Math Hammering: Five "Optimized" Rebel Lists

Good morning gamers,

We've looked over the last five posts in this series at what the "optimal" Rebel units are for Legion 2.6 across all six ranks (lumping Support and Heavy in together). Today, we're taking those stats and asking the very important question of "So What?"

It's all fine and good to go throwing numbers around, coming up with a Top 10 list (or Top X list when there are fewer than 10 units to evaluate) for each rank - but how does that knowledge shape list building? And if these are the "optimal" units, how do those scores compete with each other when you only have 1000 points to use across all of the ranks? And what if my assumptions about the equal weighting of offensive and defensive scores was wrong?

Well, today we're looking at seven lists that take the stats we've been generating and trying to find the "best" Rebel lists - two from Echo Base Defenders, two from Bright Tree Village, and three from the general faction of the Rebel Alliance (one with an equal weighting of offensive and defensive scores, one that favors offensive over defensive scores, and one that favors defensive over offensive scores). Let's see what shakes out, shall we?

Echo Base Defenders

The Echo Base Defenders battle force doesn't allow for the use of the Field Commander keyword, so you have to have at least one Commander (max of four Commanders/ Operatives), at least three Corps units (up to six Rebel Veterans and six Mark II Medium Blasters), and at least one Support unit (up to four of those). You can also have up to two heavy units, but none are required.

Our roster is pretty light - but despite the lightness of our bench, we do have some of the highest-ranked units in our assessment (below are the units with their overall weighted rankings provided as a reference, broken out into colored bins of 0.0-0.699, 0.7-0.799, 0.8-0.899, 0.9-0.999, and 1.0+):

• Commander:
• Leia Organa with Improvised Orders: 0.652
• Han Solo with Esteemed Leader and Up Close and Personal: 0.577
• Luke Skywalker with Burst of Speed, Offensive Push, and Recon Intel: 0.416
• Operative:
• Chewbacca: 0.736
• R2-D2: 0.618
• Corps:
• Mark II Medium Blaster Troopers: 1.080
• 0-2 Mark II Medium Blaster Trooper with Rebel Veteran with Comms Technician and HQ Uplink: 0.957
• Rebel Veterans: 0.855
• Rebel Veterans with Smoke Grenades: 0.805
• Support:
• 1.4 FD Laser Cannon Teams with Barrage Generators: 0.947
• Tauntaun Riders: 0.772
• Tauntaun Riders with Up Close and Personal: 0.761
• Heavy:
• T-47 Airspeeders with Harpoon: 0.693
• T-47 Airpseeders with Ground Buzzer: 0.671

My first observation about this list of units is that the Commander, Operative, and Heavy ranks are . . . not great. Mark II Medium Blasters are our most efficient units and I included the overall damage you should expect to get by taking both a Mark II AND a Rebel Vet squad with a Comms Tech/HQ Uplink (now that there's a limit of 2 HQ Uplinks in your army, I've applied a limit there), since you're intending for those two to operate as a team (one coordinating into the other so you can get a free attack action from the Standby that the Mark II gains from Fire Support). Three shots at range 1-3, totally 12 black dice with surge to hit (or surge to hit after Critical 2) is quite a bit of damage for just over 100pts. We're going to lean into the Mark IIs a bit.

We also get better scores from the FD Laser Cannon teams than we do the Tauntauns - and while Tauntauns have more scenarios where they can score, we lean into three primary objectives where we can have FD Cannons score/contest (Bunker Assault, Recover the Research, and Breakthrough) instead of other objectives that might make them more useless. Yes, we can't guarantee that we'll play one of those, but we have a chance at least of doing something.

