Sunday, May 12, 2019

Star Wars Legion Tournament at Huzzah Hobbies May 11, 2019

This Saturday, I played in a 10 person Star Wars Legion Tournament held at Huzzah Hobbies in VA.  I didn't have high expectations of winning as the three tournament games would be 3rd through 5th games played but the best way to learn to swim is to, well you know.

I forgot to take pictures, which is a good sign I was having fun and only have two on my phone.  The first pictures is from my second game where two very similar Imperial forces take on one another.  It was my funnest game and went down to the wire but the win went to John B.
A shot of Steve and Eric's last game.  I played on the Endor table you can get a peak of in the lower right and got crushed by Gordon's rebel force.  Crushed may be charitable to me.

Overall, I went 1-2 and placed 8th out of 10 - nothing to write home about (or blog) but I did achieve my goal of not coming in last.  The experience did cement for me two viewpoints:

(1) Legion is a great game and

(2) the local community is made up of a lot of Bolt Action players that I know and they are a great group of people.

While it uses miniatures and table top terrain, the game plays more like a board game than a historical tabletop game.  The key to being good is understanding how to kit out your troops and build command decks that allow you to maximize your forces potential so a good deal of planning goes into list tweaking.  The game does a much better job of capturing a Star Wars "feel" for me than FFG's 2 other tabletop miniature games in the genre (X-Wing, Imperial Assault and Armada).

I suspect you'll see a lot more Legion stuff on the blog.

The specific list I ran

General Veers 
Improvised Orders, Esteemed Leader, 

Boba Fett 
Hunter, Emergency Stims, 

Stormtroopers 
+DLT-19 Stormtrooper, 

Stormtroopers 
+DLT-19 Stormtrooper, 

Stormtroopers 
+DLT-19 Stormtrooper, 

Scout Troopers (Strike Team) 
+DLT-19x Sniper, 

Snowtroopers 
+Flametrooper, 

AT-ST 195
Imperial Hammers Elite Armor Pilot, 88 Twin Light Blaster Cannon, AT-ST Mortar Launcher, 

Commands:
Ambush, Maximum Firepower, Evasive Maneuvers, Pinned Down, Assault, Coordinated Fire, Standing Orders, 



I used a great free web app called TableTop Admiral to generate the list - check it out it's hugely helpful.

The AT/ST was a beast - it evaporated 3-4 units every game (including the AT/ST opponent in game 2) but it's cost so many points that the rest of my force was just too weak and I didn't have enough activations.  The game is similar to Bolt Action in there is a tradeoff between unit firepower and force flexibility via activations.  Too much firepower in a single unit really makes the force a glass cannon.  Next time I play, I'll probably swap out the AT/ST for 2-3 different units.

Thanks to Steve and Eric for getting to get off my butt and attend the event.  It was a lot of fun.

3 comments:

The Angry Lurker said...

Cheers for the link, my mate is a Legion nut too!

Curt said...

Fun! Legion looks cool but I really wish they did it in a smaller scale. With the requisite vehicles it would really sing at 20 or even 15mm. Armada is still my favourite of the SW stable.

Miles said...

Legion is a lot of fun and the figures (which are roughly 30-32mm) are a joy to paint. Vehicles are pretty rare given the points costs but I agree they take up a lot of real estate and are often used as moving cover for ground troops.

Shockingly, some of the more skeptical gamers out there suspect FFG went with a slightly larger scale to drives sales and prevent people fro using the 28mm figures and vehicles that come with FFG's Imperial Assault game system.

I am shocked and dismayed at such suspicious thinking and remain convinced that the scale choice was driven by artistic reasons and not craven economics. Very profitable artistic reasons, but artistic none-the-less.

Anyone have a bridge I can buy?