The History of Legion!! (In less than 53 minutes) | Star Wars Legion |

Good evening and welcome to the Legion Cantina. In today's episode, we're going to be going through a quick history of Star Wars Legion. So yeah, video kind of does what it says on the tin really. We're going to be starting all the way back in 2018 with the release of Star Wars Legion, talking about the sort of fancy flight era, which, you know, introduced kind of Legion as the base of what we know it. And then, you know, moving through the transition over to AMG, and then sort of how the design direction has changed since then, the sort of trends we're seeing in the game. And then also, I'm going to be giving my kind of 10 cents on where it looks like we're going in the future. And possibly a couple of concerns I have in terms of how the design of the game feels. So yeah, just to jump straight in, in 2018, the world was, I don't know, was it a better place in 2018? It was a different place in 2018. But on March 22nd of 2018, Star Wars Legion dropped. The sort of fundamental release for Star Wars Legion was in the form of the starter set you can see in the bottom left of this slide. So this was a starter set based around the original trilogy it was sort of the main thing was Vader versus Luke although from the box art you wouldn't really know that it's basically Vader just like front and center as you'd kind of expect maybe in that in that kind of box art. And it was similar in some ways to the starter sets we see at the moment. So you've got kind of the tools, the dice, all that kind of stuff. But this was two armies against each other. So this was more kind of a starter set, which was pitched as like maybe, you know, you and a mate. You pick this up and then you have everything you need for your first game. I think the more recent starter sets have very much been focused around you as an individual starting your army building process, whereas this was more of a kind of maybe classic starter set in the sense that you could pick this up and then just chuck it out on your dining room table and And yeah, Legion looked really different back then. I'm going to go into the specifics of the rules later on because I think the idea of this video is to go through the timeline and then later on I'll come back to the comparison of the 2018-2024 Legion versus the version of Legion that we see now on the table. But you'll probably have an idea of what the rules were like back then. So there were some weird quirks, you know, units would flee the board if they panicked. Cover was a flat value. It didn't vary. Armies were 800 points. The game was six turns long. Like the list keeps going and going, you know, you can start with the big things and work your way down to the small things, but yeah, it was a very different game. And I think this starter box did appear to be really successful. And I think it's still, I mean, I've got one, I didn't come to Legion until much further down the line. I was kind of like 2022, 2023, when I actually started picking up Star Wars Legion. And yeah, Even I have picked up, you know, elements of that starter set. There's still plenty kicking around on eBay and things like that. So it was clear it was a really successful release. In terms of other units that we saw released back then, there was the Airspeeders released later in the year. Then there was Commander Han, there was Boba Fett, the E-Web. There wasn't a huge number of units, but there were some really iconic units that actually have kind of survived the test of time reasonably well in the case of like, you know, Han. Boba Fett, not so much, although he was really good in the previous version of the game. The E-Web has always been a really fun model. And the Airspeeders is actually a really interesting model in hindsight, because there hasn't really been anything of that kind of... design since and I think the closest thing that's actually going to be to the air speeder is going to be the air support that we're going to see soon so it's really interesting that the air speeder was one of the earlier releases for Star Wars Legion and then that design from what my kind of gut is saying isn't going to kind of be replicated or have anything close to it for a really long time so yeah really interesting that that air speeder they maybe took a bit of a swing with that air speeder early on bearing in mind how kind of static and infantry based the rest First, again, to end the debate. Then in moving into 2019 there was the release of a second starter set and this was based around the prequels so this one was Obi-Wan versus General Grievous you've got a bunch of droids you've got clones I think you've got a BARC in the sort of GAR side and I think you've got a droideka in the The, um... Droid side and again similar to the original trilogy release in the previous year this was designed around you've got two armies facing off against each other you can pick this up and you can play a game on your dining room table. There weren't any kind of huge shifts in rules at this point I think I imagine at this point from a commercial side you're just looking to get the game out there build a bit of a following and then you can start to develop and kind of refine the As people get the reps in, issues are starting to be identified and things like that. In terms of the models we saw released at this point, so there were a couple of bounty hunters who arrived. We saw Bossk, then there was Sabine, there was Operative Vader and Operative Luke as well. So again, you're seeing models that... I would argue like a really iconic part of Legion like again for me as a rebel player Op Luke is like a really iconic model Sabine was actually quite iconic for me for a while there was Bossk and then it was also Rex as well from the GAR side who's been a staple of a lot of GAR lists since then Operative Vader not so much but again you could he brought some really interesting command cards that have been very fundamental to the way Vader's been played since then so yeah really good to see. Like these really iconic models being released quite early on and kind of surviving the test of time even moving into the new version of the game. 2020 was kind of when we started to see more scenarios being added so there was something called the Vital Assets expansion. I think this one at the bottom but again fundamentally what they brought was just a greater number of scenarios they kind of expanded the competitive scene and gave it more variety. I think A real staple of the early design of the scenarios versus again what we see now is quite a few of the scenarios were end of game rather than you know you score every turn and I think anything