios they'll have work). Our first event was this past weekend, so without further ado, let's dig into the lists that were present for the first round!

List #1: 10-activation Rebel Alliance

This is my list - and it's very much the way I see Rebels working in Skirmish (and sort of how I see them working in Standard games as well). Rebel units melt away when they run into large dice pools (which basically any faction can do, but Republic lists especially can bring on the pain pretty easily), so I've compensated for having an easily-killed army with an army with a LOT of activations. The traditional (but soft) activation limit for any non-battle-force list in Skirmish is 11 (1 Commander/Operative/Heavy, 4 Corps, 2 Special Forces/Support) and this list reaches 10 activations with only one detachment to push back gently on a soft spot of the list building rules.

This tournament has a "rule of one" in play, so I had to check with Centaur (who's running the next list) to see if he needed Leia to make his list work. He did, so I opted for a 10-act Rebel Officer list instead of a 9-act Leia list (which I contend is actually better than what I'm running). The list has 2 AT-RTs for long-range fire support and hopefully some resiliency (more than my Corps are going to provide), 2 Ewok Slinger squads (thanks to Underworld Connections on the Rebel Officer) for decent range damage and lots of bodies, 3 squads of Rebel Troopers (one with an SX-21, the other two with a fifth trooper, and all three with Prepared Supplies to trigger Nimble before we've moved), and a Rebel Veteran/Mark II Medium Blaster tag-team to fill out my Corps requirement and get an extra activation. All told, I should be able to outnumber all of the other lists and hopefully can steal some quick VPs on rounds 2-3 to have an edge as we get into rounds 4-5.

• Rebel Officer with Underworld Connections
• 2 Rebel Troopers with Rebel Trooper and Prepared Supplies
• 1 Rebel Trooper with SX-21 Trooper and Prepared Supplies
• 1 Rebel Veteran
• 1 Mark II Medium Blaster Trooper
• 2 Ewok Slingers with Forest Dwellers
• 2 Rebel AT-RTs with Laser Cannons

Overall, I'm pretty confident that I can do well in all three scenarios, since I can spread out without worrying about needing synergies (beyond the Coordinate rule between the Vets and the Mark II). I've got a bit of long-range threat with the AT-RTs, good mid-range threat with four of my Corps squads, and good close-range threat with my Slingers and the SX-21 - all in all, I'm cautiously optimistic that I can survive with more units on the objectives than my opponent can.

Star Wars Legion Unit Review: Jyn Erso

Good morning gamers,

This is our first post in 2025 - and we're covering the first Rebel hero I purchased: Jyn Erso. I got her used because I thought she was cool - and if I was going to collect Rebel models, it was going to be a Scarif-themed list. Well, I've been playing with her for the better part of the year (on-and-off to experiment with other Rebel builds), and I've got to say, she's not the best Rebel Commander option, but she sure is tough to deal with (and two of her command cards are really good). So let's take a look at Jyn Erso and see what she brings to the table that the Rebels want.

Rebel Jyn Erso: The Profile

Much of Jyn's profile looks like a lot of other Rebel heroes - she's got 6 Wounds, Courage 3 (pretty rare, actually), surges for crit and block, rolls a white defense die, and is Speed-2. She's a commander with a nice array of upgrade slots (Command, Training, Gear, and Armament) and by default only has a melee weapon (though her Armament slot gives her a choice of gun options).

Two ways you can run Jyn - 102-109pts
Photo Credit: LegionHQ

Her keywords are reminiscent of Leia and Padme - she has Quick Thinking (Leia has Take Cover 2), Nimble, and Sharpshooter 1 (Leia has Sharpshooter 2). Quick Thinking is great on a Nimble character (as you want the dodge every turn, but you can also get a free aim token to help you out on offense) and any character with Sharpshooter 1 (or 2 if possible) is going to get more damage through cover than those without it (and if you can reduce your opponent's cover to 0, they won't benefit from Low Profile).

These keywords are pretty good, but Jyn's defining attribute compared to these two characters is Danger Sense 4. Danger Sense is pretty rare and appears on Cassian Andor (Danger Sense 3/Courage 2), Pyke Syndicate Capos (Danger Sense 2/Courage 2), Pyke Syndicate Foot Soldiers (Danger Sense 2/Courage 1-2, depending on the Personnel choice), and Rebel Pathfinders (Danger Sense 3/Courage 2). If you take Cassian's 3-pip Command card (Volunteer Mission), you can add Danger Sense 1 (or boost an existing Danger Sense by 1) to any Commanders, Operatives, and Special Forces units you have that receive orders. Outside of the Rebel Alliance, you can only find it on Cad Bane (Danger Sense 3/Courage 3 - well, him and the Pykes who are available to everyone). Given this list, Jyn is the only person with Danger Sense 4 innate (and could have Danger Sense 5 if paired with Cassian during one round) and is one of only two units that pairs Danger Sense with Courage 3 (which makes panicking her very difficult).