Hello there!
We have written about Legion three times now. Once about which faction to pick, once about what to buy after your first few games, and once about how it compares to Shatterpoint.
All three were about armies. Not one was about the table, and the table is where a startling number of games are actually decided.
So let us fix that.
The Symptom You Have Probably Had
Your games end early. Somebody's army evaporates around turn three, the objectives barely come up, and the winner is whoever had the better shooting.
You have probably blamed your list.
It is almost never the list. It is the table.
A Legion board with insufficient terrain is not a hard game, it is a short one. Two armies standing in the open shoot each other apart, and everything that makes Legion interesting, the manoeuvring, the objectives, the decision about whether to hold or push, never gets a chance to happen.
What Terrain Is Actually For
Not cover. Not atmosphere, though it does help.
Terrain provides decisions.
A wall gives a unit somewhere to be that is not simply in front of the enemy. A tower makes a piece of the board worth contesting rather than just crossing. A ruined complex means the fastest route and the safest route are different routes, and picking between them is a thing you get to do.
Take those away and every activation collapses into the same question, which is "can I shoot that". A game where every turn asks the same question is a game that ends on turn three.
This is the whole argument, and once you have seen it on a properly dense table you cannot unsee it.
The One Purchase
Outer Rim Battles Terrain Pack, $59.99.
The reason we point at this one rather than a pile of scatter: it covers a whole board rather than one corner of it. That distinction matters more than the piece count. Terrain that fills a quarter of the table just moves the killing ground somewhere else. Terrain across the whole board changes how the game is played.
For sixty dollars this does more for your win rate and your enjoyment than a sixty dollar unit expansion will, and we would rather tell you that than sell you the unit.
Objectives Are the Other Half
Terrain gives you places worth being. Objectives are what makes them worth being.
3D Objective Tokens, $44.99. These are, on the face of it, the most skippable thing we sell. They do exactly what a printed cardboard token does.
Here is the honest case for them anyway: a 3D objective is visible from across the table at a glance, mid-game, without leaning over. In a game where you are constantly judging distances and deciding whether a unit can reach something, a marker you can actually see changes how well you play. It is a quality-of-life purchase and we will not pretend it is more than that.
Battle Card Pack, $29.99. This one is not optional in the same way. Battle cards are how the objective, deployment and condition are chosen for a game, and playing the same setup every week is another way of making every game the same game.
The Best Value on this page: honestly, the battle cards. Thirty dollars, and it varies every single game you play afterwards.
If You Have Not Started Yet
Both starter sets are $99.99: Galactic Empire and Rebel Alliance.
Buy a starter and the terrain pack before you buy a third unit. That is $160 and it is a complete, good game. Two starters and a terrain pack is $260 and covers two players entirely.
Compare that to $160 of unit expansions on an empty table, which is a worse evening and more money spent later fixing it.
Building Your Own, Because Somebody Always Asks
You do not have to buy terrain. Legion is one of the best games in the hobby for improvised tables, because the setting forgives almost anything: crates are crates, a stack of books under a cloth is a ridgeline, and a shoebox is a bunker.
The thing that matters is density, not quality. A table of ugly homemade terrain in the right quantity plays enormously better than three beautiful resin pieces on a green mat. If you are choosing between spending sixty dollars and spending an afternoon with a craft knife, the afternoon is a legitimate answer.
We would still rather you had a good time than sold you something.
What to Do Next Game
Try this once. Put down roughly twice as much terrain as you normally would. Not double the pieces in one area, double across the whole board.
Then notice what happens to turn three.
Choose the terrain pack if: your games end early, your objectives feel decorative, or you have ever finished a game thinking that neither army got to do anything interesting.
So how much is actually on your table right now, honestly? And has anyone in your group ever suggested it might not be enough?
May the Force be with you.