Alongside its new run of Starter Sets and custom character models, Star Wars Legion recently received an original campaign system, Tours of Duty, a framework to fight a string of battles with your force that will see your troopers rack up experience, suffer setbacks, and tell an original Star Wars story. Atomic Mass Games' Game Development Director Will Pagani tells us how he and the team developed Tours of Duty, and the challenges they faced on the way.
"Campaign play with unit and character progression can be a very difficult thing to design and develop for any game", Pagani says, particularly "when that game already exists", since "there are many key elements that cannot be changed and hurdles you must overcome".
Good miniature wargame campaign systems need "To have a sense of accomplishment and progress as players move through their story arcs". That means unit upgrades - but Star Wars Legion "already has an upgrade system that the frame of the game is built on", meaning the designers "had to be careful that units could still meet their basic goals and function on the battlefield but also leave room for those units to grow as they gain Veteran Ranks".
Tours of Duty adds the Commendation system, which can grant units additional upgrade slots, extra keywords, or unique abilities as they gain ranks. Pagani says this "Allows us to not only use the standard upgrade system but also add some flair that couldn't (or at least probably shouldn't!) exist in a normal Star Wars: Legion army" - like devastating once-per game Special Munitions, or a Marksmanship Badge to give a unit that shouldn't otherwise have it Precise 1.
Then there are the Supply Points, which are used to expand your army or acquire unique Strategic Assets. "I will never forget my opponent using the Combat Drop Strategic Asset to infiltrate a Persuader tank", Pagani says, "in our narrative it was buried under the sands and launched out into the open to ambush some poor Clone Troopers - hilarity ensued!"
The biggest challenge overall was simply saying no to the plethora of ideas the team came up with. "Everyone has such great ideas and gets so excited about so many cool things we can do in a campaign system… if we put it all in at once it would take even longer to develop an already intricate system of upgrades, commendations, set backs, story arcs, supply points…the list goes on for just the base campaign!" Not that the Legion team lets anything go to waste - unused ideas "Are put into the 'maybe later' folder for the campaign and are returned to, ready to be explored and implemented in the future as the campaign system evolves and we identify player wants and needs".
One hard limit in Tours of Duty is the availability of named characters - they're not common. "We see the stories of Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader play out in the shows and movies in our homes and we can play those stories in standard games of Star Wars: Legion", Pagani enthuses, but "Tours of Duty is about telling your own story of an unknown hero's rise to greatness, it's about building that story with your opponents as you play through various Story Arcs to craft the path your Paragon takes through the Galaxy".
Though the team weren't so heartless as to exclude named characters altogether - "Sometimes Darth Vader shows up for a game every once in a while to complete an important mission to the Empire!" - but it will cost some of the player's limited roster of Supply Points to draw the big man down for a single mission.
Whenever you play a Tours of Duty game, you'll be pursuing a Story Arc, which give you Agendas to pursue alongside your regular mission objectives, leading to a climactic Turning Point mission when you've completed at least two of your Agendas. Pagani says "There are a few key concepts that were important when we were developing the concept of story arcs:
Modular - people needed to be able to play the story they wanted to tell.
Personal - Players need to be able to play their arc in the same game as someone else on a different arc.
Open - They need to be widely applicable but unique enough to feel like they are special to your Paragon.
Duration - Long enough to feel meaningful but short enough to be attainable."
He admits: "Hitting all these beats is difficult". Tours of Duty originally started with a big slate of unique missions, but "The relatively generic nature of the standard missions combined with the Agendas inside of story arcs allow players to really build the story of what's going on in the game above and beyond standard games of Star Wars: Legion".
In practise, he says "most arcs are completed in 6 - 10 games, which is a hefty number of games to be sure, but also gives time for units to gain Veterancy Ranks and Setbacks", letting you enjoy that sense of progress. One arc corresponds roughly to the story from a single Star Wars movie, and Pagani says "We wanted to tie into the 'trilogy' aspect that is so common in Star Wars media", so "having three arcs be an aspirational goal of players was a fun way to do that".
Pagani's favorite example of this system is "The 'Keep Them In Line' Agenda from the 'Bring Peace to the Galaxy' Story Arc", which requires you to Panic enemy units. "Panicking units isn't something that happens all the time but it's very powerful", Shick says, "you almost have to work specifically for this Agenda whereas some of the others are a little more in line with standard gameplay plans and that's neat to me". He adds that he's "A huge fan of the narrative of Keeping Them in Line" as a way to 'Bring Peace', leaning into the propaganda theme of an arc we saw as the most Empire related".
AMG's next big announcement for Legion will be coming on November 15, as part of the Ministravaganza online convention. We're excited to see how the Star Wars Legion roadmap of releases develops into 2026!
If you like to learn more behind the scenes secrets of game design, make sure you join the Wargamer Discord community - we host regular live AMAs with game developers where you can put your questions directly to the devs. You can find our past AMAs on our YouTube channel, including a recent Star Wars Legion interview with Will Shick and Will Pagani.