A pair of photos showing box art for a Jyn Erso commander expansion and a Rebel Pathfinders unit expansion was leaked about a week ago. The leaks were met with excitement, and with disbelief. Rogue One content this early in the game’s life cycle? Not possible, some thought. Those images? Easily re-created in Photoshop. Then someone found out that if you were to change a few numerals in a URL on the Fantasy Flight page, you could see the page names for Jyn, the Pathfinders, Orson Krennic and Death Troopers. Then, on Monday, FFG dropped an article previewing Jyn and Pathfinders, making it official.

So, Rogue One is coming to Star Wars: Legion! Amazing! And Jyn Erso, the first commander available from the gritty tale of how the Death Star plans were stolen, looks super exciting. From the wonderful sculpt, to new keywords, to weapon upgrade cards that flip and change modes, this expansion has a lot to offer.

Let’s whip out our magnifying glasses and read some fuzzy text.

Stats and Keywords

Jyn Erso is a commander coming in at 130 points base for six wounds, three courage, a white defense die and surges to crit and block. Notice that she has only a melee weapon on her unit card, the Collapsible Tonfa, rolling 4 black dice with the Suppressive keyword(!), but attached to her is a ranged weapon card that goes into a new type of pistol or weapon upgrade slot with what appears to be zero cost. The ranged weapon, an A-100 Pistol Config, is comparable to Leia’s sporting blaster, but it is more consistent on two surging red dice and a white die, with range 2 and Pierce 1. This card can also Reconfigure, which lets her flip the card when she recovers, ostensibly to a different weapon config (hopefully to a longer range?). Looking to her unit card, Nimble and Sharpshooter 1 are always good to have, but the new keywords Jyn brings are bananas.

Quick Thinking (Card Action):

Gain one aim token and one dodge token.

A two-for-one action right out of the gate. Killer. Turns Nimble on right away and buffs her attack. Pretty straightforward.

Danger Sense 4:

You may choose not to remove your suppression tokens. While defending against a ranged attack, roll 1 extra defense die for each suppression token you have, adding up to 4 extra dice.

You ever run into situations where you don’t want your units to rally because it would rob them of a cover bonus? Yeah, you can just choose not to do that with Jyn. Plus, having suppression gives her the opportunity to roll extra defense dice. It’s not Low Profile, which grants the static bonus of “any cover is heavy” – but it’s potentially a lot better if you already have heavy cover since each additional suppression token is another die to roll. Higher ceiling, lower floor. If you’ve got 4 hits going into Jyn Erso with 2 suppression, a dodge token and heavy cover, she eliminates 3 of those hits during the Dodge and Cover step, and then rolls 3 dice to block your single remaining hit. Coupling this with a training upgrade like Duck and Cover and running alongside a unit with Inspire could result in some really neat plays.

Infiltrate:

You may deploy anywhere beyond range three of all enemy units.

Themed together with the Pathfinders, who also have Infiltrate, Jyn can be placed anywhere on the battlefield beyond range three of enemy units. Recover the Supplies, anyone? With the right map layout and properly supported, this could be pretty devastating when plugged into your larger strategy, but it’s not usually the best play to put your commander out there to get shot up by everything. It’ll take some careful planning to get the most out of this keyword.

New Command Card: Rebellious

There’s a lot to love about this 1-pip. At the core, this card is a Standby that cannot be removed. Recognizing that Jyn will often be suppressed while using Danger Sense and could lose her second action, this card makes for an effective work-around while she is in the thick of battle. To use the effect of the card, Jyn will have to gain another suppression, which is a net benefit for her. The effect occurs before the activating unit’s Rally step, which means if Jyn attacks at range, it will add a suppression from Jyn’s attack to their Rally roll, if they survive that long. Note that she can either perform an attack against the unit that’s about to Rally, or perform a free move while gaining Charge, potentially engaging another nearby unit that has already activated to make a “safe” melee attack. There are likely numerous unique ways that this card can be used that are just waiting to be explored. Note also that this attack or move is made regardless of whether or not Jyn has already activated, so the double attack potential is high… very high.

Jyn and Pathfinders are expected to release some time in Q1 2019, most likely in February or March. Next article, we’ll look at the Rebel Pathfinders releasing alongside Jyn, and talk about what they’ve got to offer the Rebel army.