that brought a bit of variety either in terms of like your the way you set up the deployment zones or you know you brought in those like additional cards like limited visibility and stuff like that just gave it a bit more variety because I do think One thing that has maybe improved in the kind of recent version of Legion is maybe the scenario variety. It maybe was a little bit stale and the fact that more were added was probably a really healthy thing. Again, I wasn't there at the time, but I think it was probably a really healthy thing for the game back then. In terms of other units you saw released in this year, so you had phase one and phase two clones. Man, when I saw that, it's so iconic. Like the choice you have between the phase one and the phase two clones, it was such a cool idea. I know maybe it wasn't that relevant now and like maybe it would feel over complicated but especially now for GA when they have such a small variety of course I do think phase one versus phase two clones would be a really cool thing to have and I think there is space in the game I appreciate it might be a bit confusing and not super new player friendly but yeah it would be cool to see something like that come back because I really like that part of the game you have the choice Did you want to spend the extra couple of points? I think you've got like reliable one with the phase two or did you want to save the points and go for phase one? Just a really nice thing to have. In terms of other stuff we saw, so there was like a joint Cassian-Iden kind of release. So you've got Cassian-K2 and then Iden and her droid. There was also Padme, Anakin. But the big change in 2020 in terms of like the structure of Legion overall was that this was when the handover to AMG was kind of announced. And I think. This, from what I can tell, again, wasn't part of any of this, I wasn't even playing the game at the time, but from what I can tell from the research I've done is that Asmodee basically made the decision that Fantasy Flight Games, who'd been responsible for Legion up until then, would no longer be responsible for Star Wars Legion, and it would be moved across to Atomic Mass Games. At the same time, Armada and X-Wing also moved across. I think the idea was, if you're thinking of it from a corporate structure perspective, is that... the sort of individual studios Fantasy Flight Games and Atomic Mass Games would specialize in sort of different things so Fantasy Flight Games seem to move towards like card games effectively so think about like Star Wars Unlimited and then at the time like Arkham Horror I think was also around then Atomic Mass Games would be responsible for miniatures based games so again that's X-Wing Armada and Star Wars Legion in the context of what we're talking about I don't know how either party felt about this. I think I can see, if you're looking at it purely from Asmodee's perspective, I can understand that you want studios to specialise and kind of become efficient at a certain thing. I think, obviously, with the bias of knowing what happened to Armada and X-Wing, for the players themselves, I don't know if this was a beneficial move. For me. From what I can see from the rules and the models that were being released in Star Wars Legion up until this point, I think Fantasy Flight Games had quite a clear idea of their vision for what Star Wars Legion was going to be. It was going to be quite a static game, it was going to be a bit slower. I'm going to talk about some competitive lists later on and you can see what a huge transition we've gone through in terms of what used to be really good. And what is now kind of competitive in the game. And I think that does speak to, you know, the vision that each side had for it. And I think, I'm not saying one is better than the other. I mean, I do have my opinions on it, but I'm not going to pretend like I have like the objective view on this or the correct answer as to which one is better. I know which I prefer, but I'm going to kind of talk about that later on. So it's an interesting move overall. Like I say, I think from a corporate perspective, I can understand it. But in terms of like, The overall direction of the game and the experience of the players, I think I do, in hindsight, it doesn't seem to necessarily have been like that smoother transition and it does like, there does seem to be quite a jarring shift in terms of like the design direction. So FFG's last sort of... Death gasp, as it were, in Star Wars Legion was this just like huge points update, which massively impacted specifically vehicles. So they saw some big drops across the board for vehicles. And then also to go along with that, anti-armor stuff did also seem to come down in points as well. And that was kind of FFG's last contribution to Star Wars Legion before we moved across to Atomic Mass Games. Now obviously in 2020 there was a lot going on in the world so there does seem to be this kind of like almost gap. Now I don't know if this gap would have occurred naturally anyway because you know you need time to for AMG to build and develop their idea of what they want the game to become. Now I assume they would have been told in advance of 2020 and the kind of the transition across and to start prepping but obviously you know COVID hit late 2019 hugely impacted pretty much all of 2020. and even continued into 2021 as well and so you do see this kind of almost yeah this pause this delay which is completely understandable and like i think you would see this this kind of blip in most of the in most tabletop games most things in this time as well so we moved over to 2022 now i don't know if this was originally meant to come out earlier and again we just got delayed but in 2022 you saw um the first battle forces drop so Um, this, the primary one being Shadow Collective, also, you know, Blizzard, Echo, 501st, and probably one for droids, but I can't remember what it's called. Maybe it's the Invasion Force. And yeah, this is really cool. And I think in terms of the impact that a release has on the kind of the overall game, this is probably one of the biggest ones. Now, there's obviously going to be bigger ones later. There's big ones as well later on. But this idea of shifting from Prequel stuff and original trilogy stuff to this kind of nebulous fifth faction which was so different to all the others and I think I'm not a huge Shadow Collective player. I've played a bit of it. I think they have some cool models. I think they have some cool stuff going on but I think it's so healthy for the game to have this other thing going on because Otherwise you would just have this kind of quite linear thing of you know you either have to pick