How to start a Rebellion for your first army
Written by: Matt Evans
I started my Star Wars Legion adventures early on shortly after the game launched. I was mostly into Imperial Assault at the time but I had just discovered my love for miniature painting. I found a local guy to teach me and since then I've worked to encourage and grow our local community. I found that the more I played the more I would meet new players with the same questions: what should I buy, and what is a great rebel army?
For most armies, the foundation of it is in the Corp and Commander units. Corps units are your bread and butter of the list. They move across the map to grab objectives to help you score points while potentially threatening damage. Unlike with other factions, the Rebel Alliance offers some of the more flexible options for corp units.
Rebel Trooper – In the core box is the standard Rebel Troopers. These are basic corp that shoot at range 3 with average dice and roll white defense dice. They are cheap and efficient and love to have dodge tokens.
Fleet Troopers – The next option for corp is the fleet troopers. These are close range troopers that roll big fist fulls of dice and can use their scattergun to ensure that damage goes through with it's pierce 1 (meaning you are guaranteed to do 1 damage if you make a successful attack).
Rebel Veterans – Rebel Veterans are a very solid unit. They surge on both attack and defense meaning they shoot better than the other two rebel corp units. They also have defend 1 that gives them a dodge when they are issued an order. However they only have the one option for heavy weaponry which is the CM-0/95. This is four white dice and after first glance you might notice it's a range 4 gun which is farther than the average unit can shoot and it has critical 2. This means two of your surges on your dice change to critical results (these ignore cover and dodge tokens).
Mark II Emplacements – Mark II's are special in that you can only take them when you take a Veteran unit with them. However this is a very strong unit because it adds a Firesupport option to your army as well as a cheap activation.
Commanding the Rugrats!
The Rebel faction is often been dubbed as the "Hero Hammer" faction. The Rebels have a large smattering of heroes in both the commander and operative roles to choose from. Commanders have cards that tend to have synergies with your army; while operatives tend to have cards with strong abilities that give less orders out.
Often a commander or operative choice for rebels will determine what kind of army you want to build. Will it be full of heroes or just focus on one or two? Or maybe you just want a generic officers and no heroes at all. So where do you start to command a group of ragtag commoners and scum from across the galaxy?
Scruffy Lookin' Nerf Herders
Han Solo – Han is the place to start (make sure you have the newest version of his card). This scruffy smuggler is a great way to learn how Rebels can hold their own on the battle field through card tricks and his pistol is the thing that red saves fear with its pierce 2. He has a guaranteed way to go first for a round with a 0-pip card (Sorry about the Mess). He also has an option to force his opponent to put their command card back and you both pick another card (Change of Plans). Han excels are sabotaging your opponents plans with his card tricks and he's great at putting heavy damage into your opponents corp troopers late game. He is also available now in not one but two battle force lists (Echo Base Defenders & Bright Tree Village). See battle force specifics here.
Cassian Andor – Another great commander for the rebels is Cassian Andor who is a swiss army knife. He can infiltrate to a safe early spot on the battle field, his cards have great synergy with special forces units and other heroes. He also comes with his own flexible gun (now it costs 0 to equip) that can be used as either a big pistol shot at close range or a sniper at long range. Cassian can take multiple sets of upgrade cards with his Loadout ability and chose how he wants to play when he deploys. He is a great flexible choice to plan your army around.
K2-SO – And we can't talk about Cassian without talking about his buddy K2-SO. K2 can only be taken in lists with Cassian Andor but that's okay. The two of them have a teamwork ability that makes both of them last longer on the battle field and hit a bit harder. K2-SO also has the Incognito keyword, meaning he cannot be attacked outside of range 1 until he does an attack or objective action. This means he can decide when it's time to aggressive and do it rather safely.
Sabine Wren – Sabine Wren is my favorite character in all of the rebel faction. She has a variety of abilities and options on how to play her. Her most notable one is her Explosions! card. This allows her to throw out two grenades that hit everyone around them at range 1. She also has the gunslinger keyword, allowing her to attack two unit at range of her at a time She is also speed 3 with her jetpack making her one of the fastest heroes in the game. Sabine also has several unique upgrade cards. Her whip-chord upgrade allows her to spend an action to immobilize an enemy in place. She also has a shield upgrade to be able to spend to block an attack die when she is shot at. Overall she is very tanky character that when played with practice can turn the tides of war.
Ahsoka Tano – I don't normally recommend that newer players start with force users as often they are very timing sensative and when played incorrectly can die very quickly. However chances are if you are like me, you bought the rebel faction because you love the characters, the heroes and generally rebelling in life. So who does this better than one of our newest releases Ahsoka Tano. Ahsoka has some very powerful cards that allow units around her or ones she's given orders to free tokens. This means she synergizes well with many other units in rebels. She is also a very consistent damage dealer. She can "fix" her dice results with her Jar Kai keyword and also use force powers (which are very strong in this game). Ahsoka can also hit very hard with her 1 pip card that allows her to add dice to her attack. Overall she is a very flexible force user that can support her army or go hunting after the enemy.
Some of our best fighters are down there!
So we've talked about our corp units and a few notable heroes to get you started. But that won't fill most full 800 point armies. So let's look at some special forces options as well.
Pathfinders – You've seen the movie (Rogue One), these units like to pick a spot on the battle field infiltrate to it and dig in and cause a ruckus. Pathfinders are great to use as a flanking unit, chase stray objectives or just be a thorn in your opponents sides. The infiltrate keyword (deploy anywhere on the battlefield beyond range 3 of enemies) is hard to master but pathfinders are a great unit to play and SUPER fun.