After we get our obligatory Commander and max out our Corps/Support options, we'll look into Chewie and probably Han (mostly because of synergies with Chewie, but also he's our next highest Commander), though Han ended up doing worse than the Airspeeder (and Chewie only did a little bit better). This leaves me with two ideas for lists - the first is a "purely optimal" look, where we're trying to get the highest optimal score, while the second forsakes score a bit in order to lean into the fast attack options. Here's our optimal list:

• Leia Organa with Improvised Orders
• Chewbacca
• 3x Rebel Veterans
• Rebel Veteran with Smoke Grenade
• 2x Rebel Veterans with Comms Technician and HQ Uplink
• 6x Mark II Medium Blaster Troopers
• 4x 1.4 FD Laser Cannon Teams with Barrage Generators

As you can see, we have a TON of activations - 18 in total! With Leia, Chewie, 6 Rebel Vets, 6 Mark IIs, and 4 Laser Cannons, we only had ~40pts left, so adding in the Comms Techs seemed like the best way to retain value overall (the score of the two combined is roughly the same as the scores of a Mark II and a standard Vet squad). I also added a Smoke Grenade so we could get Low Profile triggering on the first turn for the Vets.

This list (which you can view here - the FD cannon and Mark II number might be messed up, I think I found a bug in Tabletop Admiral) comes in with an overall utility score of 16.693 and has a LOT of activations. You're gonna need 'em to stay alive, especially since the list is slow, slow, slow. Starting the game with Hold at Any Cost or Somebody Has To Save Our Skins is super strong, since you can have 4-5 Vets with orders on the first turn (which means 4-5 Mark IIs will have orders as well). No Time for Sorrows is a great Turn 2 play to get some movement out of the Mark IIs without triggering Cumbersome in case you need to move towards objectives. You will eventually need those Rebel Vets running for objectives, but for the first 1-2 turns, you can probably entrench and try to blow holes in the enemy with the offensive efficiency of the Mark IIs and FD Laser Cannon teams (to say nothing of Chewie or the Rebel Vets).

Now if we want some speed, we can choose to take "less optimal" choices in the Tauntauns over the FD cannons and lean into generic Rebel Officers instead of Leia and Chewie . . . the result is an 18-activation list that - surprisingly - ranks only slightly behind the "use all the good units" list does:

• 2x Rebel Officer
• 5x Rebel Veterans
• Rebel Veterans with Smoke Grenade
• 6x Mark II Medium Blaster Troopers
• 4x Tauntaun Riders

This list turned Chewie (plus an HQ Uplink) into 2 Rebel Officers, who have a combined score that's higher than Chewie's score. Leia's points (and those of the two Comms Techs and the remaining HQ Uplink) were then used to "upgrade" the FD Cannons into Tauntauns. Tauntauns ranked lower than FD Cannons on our list, but only slightly lower (0.175 per squad, 0.7 utility points overall), which is offset by the slightly more efficient Corps build we have by leaving the Comms Techs at home. The end result is an overall utility score of 15.871, which does seem like a pretty decent number, considering that we're taking less-optimal Support and Commander choices.

But this highlights something about EBD lists: the Corps are carrying your overall utility score - you can even take a list that leans into 3 Tauntauns, 1 Airspeeder, and a Rebel Officer - all of which are suboptimal choices - but so long as you have at least 6 Rebel Vets/6 Mark IIs in your list, you're getting pretty good scores (the bonus list provided here got a 15.159). Once you drop to only 3-4 Vets/Mark IIs, however, your score tanks (a 4 Tauntaun, 2 Airspeeder, Leia list with only 3 Vets/3 Mark IIs ends up with a score of 11.673). Dropping just 1 Tauntaun to get +2 Corps jumps you up to almost 13 utility points - so yeah, make sure you lean into those Corps!

Bright Tree Village

Bright Tree has, if that were possible, an even more restrictive list of options - mostly because our Ewoks are so cheap that we're going to be forced into some difficult spots:

• Commander:
• Leia Organa with Improvised Orders: 0.652
• Logray with Herbal Medicine, Secret Ingredients, and Forest Dwellers: 0.602
• Wicket with Forest Dwellers: 0.587
• Han Solo with Esteemed Leader and Up Close and Personal: 0.577
• C-3PO: 0.500
• Operative/Heavy:
• Chewbacca (Operative): 0.736
• Chewbacca (Heavy): 0.690
• Corps:
• Ewok Skirmishers with Forest Dwellers: 1.017
• Ewok Skirmishers with Ewok Skirmisher Squad and Forest Dwellers: 0.980
• Ewok Skirmishers with Ewok Trapper and Forest Dwellers: 0.947
• 0-2 Rebel Troopers with SX-21 Trooper, Rebel Trooper, and Prepared Supplies: 0.923
• Ewok Skirmishers with Ewok Skirmisher Squad, Axe Ewok, and Call to Arms: 0.818
• Special Forces:
• Ewok Slingers with Forest Dwellers: 1.258
• Ewok Slingers with Ewok Slinger Squad and Forest Dwellers: 1.248
• 0-2 Rebel Commandos: 0.721

