Star Wars: Legion – An Update To Suppression Is Coming

Do the Suppression and Panic mechanics in Star Wars: Legion seem a little flat to you? Atomic Mass Games has some tweaks coming soon.

Suppression is a key mechanic in Star Wars: Legion. The rule is supposed to represent a unit seeking cover as they are getting shot at from various enemies. Have a little bit of Suppression is good for your unit defensively as it improves your defenses vs ranged attacks.

However, if a unit ever gets too much Suppression, then the unit starts to lose actions. If it ever gets double the number of Suppression tokens compared to it’s courage value, it Panics. That’s bad.

There’s more to the rules for Suppression. You can read all of them HERE. They start on page 77. But those are the basics of Suppression. Atomic Mass Games has been reviewing the rules for Star Wars: Legion and they are going to update the core rules. Suppression and Panic are one mechanic they are taking a closer look at and are planning some changes ahead.

via Atomic Mass Games

” While working on the Core Rulebook and other future developments for Star Wars: Legion, we realized that the suppression and panic mechanics were not delivering the desired impact on the game, especially when it came to objective play and Legion’s scenario scoring conditions. In too many situations, the player’s only option for denying or securing victory points was to outright eliminate the entire enemy unit, because suppression and panic did not affect the unit’s ability to score. Additionally, the intended functionality of panic was at odds with the written rule’s language, leading to ambiguity and problematic interactions. “

Star Wars: Legion Suppression And Panic Update

The most important change is actually a combination of little things. Here’s summary of them:

• When a unit panics it no longer flees from the battlefield
• When a unit panics it cannot perform actions or free actions
• A panicking unit drops any objective tokens they may be carrying
• At the end of their activation the panicking unit removes a number of suppression tokens equal to their courage value
• Units that are panicked cannot be used to satisfy the victory conditions on objective cards

These changes help to make Suppression and Panic more important to the scenario and objective play. They also become a more powerful and useful tool for eliminating a unit that is “too dug in” with cover and dodge tokens.

Ruleswise, this is an interesting use of an existing mechanic with a good tweak. A little bit of Suppression still “helps” your unit with cover. Too much and they get too frightened to move and are effectively “pinned” for a turn. This can really make your games feel a bit more tactically deep and challenging.

What do you think of these tweaks to Suppression and Panic for Star Wars: Legion?

Author: Adam Harrison

Writer, Editor, Texas Native, and Austinite for 15+ years, Adam covers all things Tabletop Gaming. Which includes Warhammer 40,000, Age of Sigmar, D&D, Board Games and everything else that involves dice, boards, cards and a table. A hobbyist, player, and collector of miniatures and games, Adam's current obsession are his Death Armies for Age of Sigmar, his Blood Angels and Tyranids for 40k, and his ever growing Arkham Horror: The Card Game Collection.