Star Wars Legion: Specialists Are Coming

Lets take at a look at the new Specialist units coming to Star Wars Legion.

FFG has put out some spoilers for the new Imperial and Rebel Specialist boxes. There expansions promise to shake up the the game with new generic leaders, new command cards, and new upgrades for units, both cards and new specialist troopers you can add to units. I for one am super excited about what these have to offer, such as:

Generic Leaders

The new sets include the generic leaders, Rebel Officer and Imperial Officer. Looking at the pictures shown in the spread (which do sometimes change fyi) we can see that these two units are nearly identical. Each costs 50 post, has a white defense dice, 4 hit points and 2 courage. Each does  a single black dice in combat and has a range 1-2 attack with a black and white dice. Both have Inspire 1 and Sharpshooter 1. The only difference being that the Rebel Verson has take cover 1 and the imperial version has spotter 1.

Neither of these these two are real power house units. They won’t be killing much on the tabletop and give out some minor buffs. Inspire is a pretty good ability so they do have that. Their big draw is not as a combat unit but a cheap leader. With Leia being 90 pts, and Veers being 80, these two give you a much cheaper option to lead your army if you want to focus on more on the troopers, rather than a big damn hero. The 40 points you’d save taking a Rebel Officer over Leia will get you a squad of Rebel troopers for instance. So I think these guys are a pretty good buy and will influence the meta a lot.

Personnel Upgrades

Another new thing coming in the expansions are personal upgrades.  These take up the generically personal upgrade slot that most infantry units have. Generally these have been filled an upgrade that just adds one more basic trooper model to the unit. These new upgrades allow for more customization. When talking about these upgrades its important to note that unless otherwise noted any additional models to added to the unit share the same base stats as the rest of the unit, including use the defense dice and weapons noted on the units card. Thus all of these upgrades are like adding an extra base model, that also has come additional rules.

Take the new Rebel Comms Technician. She costs a base of 9 points and allows you to take a comms upgrade on the unit, which right now is a additional 10 points at minimum.  Thats 19 points for an additional model a comms upgrade. While this may seem a little steep, recall that simply adding an additional model to the unit will run you 10 points, so this is actually giving you a 1 point discount on the comms upgrade, making it seem like a much better deal.

In addition to being taken as commanders both the Rebel and Imperial Officer can be taken as unit upgrades as well. In this case they become the units new leader (so they die last), increase the units courage by 1 and give the unit Inspire 1. These are all pretty nice buffs. For this you’re only looking at like 8-9 points over a generic extra model which isn’t really too bad for some nice leadership buffs. I think with these kinds of upgrades we’ll be seeing a lot more infantry based builds.

More Variety

There is still a lot more to be spoiled in these releases, we only know what 3 of the 8 upgrade units do, and only 2 of the 6 command cards, so there could still be some big surprises in store. I think what has me excited the most though is simply the extra variety well be seeing on the tabletop. One of the down sides to monopose figures is that each unit tends to look pretty much the same as another unit. Now that we will be getting more options for unit upgrades and new models we can see some different looking units, in both appearance and function. I’m really excited for that.

Let us know what you think of the new units, and how you plan to use them, down in the comments! 

Author: Abe Apfel

Abe is that rare thing, an Austin local born and raised here. Though he keeps on moving around, DC, Japan, ETC., he always seems to find his way back eventually. Abe has decades of experience with a wide range of tabletop and RPG games, from historicals, to Star Wars to D&D and 40K. He has been contributing to BOLS since almost the start, back when he worked at and then owned a local gaming store. He used to be big into the competitive Warhammer tournament scene but age has mellowed him and he now appreciates a good casual match. He currently covers 40K tactics and lore, as well as all things Star Wars, with occasional dabbling in other topics. Abe remains in mourning over the loss of WFB to this day.