AMG has announced big changes for Star Wars: Legion with new line-of-sight rules and a new core rulebook- check it out!
First off, they do promise this won’t radically change the way the game plays, so that’s a good start. Next, they promise to compile all the rules into a single book to make learning the rules for all the units and mechanics easier. They also just updated all the points, which you can check out here.
Star Wars: Legion Line of Sight Rules Update & Rulebook Announced!
This comes from the latest transmission from Atomic Mass Games. Let’s get into the changes!
Let’s start with the Line of Sight rules, then jump into the new rulebook. since this is their announcement, we’ll let them tell you more about it:
The first of these updated/codifications we are going to cover today is Line of Sight (LOS) and silhouettes. Line of Sight (LOS) and silhouettes have been revisited and clarified to be the same between the tournament and core rules. Previously, LOS was drawn from the head of a miniature or a specific point on a vehicle, and players had to determine if miniatures had 50% of their silhouette obscured. Emplacement Troopers and Creature Troopers also had silhouettes based on the size of the miniature instead of using a standard silhouette.
We wished to clarify this and make it easier for players to determine what their miniatures can and cannot see. There are now two standard silhouettes for all trooper miniatures- miniatures in units with small bases all use the same silhouette, and miniatures in units with notched bases all use the same silhouette.
Vehicles now have a silhouette from their base to the top of their hull that does not include parts like weapons, antennae, or crew members. This change ensures players no longer have to worry about their Spider Droid’s antennae making it impossible for them to remain hidden, and eliminates the silliness of being able to adjust a vehicles silhouette by moving its turret or positioning its weapons in a specific way.
There were certain nuances of terrain blocking LOS that were not intuitive for players. Certain placement of miniatures allowed the “sniping” of heavy weapons or specific characters from units. Which miniatures in a unit can have wounds allocated to them has changed – wounds may now be allocated to any miniature in a unit, not just ones that are in the attacker’s LOS. However, wounds must still be allocated to wounded miniatures first, so no spreading out wounds across multiple Wookiees! This change de-emphasizes some finicky nature of LOS and cover and allows players to be more relaxed with miniature placement.
Additionally the rules for which miniatures can suffer wounds from an attack have also been adjusted: Now, when a unit suffers wounds from an attack, if the attacker has LOS to only some of the miniatures in the defending unit, the defending unit cannot suffer wounds greater than the total wound threshold of miniatures that are in LOS.
New Rulebook for Star Wars: Legion
Since the beginning, Legion has broken its rules up over two important documents, the Legion Learn to Play and the Legion Rules Reference Guide (oft referred to as the RRG). While it is true that these documents do provide all the information players need in order to conduct grand battles in a galaxy far, far away, as the game has grown the initial benefits that once existed for new players of splitting information up has largely disappeared. Instead, with the significant growth of the game and alongside it the RRG, the current rules documents for Legion present far more of a hinderance, especially to new players, as they have to navigate a reference document in lieu of a linear and logical presentation of game and rules concepts that leads players through all the information they need in order to confidently learn and understand the game. With this new rulebook, we have worked exceptionally hard to create a single document that teaches players the game in an intuitive fashion that ensures they will have all of the core rules of Legion by the time they reach the final page.
We would like to see this, as having one place where you can find all the rules is nice. Plus, this lets them look back through the rules and actually update them, which is nice to see the continued support for Legion.
While creating a fully modernized Core Rulebook for Legion we also had the opportunity to really dig into the previous rules language. As with all rules sets, time and experience are incredible teachers and often expose areas where rules language fails or is unclear in guiding players to intent of the rule. As excited as we were to simply create a Core Rulebook that would make learning the game significantly better for new players, we also knew we had a unique opportunity to really dive in and make sure all the rules were as clear and consistent as possible in the hopes of improving player recall and memory leading to less need for players to return to the core rules during play.
That does it for this one, but they promised to keep the updates coming throughout the end of the year, with a drop of the new rulebook in 2023.
Do you like the changes to LOS in Legion? Are you excited about a full rulebook?
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About the Author: Travis Pasch
Travis Pasch
Job Title: Head Writer & Editor
Socials: @paschbass
About Travis Pasch: Travis has been a Warhammer 40k hobbyist since the 1990s, playing the game since Third Edition. Through extensive traveling, he’s seen a lot of the miniatures hobby from across the world, giving him a unique perspective on the latest gaming topics and trends.
Travis’s brother even owns a commission painting studio, where he’s picked up a lot of good advice and techniques for painting Warhammer and tabletop miniatures over the years, as well. Travis joined the Spikey Bits team in 2019 and has been the lead writer since 2020.
Currently, he’s working on converting all his 40k Adeptus Mechanicus models and becoming a true tech enjoyer, complete with both sad and happy robot noises!
