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Ok, so this has initially gripped my interest but I'm starting to ponder why there is little discussions for IA here? seems that there is tons of X-Wing and Armada but what about the ground based battles?

So with that I've decided to start up a thread to ask around who plays it and how are they finding it?

Personally I am loving it, I have every expansion up to the Hoth wave, and I'm getting a game in every night over at Uni Accodation with flatmates, and soon me and one flatmate are going to go into the tournaments held at my FLGS

So with that I am currently torn between two factions.. Empire and Mercs..

(Feth the dirty rebel scum, ungrateful to the imperial liberties we gave them ).

The current trend with me is that I love using Vader and Boba, Vader backed up with Imperial Stromtroopers have always carved a bloody path against the Rebels even the most hard lists filled with Wookies have fallen before the might of blaster fire.

But I also LOVE Boba, as hes always, always done well fighting both Rebels and Empire with his mobile ability and explosive armaments, plus with the recent support I have added I just love those HK assassin droids and I want to test out a list with Boba and HK's..

And don't get me started on the Wampas

With the recent Erratas for both the Saboteurs and the Guard I feel that there will be a wider variety of lists that have a decent crack at 1st place

So whats your thought on list creation now with the Errata and FAQ in place as well as how are you finding the game as a whole?

Cheers to all comments

I love Imperial Assault but I haven't gotten into the Skirmish game at all, just the Campaign. I play X-Wing and Aramada competitively so I don't feel the need to play another game like those two (it's mainly an issue of time because mine is so limited!).

My game group just got Return to Hoth so we would be starting that up soon and I'm really looking forward to it.

Me and a few friends have just started playing the Campaign. I picked Gaarkhan and have loved every second of it.

During the first mission, the Imperial Player locked me and the smuggler in the base together while the other two were trapped outside with a legion of Stormtroopers. I managed, while injured, to sprint to the first terminal, break it, then run back the next turn to kill the last terminal. Our Jedi had one health left when we pulled out the win.

That game is just so tense!

I love the game, though in a ways it's a shame it's not possible to play it in a 'pick up and play' style, which makes it difficult unless you have allot of time to run a campaign. I suppose the Skirmish mode works for this but I've not had a chance to try it.

I've bought most of the releases just to paint them. It's brought me back the world of 28mm miniatures after about 5 years of painting 15mm Historicals almost exclusively. I just got a bundle of the Return to Hoth releases for Xmas and am planning how to paint Dengar right now.

I see Imperial Assault as vastly underrated.

The campaign is great if you have a couple of buddies interested in it.

The skirmish game is alright too and do work for that pick up and play aspect. - I certainly like it more than many of the various boardgames I've played.

Honestly, is the best value single boxed game set I've ever bought. That's before the expansions.

 Compel wrote:
Honestly, is the best value single boxed game set I've ever bought. That's before the expansions.

I totally agree and it's something my gaming group has discussed quite a few times.

Must have missed the skirmish aspect of this game. What's that all about?

I have it and have run through the tutorial with my brother and nephew. We really liked it.

The main issue is the one we always have - we spend a long time working on armies for games and want to use them. So playing a big box game like this becomes less alluring.

I'm trying to get it played though. It's a lot of fun.

 usernamesareannoying wrote:
Must have missed the skirmish aspect of this game. What's that all about?

The rules are in the core set

Basically you make up to 40pts of a force (Rebels, Merc or Empire) and you shuffle a skirmish mission deck and pick a mission from there.

To win you basically try to get to 40VP by completeing the mission or by killing enemy models

Me and a my Flatmates LOVE skirmish and are about to embark onto the tournaments

Campaigns great but I find that when we started it we had it going for a few weeks but as soon as one person couldn't make it the whole scene fell apart..

But its still a great system

Glad to see everyone enjoying it, and I can't wait to test out some lists with my flatmates for skirmish, I really want to see how Boba works with the new Hoth support and how Vader can work with the Snowtroopers


Happy New Year all

 happygolucky wrote:
Campaigns great but I find that when we started it we had it going for a few weeks but as soon as one person couldn't make it the whole scene fell apart..

This, IMO is what the skirmish side is for. I'm not a big supporter of this game as a tournament game (no offense at all if you enjoy it that way), but to me the skirmish system was made as a supplement to the game, and its purpose is great as something to do if not everyone turns up. Let's people slap together small lists of what's available (assuming the person who owns it shelled out for all the little expansion packs) and have some small quick games and hope that next session everyone turns up.

