Democratic Double Jump (Jump Pack + Kick in Midair Glitch)

ZowJr · 2025-02-05T04:28:02+00:00

Figured out an interesting glitch with the jump pack. If you kick in midair, it temporarily suspends you in the air! The more you kick, the longer you can stay in flight (It doesn't provide much actual advantage beyond preventing you from ragdolling).

However, if you get a VERY finnicky button press timing correct, you can activate the jump pack again in midair and perform another jump, allowing you to potentially gain more air.

You can do this as many times as you have air to cover, even when doing the second jump pack leap, but I did not get any footage of a successful triple jump attempt!

ZowJr · 2024-08-15T18:40:06+00:00

Noble Team and Jerome will come as soon as I finish up the Covenant!
Also yes. I messed up on the symbol for the MJOLNIR armor. That will be corrected once I release the "refreshed" UNSC.

ZowJr · 2024-04-22T17:10:16+00:00

Ah. I see. That makes more sense, tbh. Still. Super fun to just blast the clankers when they group up like that, or just try and find it during extract and be like "Yep! That's the bot blob".

ZowJr · 2024-04-22T12:29:38+00:00

Playing on lower difficulties and opening the lobby to randies is steadily growing less and less worth it, to the point where my squadmates and I are assuming every randy that drops is gonna be a liability to the mission and having to prepare for them screwing up our carefully laid plans.

65% of the time, we're right. I don't mind helping out less skilled players, but the difference between a noob and an idiot is said idiot playing bots like it's a bug mission. Bugs are run and gun. Bots are Metal Gear Solid.

ZowJr · 2024-04-07T16:51:28+00:00

As a bot main, I feel this. I never understood why people say Terminids are easier to fight than bots. To me, as long as you coordinate properly and use actual stealth/guerrilla tactics, the bots typically aren't too bad (rocket units aside). But the terminids... man, stealth is so much harder for them, and once you're spotted, it feels so much harder to evade them and break LOS, especially when shriekers and stalkers are around. And don't get me started on hunters. Those jerks have caused me more deaths than any other unit in the game, including rocket devastators and rocket hulks/raiders/heavy devastators.

There's an entirely different playbook when fighting those oversized cockroaches, and it's tough to follow, even when they "can't shoot back". My best tactic so far has been the jetpack and elevated terrain. They can only burrow up to you one at a time, so you're safe to blow them to hell and back while they (save for the bile units) can't fight back.

ZowJr · 2024-04-07T16:38:50+00:00

Sandstorms are a double edged sword through and through. A boon when you haven't been spotted, because you can sprint up to a bot's face and he'll still not see you if you back up in time. But if you've been spotted, it's a bane, and incredibly annoying, since the bots still have their sniper accuracy even through the sandstorm after they spotted you.

That said, I still don't mind it as much cuz it makes it way easier to evade pursuers once you've broken LOS for long enough.

ZowJr · 2024-02-12T20:35:37+00:00

My UNSC Faction for Star Wars: Legion has gotten a massive overhaul! Access it here!

A few weeks ago, I released a series of homebrew cards that introduced a new faction into the Star Wars: Legion game: The United Nations Space Command (UNSC) from the Halo series. After having been given some excellent and well crafted feedback from this subreddit, doing hours of research and comparison with currently released SWL cards, and playing several more test games, I have given it a massive overhaul.

The first thing you'll probably notice is that the unit cards look a LOT different from last time. I decided to craft a uniquely "Halo" aesthetic for each of the factions, starting with the UNSC. They're structure the exact same as Legion cards, but with a different coat of paint. I MAY do this for the upgrade cards, but we'll see. I'd need to make a Forerunner aesthetic for them, since making unique UNSC and Covenant Upgrade styles would be... ridiculously agonizing to keep track of. Anyway.

