Legion 2.5 Core Rulebook: The Big Changes (and how to fix the terrible new cover rules) 

Love your LOS solutions. Will use them in non-comp, and hope AMG reevaluates for next change. Thanks, Ben!

I like your house rules! They make sense and I hope to play with them. I am not a competitive player and I just want to have a fun game with good opponents. I think your rules make that much more possible than the AMG rules. Thanks

I'm in agreement. I don't know if any of you guys play "Marvel Crisis Protocol" or not, but I had a feeling AMG would bring over their game design tendencies to Star Wars Legion. Their way of trying to solve arguments of LOS has always not been my preference.There's always a certain amount of abstraction in table top wargames for sure, but AMG style always seems to prefer destroying immersion and/or intuitiveness for clarity. Example: In MCP, Wolverine standing on ground level can slash an opponent at the top of a three story brownstone building. No anger or anything. I know they're working hard. It's just I wish they wouldn't go this route to solving LOS. I've never been a fan of flattening a game to 2D to end arguments of gamers that can't objectively agree on LOS. Your house rules seem pretty good to me. I'll give them a try.

Something kinda interesting, this whole "cylindrical silhouette" idea is almost identical to how LOS worked in Warmachine and Hordes. It made it so that minis couldn't be modeled for advantage, and you could really go wild with basing and poses (you want your warjack to be doing a kegstand on top of a keg you sculpted from a cork and geeenstuff? You go right ahead! It has the same silhouette as every other model on that size base). The downside was that the game also had a big issue with the terrain entirely able to be simulated with flat top-down cutouts, and it made for a lot of very boring boards. There was little to no vertical aspect to the game. Something else to be aware of is that there are several ex-Privateer Press staff currently working at AMG (most notably Will Shick and Will Pagani). With that in mind, I like your proposal of drawing LOS from the top disc, emplacement and creature troopers granting light cover, and ground vehicles granting heavy cover instead of LOS blocking.

I like a lot of the new changes as well. I will also use your house rules for LOS. Makes a lot of sense what you’ve come up with. Thanks!

Very thoughtful Ben. Thanks for being a voice for the common man.

I hope AMG will use your changes

One adjustment i would make is that instead of the entire top layer, los should be drawn from the vicinity of the weapons for everything but troopers, which still have to check from the entire silhouette (during the course of combat these guys would be switching from prone to standing to crouched constantly depending on the situation, it makes sense to abstract that in the way the current rules do) So for walkers with weapons mounted under the cockpit those weapons couldn't draw line of fire just because the guy sticking his head out the top can see over a building while still avoiding the toe lasers problem.

Finally a clear explanation on the current LoS rules. Thanks Ben.

Great video, and I agree with everything you've said. I want my games of Legion to feel thematic and intuitive, and these new LOS and cover rules are doing the opposite for me.

Thank you so much for the short introduction into the new core rule book. 😊👌🏼 And I think your cover house rules fit great with how cover in the real world would work. 👍🏼 But also for tournament purposes the new version (with 2D, todown) is much more basic and so it might be easier to determine whether some Miniatures are or aren't in cover/ seen? 🤷‍♂️ Let's see if hope the listen to your advice on how to fix their new version. 😃🤞🏼

ive been waiting for you to put something up on these changes. you are completely spot on. its sad we have to live in a time where disclaiming our salt levels to such an extent has to be a norm. you are completely right (from my point of view haha). these changes are how i will play house rules also. its just completely logical. all in all, the majority of the rule changes make sense and do tidy up a couple of things where advantages were being taken in a way that are not intuitive e.g. leader behind LOS, swinging out the heavy and arc sniper'ing from inside range 6 with just one model seen. but fair play on giving the solutions as well as compiling the various transgressions with the new rules. the CRB was needed - and it is a great job LJ and team did in getting it over the line in time for worlds and LVO. however, the new rules specifically for LoS just do not make sense. the example ATST and poor ol jyn not being able to see through its legs made me LOL, its just that ridiculous. thanks Ben. great video. hope your thoughts and possible solutions to a silly situation will come to fruition.

