Right. We told you to play four or five games before spending another cent, and if you are reading this, you did it and you enjoyed yourself. Welcome to the expensive part.
The wall of Star Wars: Legion expansions is genuinely intimidating, and the internet will happily tell you the twelve units you "need". Ignore that. There is a simple order that works for every faction, and it starts by resisting the thing you actually want to buy.
The Rule: Corps, Support, Hero. In That Order.
Buy a second corps unit first. Not the character you love. Not the walker. Corps troopers are the units that stand on objectives, and Legion is a game about standing on objectives. Almost every list in the game is built on a foundation of corps, and almost every new player skips them because troopers are less exciting than a Jedi.
Here is the failure mode, and it is extremely common: you buy a commander, you field them, and they die in turn two because you did not have enough bodies to screen them. A commander with nobody to command is an expensive miniature standing in a field.
Then buy support. Something that does a job your troopers cannot: reaching a flank, cracking armour, holding the corner you keep losing.
Then buy your hero. By this point you have a list that can actually deliver them somewhere useful, and they will feel as good as you wanted them to.
Rebel Alliance
- Corps: more Rebel Troopers. Yes, another box. This is the answer for every faction and Rebels feel it most.
- Support: Rebel Commandos for reaching places your line cannot, or the T-47 Airspeeder if you want something that rewrites where the fight happens.
- Hero: Cassian Andor, Jyn Erso & K-2SO gives you three of them at once, or Captain Solo & Commander Skywalker on Tauntauns if you want the models people stop and look at.
- Shortcut: the Echo Base Defenders Army Box collapses several of these steps into one purchase.
Galactic Empire
- Corps: more Stormtroopers, or Imperial Shoretroopers if you want a line that holds ground rather than advances across it.
- Support: the E-Web Heavy Blaster Team teaches positioning faster than any other purchase in the faction, because a badly placed E-Web does nothing at all, and you will only make that mistake once. Dark Troopers if you would rather walk at people.
- Hero: Darth Vader & General Veers. One box, both halves of Imperial command.
- Shortcut: the Blizzard Force Army Box.
Galactic Republic
- Corps: more Clone Troopers Infantry. The Republic's whole identity is clones supporting clones, and one box does not demonstrate that.
- Support: ARC Troopers or ARF Troopers depending on whether you want a scalpel or a screen. Clone Trooper Marksmen if there is one enemy model ruining your evening every game.
- Hero: Clone Commander Cody is the most Republic thing you can buy, and the Customizable Jedi General and Knight lets you build the Jedi you actually want rather than the one in the box.
- Fan service: the 501st Legion and the Bad Batch are the two boxes people buy for love rather than list-building, and that is a perfectly good reason.
Separatist Alliance
- Corps: more B1 Battle Droids. The faction thesis is volume. Commit to it.
- Support: B2 Super Battle Droids for weight, Droidekas for a problem your opponent has to solve immediately, or the DSD1 Dwarf Spider Droid for reach.
- Hero: Asajj Ventress, or the Customizable Super Tactical Command Droid if you would rather your commander made the droids better than made kills.
- Elite: BX-Series Droid Commandos when you want your opponent to stop laughing at battle droids.
The Boring Purchases That Change Your Games Most
Nobody puts these on a wishlist and everybody wishes they had bought them sooner.
- 3D Objective Tokens. Objectives are the entire point of the game and most people play on paper circles. Making the thing you are fighting over look like a thing you would fight over changes how a table feels more than any single unit.
- Battle Card Pack and Battle Deck Card Pack II. More missions means more varied games, which is the cheapest way to keep a collection you already own interesting.
- Attack Dice and Defense Dice. Sharing one set of dice across a table is a slow, annoying way to play. This is a small purchase that removes a small irritation from every single game.
- Terrain. A board with real cover on it plays like a different game. The Outer Rim Battles Terrain Pack is a straightforward way to get real line-of-sight blockers onto the table.
One Last Piece of Advice
Buy one box at a time, and paint it before you buy the next.
That is the whole secret. The people with beautiful armies are not faster painters than you, they just never let the backlog get ahead of them. A grey plastic pile is the single most reliable way to fall out of love with a game you were enjoying two months ago.
Everything above is in our Star Wars: Legion range, and if you are still deciding which faction to commit to, our faction guide breaks all five down.
What is on your table right now, and what is next in the queue? May the Force be with you.