Star Wars Legion: Look Who’s Coming For Life Day

Let’s take a close look at the new Chewbacca expansion for Star Wars Legion.

Recently Fantasy Flight Games put out the full spoilers for the new Chewbacca expansion pack. This new operative unit joins the Rebels, and is one mean customer. Prioritizing team work he’s a powerful force for good. Lets take a look.

Basics

Chewie arrives with a big bang in Legion. At 110 points he’s not cheap, but he sure does pack a punch. Unlike a lot of other Rebel charterers he is not a leader, but rather a straight up brawler. With a massive 9 wounds he’s as tough as almost two whole squads of Rebel Troopers, though with only a white defense dice he can take hits easily. Still, that only makes him stronger as Enrage means eventually he’ll stop caring about morale and be able to charge into combat. I think this is a pretty cool idea, as he should start the game moving up and taking shots with his Bowcaster (a deadly weapon) before going crazy and charging into combat.

Expert Climber and Unhindered are nice little buffs that make him very mobile. Guardian 3 is also nice as it lets him protect other leaders he’s working with. And of course he works best with old Han, as the two buddies get to extra dodge and aim tokens off of each other. This is especially useful with Han’s 0-pip card Sorry About The Mess as it gives him both a dodge and aim token. Lastly Chewie has a very soild melee attack with 4 red dice, this is absolutely nothing to scoff at.

Upgrades

Chewie doesn’t seem to come with any new upgrades that we haven’t seen before, but he can make good use of whats already out. Tenacity is an obvious choice for the Walking Carpet as it will bump him up to 5 red dice in combat.

I’d also consider Emergency Stims, as they kind of let him count has having 11 health and can keep him going just a bit longer.

Hunter is another possible choice for him. It’s not my favorite as it’s a little harder to trigger, but if you are running Han the aim token it generates counts twice so its most likely worth it. Without Han I’d probably skip it and save points.

Command Cards

Chewie’s Command Cards are all about working with his friends, a mechanic I really like.

When working with Han Chewie can use Notorious Scoundrels to get back one of Han’s command cards. I’m a little on the fence about this one to be honest. Han’s cards are good, but this is in-effect losing losing any special ability this turn to get back a Han card later. It 1000% better than taking the basic Assault card, so I’d run it if Han was my only commander, but if I have Luke or Leia around as well I’d most likely take their 3 pip card instead.

When paired with Leia, Chewie can use his Brains and Brawn card to devastating effect. This might actually be my favorite of his commands, as it lets him add his ranged attack to Leia’s once. Not only does this in effect let Chewie shoot twice in one turn (which is great) but the combination of Chewie’s Bowcaster and Leia’s sporting blasters adds up to very dealy, 3 back, 2 red, 2 white dice, impact 1, pierce 2, sharpshooter 2 attack with a surge to crit conversion. Aid a an aim token in and this attack will ignore both cover and the targets armor and can wipe out a whole infantry unit. (If only you could somehow combo this with Leia’s Coordantated Bombardment command card…)

Lastly Chewie’s friendship power with Luke is Common Cause, this one pip cards lets the two activate right after each other. This is a pretty great offensive card, as it’s got a decent chance of letting you activate two powerful characters before the enemy gets to go at all. Though the artwork on the card show them shooting, its clear this card is best used to launch a devastating charge. Together Luke and Chewie can charge into the enemy ranks and really beat them up in melee. You can then uses Chewie’s Guardian ablity to keep Luke alive so he can follow up next turn with Son of Skywalker. It’s a powerful combo. Moreover I think with a addition of a few of the new Wookiee Warrior units the Rebel’s can now field a pretty powerful melee army.

Let us know what you think about Chewbacca 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.