The breakdown is a lot like what we saw with EBD - Commanders/Heavies suboptimal, Corps (and in this case Special Forces) good. A very tempting breakdown would be to just run supersized Ewoks, which you can do in the following 14-activation list:

• Leia Organa with Improvised Orders
• Logray with Herbal Medicine, Secret Ingredients, and Forest Dwellers
• Wicket with Forest Dwellers
• Han Solo with Esteemed Leader and Up Close and Personal
• Chewbacca with Tenacity
• 4 Ewok Skirmishers with Ewok Skirmisher Squad and Forest Dwellers
• 1 Ewok Skirmishers
• 1 Ewok Skirmishers with Ewok Skirmisher Squad
• 3 Ewok Slingers with Ewok Slinger Squad and Forest Dwellers

Despite trying to get our "best options," we end up with a utility score of 12.703 - mostly because we eat up our Corps/Special Forces slots easily and are then left to dine on the not-so-optimized choices from Commander, Operative, and Heavy. What's interesting to me, as well, is that by NOT taking the super-sized squads, we give ourselves points to take an extra activation (C-3PO - the only one left for us to take) and we can upgrade Chewie to his AT-ST form . . . which scores slightly below his infantry form, but the not-super-sized Ewok squads actually make up for that change themselves:

• Leia Organa with Improvised Orders
• Logray with Herbal Medicine, Secret Ingredients, and Forest Dwellers
• Wicket with Forest Dwellers
• Han Solo with Esteemed Leader, and Up Close and Personal, and Prepared Supplies
• C-3PO
• 4 Ewok Skirmishers with Forest Dwellers
• 2 Ewok Skirmishers with Ewok Skirmisher Squad
• 1 Ewok Slingers with Ewok Slinger Squad and Forest Dwellers
• 2 Ewok Slingers with Forest Dwellers
• Chewbacca (Heavy)

We end up with 15 activations - less than our two EBD lists (there's a data point for you - mostly about what you can do when you lean into the Detachment mechanic), but with some pretty punchy units available to us. This list has a utility score of 13.359, which is still not great compared to our EBD lists (3 'Tauns and an Airspeeder are above 15), but it's better than it was before.

Rebel Alliance - Balanced Weighting

Okay, on to the main event - Rebel list building with all the options available to us! I'm not going to show you the full list of units, but suffice it to say that like we saw in EBD and BTV, we're going to lean heavily on Corps, Special Forces, and Support because they're full of high-optimization units. Here's a short-list of everyone available to us who got an overall utility score of 0.850 or higher by rank (which I chose as my baseline because I need Rebel Veterans to make the list so the Mark IIs can play), sans the Pykes that I don't think have a place in Rebel list building:

• Commander:
• Nobody
• Operative:
• Nobody
• Corps:
• Mark II Medium Blaster Trooper: 1.080
• Ewok Skirmishers with Forest Dwellers: 1.017
• Rebel Troopers with SX-21 Trooper, Rebel Trooper, and Prepared Supplies: 0.923
• Fleet Troopers with Fleet Trooper: 0.909
• Rebel Veterans: 0.855
• Special Forces:
• Ewok Slingers with Forest Dwellers: 1.258
• Rebel Sleeper Cell with R4 Astromech: 0.939
• Wookiee Warriors/Kashyyyk Resistance with Long Gun: 0.871
• Support:
• AT-RT with Laser Cannon: 1.021
• 1.4 FD Laser Cannon Team with Barrage Generator: 0.947
• Swoop Bikes: 0.850
• Heavy:
• A-A5 Speeder Truck with Backworld Medic and AG-2G Quad Laser: 0.924

