The new Core Rulebook for Star Wars: Legion is live on the Atomic Mass Games website. Since this project was announced in December, AMG has described it as an opportunity to clarify certain rules and to codify rulings that had already been made. While this appears largely to be true, inevitably things had to change, some more significantly than others.
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January 16th came and went with surprisingly little fanfare from Atomic Mass Games. At roughly noon, Pacific the Learn to Play and Rules Reference links were removed from their documents page for Star Wars: Legion and two new links were put in place. One is for the brand new Star Wars: Legion Core Rulebook and the other is for AMG’s new Galactic Conquest Event Rules.
For the first time, the rules for Legion are organized into a single tome, laid out in a far more traditional fashion for a wargame, and still free to download from AMG’s website. The Core Rules are 59 pages in total, including the front cover, a page of credits and a page of cutout silhouette templates at the back. That is 17 pages less than the Glossary section in the Rules Reference Guide, for those keeping track. But with all that trimming, a lot must have changed, or been thrown out completely, right?
AMG has been previewing parts of the updated rules for over a month, likely in an effort to curb any fears about a massive overhaul, instead saying they were clarifying and codifying rulings. While I would say that some of the previewed items went a bit beyond “clarifications,” I was very encouraged by what I saw. It looks like AMG has been focusing on the game’s pacing, enjoyability, and cutting down on complexity (take note, GW).
So what about the stuff we haven’t seen yet? By and large, it seems to be much more of the same, thankfully. There is no section in the Core Rules detailing the changes, which is not unexpected. Thankfully, the delightful lunatics over at 5280 Legion, a dedicated group of Colorado Legion players, have already compiled a pretty good list of changes along with relevant page numbers. You can find it here.
These are some of the changes that strike me as being more significant. Surprise! Some of them were previewed in December, so we have seen them already and had a chance to digest them without realizing it. I think this is a solid move by AMG.
- There are 3 types of terrain, and 3 terrain classifications now: Scatter/Area/Obstacle, and Open/Difficult/Impassable.
- Clamber no longer exists, Climb is a single move action.
- All minis have silhouettes now, including vehicles, for purposes of attacking and cover.
- A defender may only suffer wounds up to the wound threshold for each mini that is visible.
- When determining which defending minis are in LOS from the attacking unit, only LOS from the attacking unit leader is used
- Wounds may be applied to any mini in the unit, regardless of LOS
- A player may Pass instead of Activating a unit
- No more panic moves toward board edge
- Units with Cumbersome can shoot > move, but not move > shoot
None of these items on their own represents a huge change and I think AMG did a great job. The terrain rules seem like a solid step towards clarity without adding complexity. Being able to allocate wounds to any mini in a squad means no more “terrain scoping” (placing your own minis in such a way that you can only see the minis you want to kill) and only suffering as many wounds as can be seen by the attackers means your enemy can’t shoot around corners. However, the 5280 Legion guys point out that you can now expose your leader and a heavy weapon, hide the rest of your squad around a corner, and blaze away while only suffering two wounds max. While I expect to see this in tournaments I wonder if it will come up in friendly games.
Along with the Core Rulebook there is also a new document for Event Rules. It focuses primarily on codifying the event rules that will already be familiar to tournament goers, but one particularly interesting note is that miniatures “must be made from a majority of Asmodee North America miniature parts from the Star Wars: Legion miniatures line.” This rule is elaborated in a few bullet points that boil down to “no 3D printing or proxying.” I understand why they were compelled to do this, and it has absolutely no force on casual players, but is worth noting, nonetheless.
And there you have the Core Rulebook in a nutshell. I feel much better about getting people to try this game than I have in a long while. Personally, I applaud Atomic Mass Games’ effort on this one and I hope it helps grow the community. It will be very interesting to see what people think after we all get some games under our belts!
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