Star Wars Legion – Excited to Start Painting

As Legion gets closer and closer to reality, I find myself at a loss because I still haven’t decided on a color scheme for my armies!  It’s got me thinking more and more about how I’m going to approach painting and customizing the game once it arrives.

When to Paint

I’ve made the mistake in the past, of getting a game and refusing to play it until I’ve finished painting it.   There are several problems with this approach.  The most obvious of which is that it means I’ll have a brand new game but not actually be playing it for awhile.  The second problem is that I’ll be anxious to play, and perhaps be tempted to do rush jobs on my miniatures just so that I can get them finished and start playing.  Additionally, this doesn’t allow for an intermediate time of reflection.   For example, if I painted one squad of miniatures, then went to go play a game or two, I might see some other paint jobs that could inspire some variation on future models.   This helps establish some depth of variation and design.

So this time around, I’m going to assemble everything right away, and possibly even prime them immediately, but I don’t think I’ll have that much of a rush to fully paint everything before playing.   If you are torn on this, I could suggest a black prime and maybe a light dry-brushing, just to bring out the detail on your models to hold you over until you decide to sit down and hammer out a squad or two of troopers.

Pink Stormtroopers?

Do I want everyone to be standard?  I generally do, or at least I think I do.  When I got into playing X-Wing, I remember going nuts and painting a ton of my ships in all sorts of wild colors, like red X-Wings, purple TIE Fighters…  and now as I look back on these I think I was overanxious to do something different.   For now, I think I’d rather have the majority of my troops looking standard.  But there’s something to be said for doing a squad or two with some special paint scheme.

The key is (in my opinion) not doing a paint scheme that will overwrite something that’s likely to show up in the future.  I wouldn’t paint my stormtroopers black for example, because that might make them look too similar to Death Troopers if those show up.   Same goes for Chrome, as if they ever do sequel trilogy units, I wouldn’t want confusion with Captain Phasma.  So while I may not go so far as to do Pink Stormtroopers, I think some variation may certainly be a think.  Dirty stormtroopers, Sandy Stormtroopers, and maybe even some regular stormtroopers with a touch of snow on their uniforms for my Hoth terrain.  (To hold me over until snow

Bases

It looks like the figures don’t actually come attached to their bases.  This will help people who want to customize their bases have more freedom to do so.   The only risk with doing that however, is that it might look strange if you end up playing on new terrain at some point.   In my case, my terrain is all going to have a snowy theme, so weather I’m on Hoth, Starkiller Base, or the snow-crested mountains of Alderaan, my snowy terrain will be appropriate.   However, if I made all of my bases snowy, it might look strange when I eventually bring an army to a tournament and play on an urban setting, or an Endor map.  I may just paint all of my Imperial bases in grey, and all my rebel bases in tan, like I did for Imperial Assault.

Additionally, I won’t want any base decorations to cover up the sides of the bases.   This is specifically for the outer rings, which I plan to color differently for each unit.   One stormtrooper unit, for example, will have a red ring around it’s base.  Another might be blue, then purple, then green, etc.   This will prove helpful when units get close together and will help players differentiate between them.  This might be less of an issue for rebel units, which are more likely to have uniform variation between them.

Magnetization

In a recent videos by Sorastro, you can see the bases from below, and it appears that they have a recessed section that would allow for easy placement of a magnet.   This would be great for metal trays, and transporting armies.

This is something that could provide a ton of ease when transporting armies in a manner that will keep them mostly locked in place, and also look pretty cool to your friends.   The downside here, is that gluing a magnet into every miniature is likely going to be expensive, and time consuming.  It will also require a metal tray system for storage, which is great if you already have one from previous wargames, but if you are just getting started here with Legion and don’t have a system like this, you may want to wait a bit before magnetizing your miniatures.

 

Are you as excited about painting and playing Legion as I am?   It’s looking like February is going to be the month that we finally see it!   I’m hoping it’s not delayed!   There’s a lot of painting to do!

 

 

Legion – How Many Core Sets Do You Need?

The video, which covers most of the same material:

As Star Wars Legion’s launch date approaches, many people are asking “Do I need multiple Core Sets?” and I think it’s easily one of the most frequently asked questions, so I decided to do my best to answer.

The Short Answer : No, 1 Core set is fine.

The Long Answer : You might actually want more than one.  (Keep reading!)

To first answer, we’re going to need to answer a few key questions:

  1. What comes in the Core Set
  2. What is Required to Play?
  3. What is the cost of each core-set expansion separately?2
  4. Do I really need to buy the individual expansions at all?
  5. Am I planning to play a single faction only, or both factions?

 

Core Set Contents

The Core Set comes with rules, tokens, cards, and all teh essentials to get you started.  In terms of Miniatures, it has Vader, Luke, 2x Stormtrooper Units, 2x Rebel Trooper Units, an AT-RT, and a Speeder Bike Unit.