If you assume that we want 6 Corps units (which might be up to 12 Corps if we lean into the Rebel Vets vs. our other options), at least 2 Ewok Slinger squads (which requires taking Underworld Connections on our Commander), 3 AT-RTs (cheapest and highest overall score), and 2 A-A5s (great score, under 100pts each), we can get a 19-act list that looks like this:

• Rebel Officer with Underworld Connections
• 2x Rebel Veterans
• 2x Rebel Veterans with Smoke Grenades
• 4x Mark II Medium Blaster Troopers
• 2x Ewok Skirmishers with Forest Dwellers
• 2x Ewok Slingers with Forest Dwellers
• 1x Rebel Pathfinders with Duck and Cover and config
• 3x AT-RTs with Laser Cannons
• 2x A-A5s with Backworld Medics and AG-2G Quad Cannons

This list has an AMAZING score of 18.450 overall - that's nearly 2 utility points higher than our top-rated EBD list and it's mostly because the broader choices available to us in the Special Forces and Heavy ranks allow us to lean less into Commanders and more into other things. We didn't take 6 Vets/6 Mark IIs because we didn't have the points, but we did take 5 pairs (which I made slightly suboptimal by taking 2 sets of Smoke Grenades, which required dropping the "extra guy" from the Rebel Trooper squad).

A big part of why these units did so well is because they lean on the defensive side of the house more than the offensive side of the house, so let's see how the list building changes if we skew the scoring in favor of the offensive scores of all the units . . .

Rebel Alliance - Offensive Skew

Our previous five posts have assumed that we have an equal weighting (50/50) between offense (average expected damage for cost) and defense (average expected wounds for cost). In this section, I changed the weighting to 75/25 favoring offense - here's the updated list of our "best" units, but we're dropping the threshold down to 0.65 for reasons that will be clear shortly:

• Commander:
• Nobody
• Operative:
• Nobody
• Corps:
• Mark II Medium Blaster Trooper: 0.787
• Rebel Troopers with SX-21 Trooper, Rebel Trooper, and Prepared Supplies: 0.692
• Fleet Troopers with Fleet Trooper: 0.654
• Special Forces:
• Ewok Slingers with Forest Dwellers: 0.835
• Rebel Sleeper Cell with R4 Astromech: 0.719
• Support:
• 1.4 FD Laser Cannon Team with Barrage Generator: 0.758
• AT-RT with Laser Cannon: 0.698
• Heavy:
• Nobody

As you can see, we have some players who remained on the list, but also a new face: Rebel Pathfinders. Unfortunately for them, they're still competing against some of the most points efficient units the Rebels have to offer, so they're not getting any playing time. I will note that the Rebel Vets are sitting at 0.623 and if I extended the list to 0.623 . . . they're the only people that show up on the updated list.

This is mostly because Rebel units don't invest well in the offensive side of the game - especially their heroes and heavies. What the Rebel units have generally been good at in the past five posts has been the defensive side of the house - and so the resulting list looks pretty similar to what we had before (just with FD Cannons and Sleeper Cell instead of AT-RTs, a Mark II, and a bus):

• Rebel Officer with Underworld Connections
• 1 Rebel Troopers
• 5x Rebel Veterans
• 5x Mark II Medium Blaster Troopers
• 1 Rebel Sleeper Cell with R4 Astromech
• 1 Ewok Slingers with Forest Dwellers
• 1 Ewok Slingers with Ewok Slinger Squad and Forest Dwellers
• 3x 1.4 FD Laser Cannon Teams with Barrage Generators
• 1 A-A5 Speeder Truck with Backworld Medic and AG-2G Quad Laser

This list has an understandably lower overall score than the previous because . . . well, Rebel utility goes down the more you weight offense. The final score of 13.252 is, however, higher than our spam Ewok list for Bright Tree Village and ALMOST higher than our more "optimized" BTV list . . . that's an interesting data point to me. We also have 19 activations, which is a solid number, I feel, for the light units we have (three of them cannot score though in every scenario) - and we expanded the wounds on one of our Ewok squads to keep them in the fight longer.

