Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Gray Phoenix Legionnaire

HP: 5/6/6/6 (+0/+2)

Armor: 0/0/0/1 (+0/+1)
Aim: 70/70/75/75 (+2/+5)
Mobility: 10
Damage: 3-4 (+1/+1)
Will: 50 (+10/+20)
Initiative: 50

It's kind of funny to me that Legionnaires are less durable, less accurate, and less lethal than Progeny Brutes. I'm pretty sure this boils down to game design considerations; the Brute is a semi-elite, uncommon unit on the Progeny, whereas the Legionnaire is one of Gray Phoenix's basic units that shows up constantly in good numbers, so the Legionnaire gets less stats. It's a little unfortunate the aesthetic end of things doesn't support it; in most respects the Legionnaire and Brute are just different color palettes for the same core model, and the one substantial difference is that the Legionnaire has a beam weapon instead of a magnetic weapon, which would imply Legionnaires should be the more lethal unit.

It's not that big a deal overall, given how transparent the game is about stuff like HP, but still unfortunate.

Alert Actions: Move to better position, Hunker Down.

Surprisingly, even though Legionnaires have a non-damaging special ability, as far as I'm aware they're not willing to use it as an Alert action.

Speaking of.

Demolition

Turn-ending action: Attempts to destroy a target enemy's Cover. Does no damage to the target unit.

It's literally the Grenadier's Demolition skill from XCOM 2, but now it's used to give a modestly dangerous enemy the potential to basically do a dud turn.

Surprisingly, this is literally the only interesting quality Legionnaires have, as far as special abilities and whatnot. Their Armor situation is much more interesting, honestly; Armor varying by difficulty is surprisingly rare in Chimera Squad.

Do note that Demolition will instantly detonate Cover if it's explosive Cover, assuming it passes its check for instantly destroying the Cover. If Legionnaires are around and you're not fully confident you'll be able to prevent their turns, you should probably avoid moving adjacent to explosive Cover.

Other than that, though, Demolition really is almost always a waste of the Legionnaire's turn. The Timeline system means there's no guarantee any other enemies will be able to capitalize before the exposed agent gets to act, for one, and as far as I can tell Legionnaires don't make any effort to target Demolition on agents later in the Timeline or the like.

On the plus side, Legionnaires are really reluctant to actually break out Demolition. They do actually know they have the ability and all, but it's really rare for a Legionnaire to decide now is a good time for Demolition, so they at least only occasionally waste their turn on it. It's a little unfortunate that this means that -like Thralls- they're mostly just a Boring Stat Block Enemy even though they technically have more to them than that, but I'd rather this awkwardness than 'they constantly use Demolition even though this is usually wasting their turn'.

Aesthetically, Legionnaires are just a palette swap of the Progeny Brute, aside swapping the magnetic Shotgun for a beam Shotgun. It still is striking/interesting/odd to me that Brutes parallel the color scheme of XCOM 2 Mutons whereas Legionnaires have this more brown-to-yellow skin tone and metal-blue armor; I'd really have expected The Muton Faction to get The Classic Muton Color Scheme by default.

Narratively, Legionnaires are never directly addressed that I'm aware, where you seem to be intended to assume they're essentially just random Gray Phoenix Mutons of no particular background, no further explanation necessary, Which works fine overall, honestly, even if it would be nice to get some kind of context on the name or a suggestion as to why they get Demolition of all things. The general context of what Gray Phoenix are as an organization and how Mutons fit into the Ethereal army does a perfectly fine job of implicitly answering a bunch of possible questions, after all.

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Next time, we move on to another of Gray Phoenix's most basic units, the Adder.

See you then.