At this year's In Flight Report at GenCon2017, Fantasy Flight Games confirmed the rumor of a Star Wars tabletop minis wargame by announcing Star Wars Legion. Reception to the game has been mixed, to say the least, though. While many fans are extremely excited for a more traditional Star Wars wargame, some gamers see this as a bit redundant given the similarity of scale and subject with Imperial Assault, while many IA players themselves are worried about what this new development will mean for their game. To see what exactly all the fuss about Legion is about, I figured that this week I could examine some of the elements people are concerned with.
Scale
For a long time, fans have been considering the possibility of a tabletop miniatures wargame featuring the Star Wars IP. From the split with Games Workshop to the rumor of painter Sorastro working closely with FFG on a new project, there was plenty of speculation on how Star Wars could be brought to a more traditional tabletop format. One theory was that this format could do things that we couldn't do with Imperial Assault- huge, large scale battles with hulking AT-ATs and even the possibility of speeder and fighter support.
Bafflingly, Legion actually went the other route and made their figures slightly larger than the minis in Imperial Assault. Now, this wasn't totally a bad thing, as the minis do look fantastic.
The problem is, it seems even more unlikely that Legion will be able to feature big stuff like AT-ATs when their minis are even bigger than IA. Of course, it's not still impossible (since even with bigger minis, Legion also affords a much larger playspace than IA does) but the larger scale does seem to demonstrate a focus on smaller "skirmish-like" battles than enormous vehicular conflicts. With this, really time will tell how Legion decides to depict vehicles in its releases, and I personally think that they could still do some really cool stuff, regardless of the scale not being what many had expected.
Time Period
Quick! When I say large scale Star Wars ground assault without AT-ATs (a mouthful, I know), what do you think of? Chances are, a good many of you would think of something like the Battle of Geonosis or the beach fight on Kashyyyk. Obviously, what I'm getting at is that overlooking the prequel era seems a bit odd here.
And honestly, I get it. "The prequels were bad movies." "Battle droids aren't good enemies." "Nobody likes Anakin and his toxic relationship with sand."
Sure, the Clone Wars era isn't exactly looked upon fondly lately. But here's the thing- no matter how you feel about the prequel films, the Clone Ware aren't limited exclusively to them. It's a huge era, covered by a ton of media. Take the pretty cool Cartoon Network show, for instance. Plus, the prequels are starting to be seen in a more positive light again.
I think the biggest advantage the Clone Wars has over the Galactic Civil War when vying for a game like Legion is that TCW actually often features large scale battles between two relatively even sides. Think about Geonosis- yes ultimately the clones won the battle (sort of) but there were two huge armies going at each other for a while. Compare that to Hoth or Endor, in which you have a small ragtag Rebel group going against the might of the Empire and basically just playing for time. In those cases, you don't really even have so much of a battle sometimes, as a game of cat and mouse.
Plus, the Republic and CIS both have iconic large ground vehicles. AT-TEs, Saber-class tanks, Turbo Tanks, AATs, Hailfire droids, Spider droids... there's plenty to go into before you even start having to scrape around for more obscure stuff. Do you know what the Rebels get in Legion? An AT-RT. A vehicle that rose to prominence during the Clone Wars...
And I get it, much like Y-Wings, many iconic Rebel vehicles were initially in production during the Clone Wars. The problem is, AT-RTs are not iconic Rebel vehicles. They're hardly even in the films with the Republic, but we don't see them once on film with the Rebels. See, the Rebels have to scrape the bottom of the barrel to get a single land vehicle that people might care about, and that's just when dealing with the core box. That's rough.
So, is Legion a Threat to IA? Get On With it Already!
Ok, so that's basically my issue with Legion- scale and time period. Two decisions that, in my opinion, hold this game back from being what I personally would have wanted it to be. And I get that some people totally disagree with me on this. For some, a traditional Star Wars tabletop minis game is a dream come true, and I seriously and sincerely feel happy for those people who can embrace this.
I think my feelings on how Legion will effect IA, or vice-versa, are best summed up by a post I made on the FFG Forums:
"... the current model feels like when you go back to the parking lot and someone has parked just a little too close to your car on the driver side- you can still get into your car, but it's a tight squeeze, and they did have space on the other side of the parking spot that they could've filled if they'd been considerate. Now you have to worry about the slight possibility of dinging your car or theirs, when this could've all been avoided if they weren't so crappy at parking."
I think a big part of the slight hysteria around this release is the fact that Imperial Assault releases have seemingly slowed down lately. No summer boxed expansion, no summer blister packs, and as of writing this the Heart of the Empire expansion announced in May still hasn't switched to "Shipping" yet. There may be a lot of potential for Legion and Imperial Assault to be damaging to each other- those cars are parked awfully close to one another- but so far, nobody's door is dinged.
May the Force be with you!
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- Thomas
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