Posted in: Games, Review, Tabletop | Tagged: Fantasy Flight Games, rebels, star wars, Star Wars: Legion

Review: Breaking Down the Rebel Specialists Expansion for Star Wars: Legion

Published Wed, 06 Feb 2019 12:40:14 -0600

Fantasy Flight Games just released a pair of great expansions for Star Wars: Legion, expanding the command options for both Rebel and Empire players. We got our hands on both specialists sets, and we'll get started by taking a look at the Rebel Specialists Personnel Expansion set:

The Rebel Specialists Personnel Expansion includes four unique miniatures, a sheet of thick card-stock tokens, as well as unit and command cards. Each of the miniatures has a unique role in a Rebel army, which we'll explore below.

The Rebel Officer clocks in at a mere 50 points to field, and can be a commander option for rebel armies. This will allow for a lot more versatility in troop selection later, since armies are no longer constrained to expensive commanders like Luke Skywalker. The Rebel Officer's skills include Take Cover 1, Inspire 1, and Sharpshooter 1, and is equipped with a A-188 Blaster Pistol, which has a two range band and rolls 1 black and 1 white die for attacks. While the Rebel Officer may not be the best commander in the game, he does free up a lot of points for other troops!

The Rebel Officer mini could be customized easily, allowing Rebel players the opportunity to field more than one of these characters. Why would you do that? Well, you can also field a Rebel Officer as an individual unit commander for 19 points, which gives the unit he is assigned to an additional courage point, as well as Inspire 1.

The Rebel Comms Technician can be added to any trooper unit for nine points, which allows you to choose a comms upgrade card. The Rebel Specialists box comes with a Comms Relay upgrade card, which allows you to transfer commands from the Comms Technician's unit to any unit within two range bands, allowing you to effectively increase your range for commands in battle.

The 2-1B Medical Droid can be attached to any troop unit for 18 points, and it literally soaks up wounds. Players can place up to 2 wound tokens from the attached unit on the 2-1B's unit card, effectively "healing" those wounds. The 2-1B can also restore one miniature that has been removed from battle, although it should be noted that the droid is limited to restoring two wounds total during any game session.

The 2-1B Medical Droid and the R5 Astromech Droid are Noncombatant units, meaning that they cannot have wound allocated to them before other troops, and cannot attack or carry weapons.

The R-5 Astromech droid works in a similar fashion to the medical droid, but with vehicles instead. The R-5 can fix 1 wound, ion, or vehicle damage token from friendly vehicles that are in line of sight and within one range band. The R-5 has a limit of two tokens that it can remove from play, but these little mechanics would be great at keeping your AT-RTs up and running!

Additional cards in the Rebel Specialists Personnel Expansion include the Covering Fire, Turning the Tide, and Sabotaged Communications command cards, and the Commanding Presence and Recon Intel upgrade cards.

Sculpts on all four figures are excellent, easy to assemble, and don't need a lot of clean up before painting. Fantasy Flight Games has gone to great lengths to produce great looking figures that aren't a pain to paint, so don't expect to need a ton of painting skill to get decent looking figures on the table.

Overall, the Rebel Specialists Personnel Expansion is a fantastic addition to Star Wars: Legion, bringing a welcome new variety to the look and play style of Rebel armies. Highly Recommended.

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