Tech Trooper - Rally Aid

"Call in the airstrike"

- First Order Stormtrooper

Not every specialist focuses on bringing raw firepower. While armed with only a standard issue weapon like the E-11 rifle or DH-17 pistol, the Tech Troopers gives access to powerful command cards and support abilities.

 

Why Train a Tech Trooper?

Since they can't directly contribute damage regularly, Tech Troopers are much cheaper than other Elite Troopers. This allows you to bring more rookies and upgrades. In addition, the Tech Trooper offers a number of abilities that enable other troopers to more effectively do their jobs. Finally, the Tech Trooper allows you to call in air support.

 

Abilities

The Tech Trooper upgrade tree is split between troop survival and order and token management. The medic tree allows you to heal friendly units and protect them from harm with smoke grenades and shield generators. The comms tree ensures that your fellow troopers can activate as needed while providing them support with aim tokens.

Command Cards

 

Bringing a Tech Trooper allows you to call in air strikes. You can choose from the devastating single shot Maximum Firepower or go for more targets with an Orbital Bombardment.

I Need a Medic Over Here!

Tech Troopers help your Strike Team stay alive. Giving cover and relaying orders, the Tech provides a subtle but crucial benefit to the squad.



Next time, we will take a look at the Demolitions Expert.

See the previous classes:

• Captain
• Heavy 
• Support

Support Trooper - Long Range Specialist

"One shot. One kill."

- Clone Sniper

The Support Trooper provides your Strike Team with support in the form of long range firepower. They can take either a sniper rifle or an emplacement weapon like the Mark II Medium Blaster. Below is an example of a sniper specialist.

Abilities

Abilities focus on making the Support Trooper a single target assassin or an expert at providing covering fire. The starting abilities help the slower and cumbersome weapons get into position while still providing fire support.

Command Cards

Bringing a Support Trooper allows you to bring either Lying in Wait for a devastating final shot or Sorry About The Mess for a quick strike.

Outrange the Opposition

Support Troopers look to provide covering fire, harass enemies, and eliminate soft targets.

Next time, we will take a look at the Technician.

See the previous classes:

• Captain
• Heavy

Heavy Trooper - The Big Gun

"A big gun doesn't make a big man"

- Fives to Hevy

In addition to your Captain, a Strike Team can consist of a variety of specialized troopers. These elite squad members bring additional firepower and skills to the fight. No one exemplifies the additional firepower more than the Heavy.

Both sides have a few Heavy Troopers to choose from like the Z-6 Rotary Blaster or the HH-12 Rocket Launcher. This example shows a Heavy Trooper using the Scatter Gun.

Regardless of their weapon, Heavy Troopers start with the Dauntless ability, ensuring they can bring their firepower to bear. This is key because Heavies have a lower courage value than other troopers and may be slower as well.

Abilities

When choosing Heavy Trooper abilities, you can make your trooper either a close range monster or a mobile cannon. The new text for the Ram 1 ability allows you to add 1 red die to a melee attack if you performed a full move during your activation.

Command Cards

If you bring a Heavy Trooper, you can bring one of Chewbacca's command cards. These encourage teamwork with other Elite Troopers:

• Common Cause - Combines with assault
• Brains and Brawn - Combines with support
• Notorious Scoundrels - Combines with tech 

 

Maximum Firepower!

The Heavy Trooper is a one-man tank, ready to lay down fire to complete the mission.

Next time, we will take a look at the long range capabilities of the Support Trooper.

The Captain - Leader of the Squad

"In my book, experience outranks everything"

- Captain Rex

In Strike Team, the commander is replaced by your squad captain. In addition to giving out orders, the Captain is also the most well rounded and capable unit in a squad.

With a ranged weapon of 3 dice and Critical 1, the Captain is able to dish out significant amounts of damage, even against enemies in cover. Additionally, the Captain is the only non-Assault trooper with multiple dice for melee.

The starting attribute of the Captain is Aggressive Tactics. 

"While you are the nominated commander, after issuing orders , choose up to 4 friendly units with faceup order tokens. Each chosen unit gains 1 surge token." 

For Strike Team, troopers can gain abilities through progression (or you can choose the power level in quick-play). The abilities are on a tech tree where you choose one of two options (similar to X-COM). The tech tree for the Captain, like all the Elite troopers, is split into two ideals. In this case, the Captain can be built for a ruthless tactician or a cunning leader.

Abilities

 

Level 1

  Choosing between Spotter 2 and Take Cover 2 means upping your offense or defense in addition to the surge tokens. These actions also encourage using your Captain first.

Level 2

 This choice determines if your leader is feared or inspiring. Demoralize 1 or Inspire 1 manages suppression and action economy.

Level 3

 Gaining Sharpshooter 1 or Surge:Crit, is a tough decision. The former allows you to reliably minimize the effects of cover. While Surge:Crit can help against cover, it also provides help against potentially armored Heavy Troopers.

Level 4

 Choose between the survival of your Captain with Esteemed Leader or focus on getting your orders out with Commanding Presence.

Command Cards

Acting as the commander, a starting captain will get the 6 generic command cards for their faction. As they level up, they'll be able to add more powerful command cards like Deploy the Garrison or Somebody Has to Save Our Skins.

Lead your squad to victory!

The captain is designed to not only fend for themselves, but provide the support necessary for the rest of the team to do their job. 

Next time, we will take a look at the Heavy Trooper.

Strike Team - A Skirmish Ruleset for Star Wars Legion

"...is your strike team assembled?"

-Crix Madine

Legion On A Smaller Scale

Legion - Strike team is a homebrew ruleset designed to take the mechanics of Fantasy Flight's Star Wars - Legion and use them for a skirmish game on a smaller map and with fewer models. The current alpha rules are located here:

Alpha 0.3

Alpha 0.1

This document is filled with stats and options and is dense with information. Being in alpha, however, means the system needs to be playtested by as many people as possible to fix and refine the rules. In order to make this information more approachable, I will be posting here to discuss my design goals and philosophy behind the ruleset. This post is focused on the main design goals.

 

No Time For Sorrows... or Legion

Star Wars - Legion is in an interesting scale. While not as large as full army games like Warhammer, it certainly isn't a small skirmish. As such, the playtime and space requirements can limit how often Legion can be played. With the popularity of quicker minis games like X-Wing and Kill Team, I've wanted to make a ruleset that can offer a similar experience for the Legion system. In addition, much like Kill Team, I want the system to be playable by new players with minimal investment.

With that in mind, there are two main goals:

1. Faster Games
2. Fewer Models - a single trooper expansion will be enough to get started

Furthermore, I wanted to incorporate a progression system inspired by XCOM games and Kill Team, allowing for a narrative campaign with troopers that grow in skills and abilities.

So let's take a look at some of the changes to the original game that focus on these goals.

 

Make Ten Men Feel Like A Hundred

In Strike Team, you are in charge of a single squad of troopers fighting on a 3' by 2' map. With squads ranging from five to seven miniatures, each miniature represents an individual activation. As such, the order system from Legion was tweaked to allow for the same tension of assigning orders or hoping to pull the activation you need from the pool.

There are still the six different symbols from Legion, but they are assigned to specific types of trooper: Captain, Heavy, Support, Tech, Assault, Rookie. All troopers have between 1 HP (for Rookies) to 3 HP.

We will go over each type of trooper in future posts.

Easy? You Call That Easy?

 Those are the only major changes to the system. While individual weapons and keywords are getting tweaked, all remaining rules have stayed intact.


Check back Thursday for the feature on the leader of your Strike Team: the Captain.