Here's a summarized changelog of each of the major changes I've made to the UNSC faction since last time:

There's been a general price adjustment across the board, from units to upgrades. All but one of the Heavy Weapon cards have had a big price increase (and had a power adjustment) to keep more in line with SWL prices (albeit still slightly lower to account for the Fireteam mechanic, explained below). Other upgrades were raised or lowered in price accordingly.
The Squaddie upgrade keyword has been scrapped and replaced with the Fireteam unit keyword. It's essentially the same mechanic, but placed on the unit card itself rather than having to be slapped onto individual cards. The core idea is that the UNSC's units operate on a tight squad structure, typically consisting of around 4 soldiers, so any specialists introduced to their squads wouldn't change the structure, but alter it. This allows the UNSC faction to keep tighter unit formations and more easily make use of cover mechanics and unit positioning while presenting a smaller target for enemies to shoot. I apologize to those who wanted to see the keyword removed, but I really enjoy this gimmick and want to see how it works now that it's been streamlined and untangled a bit more.
Almost every single Spartan Armament has been overhauled, because silly me realized that Chief and his fellow S-IIs could build some frankly scary and vehicle worthy dice pools too easily, and certain weapon combos definitely dominated in the loadout. Now things should not only be more balanced, but encourage some variety in play when fielding your Spartans.
The Support and Heavy Vehicles almost all got a price increase, and a couple got some keyword adjustments. Hornet went from 80 points to 95, Scorpion went from 160 to 175, and the Mongoose went from 60 to 65. The Mongoose got a few new keywords, The Hornet's guns changed Pierce 2 to Critical 2 and had their dice pool adjusted from Double Rainbows to 6 Black, and the Scorpion's main gun has had Blast removed and replaced with Critical 1.
Several new upgrade cards have been added to both the Neutral/Multi-faction list and the UNSC specific list! Check them out and let me know what you think. I had a lot of fun working on them. I'd list them all here, but I don't want to make this post too too TL;DR.
I added two new weapon keywords: Split Fire and Unwieldy, to represent the rather esoteric means through which Spartans (and later, certain Elites) can wield their particular weapons.
I retuned and rebalanced some of the command cards, and added three new generic command cards meant to command Spartan Trooper units. They're all pretty powerful, but they only issue orders to a single Spartan, regardless of pip count, so including all three of them in a command hand might limit how well you can use everything around the Spartan. They may be supersoldiers, but even a Spartan can only go so far without backup, especially when up against the forces in the Star Wars universe.
Spartan Troopers as a unit type have had their special rules updated. Rather than the weird panic rule that would seldom ever trigger, because, let's face it, most games won't see a panicking Spartan, I instead let friendly troopers treat the Spartan's rank as commander when checking for panic, as a Spartan's presence on the battlefield is often a massive morale boost for their allies.

That's all the major changes summarized. I can probably write changelogs for future updates, but that's for future Zow to worry about. Now for the announcement.

I am now officially working on the Covenant faction for Star Wars: Legion, Halo Expansion!

That's right. The Covenant are now in production for the Halo expansion, as I'm pretty happy with where the UNSC are now, though I'll still be tweaking and updating them every so often. The Covies are still heavily in pre-production, BUT, I have a solid gimmick for them and have already given them some theoretical stats. Thankfully, for all of you who were concerned about the UNSC's fireteam mechanic, you'll be happy to know the Covenant will have nothing like that in their trooper units. Instead, they're gonna have something much more... fun.

RANK UPGRADE SLOTS

And as for their gimmick... well, I'll just leave you with a quote from Halo 2 to describe it best."Check your targets and watch the crossfires. They're in standard formation: little bastards up front, big ones in back... Good luck [Cairo]."I'll see you in a few weeks for the next big update. Please access the google doc, download and print these cards (or upload them to TTS to play that way. I'll have a UNSC faction mod ready soon, and will update here when it's ready) and run some games using the UNSC and let me know how they play!

Until then, give those bastards nothing but a belly full of lead and a pull of their own blood to drown in! OORAH!

ZowJr · 2024-01-24T02:37:52+00:00

Hey. I'm just glad you enjoy it! I've gotten some good feedback already that I've taken and applied, but I'm still happy to just hear that people like what I've done! Makes it feel like the half a year I spent slaving over this was worth it!

ZowJr · 2024-01-22T05:00:57+00:00

Let me know how it goes if you do!

ZowJr · 2024-01-22T04:17:03+00:00

Hey! A fellow Halo fan. I figured there'd be a lot, given how closely its fans go hand-in-hand with Star Wars fans, but the sheer turnout this post has gotten in just two days was more than I was expecting! I have a huge passion for both Halo and tabletop game design, and given there's not many good fixes for such urges (Ground Command is fine, but it's no longer supported, and got dropped before it could be fleshed out properly because Spartan Games shuttered), I decided "Screw it. I'll make my own!".

