Bell of Souls Blog: And I Thought They Smelled Bad On The Outside!

From Bell of Souls:

Lets take a look at the upcoming Tauntaun and Rebel Veterans for Star Wars Legion.

This week FFG announced two new expansions, the fast support Tauntaun, and the elite infantry unit Rebel Veterans.  These two units are set to further expand the game in new directions. They also help round out the Rebel Hoth forces, and set up a showdown with Veers, Vader, and the Snowtroopers. Lets take a look at what we know about them so far.

Tauntaun

Tauntaun Riders are a fast nimble Rebel support unit. They have move 3, making them very fast, and combine that with Relentless so if they move twice they can still attack. Agile also lets them gain dodge tokens from moving, and repostition lets them pivot for free. This is a unit that will most likely double move each turn and eat up the ground, aided by Unhindered allowing them to ignore difficult ground. They are a two model unit with 4 health each, but only have a white defense dice (with a surge at least), they won’t die just from being looked at by they aren’t super tanky either. They have an OK ranged attack, two red dice and sharpshooter, with a surge, but its only range 1-2. They’ve got a better melee attack with 3 dice, two of them black and ram, whatever that is.

At 90 points they are competing in price with the AT-RT which shares the same slot as them. The AT-RT is slower, but bettered armed and tougher. I think these will have a good role as light flankers and can cuase problems if they get into the enemies backfield. I also think these guys could have a role as a fast melee unit. Between, Luke, Jyn, Chewiee, the Wookiee Warriors and now the Tauntauns you can see a pretty mean assault focused Rebel list coming together.

Rebel Veterans

The Rebel Veterans, or Hoth Troopers, are a more corps infantry unit.They carry the standard A-200 Blaster Rifle, and have the stats we’ve come to expect from Rebel infantry.  They get Defend rule, which lets them get dodge tokens when given an order, and have coordinate with emplacement troopers. They do a pretty deep upgrade bar, and can expand from their starting 4 to add another trooper, either a veteran or one of the new specialists, or a  CM-O/93 Trooper who has some weird gun that I can’t quite make out, but seems to work on crits. Other than that a pretty basic unit.  The expansion also allows you to field a Mark II Medium Blaster as its own unit, we don’t know what that unit will do yet.

Despite the fact that I asked for this unit over a year ago, I’m kind of underwhelmed by it now. This is our 5th Rebel infantry unit that is based on the same stat line. They’ve all started to feel a little samey to me and and I don’t know that these guys really stand out from the basic Rebel Troopers that much. Still Hoth Troopers are iconic and were needed. Maybe the new Medium Blaster will be amazing, though I worry unless it has some way of not being targeted, that it will die too quickly. I think these guys will a good add to a thematic list, and could end up being better than I give them credit for.

Final Thoughts

These two units seem like decent expansions to the Rebel list, in particular I am excited for the Tuantaun. With the Airspeeder and the 1.4 FD cannon we will soon be able to field a very thematic and nice looking Rebel Hoth Army. Again the new models look great, and I’m happy to see FFG is continuing to try new things with the separate Medium Blaster unit. Since releses normally come in pairs for Empire and Rebels I’m looking forward to see what new Imperial units get announced. I think Dewbacks and Sandtroopers would be a good guess, and mirror the infantry unit and mounted unit Rebels just got. We also still need Shoretroopers from Rogue One so we could see them. Time will tell.

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