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yeah,
I quickly read the rules and It looks like an amazing game.
You can play it as an adventure, playing through the campaign book missions.
Or as a Skirmish board/wargame, picking out 40pt of troops & upgrades/abilities to fight with.

First off photos of the minis.
Pretty much fantastic 'board game' minis - I think these would look great painted... not sure that I'll bother.



My AT-ST chin gun doesn't fit in it's slot... going to have to remove some flash.

You get 6 rebel Heros
These come with large Hero character sheets with extra abilities for campaign play.
and a regular skirmish card which offers a cut down version of the Hero, for skirmish play.


You get a huge amount of double sided Floor pieces to set up missions and skirmish maps.


4 booklets...


300+Cards
170+ tokens - Including hero stand in tokens...
11 Dice



Wait what was that?..Stand in Hero tokens??
This is my complaint with the game and where the milks starts to turn sour...
Darth, Luke, Han, Chewie, royal guard champion, ig88, General weise, rebel troopers , rebel saboteurs.
These characters feature heavily in the campaign missions making up more than half the content. Normally being the focus of the mission.
You can also use these guys in the Skirmish game.

Who wants to play missions with half the characters represented by 3D minis and the most important ones represented by 2D card chits?

To make things worse for skirmish play the rebels have no stock troops... Just the 7 heroes to pick from.

Surely these 9 minis should have been included !??
Luckily to explain this, FFG give you a promotional leaflet.
You can buy the second half of the core games minis separately! you know... to get the full experience.


Which kinda brings us to my second gripe...
Im confused about the Luke and Darth card token since every core set comes with the Darth and Luke expansion packs... It's confusing.

FFG wrote:In addition to the massive amount of missions and figures included in the Imperial Assault Core Set, the Luke Skywalker Ally Pack and the Darth Vader Villain Pack are included in the Core Set as an added bonus

On the back of the box it says you get two expansion packs included... And shows you the retail packaging.
But inside they disappointingly come in a baggie.

But to be fair I don't even understand why they bothered putting these in a separate baggie... you need these minis to play the core game properly unless you want Darth represented by a cardboard chit!
I honestly don't see these as a bonus!

If it's to show what expansion packs add to the game.
It's not a lot, 1 minis to replace your mission goal card chits and 10 various game upgrade cards?

Basically this is stuff that should be in the box!

When I think expansion packs I would think something like Boba fett...
Stuff that's not required to play the core missions.
Stuff that will add to Skirmish play.

So in round up It's a great box.. I feel like I'm going to get a lot of use from this game.
But it feels like they held back on core stuff to sell to you as 'expansions'.

Panic...

Was interested in this but day 0 dlc is a big no no for me with video games so I am certainly not going to support it here so sadly I am going to give this a miss.

You never know since they like the way video games are distributed they may be a game of the year edition next Christmas which is an actual full game.

170 tokens? Oh FFG!

Yep Descent became a nightmare with the sheer number of counters.

Does not look very exciting or playable.
Still waiting for Armada hoping not to be disappointed at the start of the year.

 Panic wrote:

Basically this is stuff that should be in the box!

When I think expansion packs I would think something like Boba fett...
Stuff that's not required to play the core missions.
Stuff that will add to Skirmish play.

So in round up It's a great box.. I feel like I'm going to get a lot of use from this game.
But it feels like they held back on core stuff to sell to you as 'expansions'.

Panic...

People might complain that they are trying to milk the expansions, but imo its a smart decision either way. The real issue is that there is no way that the base game would have been at a reasonable price point if they had included EVERYTHING in one box. The game is already right at the top end price point for board games (and its not hard to see why with the quality and quantity of stuff you get as is) and if they included all the expansions (the ones annouced thus far that is...) then you are looking at doubling the cost of the game. At least this way its at a more accessible price point and those that want everything can still get it (and trust me people are going to drop huge amounts of money on this game). Just to be clear I would have preferred if they had done as you said and made all the core mission character in the game, but I can see why they have done it this way.

It wouldnt be a Fantasy Flight game if it didnt come with a metric ton of tokens!

Hmm, I'm not sure what to make of this. On one hand, it's Star Wars, but on the other, I find it hard to see the value in that box. I was hoping to be able to pick it up as a complete gaming experience, paint up the minis and have it all self contained and ready to go, as with the price of the expansion packs I see it as a little too expensive for what you get.

The minis do look awesome, but I'm not paying full price just for them, and the idea of tons of tokensASB and cards really does nothing for me. If the Skirmish mode were an actual Skirmish wargame rather than a boardgame-without-story essentially I might have been interested, but from what I've seen its far more the latter.

If I could but just the minis at a reasonable price then I would (and then mod Deadzone or Infinity rules), but I don't want to pay for the stuff I won't use, so I think I'm out on this one unless it gets drastically cheaper.

Thanks for for the review and unboxing!