I played SWL with friends some time ago and now we are planning to come back. Be sure that we will play with your rules for LOS! As you told, it is a bit difficult to understand for new players (as I am) and I think that sometimes this type of rules just have to "make sense" and not invent no sense rules like the new ones for LOS. Thanks!

I like your house rules, but I would like to add in addition to the house rules, house rule a change to the verbiage for determining cover (p.30, Apply Dodge and Cover, #3) so that when you have a unit of 4 minis and 2 are in heavy cover and 2 are in light cover, the unit receives heavy cover. The "more than half" should change to "at least half" in that section. It is unintuitive that a unit of 4 minis with 2 in heavy and 2 in no cover receives heavy cover whereas a unit of 4 minis with 2 in heavy and 2 in light cover receives light cover.

As a new player, you explain these changes extremely well and your cover rules make a lot more sense

Agree completely with your thoughts on cover.. I would however argue that the previous way of determining line of sight from a point on the silhouette is more practical than imagining a disc on top of a silhoutte.

Love your adjustment to the rules, which makes way more sense than AMG rendition of the rules.

Honestly Ben you could’ve been a lot more salty. The new cover rules are trash. It’s a shame, too, because a lot of the changes are good. You didn’t mention the new passing mechanic (or did I miss it), which I think is a very positive change. Climbing, fine. Wound allocation, also fine. Hopefully we can look back on this in a month and laugh. I won’t hold my breath, but I hope.

Ben we must be geniuses in spirit :D - My initial reaction was that cover is basically determined on a 2D plain with the exception of shooting from an elevated position, so the fix that popped immediately to mind was to just use the top part of the silhouette. I'm generally just not sold on the use of silhouettes for notched-based minis at all, I feel the use of LOS to Hull and/or (Andor?) visible rider should solve most problems alongside a tweak to targetting from the central point of the hull or any point of the hull would help eliminate some of the old issues.

Can we all share this to AMG? This is great!!

I think AMGs LoS rules were meant to be intuitive and avoid "feels bad" and very gamey feeling outcomes; they landed on the wrong side of that I think. As you point out, many of these new interactions that emerged after these rules changes are incredibly unintuitive and gamey, even absurd, and will feel incredibly bad. All the LoS and cover anomalies you showed will frustrate new and experienced players. I hope AMG can be mature enough to just take the L and amend some of these Cover / LoS rules changes.

Your house rules are great and track with how I've always thought it should work. Not too salty at all.

Also what size is a silhouette? Surely different printers, border sizes etc will crate changes in the print size, or did they write-down dimensions somewhere?

i usually don’t agree with a lot of what you say but i totally agree with you on this cover stuff

I love your house rules 👍 some of the new changes in this update just make me question whats the point of having models besides just looking cool? Like I still want my model to factor in to play else we might as well just push tokens with faces across a tabletop lol

You didn't mention if and I can't find much mention online. My reading is that speeder bikes no longer blow up (and take no damage) if they can't complete their compulsory move. Can you confirm?

Yes, yes, YES! THIS is how the new cover rules should’ve been. Will definitely be using your version of it, makes so much more sense

all the problems aside, I can't seem to see where it says you draw line from the units base to the others units base, as described in the "box problem" example. I only can find where it says draw a line from any point on the attackers silhouette to the defenders? What am I missing? Is any part of the attacker mini mean "every part" of the attacker mini

I agree with you on the cover. I like the your house rules. Even use it in running an fun event

When I use deflect do I have to spend a dodge token to activate deflect or just using the token for dodging is all that's required?

For Wounds, p. 31 isn't it Max Wounds Threshold? so if you can see 3 models, but they have 2 hp each the total max wounds that could be dealt would be 6?

Im just getting into Legion, and learning rules from videos has made everything very confusing lol. I was playing originally based on a video that had clamber and all that, and at some point I realized they changed that, and now I realize I do not know if what I understand about LOS is correct based on this video. Is this still the most up to date rules?

You're most defiantly not alone. ATST not getting open shots because the "toe lasers" goes through a barricade is crazy!