Required to Play

A standard game has an 800 point limit.   You’ll want to get as close to 800 points as you can.   The Core set will get you about halfway there.   You have the option of playing a smaller point game if you want, but keep in mind that official play will be at the 800 point cost.

Legion also has minimums and maximums for units.   This means in the case of the empire, you can’t just build an army completely full of stormtroopers.   However you also won’t be able to do without stormtroopers either.  You’ll need at least 1 Commander, which each faction gets in the Core Set(Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader), and you’ll need a minimum of 3 Corps units (Stormtroopers, or Rebel Troopers, respectively).  So right away you’ll need more than the Core Set comes with.

You can have up to 3 Support Units (the AT-RT, or Speeder Bikes), and a maximum of 6 Corps.  There are other restrictions for other types of units, but for this article I’m focusing just on the Core Set.  So right away it would seem like THREE Core Sets would grant you the maximum number of Corps and Support units.   So why not just buy 3 and keep it simple?

Upgrade cards

In the past, FFG has almost always thrown out a few exclusive upgrade cards in each expansion pack, to give you an incentive to buy an expansion for a miniature you already own.  We can expect they will likely do something similar this time around.   However, I will note that in their latest miniatures game, Runewars, this actually was not so much the case.  Some individual core set unit expansions didn’t have a single exclusive upgrade card.   The upgrade cards they DID have were shared among multiple expansions.  Considering this game does have a few mechanics in common with Runewars, and seemingly a very similar distribution method, I wouldn’t be surprised to see upgrades in these expansions show up in multiple different boxes.  In short – you MAY not need to buy 4x Stormtrooper Expansion packs.

Cost

The Core Set retails for $89.95.   This is actually an incredible deal when you consider what is included.  In addition to the rules, tokens, cards, and essentials to get started, you also get Luke, Vader, 2x Rebel Troopers, 2x Stormtroopers, an AT-RT, and Speeder Bike units.  Plus all the normal materials you’d need to play the game.  Now lets look at those expansion prices. (We are excluding the unknown variable of Expansion Cards when we factor in cost).

They are each $24.95, and the extra dice and range tools are each $14.95, which means if you were to buy out everything in the core set separately, it would cost you $179.60!  You could almost get 2 Core Sets for that price, and you’d have twice the miniatures!  Not to mention the extra tools and dice.   Oh dice….

Dice

I’m making a separate paragraph to talk about dice.  You are going to want a ton of dice.  This game gives you the ability to chuck a TON of dice and you aren’t going to have enough in the core set.  I actually made the mistake of proxying dice for some test games, and didn’t make enough.   I got sick of having to record results and re-roll over and over again.   If you don’t get multiple core sets, you are going to want at least 1 more dice pack, if not 2 more.

What if I’m planning on playing a Single faction?

If you are running a single faction, I think it’s a safe bet to only get one core set.   But first, find a buddy who is doing the same, and arrange to trade the opposite factions with each other.  This way you’ll have double the Imperial contents, while your pal will have double the rebel scum… (Or vice versa).

There are other reasons why multiple core sets might be considered wasteful.   For example, the extra Luke and Vader won’t do you much good, unless of course you want to have extras to paint, or run multiple paint schemes, (Red Vader anyone?  Also, you might not be certain you’ll like the game yet, and simply want to run a few smaller test games.  If that’s the case, then by all means start off with just one and test the waters.

 

Maxing out

If you want to have the maximum legal number of each type of unit, three core sets will easily be the cheapest($269.85) but like I said earlier, you’ll run the risk of not having any exclusive cards that come with the expansions.  If you max out, I would instead suggest 2 Core Sets, and 2 of each trooper expansion, and 1 of each support expansion.  This will get you access to each upgrade card.   However, if for example, the stormtrooper expansion ends up having a “MUST-BUY” exclusive, that will change the entire formula… but as of right now I doubt that will be the case.

This would have a total cost $329.60 at MSRP.  

From what I’ve seen thus far, this game doesn’t really need you to load up your units with that many upgrades to really be effective.  The best upgrades, (in my opinion) are those which add a miniature to the unit.  Since we can see the miniatures in the spreads, it is reasonable to assume that those “top-level” upgrades will be the same between the core set and the expansions.

A Balanced Approach

If you don’t want to completely max out on all units right away, I’ll share with you my current plan.  2 Core Sets and only ONE of each expansion.  This will get me started with a wealth of options, and also leave plenty of room for those new Heavy units that were also spoiled.   It’ll also be more sparing on the wallet.

This will have a cost of only $279.70

 

In closing, I recommend two core sets, based on what we know now, and the tremendous savings involved.   Unless of course, you are only planning to play a single faction and want to split cores with a friend.  Once we get more details on the individual expansion exclusive cards, then this MIGHT change, but I wouldn’t bet it will change all that much.  Thanks for reading, and may the force be with you!