Renegade Legion

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Renegade Legion is a series of games that were produced by FASA. The games were set in the future 69th century and detailed a war between the neo-Roman Empire of the Terran Overlord Government (TOG) and a breakway province in the eastern spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy calling itself the Commonwealth, made up of humans and non-enslaved alien races. The battle space of this war takes place mostly in an area of the Commonwealth called Shannedam County.

The Renegade Legion of the title is the name of a defecting TOG military unit that joins the Commonwealth forces in Shannedam County.

The Game Series

The Renegade Legion game series is made up of four wargames, a roleplaying game, a table top board game, and two computer games. With the exception of the board game and the two computer games, the Renegade Legion series was compatible on all levels.

Interceptor - Interceptor was the first game of the Renegade Legion series. It primarily concerned spacefighters and corvettes.

Centurion - Centurion was Renegade Legion's ground warfare wargame. The primary weapon of war in Centurion was the anti-gravity propelled tank, also known as a grav tank, armed with a high velocity railgun, missile launchers, and high-energy lasers, with support from conventional vehicles and from "bounce" infantry (soldiers with anti-gravity propulsion backpacks). The spacefighters from Interceptor could also be used as air support.

Leviathan - Leviathan was based heavily on capital ship combat. The Interceptor spacefighters were represented not as individual units, but as entire squadrons launched from capital ships.

Prefect - Prefect was a wargame that was shifted from the tactical level to the strategic. The player of Prefect was a general or high command in either the TOG or Commonwealth forces and was concerned with large scale moves of forces from planet to planet.

Legionnaire - Legionnaire was a roleplaying game for Renegade Legion. It also allowed for combat amongst individual combatants and contained more details on the background of the Renegade Legion series, as well as providing a simplified combat system for vehicles, including those from Centurion and Interceptor.

These five games made the crux of the Renegade Legion series. Many published adventures contained scenarios that could be used by two or more of the games. The four wargames could also be arranged in such a way that a game of Prefect could become a campaign with Leviathan handling major fleet maneuvers, using Interceptor for fighter skirimishes, and ending with Centurion being used to conduct planetary invasions.

In addition to the wargames and the roleplaying game, the boardgame Circus Imperium was also available. The game involved gravity suspended chariots being pulled by carnivous beasts, with the object of the game to defeat the other racers, usually by knocking them out of the race or getting them eaten by the monsters.

The two computer games were put out by Strategic Simulations, Inc. The first game was called Renegade Legion: Interceptor and was simply a straight adaption of the turn-based Interceptor wargame to the PC. It is interesting as its turn based system resolved movement and combat in simultaneously with the AI, giving an added challenge in trying to predict how your opponent would act. The game also allowed for two players to play against each other. The Interceptor computer game also contained a ship creation generator, providing players the ability to produce custom ships.

The second game was called Renegade: the Battle of Jacob's Star. This game deviated from the Interceptor game system by becoming a space dogfighting simulator, very similar to Wing Commander. However, the game was derided as a Wing Commander rip-off and is considered a mediocre title.

The Game System

The game system used for Interceptor and Centurion was unusual as it resolved combat using templates. A vehicle's record sheet was made using a series of grids, representing armor thickness and vital components, such as anti-gravity drives, defensive shields, and crew, for a given side (top/turret, front, left side, right side, rear, and bottom). When a unit received damage, a template would be placed at a certain point on the grid and areas blacked out or erased on the grid according to the template. Any vital component or weapon blacked out would be effected.

There were also different templates to simulate different weapon effects: lasers would penetrate in a straight line, with higher energy lasers penetrating deeper; HEAT rounds would use a cone shaped template, while standard High Explosive rounds would take shallow bowl shapes out of the armor using its template. The damage system could also allow for widowing, in which large chunks of armor could fall off the vehicle due to internal structural damage from deep-penetrating, high-expansion shells.

This damage resolution system was reused without any real changes in the Crimson Skies boardgame.