I absolutely like your opinion on los however i m not that optimistic about the new climb rules, but i have to playtest them first

Very good home brew los rules … we should petition for them to make the change with those

This seems amazing the house rules are on in my house :)

The first time I played a game as a new player, we agreed on all the various cover each thing on the table granted. Taking shots at a sniper team on an elevated walkway that now had heavy cover despite being fully visible...ok sure I'm shooting at you from below, I can see some cover making sense. Later the same game, finding out that Cassian on a box, in full view, in the middle of an open space ALSO had heavy cover?! I was completely floored. Even after months of trying to learn to play, I still don't get what the thoughts were behind the cover rules.

I didn't know the cover rules were changed so drastically. I'll play with yourr house rules instead :)

This is exactly how it should be. I like the intervening model rule, but I think the intervening model should have to make a save for every shot blocked by cover, or just automatically take a wound if cover was used. It would be like a forced guardian.

At 7:05 you say "from one ENTIRE shilouette to another". Given that .. the ATST souldnt be able to shoot in the "archway problem", right? But there you say at 12:15 "Any Part of the shiloutte". So whats correct? :)

Instead of the whole circle on top of the silhouette, I'd rather it just be a single line drawn anywhere from the top of the silhouette. That way you avoid things like barely clipping the corner of a building shooting at a unit in the middle of an open square giving heavy cover.

Do you have a different version of the core rules? According to the rules published on AMGs website pg27 says “When determining LOS between two miniatures, if an unobstructed straight imaginary line can be drawn from any part of one miniature’s silhouette to any part of the other miniature’s silhouette, those miniatures have LOS to each other.” Nothing about it being from one entire silhouette to another (like a flashlight).

100% agree!

What if they said the AT-ST's "hull" doesn't count the legs? That way it's silhouette would start up near the gun, much like a speeder.

I'm quite equivocal about the red player change. It kind of makes me feel that if they wanted to balance that out, why not rewrite the rules to be more equitable, and do away with the red/blue stuff?

Why AMG is not using skilled players/contant creators like you as consultants/testers?

You missed one part of cover that makes a difference to vehicles. Pg 37 and 38, go over vehicle cover for repulsor and ground vehicles. They only count as obscured if at least 50% of the silhouette is not visible

I loved the 7th edition 40k cover rules. They felt really intuïtive.

W8 , panic you have when unit has suppression tokens equal to or greater than DOUBLE of it courage or commander valoue

did they fix fire support yet? why can panicking units fire support? that has always been stupid.

I see your salty and raise you! With the new LOS rules we might as well stop using miniatures all together and just 3D print silhouettes. Then the rules would make a little more sense. And once it starts to cut into AMGs profits, and I bet they change those rules quick! 🤣

I agree they make more sense the worst examples of poor rules were the invisible creature troopers, your l toe shooting and through the leg shots. Hopefully they will adjust the rules asap.

I'm surprised that you didn't mention that Exemplar can't be used to share standby tokens anymore, which nerfs GAR yet again, plus with the changes to deflect as well, makes Jedi able to defend less effectively in melee combat. They're just pissing on us without even giving us the courtesy of calling it rain. But yeah I agree the new rules for LOS and gaining cover are a bit stupid, it seems like we should all just play with trenches.

I like almost all changes, but they really need to take an L on the LoS/cover change

I am so confused right now. Since I'm not a WAAC tournament player, I guess I never tried to break the rules. HOW, were people attacking with their unit leader out of LOS? I am adamant that LOS and range for shooting was from the leader, so no view, no pew! Another one that has me confused. Isn't your proposed cover/LOS rules basically the old ones (with minor changes)? I swear LOS used to be determined from the top of the firing unit... (they even use the ATST for the example). I guess it's to stop modelling for advantage, which is good Am I just playing with really old rules? lmao Love the new climbing rules. The old ones were punishing for punishing's sake, made playing with height almost impossible (unless you had scale, in which case "free moves" everywhere). Although now, walls are basically non-existent, but I guess that's okay Tie breakers feels the opposite to what I'd expect. I would have thought the bigger bid would win? Shows that they're not FFG haha Thanks for the vid Mbweha (Ben)

Nah. I’m pretty new but no feel like I understand the new rule. It might pull out some organic part of the game but this really simplifies things. I feel like it could really settle a lot of disagreements. I am admittedly new and could be wrong but it just feels simpler even if it doesn’t make “sense”. I’m still a bit confused in general but this seems to make sense to me as it seems remove weird questionable things or “perspectives”.