you know droids, gar, empire or rebels and I'm sure for most Star Wars players that would be absolutely fine but the idea you know that we now have mandos, we have pirates, we have shadow collective, all I think has kind of come from this release with shadow collective. Now, again, I don't know who can claim credit for this. I don't know if this is legacy from Fantasy Flight or if this is AMG's own idea. Yeah. I've, I've. Maybe there's some deep lore that I'm not familiar with. Again, I wasn't in the game at this point. That's a good point. So, yeah, let me know in the comments below. Was this FFG? Was this AMG? But either way, really cool release. And, yeah, just really healthy for the game that I think something else beyond the original four did come in. Then moving into 2023, I think it was just regular updates, whether those were points updates, that, you know, the rules were gradually being refined, again, similar to kind of what happened for Fantasy Flight in 2020, after maybe they dropped their big releases with the starter sets, again, AMG maybe went big with the Battle Forces, and then regular updates keep things ticking over. In terms of the models we were seeing being released at this point, so the big ones in terms of the competitive meta were probably Gideon and Darks. For anyone who wasn't around at this point, Dark Troopers were just outrageous. They weren't necessarily absurdly OP, but they were just such a different unit in the game. The idea that they could act twice a turn, and they were this trooper unit that had flat armor. So. It was, yeah, it was really interesting as a release, and I think there was definitely periods of time where, like, if you didn't tool your list correctly, Darks could absolutely rip you apart, and I really enjoyed playing into them, like, I, this was kind of when I arrived into the game, and so there was definitely that factor of, like, Darks and Gideon were new in the game, and as someone who loved Hero Hammer, I was doing a lot of, like, Cassian, Luke, Ahsoka, and It was always such a fun thematic matchup, like, you know, the scene from The Mandalorian where Luke's there trying to shred through as many darks as he can and, you know, with his surge to create and his impact and stuff like that, he could actually normally do a pretty good job. So it was a really fun matchup. And I think. It was the first of these, like, new style of units that really brought something completely different to the game. You know, the models I've talked about up until now have all kind of, like, played by the rules mostly. Obviously, you know, Luke had, like, Disengage was a bit of a game changer, but none of them were kind of as different, I think, for me, as the Dark Troopers were. There was also Ahsoka released at this point, then a bunch of Ewok stuff which was really cool. I'm a sucker for an Ewok, I've never played Bright Tree unfortunately, I don't have the money for all those Ewoks, but yeah really cool to see some models like that being released into the game. But then 2024 hit and this is probably the big shift. I think up until then, you know, the period after transition from kind of like late 2020 moving into 2021 when the reins were handed over, Obviously, you know, you have the delay due to COVID and then, yes, the Battleforces drop was big and you saw some releases and updates and points balance and stuff for the game throughout 2022, 2023. But 2024 was when they just like ripped the rulebook up literally and just went again. I think you could argue that this release fundamentally changed what Legion is. And is the point where you can identify the movement from the old style of Legion across to the new style of Legion. So what changed? Previously 800 points, now 1,000 points. I was cynical about this change at the beginning. Still a bit cynical. I think it's done to sell you stuff rather than for gameplay reasons. But they're a company, they've got to sell you stuff. And it works okay. Like, you just have more stuff, basically. So I think it's alright. Moving from six turns to five turns. Moved from most objective scoring at the end to most objective scoring every turn. In fact, I think every objective does now score every turn. Cover changes, obviously. And yeah, even the veto process was changed as well. It used to be, it's really difficult to describe, but maybe I'll go into more detail into it in a specific section later. But yeah, just huge shifts. And I think we'll reflect on this more specifically in kind of the rules section later. But this is where if you were somebody who was cynical about what AMG has done with the game this is the point i think you would be like this is where legion changed from something i enjoyed before if you liked the old version of legion to a whole new game that i don't like again i'm not saying that perspective's right or i necessarily agree with it or anything like that i'm just saying that if you are somebody and that's how you think you don't like the modern style of legion this is the point where you might have that jumping off point to go and do something else There was a slightly confusing release period. So the rules were released a bit early and with no warning. So there was this instant transition of like all tournaments are now playing in this format and I think as a result the competitive meta almost kind of paused for a bit while people were like whoa whoa whoa what's going on here and then later in 2025 the full kind of rules release came out and I think for me this needed to be handled better than it was. I think there was just so much confusion about what version we're in, where we're going, why is this being done, and the lack of advanced warning. It felt like there'd been a leak or something and they were trying to respond to it almost. It didn't feel like something that was cohesive and meant to be as smooth as you'd expect a release like this to be for such a big game and such a huge change. So it was a little bit confusing at that time. For people who are cynical about this new version of the game, this is, again, another point that I imagine will be raised in terms of, like, I didn't really know what was going on and I like the old version of the game, so I'm just going to stick and play with that one and I'm not interested in learning the new rule set, which is completely valid. In terms of the sort of models we saw released at this time, so in 2024, we saw, like, Geonosians being released, there was Bad Batch, there was the beloved Range Troopers, Sleeper Cell were released at this point, and Riot Troopers. So. For me, this is where you start to see what AMG was hoping to do with the new version of the game. So, again, it was a little