I feel like the utility score differential between this list and the previous list is indicative of how well they'd do in a game - this list has taken many of the same units and has picked up some extra firepower, but having one A-A5 instead of two does mean the healing is going to come slower (and losing three units with Armor 2 and one unit with Armor 5 to get three fixed turrets doesn't seem like a good long-term trade).

Okay, so if Rebels are so good at defense, how do things change when we skew the opposite direction and favor their defensive stats?

Rebel Alliance - Defensive Skew

As has been mentioned already, Rebel units tend to get most of their overall score from their defensive score - and as a result, we have a LOT of high-scoring units when we favor the defensive stat. I'm going to show only the units that got a utility score of basically 1.000 or higher because . . . we have plenty to work with at that level.

• Commander:
• Nobody
• Operative:
• Nobody
• Corps:
• Ewok Skirmishers with Forest Dwellers: 1.439
• Mark II Medium Blaster Trooper: 1.373
• Rebel Troopers with Rebel Trooper and Prepared Supplies: 1.196
• Fleet Troopers with Fleet Trooper: 1.164
• Rebel Veterans: 1.087
• Special Forces:
• Ewok Slingers with Forest Dwellers: 1.682
• Rebel Sleeper Cell with R4 Astromech: 1.158
• Wookiee Warriors/Kashyyyk Resistance with Battle Shield: 1.217
• Wookiee Warriors with Battle Shield, Recon Intel: 1.150
• Support:
• AT-RT with Laser Cannon: 1.344
• 1.4 FD Laser Cannon Team with Barrage Generator: 1.135
• Swoop Bikes: 1.140
• Tauntauns: 1.053
• Heavy:
• A-A5 Speeder Truck with Backworld Medic and AG-2G Quad Laser: 1.269

The Ewok Skirmishers have surged to the highest slot and the Ewok Slingers have lengthened their lead. We still don't have any Commanders or Operatives showing their faces, but the Bad Batch and Chewie were almost on our list (0.944 and 0.951 respectively) and Leia came in just behind the Rebel Officer (0.826 compared to 0.839). The Fleet Troopers jostled for position ahead of the Rebel Troopers with SX-21, but the Rebel Troopers without the SX-21 came in higher than the Fleets again. Beyond that, not a lot of position changes occurred.

The our first 19-activation list gets a higher overall score than it did before (24.231 instead of 18.450), but in the interest of not being boring, I figured I'd show off a slightly different list with 17 activations that's less optimal (20.646, balanced score equivalent of 16.292) but still very powerful and fun - and almost better than all of the EBD/BTV lists we saw at the beginning of the post:

• Rebel Officer with Underworld Connections
• The Bad Batch with Omega
• 4x Fleet Troopers with Fleet Trooper
• 2x Rebel Veterans
• 2x Mark II Medium Blaster Troopers
• 2x Ewok Slingers with Forest Dwellers
• 3x AT-RTs with Laser Cannons
• 2x A-A5s with Backworld Medics and Heavy Laser Retrofits

This list has fewer activations because it has leaned less into the Rebel Vet/Mark II spam and has added the Bad Batch as a hitting piece. We've also saved some cash by taking the cheaper/weaker Heavy Laser Retrofits on the A-A5s, which are not going to be the power pieces that the Quad Cannons would be, but they can also alpha-strike on the first turn with the AT-RTs and then speed forward to a defensive position to heal a friend (passing on the shooting on the second turn to get better positioning).

If you don't like the Fleets, you can run the Rebel Troopers with extra guy instead, but I was trying to make up for the lower overall score that was going to come from passing on the Rebel Vets/Mark IIs in favor of a named character.

Conclusion

And that's it - we've walked through all of the released Rebel units, ranked them for their points efficiency, and then made lists that tried to optimize scores. Let us know in the comments if you thought this was worth reading - we'll be doing some more unit reviews over the coming weeks and then we'll dive through the same rigorous process with the Republic (though I'll be delaying on ranks that we know are getting more units so I don't have to edit my work). Until next time, happy hobbying!