Turn Zero and Tempo
An Introduction to Objectives I
To start our series on the new objectives for Legion that came with the Core Rulebook 2.6.0 (Legion 260 as the cool kids say), we’re going to do two Introduction posts. Today, we’ll consider two things: the revamped Turn Zero and the idea of “Tempo” in Legion. It is a little bit rules heavy, but I hope it helps all of us grasp the new concepts well! Later this week, we are going to look at Prepared Position, Infiltrate, Scout, and Transport. This should gives us a solid base to dive into each of the Primary and Secondary Objectives for the rest of the series.
Turn Zero
When building an army, players now bring three of each type of mission card as their Battle Deck—three Objectives (I’ll refer to them as Primary Objectives for clarity) and their corresponding Map cards, three Secondary Objectives, and three Advantage cards. The whole point of this series is to help players make good decisions about their Battle Decks so we won’t directly comment on step 1 here. Since steps 2-4 remained the same and steps 2 and 4 are often done ahead of time by TO’s at events, we’ll skip them. Blue Player is now initially determined by a die roll. A Player’s bid (how many points below the maximum you brought in list building) is no longer is used in any way to determine Blue Player. Each player rolls five black dice, and the player who rolled more crits (the first tie breaker is hits, then surges) is the Blue Player to start. During setup, the Blue Player chooses whether to reveal the first Primary or Secondary Objective, modifies the mission first, and, after a mission is built, chooses their table edge.
A mission in Legion 260 will have one Primary Objective, one Secondary Objective, and two Advantage cards (one for each player). To start, each player shuffles each of their 3 decks. The Blue Player, then, chooses to randomly reveal one of their Primary Objective or Secondary Objective cards. Their opponent randomly reveals the other type, and each player randomly reveals one of their Advantage cards. This presents the players with one revealed Primary Objective card, one revealed Secondary Objective card, and two revealed Advantage cards (one for each player). From here, beginning with the Blue Player, each player can modify the mission twice.
Put simply, beginning with the Blue Player, a player can replace the Primary Objective with the next card revealed from their own Primary Objective deck, replace the Secondary Objective in the same way, replace their own advantage or force their opponent to replace their advantage in the same way, claim Blue Player, or pass. It is worth noting that discarded mission cards are not returned to their owners decks unless those decks are emptied. This means you will start to have more certainty about what mission card you are revealing from each of your decks as building a mission progresses. Players alternate until each player has had two opportunities to modify the mission.
At this point, the players have created their mission—one Primary Objective, one Secondary Objective, and one Advantage card each. The Blue Player, then, chooses a long edge of the table as their side and the Red Player gets the opposite side. Consulting the Map card that corresponds to the Primary Objective, the player territory that shares an edge with a player is that player’s friendly territory. In the example below, the Blue Player would orient the card to appear correct to their perspective.
Three new terms appear in Legion 260 that will often come up in this series—friendly territory, enemy territory, and contested territory. The Blue Player’s friendly territory is the blue shaded area above and their enemy territory is the red shaded area. The Red Player’s friendly and enemy territory are vice-versa. Contested territory is neither player’s friendly territory.
Once the Blue Player has picked their side, the players follow any setup instructions on the Primary Objective, then the Secondary Objective. Finally, beginning with the Blue Player, each player follows any setup instructions on their own advantage card.
The last piece of setup is to deploy units with Prepared Position. This is a new keyword that will get more extensive discussion later this week. Briefly, starting with the Blue Player, players alternate deploying units with the keyword anywhere within friendly territory. Deploying with the Prepared Position keyword is optional unless a unit also has the Stationary keyword. Once this is done, players have completed setup and begin round one with the Command Phase.
Blue Player and Red Player
There has already been quite a bit of discussion surrounding the roll for Blue Player in step 5 of Setup within the Legion community. The general consensus is that it is better to lose this roll and begin as Red Player, and I would agree. Let’s consider the benefits to beginning as Blue, then consider Red.
Blue Player
I see two advantages to Blue Player: somewhat obviously, starting as Blue Player, and the choice of first objective reveal. As the Blue Player, I am aiming to force my opponent to modify the Primary, Secondary, or Advantage card twice. If I can do this, I will keep Blue Player (and with it, the choice of table side).
Since the Blue Player gets to choose whether to reveal the first Primary or Secondary Objective, the first thing to consider is which of their Objective decks most differs from that of their opponent. Battle Decks are public info before the game (like all non-Command Cards that are in an opponent’s Army List). If you are just getting into 260, I would recommend revealing whichever of your Objective Decks most differs. As we get further into this series, hopefully the decisions around building a Battle Deck will be more clear for your specific list.