bit confusing at this point because these models, so Bad Batch and Sleeper Cell, for instance, from what I can remember about the timelines, were released into the previous version of the game, but had clearly been designed with the new version of the game in mind. So they weren't immediate. Everyone, I think, was a little bit confused as to, like, These units feel very different to the models we've had so far, just in terms of like their mobility and the way they feel in game. Like we'd never seen damage like sleeper cell before. We'd never seen a unit with kind of the, the flexibility and the threat range as well with that three pit from bad batch, you know, geo is getting the free jump. Like there were so many things that were just like, this is cool, but it doesn't quite fit with what we're trying to do at the moment. And I think. Because the game was still in this, when these models were released, the game was still in this kind of like quite static version of Legion initially. Everyone was like, this doesn't really seem to make sense. But then eventually now you can see where we were going and they now fit a lot more smoothly with the new version of Legion. It's also worth noting at this point, even though it's not strictly Legion related, that in mid-2024, the sort of support for Armada and X-Wing was officially cut. I think there had been a feeling of it winding down up until then, and it got kind of like a goodbye tour that I think officially ended in 2025 with the last tournament or something. But yeah, there was this official cut for X-Wing and Armada, and I think, obviously we can talk about Shatterpoint as well, if we want to, but I think that caused, because for me, there is actually quite a lot of overlap, perhaps unsurprisingly because it's Star Wars, but there's quite a lot of overlap between Armada, X-Wing and Legion. And I think again, for people who We're a bit cynical about what AMG were doing. This was another nail in the coffin. This was another, like, why are they doing this? Like, the game's incredibly popular still. I don't understand why this is being taken away from me. Again, from a corporate side, I'm sure it made financial sense. My guess is for X-Wing and Armada... is that they'd probably hit a point of saturation like you've they'd probably sold as many things as they could to as many people as possible and it just wasn't making financial sense anymore that would be my guess. Having spoken to like a decent number of Armada and X-Wing players, it does seem that they've kind of bought like some people have got crazy cool Armada and X-Wing collections and that's great but it meant that there wasn't much more stuff to sell them and obviously they could have kept churning out stuff that would have been you know probably reasonably well received by the community but there's no guarantee it would have been profitable so maybe that was a decision Not trying to justify it. Not saying it's the right decision, I actually don't think it was the right decision, but I'm just trying to understand it from their perspective. So yeah, that's all the background stuff that was going on, and I think it really is, it might come across as bashing AMG, but I think it is important to acknowledge what was going on in the community at this point, because Star Wars Legion didn't operate in isolation, it operates in this kind of broader... picture of Star Wars tabletop games and I think there was a general feeling in the community around like the lack of advanced warning, the slightly chaotic communication, the massive shift in Star Wars Legion's design in this like 2024-2025 period like people, not everyone, but a lot of people are naturally resistant to change and I'll put like the change curve on screen now but When, especially when some people have something they like, like be that previous version of Legion, be that X-Wing, be that Armada, and they feel that's being like threatened or taken away. And the reasons aren't completely clear because again, as a player, the restructuring, you know, for them, Fantasy Flight were doing a great job, right? Like they've made Armada, they've made X-Wing, they've released Legion, they've done all this cool stuff. And everyone's like, why is this change happening? And I think When it's being done from like a corporate efficiency standpoint that doesn't always feel like the best thing and so I think again just worth noting this kind of general feeling that I perceived at least in the community at that point. But AMG persevered, they pushed through and then in 2025 they released the Starter Sets and I think for me the Starter Sets are one of the best tabletop game releases I've witnessed in any system I've played. I was a Middle-Earth strategy battle game player before and there have been some really cool releases there, some like amazing models that I really loved and They did some, you know, reasonable, you know, starter boxes, some battle force boxes that were reasonable value and something like that. But as a value proposition and a way into the game, I don't have vision across all systems, but I think these are phenomenal. And I really think, again, I have no data to back this up. It's just a vibes based thing. The fact they seem to have sold out in quite a few places repeatedly and it does seem to have been an extremely successful product I think is... It's really important to acknowledge when AMG did something good. And you had experienced players picking these up because everyone was like it's just what I need to help expand my army. I love the new hard plastic sculpts. It gave people a reason to go out and spend their money and ultimately that's all AMG are trying to do. So huge release and massively successful from what I can tell for both new and existing players. So yeah, a huge green tick on AMG's side for that one. I think they absolutely smashed it with the start sets. We also saw some other cool stuff. Custom units which initially I was pretty cool on. I was like I don't think these are going to be that impactful or that cool. I was wrong. They are both competitively and thematically they are a phenomenal release. They do a huge part to enable Tours of Duty which I know is how a lot of people like to play the game now if you're not more competitively If you want that more thematic experience, I think Tours of Duty is phenomenal. And yeah they're just a great release and again lets you tell your own stories which I think as someone who really likes the characters and likes a hero focused play style they're not naturally what I sort of initially went to but I can see for some people who you know want to write their own stories and have more interest in the lore and stuff