The counters to represent characters thing is a bit of a poser. I suppose they could have included everything in one big box, but the resulting overall price would have been huge and £80 is very expensive for a board game anyway. I was under the assumption that the special characters would appear in a handful of missions so it wouldn’t make that much of a difference if you had an official miniature or not. But to hear that half the missions will require at least one is a tad worrying.

I think FFG have realized that they make more money in expansions than they do in core sets and so this will be their business model from now on.

I played the tutorial of this the other day. Playing 4 heroes against the imperials it seemed heavily in favour or the heroes but that doesn't surprise me in a mode designed to teach the mechanics rather than create a challenge.

The game pieces are nice and the card, tokens etc all seem standard FFG quality.

Game wise the rules seem simple but fun sadly I didn't get a chance to try the main game.

Facing didn't seem to matter from what we saw in the rules. Each character had a special skill or two which made them unique.

Basic rules are something like this. You have two actions in each turn. You can move and perform an action or attack or you can attack twice as a hero. Imperials can only attack twice with certain characters. Turn Order is Hero, Imperial, Hero, Imperial and so on. Facing didnt seem to matter in the game.

All in all the game seemed fun and I would happily try it again.

 LuciusAR wrote:
I suppose they could have included everything in one big box, but the resulting overall price would have been huge

You guys keep saying that, liked there's some immutable law of pricing. How much do you really think a dozen more minis would cost them? Expansions only really work if people buy the base game to begin with, and this one's kind of a stinker. It might have worked better as a "loss leader" (by which I mean a board game that was competetively priced instead of rapaciously exploiting the brand name and its fans) with some expansions that actually add more to the game.

It's not just the miniatures though, then you have to add all the supporting cards, tokens, missions Etc.

Anyway, Amazon had it at £58 today, so my willpower crumbled. Happy Christmas to me...

Think I will give this a miss for now. I have never really enjoyed Descent too much.

Great unboxing OP all the same! Thanks!

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 LuciusAR wrote:
I suppose they could have included everything in one big box, but the resulting overall price would have been huge

You guys keep saying that, liked there's some immutable law of pricing. How much do you really think a dozen more minis would cost them? Expansions only really work if people buy the base game to begin with, and this one's kind of a stinker. It might have worked better as a "loss leader" (by which I mean a board game that was competetively priced instead of rapaciously exploiting the brand name and its fans) with some expansions that actually add more to the game.

While we don't know exactly how much each miniature costs them to produce you can boil this down to a pretty simple numbers game. I believe there are 25 minis in the base set, combined with all the associated cards/counters etc and these will almost certainly be the most expensive components for them to produce (minis cost more than cardboard). From what I can see there are another 10 expansion miniatures that have already been announced, which as a general ballpark means you are looking at 40% for the game as is. One of these is an AT-ST and single characters like Han and Chewy will be in higher demand and probably have more detail than a standard grunt, so I think 40-50% more is within reason. Considering the game is already in the $80-100 (US) range putting another 50% on top of that is going to push the game way out of reach of casual gamers.

I'm not sure why you are thinking that the game is a stinker? The only complaint I have seen about the game has been the fairly high price for the base set and obviously this issue with the chits and day 0 expansion packs. By all accounts the game is great, Descent is probably the best selling dungeon crawl boardgame around and this is based on the same system but is set in a much more well known (and accessible) universe. Everything I have seen so far makes me think this game is going to do incredibly well.

Board games don't do loss leaders and I doubt they ever will - the market might be growthing but they are still pretty small overall. Most companies in the industry don't have room to do this kind of thing, FFG are one of the few who might be able to do it but they have no reason to because they have no direct competition (all board games are different, and certainly they have monopoly on the 'scenario based campaign driven adventure game based in the Star Wars universe' category) and the industry changes so quickly. The majority of gamers are in the casual category - they aren't going to hunt down every expansion for every game they own.

The price of the main game vs the number of minis looks a lot better when discounted to $70. I still won't buy it for years and years since the value won't be there for me until I have a group willing to play it, but it's a lot better at discount.

Also, the AT-ST expansion looks like a good deal at $15, which is a lot better than I had expected it to be. I would still love to see affordable squads of Stormtroopers. The rebels look pretty expensive to field in sufficient numbers...

I'm not sure why you are thinking that the game is a stinker? The only complaint I have seen about the game has been the fairly high price for the base set and obviously this issue with the chits and day 0 expansion packs.

That's why. Expensive chits, basically. But a lot of my reaction is based on the impression that all the expansions were going to be painfully priced, which seems to be less of the case than for Imperial Armada.

So I'm having trouble understanding something...

It is a bad thing FFG included 170 counters so you can play scenarios using models you don't have?

Or would it have been better to not include the 170 counters so that you would not be able to play certain scenarios at all, as you don't have models OR counters?

 judgedoug wrote:
So I'm having trouble understanding something...

It is a bad thing FFG included 170 counters so you can play scenarios using models you don't have?

