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Gameplay: 6/10

Lore: 10/10

Hobbying: 8/10

Despite the great reviews of Star Wars: Legion, I have been reluctant to dip my toe into the waters for one reason and one reason only: I didn’t think I could paint Stormtroopers. White armor is a hard thing to paint, but that wasn’t as intimidating as the fine panel lining with black along their helmets and between their joints. So, while everyone was having fun with this game, I let it go and played something else.

I have been missing out. And, I couldn’t be more wrong about the Stormtroopers. I’ll get to an explanation of how I painted them a little later, but suffice it to say that with a little ingenious trick I learned from Squidmar Miniatures, and a a little hand control that didn’t need to be as precise as I was expecting, they turned out just fine.

But let’s get to the game.

No, first, let’s get to Star Wars. Star Wars: Legion actually comes with two different starter sets, one for the prequels and one for the original trilogy (I don’t know if they’ll eventually come out with a starter for the final trilogy, but I would buy it.)

Now, I’m old (43) and I grew up watching the original trilogy (Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi) nearly non-stop on VHS, wearing out the tapes as my brother and I were entranced by everything about them. When the Special Release came out later (while I was in high school) I was excitedly one of the first in line. (As a side note, it was during the Special Release of Empire Strikes Back that I held a girl’s hand for the first time. So, it holds a special place in my heart. Was it at a romantic part? No. It was while Luke was fighting Darth Vader.)

Anyway, I camped out to wait in line to get tickets to opening night of The Phantom Menace, back when camping out was a thing that people did to get into movies. It was an awesome experience, even if the movie was a little meh. Just so my opinions are fully transparent, I think the prequels are generally garbage, though Phantom Menace had some legitimately good scenes (the lightsaber battle at the end, especially).

ANYWAY, this is a round-about way of saying that when I had the choice of getting the Star Wars: Legion Core Set (from the original trilogy) and the Star Wars: Legion Clone Wars Core Set, the answer was painfully obvious.

What Models Come in Star Wars: Legion Core Set? What Models Come in Star Wars Legion: Clone Wars Core Set?

The difference between the two boxes is that the original trilogy Star Wars: Legion Core Set has two characters, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, and Luke is leading a force of 12 rebels (who are a delight to paint) and Vader is leading 16 Stormtroopers. The Rebels also have a walker, an AT-RT, which is a personal, open-topped vehicle (I’m not sure the lore behind AT-RTs, but I don’t know why the rebels have AT-Vehicles when the AT-AT and AT-ST are Empire vehicles.) The Stormtroopers have two scout troopers on speeder bikes (ala Return of the Jedi).

The Star Wars: Legion Clone Wars Core Set has two characters again: Obi-Wan Kenobi and General Grievous. On Obi-Wan’s side are 12 Phase I Clone Troopers and a BARC Speeder with a sidecar for a gunner. On Grievous’s side are 18 Battle Droids, and two Droidekas.

Like I said, I was in no hurry to paint Stormtroopers, so Clone Troopers didn’t seem to be something I wanted, either, and I’ve never liked the Battle Droids (though Droidekas are cool).

So, the Star Wars: Legion Core Set was the box for me.

What is Gameplay Like in Star Wars: Legion?

First off, the game recommends that you have a battlefield that is 3′ x 3′ and I think that makes a lot of sense and wouldn’t recommend that you dip below that. Smaller board sizes are fine for troops, but when you get vehicles in the mix–especially those fast Speeder iks, you’re going to want room to maneuver. Also, this is not a game that is meant to involve a lot of close combat, except for your characters with your lightsabers. This is a shooting game, not a melee game.

Each player gets handy unit cards with unit tokens for each of their forces (not each model–the Stormtroopers and Rebel Troopers are in squads and act as squads. You also get a hand of cards, including the “Ambush,” “Push,” “Assault,” and “Standing Orders” cards. We’ll talk about them in a minute.

The object of the game is to control objectives, not necessarily to wipe out the enemy force, though if you do that, too, it wouldn’t be bad thing.

The game starts out with the Command Phase, which I admit I don’t exactly love, but I don’t entirely hate. Your Commander (Luke or Vader) will draw Command Cards, some of which are similar to the cards mentioned above, and some of which add additional command abilities. The cards’ benefit is that they add a bit of command strategy to the game, with your commander making decisions for who should move, who should shoot, who should ambush, etc. What I don’t like about the command cards is that I don’t like miniature wargames that use cards.

Fortunately, the card mechanics in this game are not nearly as cumbersome as other Star Wars wargames (I’m looking squarely in your direction, Star Wars X-Wing, where half the table is filled with cards on top of cards.)

Activating units depend upon the Command card played, and you basically move and shot until you achieve your objectives or your defeat your enemy. The rules are, really, as simple as that.

There are some interesting things that the game does with its mechanics, the first of these having to do with the Movement phase. Instead of using a tape measure, you use a hinged stick. Depending on how far your unit can move, the appropriate stick will be used, and then your models must follow in the direction of the hinge. This means that you’re not taking curved turns, and that you’re models are restricted in movement–to a limited degree.

