Star Wars Legion Unit Review: Scout Troopers

Good morning gamers,

We're tackling the last of the Imperial units from the Imperial starter set today and boy do these boys pack a punch! While Scout Troopers may not be the best example of a glass cannon, they certainly qualify as being heavy on the offense and light on the defense. Scouts are incredibly points efficient, but also very hard to keep alive - so in today's post, we're going to look at what these guys are good at and how you can get the most out of them in both standard Imperial lists and in several battle forces.

Scout Troopers: The Profile

Scout Troopers have some pretty common Special Forces stats: Speed 2, Courage 2, and 1 Health each. This makes them more courageous than the Imperial Corps units we've looked at recently, so they can afford to be a little distant from your Compel characters. Their offense is super good with Sharpshooter 1 and 2 black dice/mini at range 1-2 (and their melee is fine with 1 black die/mini in melee). Without Surge to hit/crit, they wouldn't mind access to the Critical keyword (available in the Imperial Remnant Battle Force - more on that later) or characters that help them get surge tokens (rare but possible - more on that later). Defensively, they're a bit fragile with surging white saves, but Low Profile helps them some - especially if they're sitting in a terrain feature that grants heavy cover. Scout 3 is a very useful Turn 1 aid, as it helps them navigate up the board quickly (though without Unhindered, they're going to still get slowed down by difficult terrain). With 4 minis for 48pts, these guys are about the same cost as Stromtroopers/Snowtroopers per mini, which is very useful for buffing out your activations.

The Scout Trooper Strike Team had a very similar profile (boy am I glad this article came out AFTER the points adjustment and profile releases). Like before, they have the Heavy Weapon Team special rule, which makes the Heavy Weapon upgrade required, but the Heavy is also the unit leader. With only 2 models including the Heavy, this squad is much easier to kill and once you include the Heavy, they aren't that much cheaper than the full squad (42pts with the sniper vs. 48pts for the full squad without upgrades). With the sniper getting better and coming down in price (20pts now) and the option for cheaper heavies if you don't want to do chip-damage from far away (10pts for a Probe, 17pts for a saboteur), these might see play now. They have Detachment: Scout Troopers, so they can only be fielded alongside full Scout Trooper units, which means their primary point of comparison is definitely Probe Droids (and since these are Support options now, you're looking to add more Support tokens to your bag instead of Special Forces).

Star Wars Legion Unit Review: Snowtroopers

Good morning gamers,

We're back in the Empire for the rest of the month and we're tackling our second of the Imperial Corps units: Snowtroopers. I was a fan of these guys (at least in theory) in the previous edition of the game because they were basically Stormtroopers with Steady. Yes, they have less of a smorgasbord of Heavy Weapon options, but Steady is a great keyword and they're rolling similar stuff on offense and defense. For most competitive players, Snowtroopers have been the go-to option in Legion 2.6 and they are, truthfully, very good units. Let's dig into what makes these guys so great!

Snowtroopers: The Profile

Like Stormtroopers (and Pyke Syndicate Foot Soldiers), these guys are base 42pts - though in reality, these guys are 68pts+, for reasons we'll see when we get to the upgrade section. These are some of the cheapest red-defense-die units in the game and they keep their cost down by taking a few key downgrades. First and foremost, they're only Speed-1 - as we'll see in a moment, that's perfectly fine. Second, they roll 1 white attack die per mini in both melee and at range - with surge to hit, this is only marginally worse than rolling 1 black die each without surging, but it psychologically FEELS worse because "white dice can't hit". Third, they're only base Courage 1 - but the Empire has a few tricks that can fix that problem easily.

At first blush, these guys aren't much to look at - but their one and only keyword makes up for a lot of their problems: Steady. Second to Relentless, this is the strongest keyword for turning a drool unit into a cool unit. While these guys are Speed-1 (~4" of movement), the fact that they can move-move-shoot with ~8" of total movement makes them faster than most units that can only move-shoot. Additionally, because they're moving at Speed-1, they effectively ignore difficult terrain (since difficult terrain reduces your speed by 1 to a minimum of 1). Most other units would need to pay 2pts to get Environmental Gear (or have Scale in their profiles/upgrade suite), so when you think about it, these guys are actually the cheapest Corps option the Empire has. To use them effectively, you do have to build around them a little - but their upgrades can help with this a lot.

Star Wars Legion Unit Review: Rebel Sleeper Cell

Good morning gamers,

Rebels have been pretty dominant since the arrival of the Rebel Sleeper Cell unit came to version 2.6 - they were originally very overtuned to be good at playing the new game of Legion and have gotten some points hikes to ease them off a bit. While some players were running three of these every single time they hit the table, modern lists post-price-hikes have seen a more modest number of 1-2 Sleepers in Rebel lists (often accompanied by some form of Ewok Slinger squad, Mandalorians, and very, VERY occasionally Rebel Commandos or Wookiees).

Today we're digging into the Rebel Sleeper Cell unit and what's still good about them, even after they got their price hikes. Let's see what the profile has to offer and why this is still very much a good choice in Rebel lists.

Rebel Sleeper Cell: The Profile

I'm not sure that you could tune this unit any more than it is now, except by giving it better saves. You've got the stock-standard Rebel Special Forces stats of Courage 2, Speed-2, surging-white saves, and 1 Health each - but with a starting unit size of 6 models and surging-white saves, they're quite a bit more durable than most of their competitors (Rebel Commandos and Mandalorian Resistance - one could make an argument for Wookiees and Ewoks being more durable because of the sheer amount of wounds they have). To help their durability, they have Nimble, though no innate ways to get dodge support. With Exemplar heroes (and possibly some upgrades), it's not hard to trigger Nimble, though the issue is usually timing. Still, if you can get a dodge token on these guys (or can borrow it from someone), they'll be guaranteed one extra life so long as your opponent hasn't leaned into High Velocity (beware those perennial Clone Commandos and those cheaper AATs).

These guys have settled into a unit cost of 77pts and boy do they pack a PUNCH on offense! At range 1-2, they roll 2 black dice each with surge to hit, which means that a six-man Sleeper Cell unit is expected to get 7.5 hits/attack - and that's before any aim tokens that they use for rerolls with Tactical 1! With Scout 2, they're probably moving twice on the first turn (moving roughly 12" up the board), which means anyone who drifted 12" or more up their side of the board might be in range on the first turn - and with two aim tokens to fix the 4.5 dice that missed, you're looking at close to 10 expected hits on the first turn (some of which are likely to be crits). Yeah, they're nasty. Additionally, once in melee, they have the option to roll 1 red each with Impact 1 on each of those weapons (reliable into armor units) or roll 1 black/1 white with suppressive (pretty decent against most trooper units). All in all, these guys have a great offensive package - and one that feels much better than it should for a sub-80pt unit!