I call you Ben.

That Silhouete and "Top Disc" ruling is very timeconsuming in real games, without Tabletop Simulator Silhouettes. Sure you could buy or make one for Trooper Units to put them on the place instead of the model but all Vehicles create a very time consuming process where you have to find out if there is LoS etc or not.

i am a new player in SWL, with only a couple of games in Kill Team as my whole xp in Tabletop. And i think your correction here is simply logical. I dont get it that in a game where ppl say, that its one if not the most beginner friendly games out there and the most balanced game, that there are unlogical and imho stupid rules like these...

Doesn't jen lie down and shoot through the dewbacka legs for a cool cinematic moment?

You are more than right!

Loving the games I’ve played so far in the new version of the game! Stay salty nerds!

Good to have a look. Just learning. How would you rule looking through fog from the stl.model kit? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KgGvLPmQPk4.html

Ben I think your changes would be great, more intuitive and less immersion breaking. In our gaming group (not competitive) we always played an will play true line of sight which is in my opinion quite close to your ideas. As long as you play TLoS without being able to shoot at only antennas, weapons, etc. it is fine. You can only shoot something if you can see the hull or body/torso of the mini. That's actually how we played almost every other shooty wargame in the last 25 years. I don't know why this wouldn't work for Legion.

And everybody wonders why we stopped making content.

silhouettes are stupid. LoS should be determined by whether or not you can see any part of the defending model from the weapon of the attacking model and determining cover should be done by tracing a line from center base to center base and you only get cover from scatter terrain if line both passes through and youre within 1" of the scatter terrain.

Just wait till they remove trooper limits and people start having dream teams of all commanders and operatives.

Did AMG end up fixing some of these changes?

Not sure why they changed the cover rules at all to be honest it was fine. I played 40k and we don’t have to mess around with silhouettes, if your playing in a tournament and you can’t decide on line of sight call a judge

WTH, no glasses!?

Jyn standing on the box (or standing on any elevation) getting cover is very in theme with Star Wars, she has the High Ground after all!

No such thing as being salty , its either logical or not and you are speaking with common sense .

Stopped at your dewback example. New players won’t have any bias coming to the game. Simply telling them troopers don’t block LOS prevents the kind of gotchya moment you describe. The new rules are only non-intuitive if your intuition is to play by the old rules. Or if you see the game as a Toy Soldier game where the intent is to recreate an environment where static models on plastic bases that cannot move take turns moving and shooting from static positions. The only changes I would suggest making to the new LOS and Cover rules would be to only have an object grant cover if the target unit was within range 1/S speed range of it, and I’d allow vehicles to determine LOS from an elevated position or ignore cover below a certain height.

The Cover rules are awful. If you want to pull super cheesy tactics...blob up some Storms behind the LOS blocking ATST with Astromechs and slowly move half of your force forward...completely blocked from being shot and peeling off any wounds that go on the ATST as you plod forward.

How not to agree with you?

Yup. Your rules are better. If you can see it you can hit it.

You have the cover rules wrong in this video? Specifically where you discuss "the barricade problem" It's not a problem at all because LOS is drawn from a point at the top of the AT-STs silhouette... thus, the troop unit is NOT obscured at all and not given heavy cover.

Sometimes It just feels like they didn't try. I'm going to assume it didn't take you long to come up with these much better rules. So like... what's the deal AMG???

I know I will either discuss, in a casual game, if my opponent wants to follow these rules because I know I don't like any of these changes as its not realistic/immersive. However, and I could be wrong, wasn't the barricade problem always a thing in terms of the Iden and Jyn example since the attacker has to be touching the cover in order for the target to not benefit from it? Or did it become even worse when it comes to trooper shooting trooper?

11:30 what a joke...