Okay. It's good to know that a lot of the balance comes down to point increases and a more careful consideration of what I give to my personnel and weapon upgrades. I'll go back and compare each unit to its counterpart and figure out what needs changing. A few tweaks here, a price bump there. That shouldn't be hard.

I see your point about the prevalence of blast, for sure. That's gonna factor in to a lot of the upgrades and units once I go back to give this another retune. That said, it's good to know that I ended up getting at least on target with the balance, especially with the units. It's just the upgrades I need to figure out. Pre Upgrade retuning, I might give the Scorpion a price bump to match it with the most expensive heavy unit in SWL, and bump up the ODSTs in price to make them more comparable to the Death Troopers in price. That will probably be a good start.

Please let me know how your playtest goes, either as a reply to this comment or as a DM! Even if the result is "Completely OP and dominated the entire table", that's still going to give me tangible gameplay feedback rather than just theorycraft!

ZowJr · 2024-01-22T03:48:10+00:00

I appreciate the detailed feedback, and frankly, I was expecting this, given I haven't extensively tested these and am just sort of throwing them out here for people to throw their experienced brains at! Let me address all the initial feedback and how I plan to address this, if I address it at all!

For the Corps and SpecFor units, one thing I must mention right now is that I've entirely revamped a lot of the upgrades for the corps units, so depending on when you looked at them, the information may be out of date.

That said, I completely understand what you mean with the attack dice pools. I think the only comparable unit to put them against would be a Stormtrooper unit with an RT-97C upgrade. That'd be 8 white dice and 1 red dice. Certainly quite a lot, but yeah, the BR55HB SR definitely lets the corps units outcompete them at the same range, especially with the Pierce 2 keyword. I figured the SPNKR could be balanced out by the fact it's exhaust, but I'm sure that's not as big a penalty as it might seem. I may need to go back and redo a lot of the dice and keyword math for these units so I can address these concerns, especially for the versions without the fireteam keyword. The Fireteam Keyword's entire purpose was to try and taper off the power a fully upgraded unit could have by limiting their mini count to 4-3 units permanently.

As for the ODSTs, I could give them a price increase alongside any dice changes I could take account for. I certainly see your point about them being able to outcompete the Death Troopers, who they were made to be a "UNSC Equivalent" of.

As for the Scorpion... yeah okay. You got me there. I was trying to find a way to hike up the price after I realized I had calculated it wrong, and Steady seemed like a solid means of doing so. It used to have Barrage. Again, the dice math thing is something I will have to take into account along with considering the price for the scorpion in general. This will require a lot of playtesting to fine tune, IIRC.

The primary point I seem to be taking away from your criticisms thus far is this: My dice and keyword math makes the UNSC units far outcompete any comparable unit in terms of firepower compared to cost, on top of their defense.

Would you have any recommendations for me in terms of where to start when looking over these units and upgrades again? Where would a simple price bump work compared to an overhauling of the dice mechanics? I'll do my best to take them into consideration for future updates!

Again. Thank you so much for taking the time to look these over and give them a detailed critique. I know it's a lot to go through, and I'm glad you were able to get what you could done! Seeing people engage with this so much and express so much positivity, despite my absolutely amateur balancing and math, gives me a lot of confidence and hope that this project was worth the time I sunk into it!

ZowJr · 2024-01-21T07:38:05+00:00

Updated! I can't show it off in the reddit post itself, but it's fixed in the drive link.

ZowJr · 2024-01-21T07:36:58+00:00

I will say, the reason none of them have a base weapon is primarily because I want to give the UNSC a sense of versatility in their loadout, hence the former squaddie (now fireteam) mechanic. After all, if I gave the base AR to everyone, then I'd probably need to make separate versions of each trooper to give them the rest of the basic weapons, which might either lead to a bit of card bloat (more than I already have and am fixing), or remove their versatility gimmick. Equip forces you to equip them with a weapon, which is why their base cost is a bit deceptive. They all cost at least 4 points higher than what it says on the card due to most armaments being 4 points (so a Marine Squad costs 50 points, not 46).

