This isn’t going to make me any friends and it is definitely NOT the majority opinion, but I’m actually glad Palpatine got the axe. I’m not gloating or telling anyone not to be frustrated. I think this is good for the game. Here me out.
Before I get too much rage thrown my way let me say first that I am an Empire player. In fact, I documented the painting of my Empire Army on this very blog. Empire is not just my main, they are my only army. I haven’t even painted anything else for fun. But having Emperor Palpatine as a playable character in Star Wars: Legion was an objectively bad idea from the very beginning. Let’s see if I can articulate my reasons before an angry mob throws me into a reactor or whatever that was.
Sheev Palpatine, Darth Sidious, The Emperor. The strongest Dark Side force user in the history of the galaxy according to many, certainly the undisputed master of the Dark Side in his own time. He ruled an empire spanning millions of star systems and billions of colonies. His Imperial army at its height commanded tens of thousands of Star Destroyers. Palpatine’s armed forces built a space station the size of a moon that could eradicate a planet with a single energy blast, and when it blew up, built another one. It is objectively ridiculous to put Palpatine in any situation posed by Legion’s generated missions.
There is no scenario in which The Emperor should be leading a company of thirty or forty storm troopers on any kind of mission. Are we supposed to believe that Palpatine decided to join Giggle Company of the 387th Stormtrooper Battalion on a sweep and clear mission because things were just getting too dull at the Imperial Palace? What piece of intel could be so valuable, what bunker so impregnable, what recon mission so important, that the Emperor of the Galaxy would show up to secure it? Every single thing that takes place in a game of Legion is so unbelievably below his pay grade that putting him in that position diminishes his character.
Further diminishing Palpatine is the idea that he could be part of a force facing an enemy of supposedly equal strength. I have no opinion of his skill with a light saber, but Palpatine is purported to be able to rip the souls right out of his enemies. Supposedly he devours the life essence of entire planets. Sticking solely to things I have seen in the movies, he was never in any true danger, merely toying with others for his own manipulative reasons. Palpatine as I know him should utterly demolish any Legion-sized force he faces. We never see him in a front line role because he is never needed in one. The Battle of Endor only happens because he allows it to happen so he can get to Luke and try to turn him. He is a master manipulator and that is what he should be doing, not surface scans.
Lastly, he’s just not needed. The best reason for why Palpatine never goes on the front lines is because he has the most capable, dangerous, effective and ruthless lieutenant in the entire Galaxy to go there for him. Darth Vader should be the most effective and expensive leader the Empire player can take. He was one of the best swordsmen in the galaxy, even if he is more machine now, than man. His terrifying skills with the force are front and center on the first Legion core box. When the plans for the Death Star are beamed aboard a rebel ship from Skarif the Emperor doesn’t slaughter his way through a hallway of soldiers to recover them, Vader does. Putting Emperor Palpatine in Legion was a mistake from the beginning. Though I am not deaf to the howls of pain and outrage from my fellow Empire players, I am glad he has been removed.
What do you think? Am I utterly tone deaf and unable to read a room? Let me know in the comments!
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Sheev shows up himself to take on Maul and Savage on Mandalore, that’s reason enough imo for him to be playable.
That’s fair! I always put him in the same category as The Emperor or the Primarchs from 40K. If they are on the board everything else should just be dead.
There’s honestly nothing in G-Canon to suggest that Vader (let alone the Emperor) *wouldn’t* get cut to pieces if he were so reckless as to go stomping head-first into a hail of blaster-bolts as in the highly-polished fan-film known as “Rogue One” (there’s a reason Vader comes in *behind* his Stormtroopers any time that he’s present on a battlefield in George Lucas’s films). Lucas has been at pains for years now to combat the extremely inflated estimation that many fans have of Force-users, repeatedly warning that “they’re not superheroes,” and that they can be killed like anyone else.