like that like Obviously we've got more Jedi for the council now, but in that gap in between, you know, there was no reason you couldn't whip out like, you know, a Plo Koon sculpt or a Kit Fisto sculpt or whatever, like, yeah, very cool, amazing release, and yeah, they cooked again. Clone marksmen, meh, nobody really, they're fine, like, they're not OP, not underpowered, just slot them into the list sometimes, yeah, is what it is. Obviously, the big one that... is worth talking about in 2025 was do you ever agree with some real wheel bike? I think if you see like the beginnings with Geonosians, Bad Batch, Sleeper Cell. The kind of end of the arc is Greg on Wheelbike and it's Han on Torn, it's Jedi on Bark. Obviously Empire doesn't get anything because apparently Empire doesn't deserve the cool releases that everyone else gets. Wild. I mean, I know it's harder for Empire because there isn't something that naturally fits, but I feel like they deserve something. But these releases, if you compare them, I think this is the clearest point where you can be like, wow we have moved on so far from where we were and you know there's other units that fit in there as well you know we can talk about the Mandos coming in 2026 but the the fundamental shift in what a unit can do is just insane like we had fast units before you know speeder bikes existed from the original 2018 starter set for instance and swoops were common barks came out I think in that starter set as well, or were released not long after. But this idea that now these fast units could also deal tons of damage is just such a shift from where we were. Because previously, the level of damage that, you know, Greg on Weeda bike, Han on Torn, all these Jedi on Barks are going to be able to do was reserved for units that didn't have as much mobility. And obviously, you know, these units, apart from Han on Torn, are costed accordingly. But just the idea that this shift had occurred, that now you had these units that not only could cross the gap, but could actually wreck you when they got there, was just huge. And I think, again, has been a really huge shift in just design language. And that sounds pretentious, but it's probably the best way I can think to frame it. Like, there is no way that during the Fantasy Flight era, anything like this could have come out. Obviously, we had the air speeders, but... They were fragile and they didn't actually deal like tons of damage necessarily like normally an air speeder is good for four with you know no pierce, no suppressive, no crazy stuff going on. Whereas now you know you've got Han on Taun with his six pierce one, Greg on wheel bike who can very easily throw like you know seven pierce two or something like there is just this really big shift in terms of the design we're seeing. And then finally in 2026 in terms of you know another huge shift is air support. We don't have a huge amount of information on air support yet but my guess is it's going to be high mobility, it's going to be something that I don't know if we have to score objectives, I don't know if it'd be kind of thing that's on the board one turn and then immediately jumps off anything like that. Again if you do have more info on air support and I've missed it absolutely drop it in the comments below. Maybe I've missed you know an interview or a YouTube video or something. Where they go into more detail on those. Finally the big release in 2026 was obviously Mando's. Again similar to the start sets. Seems to be massively successful. The starter box sold out so quickly. Mando's are cool. They're going to be on a lot of boards. They are naturally fast and dynamic. And able to score objectives well. Yes you trade off for activation count. But you can do things with like infiltrate, relentless etc. To get around those. So a very cool release. I think it is worth noting like especially 2025-2026 I think AMG has really been smashing with the releases I think they will all have been selling really well obviously there were some exceptions that maybe possibly won't have sold so well but I think in definite terms like starter sets the Mandos I think the Battle Force boxes like the Hoth one and the Empire one uh sorry the Rebel one and the Empire one on Hoth They may have sold okay, but I think in comparison to the starter sets and the Mando boxes, they're just not on the same level of value and the same level of cool. So there we go. That's the timeline. That's where we started in 2018 and kind of the journey, emotionally at least, that we all went on to get where we are. And I think obviously there's a lot of debate around whether or not the game is moving in a good direction or not. I think... To kind of help with this discussion, I'm going to go through a more direct comparison with just sort of a list of stuff that I could think of that has changed between the sort of 2018 to 2024 version and the new version of Legion. So in a nutshell, if I was to describe what Legion was like from 2018 to 2024 and compare it to what we've sort of got with Legion now, I would say that it was more static. Partly due to the fact that a decent number of the objectives were scored at the end of the game and were not scored at each turn throughout. So there was minimal incentive, apart from with a couple of them, like hostage exchange, which could kind of force you to push more into the centre. But even that, I think, scored at the end of the game. So it is a bit strange. And I think we'll look at sort of an example of a competitive list later. Gun line lists were a lot more prevalent and it was much more about kind of picking off units that you could early on. So, for instance, Cassian with his infiltrate and his infinite range sniper was really strong in this version of the game because if you had a sniper versus sniper off, you could drop in with Cassian, aim, shoot. You'd hope that he'd be getting, you know, at least a one pierce or even a two pierce one through cover. And that meant you could pick off snipers really effectively. So it is an interesting thing to think about. It's just how you went about winning a game in 2018 to 2024 compared to the new version. It's also worth noting vehicles couldn't score a decent number of the objectives. A lot of them were kind of trooper based so it meant that vehicle scoring was actually a bit more difficult. It also vehicles behaved very differently so for instance So for instance the transport keyword was very different, it was a permanent effect not a turn one effect. So there were some really scary lists that ran around, I know like Lila Claire used to have like the Black Sun bus thing which I played a few times and I just had no idea how to deal with it, it