Good morning gamers,
Last time, we looked at what the "best" Rebel Corps unit was, based on how well it fulfilled the needs of the scoring system that's in place for Legion 2.6. Today, we're turning to the other required rank class in Legion: the Commander. The Rebels have access to nine Commanders at the moment (no new ones appear to be on the horizon, though new sculpts are coming!), but it would appear that in an interview with Grey Squadron Gaming, one of these Commanders will be migrated to Operative. Let's take a look at how we're going to be ranking things and then we'll dig into who's the best Rebel Commander around!
Taxonomy Overview: What Is "Optimal" for Legion 2.6?
As discussed in the previous post, 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 and average expected health (AEH).
Average Expected Damage (AED) is computed by finding the average number of hits and crits that a unit is supposed to get. The greatest dilemma for finding this number in the real world is that it is affected by a LOT of variables - here's a few:
- There is a subtle but mostly irrelevant distinction between a Hit result and a Crit result - Crits really only matter if the enemy unit has the Armor X keyword, has dodge tokens, and to a small degree, has light/heavy cover (often if they also have Low Profile);
- The Pierce X keyword doesn't increase the damage that you do, but it DOES make the damage that you get more likely to actually take effect;
- The number of hits/crits that you get is all fine and good, but the quality of the target unit's save (and defensive keywords, dodge tokens, and visible models) can have a huge impact on how much damage you can actually do;
- The number of wounds previously suffered might reduce the expected damage of the unit (if it's a multi-model unit and each model has 1 wound) or it might have a slight impact once a certain amount of damage is done (if it's a multi-model unit and each model has multiple wounds), or might have no impact at all (in the case of single-model units); and
- The distance to the enemy target may affect whether or not a unit can aim before shooting - and the value of an aim token is highly dependent on which dice in your dice pool hit or missed in the first volley).
For the sake of a more simplistic model, I've made the following assumptions:
- If a model pays for an upgrade that increases its damage once injured (like Tenacity), we will use the upgrade to improve whatever offensive range bands would be affected;
- The average expected damage of a model will be a straight average of their expected damage at ranges melee-3 (for Corps, we did ranges 2-4 and preference of melee or range 1, but since most Commanders can't do damage at range 4 - Cassian is the only exception - it seemed silly to both penalize basically everyone for a very understandable design choice by the AMG crowd AND reward characters that can do melee well over those that can't);
- The score for the model will be the score of a reasonable loadout for the character - we will not be meta-gaming upgrades to score well in the system, but will look instead at what makes a Commander function well in army lists;
- Units are assumed to not take aim actions before they shoot unless that unit has a unique way to gain an aim token without spending an action; and
- The score for the unit will be the average expected hits for every 10 points spent on the unit (so units that are cheaper but do the same/more damage than a more expensive unit come out ahead).