Great video! Nicely described. I think your interpretations of the line of sight "issues" are mostly AT-ST issues, not actual RAW issues. Your solution of drawing line of sight from the top of the model's silhouette sounds like a neat solution in your examples, but I don't think it is. On TTS where it's easy to see the silhouettes and exact positioning it might work, but you have to factor in IRL new players. Drawing line of sight from a base (a physical, viewable object) is far more intuitive than the top of an imaginary cylinder. Also your interpretations of positioning are a bit too literal for this rule. One has to imagine the trooper isn't literally standing on top of the box. These are trained soldiers for the most part. They are amongst the boxes. Perhaps in between them or whatever, using them as cover. It is similar for barricades whereby a trooper is staying low and putting whatever LOS blocking objects they can in between them and the foe. I'm not saying your rule is bad, it's not, I'm just saying AMG's rule is far better for teaching new players the game and making things clear and unambiguous. Even though it does create some counter-intuitive situations in some rare cases. Really the AT-ST should have some exceptions to the normal rules printed for it, because your examples would make sense in the RAW rules for pretty much any other vehicle. LOS could simply be drawn from the weapons or top of vehicles like the ATST and Flyers for example, without making a weird diagonal LOS rule for all troopers to abide to. Lastly, the creature trooper blocking LOS thing is not a problem IMO. I know it can seem counter-intuitive, but it is much easier to tell a new player that models do not block LOS, except if they're a vehicle. It makes sense you could hide behind a trundling, enormous tank, but not necessarily a fast moving lizard not much larger than a man. I like the cover options you've given, I think that's smart, but calling out creature troopers as different, alongside vehicles is more trouble than it's worth. Especially if more lean or flying creature troopers come out in the future. Many TT games (most?) use the rule that minis don't block LOS, to represent fluid movement, so it shouldn't come as a surprise to players.

Yep. I agree, muuuuuuuch better Los rules.

Core Rulebook has always existed. Its in the core sets. It was just never on a digital platform until now. The barricade problem has always existed in the game but yeah it shouldn't be that way. If your mini's silhoutte is taller then the barricade it should be able to shoot the target with no cover from the barricade. I'm sure its a game balance thing because otherwise barricades don't really work as everything just shoots over them.

If the minis visible have 2 health each, would you be able to deal 2x visible minis damage to the unit? Being a new player, I really like the house rules for LoS and cover, makes much more sense!

Here are my thoughts on the new LOS rules just related to the two examples of the Dewback and ATST. I prefer the new rules and here are my thoughts, I hope this will help any salty feelings. The new way streamlines the game, and avoids these moments which I'm sure we ALL have had where I want to shoot an enemy model, and I need stoop down to mini level, I say "OK, I see model, through the gap between the legs and the tail" My opponent says, "um, no, how can you see it?" They stoop down from their point of view and say "nope, cant see" I say "yes I can, come look from my side of the table" The opponent walks around and stoops down and at this point either agrees or still disagrees. Now it comes down to a debate or finding a 3rd party to come tell us if LOS can be drawn. This new way eliminates that from the start saying "this silhouette either blocks or does not block LOS" DONE, game continues. I'm keen to hear other players' thoughts on this. I do like some of your suggestions though. Happy gaming all

If AMG doesn't fix these ridiculous LOS issues, I say we all agree to just ignore them and play the way it makes sense.

I have to say I disagree with most of your problems with the new rules. All the games I played before Legion used the silhouette mechanic and worked fine. Sure, it has some abstractions (Look at the "Kraken" Model from Warmachine and Hordes. It also blocks LoS with the whole base), but once you get used to it, ist makes stuff way simpler and prevents any modelling for advantage. The only problem I really see is the barricade problem and this can be solved with a rule that usually is in those more abstract games: You have to be close to a Terrain piece that is granting cover to gain the benefit (It's usually 1 or 2 inches in these games, so within movement 1 might work? )

I personally like the new cover rules, I think it makes it quicker to determine and makes things uniform so you don't have to worry about weird things with the models. I think the hard part is that on our physical miniatures we can't put that top disc on a lot of them, and a lot of them are taller than a silhouette now It's harder to see that physically on the table.

going to have to say i prefer the rules as written

Good video until you said “I hope I convinced you these changes are bad.” You should highlight them but let playing games with new rules convince people or not.