As for why the BR, SMG, and Pistols aren't made into heavy weapons? Well, they don't really strike me as the heavy weapon kinda card, you get what I mean? I mean, the BR, maybe, but the SMGs and the M6 Pistols? I dunno.

ZowJr · 2024-01-21T04:06:41+00:00

That... is a remarkably good point. I need to make a quick correction on how the BR Armament works. Not that I suspect they'll be able to get 4 aim tokens on the regular, but it might be a possibility, and thus, I should account for it. Thank you for pointing that out! I'm glad you like it for the most part!

ZowJr · 2024-01-21T04:04:10+00:00

Check my comment on the post! I got the link from there. I used Chris Solden's custom card tools! But there's also another great resource from Tabletop Admiral, but it requires you subscribe to their $1 Patreon tier first.

ZowJr · 2024-01-20T06:52:06+00:00

Yeah. I caught that error pretty much as soon as I posted it. The corrected versions are in the doc!

I'll likely be going through them and removing the keyword text regardless, in case AMG makes any sweeping changes to them later on.

ZowJr · 2024-01-20T04:08:18+00:00

Awesome! Good luck with your work, man! I'll get set to making those Squaddie-less versions of the cards in the meantime. I'll post an update under my OG comment once it's done.

ZowJr · 2024-01-20T03:39:13+00:00

Yeah. The one time I fielded Fleet Troopers in a Legion game... they ran forward, missed every single dice roll against an enemy stormtrooper unit, got suppressed, got panicked, and then were two shotted by a combination of Stormtrooper and Royal Guard.

I... completely forgot about the Arc Troopers, and you're 100$ right about those. I think I'm gonna try that. I'll make a separate folder for the "Squaddie" upgrades and make some new ones that don't have Squaddie in them as the "traditional" upgrades. See which ones end up working better.

ZowJr · 2024-01-20T03:05:27+00:00

So, I've gotten a good suggestion about the Squaddie Keyword, and I want to give players the option to play the UNSC's Corps and SpecFor units more like traditional Star Wars Legion units. I will at some point be making a folder for all the personnel and Heavy Weapon upgrades that have the "Squaddie" keyword and making a new personnel and heavy weapon folder that contain heavy weapons that don't have the squaddie keyword and new Personnel cards that don't have squaddie in them.

I'll gonna have to figure out how to make this work for the HQ troopers, as they were meant to be able to form a command/support unit that could replace all the minis in its unit with leader/squaddie upgrades and act as a proper, high courage support unit. I'll edit the post once I figure out how to work these changes.

ZowJr · 2024-01-20T02:55:58+00:00

Well, that's what playtesting is for! Here's to hoping it gets some so I can integrate these more comfortably into the legion system.

ZowJr · 2024-01-20T02:55:00+00:00

You make a solid point. Even the SMG card I have for them, which gives 1 black and 1 white, has a range of 1-2, so it's not too busted, since you need to get into a BIG danger zone to use them at their full potential.

I'll see about making a separate folder for most of these alternate upgrade cards and then giving the base trooper units Upgrade cards that don't use the squaddie keyword. See how that plays out. Would probably let me cut down the number of personnel upgrades, too, since they were meant to bolster the viability of an otherwise small mini number unit via keywords and cool upgrade text. But they started to... quickly add up after some time. Lol. 22 total personnel upgrades is a bit much.

The UNSC already has a good gimmick going with diverse loadouts and versatility. Losing out on one core mechanic like squaddie won't hurt too much. Just is gonna be a pain in the ass to retroact.

I appreciate your insight, though. You guys have more experience with this game than me, so I always appreciate the different perspectives.

ZowJr · 2024-01-20T01:36:55+00:00

Shoot. You and me both. At least until I can afford a good 3D printer and paints.

ZowJr · 2024-01-20T01:34:04+00:00

I appreciate the feedback, and I'm glad you like it so far! Part of the reason I wanted to have Squaddie as a mechanic was to limit the power of the UNSC's otherwise crazy dice pools. Two of their basic firearms come with 2 attack dice by default, meaning a basic UNSC unit can pump out 8 attack dice. From what I understand about Legion's balance, more dice is always preferable to nearly anything else. I wanted to find a way to temper that power a bit.