was amazing. You could do like standbys with the bus and then you could move around and block people and then the black suns could jump out behind and still have their turn and they and they could blow you away. It was just amazing. Like, it was such a... Also due to things like force push and the way standbys were, all these kind of things. It was much more... There were more gotcha moments, to be fair, and maybe that's perhaps why the design direction has shifted a bit away from those kind of, like, you need to know very specifically how these rules interactions occur. Still happens in the new version of Legion, but I think they are less common than it used to be. And yeah, I think 800 points obviously meant that each unit felt significantly more impactful. You literally had Depending on how you flip the percentages, 25% less stuff on the board, and that meant each unit had to do more, and it meant each unit was more valuable, and again, when you are playing to end of game, or in some extreme cases, if you tabled someone, you did win, but if you're playing to the end of the game, You need those, each unit became so valuable. Now they are still valuable in the game, don't get me wrong, but you had to be really cagey early on and really think about how you're going to go about picking off one or two of your opponent's units and that might be enough to win you the game. Also bounty was a lot more prevalent in this point. Again, games felt tighter, you have more time to go about scoring that bounty and it could just be the difference, like enough of a swing to maybe grab you that extra VP to get you across the line at the end of the game. Again you started on the board you didn't have the deployment phase and scout and infiltrate were very different abilities so scout after you deployed your unit you could do a scout move this meant you could do fun stuff with like you had to sort of drop in your deployment area but then you could scout out and then infiltrate used to just be I think it was beyond range two or maybe range three you could just drop anywhere on the board so if you could hold your infiltrating units for as long as you could you could then drop them really aggressively and it could really mess people up and as a result infiltrate was a lot less common because i think it used to be you know significantly more powerful don't get me wrong still very powerful in the game at the moment especially with contact in the game for instance but it used to be a very different ability in terms of how it worked in the game. But then moving across to the new version of Legion, obviously, in terms of a comparison to the previous version, it's a lot faster, it's a lot more mobile, it's a lot more aggressive, and it has much more of a kind of mixed arms approach, I would say. I think vehicles were significantly rarer back then than they are now. And I'm not going to say whether that's a good or a bad thing, I don't really mind. I think vehicles are fine. I'm personally more of an infantry Enjoy it, but I think vehicles are absolutely fine if it's your cup of tea, you know, with the 212 or Tempest or the Rapid Interdiction Force. Well, got the name right for that once. Um I think that's all really, you know, healthy. starting And if that's your cup of tea, then very happy for you. Obviously, we moved to a thousand points and the fact we now have, I think, easier access to cheaper activations. There has been a bit of power creep in terms of the availability of cheap units. to So that has meant, you know, speak a typical army back then might have been sort of 9 to 10 activations at kind of maybe the higher end. Now you can very easily push up towards 15 and so, you know, now. despite the fact the points change is only 25%, we've maybe seen a bigger swing than that in the number of activations just because they are that bit cheaper. In the new version of the game, Movement is king. It's, it's. In order to be useful, a unit is going to have to move during the game. It's going to have to do something dynamic. It's going to have to do something to respond to what your opponent's doing. Previously it was a lot more about winning kind of the attrition war and dice pools and you know the range bands as well was maybe a bigger deal obviously still relevant to the game now but range bands used to be a much bigger deal back then you know range five was huge range four was huge and if you only had range three then you maybe could get picked off by the snipers in the range four options. Also now we obviously only only go to five rounds and also if If 12 VP happens before then, you can call the game early. It's not the case you have to wait till the end to score the VPs, which is the case for a lot of the previous versions of the scenarios. Now it's just get to 12 VP or whoever has the most at the end of round five. In terms of specific stuff, Force Push used to be 10 points. Holy crap. Crap. I hate the phrase, like, it's stapled to a unit, but Force Push was nutty powerful. You could do insane stuff with it, and it used to trigger standbys, which, like... Just blows my mind to think about that now. The fact that standbys used to be better and could be triggered by Force Push and all this kind of stuff, just insane how the game was played back then. And yeah, I think Force Push was a bit toxic. Toxic. Um... It was just so, so powerful. And again, as someone who used to run like Luke Ahsoka, the tricks you could pull off with those two together, and especially when the game was naturally more static. Having units that were that bit more dynamic and could do stuff like that was just crazy so yeah really amazing to imagine what the game was like back then but yeah Force Push is 10 points. Cover was obviously fixed, you did one for light cover, two for heavy cover and if you had low profile you took away three. Was this a good thing? It basically shifted you towards either having Sharpshooter 2 or, sorry, Sharpshooter 2 for small dice pools. So Boba Fett, for instance, back then was really solid because he pretty much guaranteed you like a range two, probably like three or four PS1 and you could just go straight through, especially had Search to Crit as well. Or you went for huge dice pools or, you know, you took like Blast Grenades and stuff. So I think one of the reasons that Leia Clare's kind of busts. Black Suns list worked so well was just you had these mega dice pools that nobody else really had access to back then like it was just crazy to imagine that you know Black Suns now They do have a pretty scary dice pool, but they were really the exception back then. Not many things could bring that level of firepower, especially in such a dynamic way of