I had a chance to sit down with Ryan Sliwoski of swSTABcast on Thursday evening and ask him about his experiences on the first day of the Maximum Firepower tournament at Gen Con. Ryan played all three events, was the runner up on Friday, and went on to win Saturday’s event, securing his invite to the High Command tournament at AdeptiCon. Below is the transcript of our Q&A.

Link to Ryan’s list from Thursday here: https://tabletopadmiral.com/legion/lists/9371/

Link to Ryan’s list from Saturday here: https://tabletopadmiral.com/legion/lists/9421/

Q: How does your list work?

A: Luke’s a big threat that people have to deal with, or you lose. Flamethrower AT-RTs aren’t necessarily scary, but if you ignore them they can get scary very quickly. With the Fleet Troopers the way they’re kitted, if you leave them alone, they throw 2 red dice, 1 black dice and 8 white dice that ignore cover with Pierce 1. Sometimes they hit like wet linguini, other times things just die. I’ve one shot Vader with them before, they throw enough dice that it can happen. I put 4 or 5 very threatening activations on the board to make you deal with them, and I’ve got Leia and 4 rebel troopers with Nimble who sit and do whatever the objective card tells us to do.

Q: What do you think of the official terrain? Thoughts on density, quality?

A: The stuff looks great, most of it is laid out pretty well – I don’t think there is enough variety. There’s a lot of barricades, which are fine, there’s a lot of heavy cover, a lot of impassable stuff. I have three units with Environmental Gear – tomorrow they’re coming off. The only thing it’s worthwhile for right now is jumping over barricades, and you can be clever and just position your unit leader next to the barricade with everyone else behind it to have cover, and you can just to get around it.

Q: We are in a position where we have a ton of units slated for release now. What are your impressions about how list building might shift in the future?

A: Commandos are going to change the game. I’m going to put a huge asterisk next to all of this and say I’m happy to be wrong about anything. I don’t think the two man Commando team is very good – I think we have a lot of investment in stuff like Maxmimum Firepower and Coordinated Bombardment, and even a Laser Cannon AT-RT, or a Speeder Bike can run up and pop them and then you’re out 45 points.

The sniper, I don’t think, pulls his weight. I would have liked to see a mechanic from him kind of like what the Accuracy in Runewars does. It’s kind of like the same idea where you have specialist minis in the formation groups, and you can target where your wounds go. So instead of “you can’t spend dodge tokens,” maybe something where I can hit that specialty unit, I can hit that Z-6 guy to give him a little more utility. Other than that, it’s a big investment you might not get a lot out of.

The two man Charge team, I want to experiment with. We don’t have a frame of reference for it; Nothing we’ve played with in Legion for the last six months has had anything like it. We need to get it to the table and see what it looks like. It could be a fun zoning tool, but I still have that fear, what if they just get bopped off the table? I could see them being really fun, but super situational. I don’t think I’d put them in a tournament list, but if I’m just practicing with my friends, I think Rapid Reinforcements and the two man charge team would be a ton of fun. It’s not something you can plan for, unless you take a ten point bid. The four man, sixty point Commando team, just naked, is going to extremely big – Rebel Troopers that surge to hit, can get heavy cover in the open, just sixty points. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Q: General thoughts on Han?

A: I want to take Luke out of my list, because he doesn’t fit the Rebel army as he goes screaming into the front while the rest of the army chases behind him. I don’t think Han’s a better deal. If they gave him a third red die, he’d be awesome. But, anything in heavy cover with a dodge token, and he’s praying for crits. And he’s so short range. His Command cards are neat – I think if you find utility in Han it’ll be through his Command Hand, but I’m not sold on him yet. I love Leia too much to replace her, because that means I’d have to go down an activation, and I really like having ten.

Q: Do you then take a minimalist Han, maybe with only Esteemed Leader?

A: I don’t think I would even use Esteemed Leader, I haven’t found a whole lot of utility in that card. On the turn that you’d want it, you drop Han’s two pip (Reckless Diversion) and force the enemy team to shoot another trooper you just put an order on, and you can kind of achieve the same effect. You know, if Han was an Operative, I’d be a happy man.

Q: What is something you may have learned today about playing Legion?

A: That’s a good question! I’ve learned how to better interpret some terrain rules. I made a couple of mistakes in my first two games where I thought I got behind and I made some reckless moves that didn’t help, so, keeping my own head cool. Take two minutes at the beginning of every match and measure how far apart terrain is so you have a frame of reference. If you do it during the game you telegraph to your opponent what you’re thinking of doing. I’m a big proponent of red player because I like that last veto, but the board edge, with these maps, has really, really mattered.

Q: What’s the biggest, best piece of advice you could give to someone who is new and trying to improve?

A: This is not a “wargame.” It’s about managing your activations and managing your objectives. This last game was only close, because I had more objective control until he murdered all my dudes, and he was on a clock. The coolest victory I ever pulled out of my butt: I had a Leia with 2 hit points left, he had an AT-ST still to shoot, a fully loaded group of Stormtroopers and Snowtroopers left to shoot, but I used a lone unit commander on Breakthrough to draw his Darth Vader back into his deployment zone, and then Leia ran and tagged him and he couldn’t shoot into melee, so I won with just a low hit point Leia. So, you can feel really good about where you are militarily, but you have to keep that clock in the back of your head that says, “Even if I don’t have the objectives now, I have to have a plan by the end of turn six, or in a tournament like this, by when the timer hits zero, to be ahead.”

Q: Did you have fun today?

A: I had a blast!

Thank you for the interview, Ryan, it was a pleasure. Coming up next will be a QA with Dustin Foran, winner of Friday’s Maximum Firepower event and also a top tier Runewars player. If you’d like to learn more about Organized Play for Star Wars: Legion, click here. As always, thanks for reading.