Star Wars: Legion Rules Update Preview – Passing

Hello Star Wars™: Legion fans, and welcome back to the second installment in our series looking at the upcoming Legion Core Rulebook releasing January 16, 2023. For those who might have missed the first article in our series, you may be asking yourself: “What is this about a Legion Core Rulebook?” In short, over the last year we have been hard at work taking the Legion Learn to Play rulebook and the Rules Reference Guide and melding them together to create a standard Core Rulebook for Star Wars: Legion. The Core Rulebook covers all the information players need to play Legion in a single document that is laid out in a logical and linear fashion. It’s the type of Core Rulebook that you will find for almost every other popular miniatures game out there.

That’s the short version, but be sure to check out the full article for a complete understanding of the goal of this Core Rulebook, what benefits it will bring to the game, and for a look at some of the updates and clarifications coming to the Legion Line of Sight rules.

In today’s article we are going to be looking at a new addition to the rules of Legion. This new rule seeks to address a problem that has stymied player’s options and creativity in ways far beyond what we believe the original intention was for players expressing their strategic and tactical acumen when creating their very own army from a Galaxy Far, Far Away.

Throughout the entirety of Legion’s history, armies with fewer activations have struggled against armies with a much higher number of activations. Lower activation armies were forced to either stay in place or engage a much more numerous foe that could “bide its time” by continuously activating “filler” units. We wanted to find a way to even the playing field between armies with a large difference in activations and give lower activation armies a bit of a boost. Not only would this allow for greater player creativity and agency when it comes to building their armies, it also allows the Factions in Legion to better lean into some of the elements that make them unique, thus opening up even more interesting diversity on the tabletop.

Our solution is perhaps the biggest change of all in the Core Rulebook, and it was a key focus of a huge amount of our playtesting and development work over the last year: a new Pass mechanic has been added to the game. During the Activation Phase, a player may choose to Pass and skip their turn once per round if their opponent has more remaining orders.
Implementing the Pass mechanic in a way that hit a balance between keeping Activation count a potent advantage, but not overwhelming, was an arduous road filled with plenty of pitfalls and lessons learned. Passing allows smaller activation forces to be on a more equal footing through their superior abilities and skills, and not be overwhelmed by a large army of lesser trained troops. We’re excited for this new addition to Legion to really open up list building and player creativity.

That’s all for today’s Transmission. Be sure to watch for our next installment as we countdown to the launch of the Legion Core Rulebook in January.