being able to be transported in the AA-5. So yeah, kind of crazy to think back. Flat armor was also common, so it wasn't the case you had to get over armor 5, it was just you had to be getting crits or you had to have impact. Especially, you know, I talked about Dark Troopers, they were just such a force, and if you didn't bring anti-armor tech you could really be in trouble, so ion and anti-armor tech became a lot more common. There was also stuff like speedy units if they got to a certain piece of terrain in a certain way that was more than height one and they like blocked themselves then they could wound themselves on a compulsory move. I think that was way back in the day I think that was fairly quickly removed but yeah just kind of nuts to imagine that speedy units could damage themselves by crashing into a wall or something. And then obviously there was the units sort of used to move towards the edge of the board if they were panicked after rallying. And again, I can't remember when this was removed from the game. This was before my time that this was removed from the game. But yeah, just crazy to imagine that this used to be something in the game that you had to try and like imagine the route they would take towards the edge of the board when they panicked. Just, yeah, wild to imagine that used to be in the game. So in the new version of the game... Force push is significantly less good. It's still very good and still kind of a staple of some versions of, you know, there's like a Yoda list, for instance, that you can double force push and it's one pick turn and things like that. It's no longer the staple it used to be. At 40 points, obviously, you'd expect it to be significantly worse. But the idea that it used to be, you know, a quarter of the price is just kind of crazy. Cover is obviously no longer a flat amount. You roll white dice to the number of hits. I don't think people on the whole are that keen on, but I think thematically does make a bit more sense and kind of feels a bit more intuitive. Like if you're firing more guns at a thing, you would expect the amount of sort of firepower to be, you would expect the amount that's blocked by the cover to vary with how much is being shot at it. So if you shoot two lasers at something, you might expect one to be blocked. But if you shoot 10 lasers at something, you'd probably expect more than one to be blocked. It feels kind of intuitive to me. Then obviously Armor 5 became the new kind of flat armor. Armor 2 or 3 is also quite common. Yeah, I think this change is fine. I think most of the time Armor 5 and flat armor function fairly similarly. It does mean that, you know, the huge dice balls can now actually do some damage to vehicles just by, you know, sheer weight of dice, basically, which I think is a cool thing. And I sort of think works thematically and does at least give you options. It doesn't mean that, you know... Your huge sleep cell shot is no longer completely useless against a vehicle with armour. Speedy units can now pretty much do whatever they want they have massive flexibility very little slows them down or bothers them so is that healthy? I don't know but it's a decision that's been made and I think speedy units are a really nice utility in the game now and obviously I don't think the wounding themselves thing was a particularly big deal before but speedy units do feel really decent in the game at the moment. Finally you know transport got changed from this permanent effect where they hid inside the bus and then kind of like jumped out whenever you wanted to they can only be transported on turn one. Behaves a bit like Scout and Infiltrate, still used in the game, still a very useful utility to have, but not quite the sort of terrifying force it used to be. You know, you used to be able to put like an E-Web or a mortar in the back of a Gav tank and just drive it around the board and shoot and it got heavy cover and all that kind of stuff. Very fun, but I think the new version of Transport is sort of slicker and not necessarily more intuitive, but at least, you know, feels smoother and less complicated in game. If we compare you know how you build your sort of scenario now so similar in the sense of like there's one that's red there's one that's green and there's one that's blue obviously one's yellow but so in the old version you used to have a the scenario and the deployment for it were separate So you... There was the bidding system as well which I should probably talk about. So in the previous version of the game you could opt to bring your list in under 800 points and that was effectively your bid and I loved this mechanic from a competitive sense. As a new player I think it's toxic and I think it was a good thing it was probably removed from the game but for experienced players the ability to like tinker with your bid I just love as a mechanic. I love as a way of like adding another level to list building because If you want to reward skill and you want to reward understanding of the game, I think this is such an interesting way to do it. But basically, the person with the lower bid could choose... I think they got the option to veto second is roughly how I remember it. It's been so long now. I think they got to veto second. And then what you would do is each of you would bring three deployments, three objective missions and three of the green cards that added extra effects to the game. You'd shuffle the whole thing up and then you would deal them out. And then you would have kind of a stack of three of the deployments at the top, A stack of three of the... objectives in the middle and then a stack of three of these sort of extra effects on the bottom row and then you would go through and you would remove the leftmost one each time so the first person would be like oh I don't like the top deployment I'm going to remove that one and then you would turn over the next card and see what that one was and you'd make your way across the board. It obviously has a lot of similarities with the way we currently do stuff in the modern version of Legion but it felt more inverted commas skill based just because there was was that bid and that was how you decided it. The fact that it's now randomized. is obviously more intuitive and less punishing for newer players but i think for the competitive players i can understand why the old bid system did feel kind of more rewarding but yeah it was similar in the sense that you you know you laid them out and then you vetoed through you each had two vetoes and being able to veto a second was obviously a massive advantage Move to the new one again similar so you roll your sort of four black dice and then one player's blue one