Or would it have been better to not include the 170 counters so that you would not be able to play certain scenarios at all, as you don't have models OR counters?

Personally, I'd rather have had less/smaller missions in main box that had everything you need to play, especially as there are mission cards in the expansion packs. I wouldn't mind (but probably wouldn't buy) a board game with all chits, and would buy an all-minis game, but mixing the two just seems off to me

As it is, I've just bought close to a hundred 40mm Star Wars Command minis, and am now working on writing up rules for them at various scales.

This is a board game and not a minis game.

 Manchu wrote:
This is a board game and not a minis game.

Exactly, which is why I'm not actually saying it's a bad product at all in that sense. It's just not something I'm now interested in.

 Paradigm wrote:
It's just not something I'm now interested in.

I think I might be in the same boat. I would like to play Star Wars Descent but I have no desire to own it. If FFG gets around to publishing something like a DUST Warfare style book, I will probably start collecting the miniatures.

Would the skirmish aspect of the game appeal to you? It is interesting how the game offers two ways to play it but I agree, it is a little pricey.

If I had a regular gaming group, I would probably pick it up as I barely play with my X-Wing figures as it is and I'm *still* buying more.

Having said that, I have a chance to play it tomorrow so who knows how I might feel afterwards.

Based on the FFG preview, the "skirmish game" does not look very interesting to me as a war gamer.

Yeah, the 'Skirmish' mode just seems to be a 'build your own' version of the Dungeon Crawl mode, same mechanics and setup, just with variable forces.

It's why, as mentioned above, I'm working on some actual SW Wargame rules at the moment (both ground combat and space stuff) which I will, of course, share with Dakka when done.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

I'm not sure why you are thinking that the game is a stinker? The only complaint I have seen about the game has been the fairly high price for the base set and obviously this issue with the chits and day 0 expansion packs.

That's why. Expensive chits, basically. But a lot of my reaction is based on the impression that all the expansions were going to be painfully priced, which seems to be less of the case than for Imperial Armada.

Imperial Assault is a board game, Armada is minatures based tabletop wargame. A prepainted, easy to get into wargame which is definitely lighter than stuff like 40k and Warmachine, but still a wargame (even moreso than X-Wing).

 Paradigm wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
So I'm having trouble understanding something...

It is a bad thing FFG included 170 counters so you can play scenarios using models you don't have?

Or would it have been better to not include the 170 counters so that you would not be able to play certain scenarios at all, as you don't have models OR counters?

Personally, I'd rather have had less/smaller missions in main box that had everything you need to play, especially as there are mission cards in the expansion packs. I wouldn't mind (but probably wouldn't buy) a board game with all chits, and would buy an all-minis game, but mixing the two just seems off to me

As it is, I've just bought close to a hundred 40mm Star Wars Command minis, and am now working on writing up rules for them at various scales.

Seems a matter of economy to me. A steel die to cut cardboard is a few hundred dollars; a small fraction of the cost of a steel mold for 3D miniatures. I can't imagine them being able to include even one more miniature sculpt in the box for the equivalent cost of dropping the character tokens.

In this case, FFG chose to include counters so someone buying a $100 game feels they can get maximum value out of it by playing tons of scenarios and testing out new units, without having to buy a ton of expansions.
It's like the opposite of Day 1 DLC. The tokens are all there, and the expansions are purely optional if you want 3D counters instead of 2D counters.

The box is quite reasonable for a board-game.

The starter-mission is well-balanced. During more than 30+ demo-games during SPIEL 2014 I won half the time as Imperial and lost half the time. It depended simply on who had the better oveall-strategy.

We've put in four games already; 2 campaign and two skirmish (we just used Space Marine Scouts for the Rebels) and the game is really really fun. My brother, who is not a gamer, is having a blast with it.

- I really like the aiming mechanic. It seems to work very well.
- In the early campaign it is VERY hard to win with the Empire. Very hard. But that's okay, because I've still had a blast playing as them, and it's made the one time I took out a hero even better!

Other notes:
- The Knight Models Star Wars metal models (that are sadly now OOP) scale really well with the game. The proportions are a bit off, as the Knight Models are more of a true scale whereas the FFG plastics are a bit more heroic scale, but they still fit.
- I think the value in the core box is absolutely there, and I'm unconcerned with the "day 1 DLC," as it were, because the game is 100% playable out of the box with the counters.

Regardless, super fun game, and I look forward to playing it more!

Actually you have a 50:50 chance at winning with the empire during the game, but it takes more time to learn how to play the empire.

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
Actually you have a 50:50 chance at winning with the empire during the game, but it takes more time to learn how to play the empire.

Like I said: harder

Just got my Imperial Assault box and I definitely agree with the value, $US69 from a discounter offers a fair bit... 33 troop sized models and an AT-ST which trashes 40k sentinels plus all the tiles, rules etc ofc. The models aren't the best quality but they're fine. Looking forward to getting some games in.

Now to do some deadzone rules for imperial troops ; p