Red Player
The Red Player has the strongest benefit, in my opinion: the final modification of the mission, and with it, the guarantee of being Blue Player if they so choose. As Red Player, I am considering which Battle Deck combinations do I absolutely not want to play against my opponent. As long as those combinations are not showing when I am on my final modification, I will likely choose to claim Blue Player (and with it the table side).
Let’s consider a slightly silly, hypothetical game on the table above. My opponent won the Blue Player roll and brought a 14 activation Bright Tree Village Ewok spam:
1000/1000
14 Activations
Han Solo (Underworld Connections, Up Close and Personal)
Wicket (Forest Dwellers)
C-3P0
Logray (Secret Ingredients)
Chewbacca
4x Ewok Skirmishers (Ewok Skirmisher Squad, Forest Dwellers)
2x Ewok Skirmishers (Axe Ewok, Ewok Skirmisher Squad, Call to Arms)
3x Ewok Slingers (Ewok Slinger Squad)
I lost that roll and brought a 7 activation Moff Gideon/Dark Trooper list:
997/1000
7 Activations
Moff Gideon (Long Live the Empire) (The Darksaber)
3x Stormtroopers (DLT-19 Stormtrooper)
3x Imperial Dark Troopers (Programmed Loyalty, SM-9 Frag Launcher, XS-IV Assault Cannon, Imperial Dark Trooper)
As any good Legion 260 player would as initial Red Player, I am considering what mission I do not want to play. I am not particularly excited about playing Shifting Priorities. Needing to contest multiple of its five Point of Interests with only 7 units vs my opponents 14 activation Ewok list puts me in something of a bind. If after my opponent’s two modifications, Shifting Priorities is the top Primary Objective card, I am balancing the problematic Primary Objective with being stuck in the red territory above. There are very few places to deploy units out of line of sight in that friendly territory, and since I only have 7 activations (and really only 4 that are going to consistently remove Ewoks), I would like to keep my Dark Troopers out of line of sight round one. In this hypothetical, I’d likely leave my opponent as Blue Player (letting him take table side and send Log Traps and Chewbacca shots into a Dark Trooper) and reveal one of my remaining Primary Objectives to insure we are playing a style of game my list is comfortable with even though I am left with a worse friendly territory.
Tempo
This example brings up our final topic for this post—tempo. Why does the Moff Gideon/Dark Trooper player not necessarily want to play Shifting Priorities vs high activation lists? I would answer that by saying, they start out without tempo.
When playing Legion, I am often considering, do I have the tempo? This means, “if things continue as they are, will I win the game?” Players can win the game in three ways: having 12 victory points in an end phase and having more victory points than their opponent, defeating all their opponent’s units and having at least one undefeated unit of their own, or having more victory points at the end of the fifth round.
Using the previous example, if they were to play a game on Shifting Priorities, the Ewok player is comfortable with things staying as they are due to their large activation advantage. Additionally, with things like scout and scouting party, they can more quickly contest objectives and solidify their tempo advantage. The Dark Trooper player not only has to start defeating Ewok units quickly, they also have to insure they don’t get so far behind on rounds two and three that they can still get to 12 victory points first. I would describe this as the Ewoks having the tempo to start and as having the means to expand that advantage.
If, for example, my first Dark Trooper shot with their Frag Launcher negating the Ewoks’ cover and, by extension, low profile only removed three Ewok models, I would say I lost even more tempo. I need to do even more now to get things in a position where they point to a victory for me. As the Dark Trooper player, I am immediately going to consider higher reward plays, even if those entail higher risk. I would need to change things quickly to have a chance to win.
Tying this back into the process of modifying the mission, players ought not only consider what Objective cards their list is effective at, but also should consider, “when the game begins on this mission, do I need to do something to change tempo or does my opponent?” Ideally, you want to modify the mission so that you start a game with the tempo or have the means to quickly get the tempo back. Beginning a game where you immediately need to make high risk plays is less than ideal, but at the same time, you as a player would rather be aware that this is required for me to have a shot as opposed to being cautious the whole game and losing.
As we go through the Primary and Secondary Objectives, a key theme will be what actually is the starting point for scoring each objective. Understanding how quickly things score and how many points you can score on each objective will insure you are in the best possible spot to begin with and keep the tempo in a Legion game.
That’s all for today. I hope this gives you a strong foundation in the mechanics of Legion 260’s Turn Zero, while also giving you some food for thought about the best way to approach Blue and Red player. Check back later this week for our post on Prepared Position, Scout, Transport, and Infiltrate.
Have you ever swung the tempo or had it swung away from you in a Legion game in a dramatic fashion? Tell us how in the comments below!
Great job man, your thought process in how your dark trooper list is ineffective to shifting priorities against 14 act ewoks was really insightful to developing forethought to the new turn zero of legion.