Atomic Mass Games | Star Wars: Legion Rebel Commandos Unit Expansion | Miniatures Game | Ages 14+ | 2 Players | 120-180 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

The Rebel Alliance can recruit new members from across the galaxy, finding pilots, soldiers, and medics among those who hate the Empire. Plenty of beings can take up a blaster rifle to fight Stormtroopers, but there are a few who are willing to push the boundaries and do whatever it takes to keep the Rebellion alive. Saboteurs. Snipers. The Rebel Alliance’s most dangerous operatives—now entering the infantry battles played out in your games of Star Wars: Legion. R2 is a squishy character that doesn’t do much besides try and score victory points, and we live in a meta where bounty hunters are both effective and popular, which often makes R2 something of a liability to take. The trash can’s reign of Secret Mission induced terror is over and has been for awhile, and maybe that’s a good thing? Fleet Troopers Boy, how I would love to just give these guys a good old fashioned generic heavy weapon that just added dice and did nothing else. Bistan is pretty solid, but he’s unique, and Pao doesn’t do what you need a heavy weapon upgrade to do (add offense), so you are probably limited to just one of these unless you are doing something specific with a bunch of infiltrating naked Pathfinders. Why can’t Melshi just walk over to a Rebel Trooper unit, pull rank, and commandeer one of those Z-6s that the Rebel Troopers probably weren’t using anyway? Wookiees (Ranged) Specialized Units –The Rebellion has very specialized units which does work both for and against it. Units tend to excel at a specific task, and it’s generally clear to a beginner what a unit is “meant” to do. The flip side is that if the units are caught trying to do things they’re not designed to do, they’ll usually be defeated by things more appropriate for the task.

The first but not last Rebel corps unit in this tier, Fleets are reasonable as naked units (or medbot delivery) but they are just too squishy and unreliable to take as assault units, which is what you’re doing if you take their shotgun. Rebel Troopers We’ll talk about four key elements of Strike Team Sniper tactics: Deployment, Target Priority, Corner Peeking, and Counter Sniping. Deployment Cassian was already a staple of Rebel lists before the points update, and then he got a ten point reduction via his now-free gun. Cassian brings reliable unlimited range damage that bypasses most defensive tech, and he does it while fulfilling your Commander slot. His command cards also offer excellent support to other Rebel characters. He’s a particularly good match for Ahsoka or Boba, who both feature high on this list. If you are running a Rebel list without Cassian, you need a really good reason for it. K-2SO

points. This works out to 15 points per model, or 50% more expensive than a Rebel Trooper. You’re getting some good perks for your premium, but durability isn’t one of them… health per model, white/surge defense. Same raw durability as a Rebel Trooper, except without Nimble. Don’t hang these guys out to dry. Not dealing the same high damage as Luke, Leia’s skills across both ranged and melee combat instead make her more flexible as a commander. Her Sharpshooter keyword ability is noteworthy for dismissing target cover, but it’s through her team buffs that she really shines. Inspire removes suppression tokens from nearby troops, and the Take Cover ability grants doge tokens to those nearby. Keep her close to weak troops as you charge headlong into the throes of conflict. With a smaller points price tag than Luke, fielding Leia will free up enough space to add another Rebel Trooper squadron with an added Z-6 chaingun to your army – useful if you’re after greater heavy firepower. Speaking of units with small dice pools hurt by the cover changes, here’s Han! Han had a brief renaissance after the ’21 points update when he got Steady, but his double red dice pool, while reliable into no cover or light cover, is absolutely miserable for his cost (and its range) into heavy cover, which is mostly what you’re doing these days. The original Core Set is still a great place to start. It’s an economic way to get a few good starting units, all the cards, dice and tools you need to play the game and even a second army to split with a friend (or keep for yourself if you want to play both sides). If you’re splitting with a friend, it’s not even a bad idea to buy two and double your starting options.

The recent points update brought quite a few cuts to a slew of Rebel units, shuffling around the internal balance of the factions and (hopefully) allowing the recently struggling Rebel Alliance to compete with their red save nemeses. We’ll take a look at how things shake out for the Rebel roster after the points update. Also, while I’m sure Ewoks will shake things up, they aren’t actually out yet so they won’t be included on this list.

Bring Down the Empire

Introduced to the canon in DICE’s 2017 videogame Star Wars: Battlefront 2, Iden Versio has become something of a hot topic in Star Wars: Legion. Boasting a slew of original and effective abilities that can be easily integrated with an existing force, Versio’s power is matched only by her variability. A 100-point unit cost might seem steep, but her abilities make every point worth it. Hey, a use for these things. If you intend on using clamber cohesion to corner peek, these are a nice, cheap upgrade for a strike team. Summary R2-D2– You have to buy an unfortunately overpriced terrain piece to get him but R2 opens up a lot of options for rebels. Notably, his Secret Mission can score you an extra point and in Legion, where games are frequently resolved on small margins it can mean the difference between winning or going to kill points for a tie breaker. Conclusion Whether you choose to field the Rebel Commandos at full strength, or you’re simply bringing snipers or saboteurs as part of a few small strike teams, you’ll have the tools that you need to sway the battle in your favor. The seven miniatures included in this unit expansion allow you to field both a standard unit and a strike team of Rebel Commandos, helping you to tailor your Rebel army to play however you choose. Unfortunately, the best Rebel corps unit is not really a Rebel unit at all. Pykes are still excellent units, with very strong offense and above average defense, as well as Courage 2 when you bring the Capo personnel upgrade along. Unfortunately, they don’t help fill your corps minimums, but if you’re bringing somewhere from 4-6 corps and you can find the points to bring upgraded Pykes, it’s well worth it. Pyke Syndicate Capo

The landspeeder got some huge cuts in the last points update, making players reconsider if that Unstable Astromech double hardpoint build actually is any good after all. Turns out a strong seven dice pool tapped twice in a row actually does quite a bit of work if you’re looking for an alpha strike build, and now you can do that for as little as 108 points. You can of course still put R2 in one of these if you want, to double as some repair insurance while threatening to score that extra point. Rebel Vets and Mark II Medium Blaster Din can still be pretty disruptive when he’s directly in your face and in melee (and he’s more likely to be able to get those out of cover shots with the pistol) but at his price point he just isn’t good enough in that role to justify it. IG-11 Hopefully you aren’t even shooting at vehicles. I would shoot any of the above in heavy cover before shooting vehicles, unless that vehicle is a really important one and only has one health left. Corner Peeking Big chart, small chart. Red chart, blue chart. This one has a little star. This one has a little car. Boy what a lot of… bloody hell, I’ve been reading too many children’s books. The most common way to take the sniper, however, is in a strike team. Often you are only shooting with the DH-447 itself.

Leia Organa

Oh yeah, this thing still exists. While the (entirely justified) changes to closed transports made it much harder to deliver a W key unit to your opponent’s doorstep, the A-A5 is still a reasonable price for a support vehicle, and you’ll soon be able to put tiny, cheap murder bears in one of these, if that’s a thing you want to do. T-47 Airspeeder Let’s state the obvious here: we’re talking about sniper strike teams, not sabs. Sabs got massively hurt by the new wound allocation rules (even moreso than their sniper counterparts) and their offensive profile doesn’t really justify the huge risk anymore. It doesn’t change much if you sort it by white/surge defense die; the full squad + DH-447 just loses one spot to the Fleets + MPL-B.