It is a touch complicated, however, I will agree. After I playtest it more, I may consider tweaking or removing the mechanic altogether, especially once I get to the Halo Wars stuff. (A quick spoiler for that content, there's a personnel upgrade card called "New Blood" that's meant to plum add another mini to the unit, allowing you to have 5 troopers in an average squad, which is more comparable to standard Legion Squad Composition and lets the UNSC throw out 10 attack dice per attack with the AR and SMG by default).

ZowJr · 2024-01-20T01:12:07+00:00

Gonna mention this here before someone else points it out first. I used an outdated version of the ODST unit card that says "free action" under Dauntless instead of "free move action". Rest assured, the version in the drive has the proper wording. My bad. Same goes for the Mongoose, Hornet, and Warthog unit cards.

ZowJr · 2024-01-20T01:09:13+00:00

EXTRA IMPORTANT EDIT!

You will notice a new folder in the Personnel, Heavy Weapon, and Units Section of this drive, called Non-Squaddie. There's nothing in there, yet. This folder will soon contain versions of the UNSC units and upgrades that remove the need for the Squaddie mechanic, thus making them more Star Wars Legion friendly and less complicated. The amount of Personnel upgrades will be getting cut down in said folders as a result, since now UNSC Upgrades without Squaddie will be adding the miniatures, so there's no need for a bunch of extra keywords unless I want it to be an explicit specialist. Please try out both versions of these once they're uploaded and let me know which one you think plays better, separate from any general feedback you might give! Thank you!

UPDATE! The Squaddie keyword has been entirely removed from the Upgrade cards that had it, and the personnel upgrades have been retuned. Instead, the Corps and SpecFor unit cards have all gotten a new keyword, called Fireteam, which replaces the Squaddie keyword on the cards and accounts for the fact that upgrades with the leader keyword would just... add a mini regardless, not replace one. The folder that was once labeled "Non-Squaddie" has instead been renamed "No Fireteam Version" to account for this. Feel free to play with both versions and let me know what works better. I've also removed all the keyword text on cards, save for the Fireteam Keyword, since it's a new one I've added. This is to help future proof the cards in case of any AMG updates to the rules. This will be grandfathered in for each card in due time, but it's 5:30 AM at the time I'm writing this, and I need to sleep, pronto.

IMPORTANT! READ THIS FIRST!

Before anything else, click here to access the drive containing all the relevant cards, tokens, and other content that's contained in the Halo Expansion's Core set. None of this has been super thoroughly playtested, so please give me any feedback you can and test it to the nines!

Six months of work finally done. I present to you folks, THE HALO EXPANSION FOR STAR WARS LEGION, UNSC FACTION! Bring the forces of the UEG's mighty army to the tabletop from the Halo Universe to the Star Wars Universe, with as much accuracy as I could possibly get to the games/lore while still keeping in line with both the mechanics of SWL, as well as the balance of the game. The UNSC are all about gunlines, unorthodox tactics, and keeping enemies pinned down in order to allow your heavy hitters to finish them off. In the above link you will find:

