Last year in a casino over 350 miles away I entered my first Star Wars Legion tournament. I attended the Atlantic City Open and I was rather nervous as I was rolling into a meta that I wasn’t too familiar with. I had initially planned to play Anakin Skywalker, but I lacked the confidence in running him as he was fairly new at the time and was considered the worst commander in the game. That fear led me to panic and I submitted an Obi-Wan list at the last minute. With a dwindling player base due to a pandemic that can’t seem to go away, I had no practice with and little time to get any reps with.
In my first round of that tournament went against the reigning world champ at the time, Luke Cook, and got sent to the losers bracket. I then followed that loss up with a second defeat against a Rebel player that was fairly new to the game (which still stings thank you very much). Luckily I did win my third match up; if you count being the only player at that table remembering that there are six turns to a game, and if you were to go another round you would have surely lost your very expensive Jedi to a bunch of Stormtroopers. But hey, second to last place still isn’t last place. Overall, it was a fun experience where I learned a lot, though I was fairly disappointed at my overall performance.
As I stare at my list that I’m getting ready to submit for the Star Wars Legion GT at Adepticon. I had waffled a lot about which list I should bring. Do I bring back Obi-Wan and play defensively? Run the nerfed Captain Rex and try my hands at trying to see if clones still worked after being kneecapped from the recent errata? Do I go back to that Anakin idea now that I know how to play him and find it extremely fun, especially since he did get a bit of a buff. Though there was another possibility as I can take Grand Master Yoda, the new hotness in the Republic that has been carrying the faction on his tiny green shoulders.
It seemed obvious, I picked Yoda…
I had initially thought of a clone trooper centric list with Yoda. After looking at the meta I noticed a lot of play with Yoda with Padme and the TX-130 Saber tank. For those of you not in the know, this Yoda list gimmick is being able to feed the tank the tokens Yoda creates whenever Luminous Beings is in play, which is possible to play 2 or 3 times in a game since Yoda can recycle his command cards. Then you can use Yoda’s Guidance ability on Padme to generate additional tokens that she can naturally feed into the tank as well. If things go well you can easily get the TX-130 Saber tank to shoot 3 to 4 times a turn just by feeding it Standby tokens from Padme.
With Yoda, Padme, and Saber in mind I began the theory crafting a list more my speed and came across the same list, but you replace the tank with a pair of Wookiee Warriors for an aggressive melee list. I told myself that this was the list and started practicing and painting my big hairy warrior. Early testing was interesting, I quickly picked up the weakness of such a list. The most major weakness of this list was the amount of activations I had where I only had 8 units compared to the 10 that most other faction lists would have. This meant that the Wookies needed to do work to balance out activation count and fast. Sadly since they’re most effective in close to melee range they’re was little they could do, especially with rolling white dice for saves. Oftentimes I would find myself losing my wookiees before they could even throw a punch.
So there I was, two months away from Adepticon with a Yoda/Wookiee list that has gone 2-6. One of my victories came from Padme scoring her secret mission and being a sole survivor of my list in that game, the second coming from my opponent forfeiting on turn 3 where they failed to notice that if the game continued they could have easily out-attrition for the win. Needlessly to say, I wasn’t very hopeful and I had to come to a decision: Do I stick with a list I’m not happy with, or do I go back to Anakin and try to work out a list with him. I have heard that there have been a few players in the competitive scene playing Anakin/Padme with triple BARC speeders with some success.
Again, no brainer here. I’m a much better Anakin player and I love running with Padme as my friends can attest to.
At the time my list consistent of the previous mentioned characters, a clone commander to keep Anakin in check and set up a fire support, 2 units of phase 2 clones with Z-6 miniguns and a phase 1 squad with an RPS-6 rocket launcher for armored targets, and 3 speeder bikes. This was a fairly standard Anakin list where the damage would come primarily from the Z-6 squads until Anakin was powered up and he became a vessel for the clones to Fire support into. As a base Anakin can throw his Lightsaber at 3 red with an increased chance to critical that negates 3 block results when an opponent defends, and in addition to 3 defense rolls he can turn 3 hit results into critical results when he targets Armored targets. With the clone Fire Support I can supplement his attacks with either more dice from the Z-6 squad or give him more Impact to turn over 5 hit results into critical results. All strong stuff while the BARCs target soft units of strike teams and run certain objectives with their speed 3 and compulsory.
The list was solid, but it had its weaknesses.:With only 3 units of infantry I ran into issues that involved objectives like Recover the Supplies and Sabotage Moisture Vaporators where I needed units to interact to win. I can certainly use either of my characters to tend to those missions but they weren’t ideal, especially since Anakin isn’t at his max potential until turn 3. I was also at a range disadvantage since my best guns were only range 3 which is about 18 inches on the board, and while the BARCs can close the gap they’re fairly fragile. Lastly I lacked any sort of bid which meant that I would be at the mercy of my opponent on whether I’ll be the Red or Blue player.
I liked the core of the list where it was, so instead of doing anything major I thought it best to see my options to make some minor tweaks. While Phase 2s were nice compared to their cheaper counterparts, the phase 1s had several more options and upgrades to choose from and as a bonus they had their own Z-6 so I can still pour 6 white attack dice into my opponent. I began to dig into them more and weigh my options. DC-15s seemed like a pretty obvious choice as they gave me the much needed range 4 band to use as well as Critical 1 with 2 red. With a pair of those in my list I can start plinking Armor targets and if I fire support my Rocket I can send a meaty 3 red, 2 black and 1 white with Critical 1 and Impact 2 into a target, which won’t kill it but can turn into a Anakin Saber Throw play later in the game. Then there’s the Phase 1 Captains, which add another model to my Z-6 squad. That not only adds another die into their attack pool, it allows me to give them Overwatch which can make me bring out early Standby plays that Clones were notorious for back on release. All this cost me the phase 2s and a BARC which freed up some points for a small bid that I can leverage against lists that take max out their points.
So far this version of the list has been successful and does have me confident that I can go into Adepticon and not lose every game I’m in. Though, my vision is clouded on whether I’ll be more successful this time around than I was back in Atlantic City.
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