Star Wars Legion Announces Major Rules Refresh

Star Wars Legion is getting a new rules “refresh,” marking a major shift in the popular army-building game. This weekend, Atomic Mass Games announced a long-rumored “rules refresh” for Star Wars Legion, changing multiple aspects of the game. While players can still use their Star Wars Legion miniatures, much of the cardboard associated with the game – that is, the cards that define how units work, how special abilities are used, and even the missions that dictate what the objectives are for a chosen game have changed. This marks the biggest change to Star Wars Legion since its launch six years ago. 

One of the biggest changes to Star Wars Legion is that a standard army is built using 1,000 points instead of 800 points. Instead of increasing the points value for most units, players can now upgrade their units via squad updates, which allows them to add additional miniatures to a specific unit. Because the larger unit sizes means more attacks being aimed at individual characters, heroes have a new rule called “backup” which grants a two-hit reduction to a hero when they are supported by another unit and attacked at a longer distance. Lightsaber-wielding characters’ Deflect ability now no longer requires a Dodge token to activate, allowing them to be more aggressive on the battlefield.The rules surrounding cover has also changed in Star Wars Legion, with units now getting additional chances to roll defense dice rather than a flat two-hit reduction. 

Another significant change is that the length of a game has increased, with five rounds instead of four. However, players will largely spend their first turn deploying and moving units into position. Scoring has also shifted thanks to secondary objectives, which provides more ways to score than before. 

Finally, one of the main armies of the game has gotten revamped, with the Galactic Republic receiving an increased range for token sharing and Phase I and Phase II clone troopers merged into a single type of unit, both of which are designed to prevent players from heavily clustering their units together to benefit from their token-sharing ability. 

More changes to Star Wars Legion were revealed on Atomic Mass Games’ website, with new rules also available for players to download.