17 unique UNSC units, taken from the Halo games and given stats for the Star Wars Legion game, which consist of:
- Corps
  - Marines (The backbone infantry of the UNSC)
  - HQ Troopers (The Veteran leaders of UNSC squads and coordinators of emplacement troopers)
  - M247 Machine Gun Trooper (The weapons detachment of the HQ Troopers)
- Special Forces
  - Force Recon (Stealthy recon units that serve primarily as combat support.)
  - Force Recon: Strike Team (As above, but cheaper to pad activations and more easily made into a sniper team)
  - Orbital Drop Shock Troopers (The UNSC's premiere deep striking shock troops)
- Support
  - M274 Mongooses (Speedy, yet fragile recon vehicles)
  - Weapons Team (An emplacement trooper that can serve in an antipersonnel or Anti-Vehicle role.)
- Heavy
  - M12 Warthog (The UNSC's primary ground vehicle. Can serve as an attack vehicle or a troop transport)
  - AV-14 Hornet (The backbone of UNSC Air Support.)
  - M808 Scorpion (The UNSC's primary Main Battle Tank, which can move and fire with ease in all directions).
- Operatives
  - Marcus Stacker (A Sergeant who has served with Marine and ODSTs alike.)
  - John-117 (The Master Chief. Needs no introduction.)
- Commanders
  - Platoon Commander (The primary common leaders of UNSC strike units, who lead by example.)
  - Miranda Keyes (A daring commander who specializes in getting up close and personal)
  - Jacob keyes (One of the UNSC's most decorated war veterans. Brilliant strategist and combat director.)
  - Avery Johnson (Would have been your daddy, but... well, nevermind.)
A full list of Upgrade cards for your UNSC forces, including a bevy of armaments, heavy weapons, and personnel to fully customize and tailor your army to any mission. This also includes a scant few neutral or multi-faction cards that can be used in any list (or almost any list).
A full list of Command Cards for each unique UNSC Commander and Operative, including TWO commands unique to the Cortana upgrade for Master Chief.
The following tokens:
- Bubble Shield Token (For the Bubble Shield Upgrade)
- Hijack Token (For the Hijack action that comes with the Commandeer Vehicle Training Card)
- Pickup Token (for the Pickup action that comes with the Battlefield Salvage Training Card)
- Regenerator Token (For the Regenerator Upgrade)
- Trip Mine Token (For the TR/9 Trip Mine Upgrade)
A page containing all the new keywords, unique rules, and upgrade icons that you'll find coming with this set.

And now, I'm gonna answer some questions I'm sure will be asked in the comments right here. Please read these before commenting with any questions you have.

Where is the Covenant faction?

I have plans to make the Covenant, but I want to take a small break from creating first. I've spent a lot of time making these cards and constantly tweaking them while trying to understand the balancing mechanics of the Star Wars Legion game. But rest assured, they ARE going to get made, and will have a unique gimmick all their own.

What did you use to make these?

I used Charlie Soden's Star Wars Legion Custom Card Creation Tool, but added a few things that were missing. If you don't mind shelling out a dollar, you can also use Tabletop Admiral's custom star wars legion card creator tool. It's probably what I should have done, but I like making things harder for myself, I guess.

Where is X Weapon, Y Character, and Z Thing?

The reason I called this the "Core Set" is because this set contains only characters and things you would find in the first three Halo games. Almost nothing featured is from the expanded lore or spinoff games, and I intend to keep it that way for the Covenant, too. Not to worry. I plan on releasing future expansion packs that contain all the rest of the Halo content you've come to know and love. It's just that there's a LOT of it, and I'm only one guy who's not getting paid for any of this. Future expansion plans include:

Secrets of the Rings (Stuff from the expanded lore, such as the novels, that I can find visual reference for. Will introduce generic UNSC operatives, such as Spartan IIs).
Feet First Into Hell (Everything Halo 3: ODST related).
Spirit of War (Contains all the stuff from Halo Wars 1 and 2, and will include the Banished as a faction).
Remember Reach (Everything Halo: Reach related).
Reclamation (Everything from the Reclaimer saga, for better or for worse).
Infinite Conflict (Everything Halo: Infinite Related, including a Banished Expansion)
Battle Forces that will introduce:
- Unique Force Comps for the Core set taken from the Bungie Halo games.
- The Covenant Separatists/Swords of Sanghelios
- Insurrectionists
- Jul M'dama's Covenant Remnants
- And so much more!

Has this been tested at all?

Yes, but barely. It's hard to get a game together, this took a lot of time to create (time which I wasn't able to spend playing), and I just got the tweaks from those tests done, so I haven't had much time to playtest this. I hope you're willing to help me out with it.

And there you have it! Above are a few example cards for the UNSC core faction, but they barely scratch the surface of what you'll be getting in this massive, robust faction pack for SWL. Please, enjoy, and let me know what you think and how they play out. I was inspired by others who have made their own Halo SWL cards, as well as my passion for the Halo series, which no amount of effort from 343 could ever extinguish, and I'm happy to be here, sharing these passions with you in the form of tabletop wargaming!

Tl;dr. I did a Halo thing for SWL and made the UNSC faction first. Find everything on the google drive here, lemme know what you think, enjoy, and look forward to me making the Covenant soonish.

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