Star Wars Legion April 2025 Developer Updates

In March, Atomic Mass Games showcased a flurry of roadmap updates, announcements and reveals from their panel at Adepticon panel. AMG has been systematically announcing new product, revealing new rules updates, and releasing new product since their big Star Wars Legion Refresh (Legion 2.0) announcement during their 2024 Ministravaganza. 

This latest reveal showcases some additions, changes, and flat out removals of game elements as they prepare for the fall launch of their new faction starter sets.  While this is not a comprehensive list of all of the updates, here are some of the major highlights from the Developer Update stream. 

You don’t have to wait until the fall to start playing, however. Atomic Mass Games has the entire new edition rules, cards, and accessories available to download for free on their site. That’s pretty amazing. Recently, Gaming Trend had an interview with Will Shick, Director of Product Development, who discussed the rationale behind this generosity. 

Let’s get into it:

Wording and Language Cleanup

In addition to the visual card changes, the content of the cards’ text and abilities have been made clearer and easier to read for both players. The goal being for everything in the game to be more uniform, including keywords, icons, and timing effects.

One of the biggest changes is the changes to the words “At”, “Within”, and “Beyond.” These have now been changed to “within”, “completely within”, and “not within.” All of these have different meanings and are applied differently based on the text of either the rule or keyword.

Battlefield Area Terrain

Tables and the terrain they populate them with are a huge visual draw for the game. From the stream, the goal was to get more area terrain on the table like trees, debris, wrecked vehicles, etc. Not only are they more interesting to look at, they are also something that would naturally be on the battlefield. The old rules for determining area terrain was clunky and difficult. So, the terrain retains its vertical silhouette and the base/footprint of the terrain is considered part of the terrain when firing through it.

Movement

When you move your unit, you can now move other miniatures of the unit out of the way; i.e. other models in the unit do not block movement for the leader. The keywords Reverse and Strafe are now standard moves. 

Line of Sight

Much of this was to clean up game play and reduce or remove exploitable game interactions. When firing into a unit, models in the unit don’t block line of sight to the rest of that unit. Models with legs or arms sticking out over the base, like AT-RTs, Crab Droids, or Dewbacks, can’t block line of sight to models behind them (even though you still can’t see under the model due to the silhouette rules). 

Command Cards

Other than the game effects and abilities that have been changed on the command cards already, there have been changes to how command cards are included in a list and played. Units don’t necessarily have access to every command card with their name on it, like Darth Vader (Commander) and Darth Vader (Operative). This has expanded and changed how the command hand works, especially with new units on the way, and is future-proofing unwanted or unintended game interactions with characters. 

According to AMG “Being able to put power into the characters and not bend characters around the card allows us to really dive into the lore of Star Wars and see multiple iterations of these characters and do some cool things with future designs.” The best example of this being Luke Skywalker’s “I am a Jedi” command card would have created some imbalances with the new Hoth Luke Skywalker (on the Tauntaun) Commander. AMG did mention that new command cards for a given character aren’t necessarily going to be for previous versions of that character.

Keywords:

New Keywords: 

• One Step Ahead - After players reveal their command card, they can choose an unit with this keyword to perform a speed-1 move if your pips do not match. If the pips do match, another friendly unit  performs a speed-1 instead.
• Shien Mastery - This affects how Deflects work. The attacking unit suffers one wound per defense surge in the defender’s die roll. If the defender prevents every wound from a ranged attack, it doesn’t gain a suppression token. 

Removed Keywords:

• Contingencies, Flawed, and Loadout have been removed from the game.

Changed Keywords:

• Cache - tokens provided by an Upgrade Card with the Cache keyword can be used, even if any models added by the upgrade are defeated.
• Self Destruct - It is no longer considered an attack and does damage & suppression separately. Additionally, if the unit is at least halfway on its Wound threshold, it gets to make an attack with black attack dice equal to its X value.
• Tow Cable - Weapons with this keyword can now immobilize units in addition to pivoting it.
• Small - This has been reworked so that it’s now not possible to target a unit if the only visible model in the unit is a Counterpart miniature with the Small keyword.

Removed/Retired Game Elements - Units and Cards

The following units and miniatures have been either changed or removed from the game:

• Emperor Palpatine
  • The biggest and most notable removal from the game. According to Will Shick in a recent interview, there were many factors in removing ol’ Sheev from the game, including LucasFilmLtd’s view of his inclusion and role within this game space, AMG game balancing for Legion, and what the piece actually brought to the table. Removal now leaves some space for adding him and the Imperial Royal Guards in the future. So, until he ‘somehow returns,’ he will enjoy the bottom of the Death Star core reactor.
    • Recently, Emperor Palpatine locked in a victory at a Star Wars Legion Grand Tournament in Arizona, which may be one the last times he ever graces the top of the leaderboard for the Empire.
    • Editor’s Note: I believe that in the next few years, the sequel trilogy factions will make an appearance and Emperor Palpatine will be an absolute unit of a unit released for Republic, Confederacy, Empire, and the First Order. 
• Imperial Guards
  • Also removed. I mean, who are they going to guard if Palpatine isn’t around?
• Rebel Pathfinders
  • Similar to Palpatine and the Royal Guards, the Pathfinders represented one extra cook in the kitchen, and may receive a rework in the future. For now, they’re just cool Rebel trooper models.
• Imperial Officer, Rebel Officer, and Generic Super Tactical Droid as Commander Unit
  • The new ‘Customizable Officer’ will replace these, and they can still be used as personnel. Kalani and Kraken are individual units, and players can use both. 
• ARC Trooper JT-12 Jetpacks
  • ARCs have replaced the Jetpack for Scale, since they’re fast enough as is.
• DC-15 Heavy Weapon Trooper
  • This piece will become the Clone Trooper Marksman

The following upgrade cards have been removed from the game:

• Aggressive Tactics
• Battle Meditation
• Comm Relay
• Esteemed Leader
• Refurbished “Gonk” Droid

The biggest reasons for these removals were that the cards were either too effective in game, regardless of their cost, or they were going to be too difficult to future-proof for new releases (either with units or cards.) This will open up space for either new similar cards (mechanic-wise), or entirely new cards with game effects that fit better in this latest edition. 

Unit Points and Keyword Updates

There are a host of new changes and updates to unit point costs and changes to keywords and/or upgrades. Without going into specific details, here are some highlights of units that have been changed:

• Iden Versio
• Agent Kallus
• Lando Calrissian
• Jyn Erso
• Mandalorian Super Commandos

AMG is always watching the meta, seeing what pieces are receiving too much play or not enough. The following are the units that were revealed on stream as being ‘watched.’

• Riot Control Squad
• Aqua Droids
• Sleeper Cell
• Empire… just as a whole thing.
• Landspeeders (Will is very partial to landspeeders)

Updated 4/17/25: You can read Atomic Mass Games' official transmission and watch the full stream on their website here.

With all of these changes, there have certainly been many responses to it. Depending on your level of play (competitive or casual) and the community you hang out with, you may have experienced some vitriolic or possibly some welcoming responses. Change is hard, but necessary for any game to survive. Let us know what you think!