player's red. Blue player gets to pick whether they want to take their primaries or their secondaries and then you kind of veto through with you each taking cards from your deck if you don't like the one that is currently there. So the new one is much more new player friendly it's much more intuitive but the old one it maybe it's rose-tinted goggles but it definitely has a charm to it and I can understand why people miss it. Finally, let's talk about some competitive lists. So on the left hand side is a rebel list that came second at, I think, Lone Star Open. Might be Las Vegas Open, I think it was Lone Star Open. I don't know if those are the same thing. Sorry, I'm not very high up on my American Legion lore. Look at this list. This list is nuts. So, you have Cassian as your commander with duck and cover and his sniper config. Then you've got Ahsoka with push, burst, into the fray tenacity. Classic comp. I think I ran something very similar to this when I was doing my Ahsoka. Thank you, Luca. K2 with the transponder and the blaster. Exactly what you would expect. Then, two laser cannons. BWAAAAAAA Just nuts. can you imagine in the big old 2026 someone whipping out double laser cannon at LSO and yeah just insane to imagine um fair play to whoever navigated this list i think says the top michael smiley like crazy um love this yeah with um transponder and barrage generator yeah and then two strike teams with the uh DH44 sniper you didn't have to bring The base team to bring the strike teams back then. You have the choice to bring them without. So obviously you've just got these for some nice early long-range plink. And early on, you know, this list is pushing a decent number of activations. It's getting up to 10. You've got three sort of deadly sniper units, as well as those laser cannons to come down and be really aggressive. Then you've got the rebel veterans bringing the CM-004, and then one bringing smoke grenades, and then finally the medium blaster trooper. So you can see, most of this list is a gun line. Cassian, Snipers, Rebel Vets, the Blaster Trooper as well. The only more aggro units is probably Ahsoka and K2. There's no really dynamic, aggressive units here if we compare this to where we are with Legion now. This is a gun line list. And could this list work in Modern Legion? My gut is I really don't. Unless you were really good at the game, I think this would really struggle to work. Yeah, two laser cannons, just crazy that this managed to do so well. Yeah, whereas move over to, I think this is Isaiah's list from the World Team Championships that came first. Obviously got Yoda, Padme, Marksman, Marksman, Infantry. Those are actually, you know, more static units. The marksmen especially are the more kind of back rank units. They're more of a gun line style unit. Obviously Yoda more aggressive and then Padme just there mostly for the token generation and a bit of support. But then we've got two lots of arcs, which are going to be much more aggressive. The Wookiees, which are going to be much more aggressive. The LAT, which is going to enable them to be much more aggressive. And then the ISP, which is going to offer some support. So you can see how like. Obviously these lists are trying to do very different things, but the idea that in the previous version of the game this kind of list was possible, and now this kind of list on the right-hand side is much more aggressive, much more focused on playing those objectives and controlling areas of the board, rather than the focus of the left-hand list, which is just winning that kind of attrition gunline war. Yeah, just absolutely fascinating how list design has changed between the two versions of the game. And the final bit, what's coming in the future? Obviously, I've mentioned air support, I've mentioned the Jedi Embark, and we've got the 224th Armored Division, which I don't think is going to be problematic, but I'm hoping will also be, you know, a bit dynamic, give Empire something to kind of compete with these more dynamic options that we've been seeing in the other factions. So, in terms of how I feel about it, I don't know if I'm that keen on the kind of the direction that Legion is taking. I think Legion is becoming a bit too fast, a bit too aggressive, a bit too brawly almost for... I don't strictly prefer the old version of the game. I think there's stuff the new game does really well. I think the scenarios are healthier. I think there's a decent variety of stuff you have to do. But I don't know, just something about the old version of the game. I was thinking about that tactical, slower play. Maybe it wasn't as new player friendly and maybe that's just something that I'm biased to basically because I'm a more experienced player now. But I just don't know how I feel about these faster, more aggressive units. And anyway, let me know what you think in the comments below. How do you feel about the direction Legion's taking? Because there does seem to be a clear trend in the way AMG is pushing the game towards. And again, I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I'm not bashing them. I'm just saying personally, I think I did prefer the older, slower, more tactical style of play that we saw before. There may be loads of people who enjoy the new version and I'm not saying they're wrong I'm just saying my personal preference is for that. So yeah let me know what you think in the comments below I'd be absolutely fascinated to see what people are saying I might even do like a poll and just see you know where people are at in terms of their feeling of the new version of the game versus the old version. Good lord, this video has dragged on. I don't think I can really call this a brief history of Star Wars Legion anymore because crikey. Yeah, just before I sign off, again, huge thank you to the members. Your support is greatly appreciated, literally enables me to make more and better content for the channel, which I am very grateful for. And yeah, just want to give a shout out to the new members we've had joined since the previous video. So we've got Javo CP, Owen Riley 190, Colton Thulin. Yelt Ned 9390, Robbers0317, Daniel Crockett 1224, Dew from the Mountain and James Knight 9086. See ya! Again, huge thank you to all the members. Obviously, if you support the channel by liking, subscribing, commenting, whatever, it's all hugely appreciated. You don't have to be a member to support the channel. And yeah, next video is going to be a tournament prep thing. I'm off to a GT very soon and excited to talk about my list and what I think the tournament is going to look like. So yeah, thank you so much for watching. Like, subscribe, etc. And I will see you for the next one.