With Labor Day in the United States this last weekend, I finally had a chance to sit down with my younger son and play Star Wars: Legion. This is a game we picked up several months ago, and my son was very eager to do (he is all about the foot soldier games). He selected the Empire, which left me with the Rebel Alliance. In our case, we were only playing with the core set – we have seen several of the expansions, but until we actually played, we did not want to add additional units. Given the various other activities, I also have not had a chance to paint the models, though for the most part that was not an issue.
The game was straight forward, a simple battle in a balanced field – not much in the way of terrain, but plenty of hard cover. After the first couple of rounds, I was impressed by how intuitive the game became – the later turns moved much faster. Some of this is similarities to X-Wing and Armada, but also just the basic nature of the mechanics. Fundamentally, just roll hits and then defense – the only variability was in the type of dice used in each case. Certainly with upgrades and advanced rules, it will be a bit more complex, but the basic mechanics are easy to understand.
For the battle, the Empire played a bit cautious, holding back, while the Rebels charged the field. The Empire speeder bikes went down fairly quickly, after they flew directly past a Rebel squad. Cover turned out to be rather powerful, a Rebel squad was decimated charging Stormtroopers behind cover. The Rebel AT-RT was surprisingly powerful, and resistant to damage being armored, it ended up going up against Darth Vader before it was taken down. In the end, a wounded Darth Vader faced off against Luke Skywalker and a unit of Rebel troopers, resulting in a Rebel win after turn 6. And a willingness to continue to play and expand for future games.
