Renegade Legion is a series of science fiction games that were designed by Sam Lewis, produced by FASA, and published from 1989 to 1993.
Set in the 69th Century, the series allowed gamers to play out the battles between the "Terran Overlord Government (TOG)", a corrupt galactic empire, and the "Commonwealth", an alliance of humans and aliens.
The focus of the plot, like with many strategy games, is to present a long term conflict to enable as many individual situations and environments as possible.
Most of Renegade Legion deals with large, military battles to be played on hexagonal grid mapsheets in a turn-based rules system.
The themes involve large-scale military operations as the Terran Overlord Government (TOG for short) attempts to completely conquer the Milky Way Galaxy.
There are many alien races involved, and stories often use elements such royal bloodlines, betrayal, and normally leave little room for a peaceful solution.
The new government is then led by a Caesar (dictator for life), and appoints a number of personal representatives called Overlords who wield nearly unlimited legal power.
It is from these various rogue TOG units the setting derives the name of Renegade Legion as they form half of the professional army of the Commonwealth.
During a panel at RedCon95, FASA President Sam Lewis stated that the Renegade Legion series of games were originally designed for use with the Star Wars license.
Interceptor used a complex diagram of ship systems to track internal damage; this feature proved difficult for players to use and was not carried into the other games of the series.
Prefect was a more traditional wargame with large fold-out maps and hundreds of small cardboard counters, that shifted the action from the tactical level to the operational and involved the invasion of an entire star system.
The player of Prefect was a high-level commander in either the TOG or Commonwealth forces and controlled thousands of ships, tanks and soldiers fighting over multiple worlds and millions of miles of space.
Ral Partha produced a series of lead figures for the game, including chariots, senators and imperial guards.
The bomb instantaneously increases the local gravity to such an extent that nearby matter undergoes nuclear fusion and explodes.
Flying a few feet above the ground is safer as grav vehicles are vulnerable to hits from below, and this also slows their top speed as they avoid crashing into terrain.
The visual art style of Renegade legion most often depicts grav vehicles as having a box shaped hull with two downward sloping prong bow section with upturned tips.
Military forces in the Renegade Legion setting make extensive use of electromagnetic projectile weapons, variously referred to as "mass drivers" or "gauss cannons".
Various weapons of mass destruction also exist including the THOR satellite system (orbital kinetic-bombardment) and the HELL bomb, which instantaneously increases the local gravity to such an extent that nearby matter undergoes nuclear fusion and explodes.
Ground combat in the Renegade Legion setting has a number of types of long-range fire support, including both indirect-fire artillery munitions and orbital kinetic-bombardment weapons (referred to as Thor satellites.)
In addition the energies involved will build up within the solid matter of the ship and crews, requiring no more than a month of travel in T-space before becoming dangerous.
The arrays are large space stations and can transmit and receive over far greater distances than the P-comm devices, even across the entire Milky Way galaxy.
In grav tank battles the solid metal rounds fired by main gun/Gauss cannon are not affected by shields, as well as Thor satellite attacks and nuclear detonations.
Renegade Legion: Interceptor was a straight translation of the turned-based board game of the same name, and allowed two players to fight each other with a squadron of starfighters.
[citation needed] Next Generation reviewed the PC version of the game, rating it two stars out of five, and stated that "In its defense, Renegade 2 has succeeded in cutting down load times, and the high-res graphics are gorgeous without the need for the kind of horsepower required for Origin's latest, Wing Commander IV.
Interceptor, 2nd Edition abolished the flow chart-like internal damage system, in effect making it to "Centurion in Space".
Luc Nadon and Dallen Masters did a playtest version that differed heavily from the Battletroops rules, in effect making Phalanx a tabletop game.
In addition, FASA published Shannedam County, a sourcebook which profiled dozen of planets and star systems where adventures and battles could be set.
Renegade Legion's Leviathan module was used as the base for FASA's Battletech new aerospace rules known at the time as BattleSpace.