At range 3 of your opponent they can throw fistfuls of dice. They have two heavy weapon options in the form of named characters (Bistan & Pao). Bistan is a range 4 option that throws 5 dice and can even put a pesky ion token on droids/vehicles to stop them from getting an action on their next turn. Pao is a unit leader (meaning he becomes the last to die in that unit) that also gives a range 4 weapon of 2 dice but additionally comes with inspire 1. Both named characters here come with 2 additional health for your pathfinder units.
Mandalorians – Mandalorians actually have two ways to play them. You can run them as generic Mandalorian Resistence unit or as the unique Clan Wren squad (family of Sabine Wren).
Either way Mandalorians have something in common they have above average defense dice saves (Beskar Armor) and they love dodge tokens. With speed 3 , they are great for playing the missions of the game and their jet packs allow them to be one of the fastest units on foot. Mandalorians also have a load of weaponry options. Their jetpack rockets are great for getting early long range shots into your opponent. They also have 3 heavy weapon unit upgrades. You can equip a unique option (meaning you can't take more than one) of Tristan Wren or Ursa Wren, or you can take any number of the Beskad Duelist (note if you bring Clan Wren unit squad Tristan and Ursa must be equipped to them).
Tristan Wren – has a very efficient range 3 gun that can pierce by spending an aim token and two health.
Ursa Wren – also comes with two health and an above average gun and becomes your unit leader and gives a way for the squad to get free moves if they would lose action.
Beskad Duelist – is the cheapest of the three and only brings one additional health to the squad.
We are in Hot Pursuit!
The last thing we will touch on, before looking at some list examples, are the heavy unit options. For the Rebel faction this tends to be things that go vroom vroom and are typically pretty quick on the battlefield.
T-47 Airspeeder – These are the classic scene from Empire Strikes Back, Luke is in his T-47 Airspeeder bringing down an AT-AT Walker with his tow cable. These are the fastest units in the game and take some planning to play. They are immune to melee and range 1 weapons (grenades and stuff) so they can cause a bit of a nuisance for your opponent if they aren't bringing many ways to deal with a fully armored vehicle (Armor on units means they can only be damaged by critical results on your opponents dice). T-47s are also THE fastest unit in the game they can zip from board edge to board edge very quickly and hit very consistently with their six dice attack.
A-A5 Speeder Truck – If you like twisted metal, chaos embodied and just big trucks then this might be your dream unit. The A-A5 is a massive unit that blocks your opponent from seeing the stuff behind it. It also allows you to put a full unit of troopers inside with theTransport 1: Closed keyword. This means they can't be targeted by enemies and can jump out once the Speeder Truck (often called the Bus) gets close. Units like fleets and other close range units love to hitch a ride on this delivery system. The A-A5 also comes with a handful of unique upgrades and gun options. The most notable one might be the Unorthodox Tactician. When the speeder truck would take it's turn you may roll 3 red dice and for every result that isn't a blank it can give out up to 3 aim tokens to let your team reroll their attack dice that round. Overall the speeder truck is a very good support unit that helps your army get to where it's going and get the aims it needs. But I could talk this whole article about the Bus so lets just leave the rest for you to explore and discover.
X-34 Land Speeder – Similar to the Speeder Truck you can put a unit into the X-34 Land Speeder with the Light Transport 1: Open keyword. However it has to be a single mini unit (commander or operative unit) and this means that since it is open that unit can be attacked and make attacks out of the vehicle. So units like Han Solo, Cassian, etc can shoot out of the land speeder after it drive up. This makes the land speeder a great unit for speeding into the heat of things to get some out of cover shots. The Land speeder is also one of the few units sporting the arsenal 3 keyword. This means you can shoot with up to three of it's weapons at a time. The land speeder comes with several retrofitted gun options including: M-45 Ion Blaster, Mark II Medium Blaster, A-300 Rifle Gunner, and the RPS 6-Rocket Gunner.
Assembling an Army
That's definitely not ALL the rebel units we could talk about or even every trick you can pull with them but it's a start. So lets look at some lists I've thrown together to help get you started with these units. Try some of these or build your own. The key to rebels is to continue to experiment and push the boundaries of what these units are capable of.
So anyway then I started blasting! – List 1
This list loves to go fast and hit hard. Han Solo deploys into the Land Speeder and you can deploy your fleet troopers with frag grenades into the Speeder Truck. Then you drive the list up using the Speeder Truck to give the rest of your team something to hide behind until you get into range and then just start blasting.
There is no Rogue One – List 2
This is a very thematic rebel list. It has a few units that start the battle outside of your deployment zone and then the Airspeeders come zooming in to lay down covering fire while your team can seal the victory with early objective play. Cassian is also very consistent at putting some early wounds on your opponent. Be sure to put orders on your Airspeeders as often as you can in case they need to fly in and out of the heat of battle.
Sisters of Battle – List 3
So this list might be the hardest to play but also the most rewarding. Ahsoka & Sabine take some practice to play together but can run as a pair to "dive" into your opponent's corp units and use their melee weapons to tear them up or they can hang back and support the rest of the list. This is a flexible list with a lot of surprises I will leave some of it's secrets for you to discover.
That's all I have for my introductory article on how to get started with Rebels. A big thank you to Tabletop Admiral which I used to build these list!
If you have any questions or comments about your rebel build, feel free to email us at Indianapolisgarrison@gmail.com!
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