It’s been a couple of weeks since Star Wars: Legion saw its very first full Core Rulebook release on our website. While the compiled and complete Core Rules create the foundation for the exciting future to come, they are no longer the only way players can wage battle in a galaxy far, far away. In today’s transmission we are excited to reveal a brand new Game Mode for Legion called Special Operations.
Before we dive right into exactly what Special Operations is, it’s probably a good idea to define what exactly we mean when we talk about Game Modes. Game Modes are new ways to experience Star Wars: Legion. Each non-Core Mode modifies the base gameplay experience in various ways, whether changing the number of players, altering the standard victory conditions, introducing new character rules specific to a Game Mode, or plenty more. Game Modes are designed to add variety and value to players’ collections by offering players multiple ways to engage with their favorite game. While the primary focus of the bulk of Atomic Mass Games’ design and development will always center around the base game experience, it remains our goal to constantly look for opportunities to introduce new and exciting Game Modes that add unexpected or highly-desired mechanics, that don’t quite fit in with the Core Rules.
Designed by Atomic Mass’ own pair of Wills (Director of Product Development Will Shick and Development Manager Will Pagani) and developed by Legion’s dedicated Lead Developer Andrew Dursum, Star Wars: Legion – Special Operations allows players to play out intense firefight missions between small squads of elite troopers. While this idea has been on our big “Dream Board” for Legion for some time, recent chatter among community showed us there is a very strong desire for a way to experience tactical and up close and personal Star Wars: Legion battle experience focused on individual trooper miniatures.
In Special Operations, players choose from a preset list of Special Operations squads. Each squad is composed of various troopers from Star Wars: Legion. While the game uses much of the standard Legion rules (and exclusively standard Legion miniatures), players have a command hand, assign orders, perform activations and actions just like normal games of Legion, the rules have been adjusted to shift the experience from unit vs unit combat to trooper vs trooper combat. Additionally, Special Operations unique missions and upgrade system add new strategic and tactical challenges for players to overcome as they race to achieve their mission objectives.
While we already had the game design and initial development for Special Operations done, normally the next step would be several months of playtesting, followed by potentially more testing as we put the game through its paces using our dedicated groups of global playtesters as we worked to fully develop and polish Special Operations before sending it off to be made into an actual thing by our incredible Graphic Design team. If we followed all the normal steps we might have Special Operations ready for you all to print and play by the end of the year.
However, we’ve fallen in love with what this Game Mode brings to Legion and we’ve seen so much passion and desire from the community that we thought: what if we brought the community in to help speed up the normal testing process?
We are thrilled to say that over the next several months we will be running a Public Beta on Legion Special Operations. Starting today, you can download the Special Operations Beta Rules, play testing games with your local Legion community, and provide valuable feedback that will help us speed the delivery of this new Legion Game Mode to be available this Summer as a free print and play packet.
Participate in this open beta in two rounds of playtesting. We will take feedback during the month of February, close feedback to review during March, and re-open the beta in April for a second round of feedback.
To get started and help forge this exciting new expansion to Legion visit the official Special Operations Beta page.
Til next time, this is Atomic Mass Transmissions signing off!
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