Ultimately, the game isn’t revolutionary. It is basically: Command, Move, Shoot. Shooting is done with special dice. Terrain and cover affect your rolls. Line of sight is important. It’s all stuff that a beginning gamer can and will pick up easily without driving themselves crazy with rules overload.

One disappointment is that there really aren’t a lot of cards to choose from, and I’m not talking just about the Command cards, but the Scenario cards and the Objective cards are really limited. In the Core Set, there are only four objective cards, four setup cards, and four conditions cards (think of conditions cards like bad weather or other hostile conditions). Of course, I realize that there are expansions to the game–and that’s good, because these forces are pretty small–but until you buy the expansions these can get pretty boring quick.

Star Wars: Legion Terrain

Another word needs to be said about the starting terrain. Have you ever watched professional paintball tournaments? Regular paintball is often played in the woods or at least in nature. There’s interesting strategic points and places to hide and things to do. But professional paintball tournaments want to make everything fair, so they exchange trees and rocks for big plastic barriers that are perfectly symmetrical on each side of the field–so that neither team has the advantage That is a little bit how terrain in this Core Set feels to me. The barriers are all exactly the same–and they don’t even look like scatter terrain, they just look like barriers to hide behind. The least they could have done was make some of them look like stacks of boxes, broken ships, or natural elements like trees or rocks.

There is, obviously, a large 3D printing market that has sprung up around Star Wars: Legion. Nearly every 3D printing terrain website has their own version of the domed buildings on Tatooine. The Star Wars: Legion Core Set Rulebook even has suggestions to build your own terrain and it’s of…. Tatooine.

It should be noted that Fantasy Flight does sell battlemats which look pretty good (they have five to choose from) and they do sell a handful of terrain pieces: a Downed AT-ST, the Crashed Escape Pod, the Endor Imperial Bunker. But that’s about it. (And their terrain is so much more expensive than just printing it yourself. Their Imperial Bunker retails for $74.95, while a similar–it can’t be exact because copyright–bunker STL file sells on a third-party 3D printing site for $7.)

Overall Ratings:

Gameplay

I gave the gameplay of the Star Wars: Legion Core Set a 6/10, not because there’s anything I particularly dislike (though I’m leery of cards and card creep) but there’s nothing amazing, either. They appear to have taken the good elements of good games, mashed them together, and popped out a rule set. Again, this means the rules are good. They’re just not original.

Lore

Come on. This is a Star Wars game, and if there has ever been any piece of pop culture that has more lore associated with it, I’m not sure what it is. Marvel isn’t there. Warhammer isn’t there. Star Trek isn’t there. Historicals, for as *real* as they are, have not entered the cultural zeitgeist of the modern game player (with the possible exception of World War Two) nearly as much as Star Wars. Ask somebody to explain the Battle of Kursk, and then ask them to explain the Battle of Endor, and you know which one is going to get a more correct description by 9/10ths of wargamers. You can play this game as Han Solo or Princess Leia. You can play this game as Chewbacca or Boba Fett. There is literally so much that you can recreate in this game it’s off the charts. Solid 10/10 for lore. (Side note: the sheer number of side characters and units that you simply *must have* can make this game a major money pit.)

Hobbying

I gave this game a 8/10, but I feel like that needs some bit of explanation. Every figure that I painted for this set–and yes, even the barriers–have been sheer joy to paint and they’ve all turned out far better than I expected they would. That said, a serious hobbyist is going to have issues with a few things: first, the models are soft plastic. I don’t think it’s PVC; I’m not sure what it is. But instead of gluing the arms into place on a figure, you stretch the arms to fit into their sockets. And this means: a lot of gaps to be filled. If you’re a casual player who isn’t as concerned about gaps, then more power to you, but I’m usually that guy, too, and even I was bothered by the size of gaps at the Stormtroopers’ shoulders. (There are also some significant mold lines, if you care about that kind of thing.) And some people have said that the larger vehicles (the Speeder Bikes and the AT-RT) were hard to put together because the instructions were poor. The instructions are, indeed, poor, but I got them together with minimal trouble.

That said, I mentioned above how I was really nervous about painting the fine black detail on the Stormtroopers’ armor and helmets. I took a lesson from Squidmar, and used a 003 Micron pen instead of a paint brush, and it worked a treat. The line is extremely fine, I could do both the panel lining and the eye lenses. The rest of the Stormtroopers’ armor was a spray of pure white paint (I used Corax White from Citadel), then washed the armor with Citadel Contrast Apothecary White (a sort of blueish-grey almost-white color), and then re-drybrushed them with pure white. Then the black panel lining and the guns, and the squad of Stormtroopers was knocked out super fast (if you don’t include the amount of time for the Contrast paint to dry, I could have finished the whole squad of 8 in 90 minutes.)

Conclusion

Star Wars: Legion is a fun-enough game that is a collector’s dream because there is Just. So. Much. Lore. Painting and scenery building are fun, even if the Core Set doesn’t come with interesting scenery. If you are interested in Star Wars and wargaming, then I highly recommend getting the Star Wars: Legion Core set, either the original or the Clone Wars.