To be honest, the way I went with my campaign was, if more than 2 other people had turned up, we kept on going with the campaign. - I felt it was important not to let the momentum drop.

Everyone else just used the characters of the other players and we just left the spending of exp for those other characters until the next session. - The group decided as a whole what items to buy from the shop, anyway.

It ended up being the right play as the 2 people who consistently missed the games eventually did admit, "yeah, we preferred going to Friday Night Magic instead." Of course, they could have told us that weeks earlier.

I love painting the minis! Something about painting Star Wars figures that just rocks above Warhammer models.

So question, since I've only played the tutorial - the additional hero packs. Luke, Han, Chewie, Leia, etc. They come with a normal unit card, but not a campaign dashboard. I assume that means they can't be the main heroes of the campaign. How do you use them? Are they skirmish only?

They're not Skirmish only. They can be played in the campaign as 'allied' characters.

This usually takes 2 forms, either, for example, you end up coming across a mission, might be a side mission, might be a story mission, where those characters are involved in it as part of the game setup. - For example, you happen to pull out a mission that involves your characters walking along and coming across Chewbacca caught in an ambush as he's trying to find pieces to fix the Millennium Falcon.

Alternatively, you'll pick a side mission that, the reward for winning it, unlocks a character to become an optional ally, permanently. You can have only one of these allies in a mission (a squad of troopers counts as one, R2D2 and 3PO might be able to be deployed together, can't remember...).
The downside of that, is that the Imperials get bonus enemies equal to the allies points cost. - But sometimes, that really can be worth it.

For example, if you've got a mission where you need to head back to the deployment zone after doing something, having a group of Rebel Troopers defending the corridor to it, might be really very helpful, forcing the Imperial forces to split up, even if they have an additional squad of stormtroopers themselves, the rebel troopers are 'stronger' in a defensive position.

Okay, that's pretty awesome. I really have to talk my group into giving it a solid go.

How good are the figures? I've eyed them a few times, but not being able to see the mini itself in the package definitely doesn't help their case. I know they're single-part, but are they the same level of detail and material as GW plastics? More like the Lord of the Rings range? Better? Worse?

I'd say they're pretty high up there for board game miniatures, but they are really not close at all to miniature company miniatures.

You can paint them and have a fun time painting them but you'll never be able to go into a painting competition with them, if that makes sense.

I love painting the minis too. The campaign game I wasn't too keen on, and unfortunately I've only played the skirmish game once. It wasn't fun, and with so many other games vying for my attention, I've been unable to come back to it.

The silver lining of this cloud is that a few friends are playing the campaign, and I let them borrow my painted set, so at least someone is enjoying it!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
PS - I'd agree with the above assertions about the quality of the figures. They were nice, and fun to paint, but not outstanding. Great for a boardgame, but only fair-to-middling when compared to many of the top table top model makers.

The figures aren't terrible, but as said, they're board game pieces, not wargame pieces. So set your expectations lower. This is Vader and a Stormtrooper right out of the box (so I haven't done any mold line cleaning or straightening of Vaders saber).



That doesn't mean they don't look fantastic with a bit of effort (done by the very talented McGibs).

 Lord Corellia wrote:
How good are the figures? I've eyed them a few times, but not being able to see the mini itself in the package definitely doesn't help their case. I know they're single-part, but are they the same level of detail and material as GW plastics? More like the Lord of the Rings range? Better? Worse?

I posted images of the ones I painted here in the thread, but somehow they've disappeared. So I guess maybe they're in my gallery now? Give it a check, they might be in there. Pretty decent figures. I'll add images there if they aren't.

I have a question about playable heroes. Can you mix and match in a campaign? Like use 2 from the core game and 1 from each expansion in a core campaign?

 -Loki- wrote:
I have a question about playable heroes. Can you mix and match in a campaign? Like use 2 from the core game and 1 from each expansion in a core campaign?

I'm pretty sure that is perfectly fine to do.

Cool. I just grabbed Twin Shadows today as I had some money from Christmas to blow on hobby stuff. I think my next purchases will be the Rebel Troopers and Saboteurs so I can make some skirmish lists. I think that's the gateway for my brother, he's shown an interest in grabbing Kayn Somos, a pack of Storm Troopers and Weiss to make a skirmish list.

If I can get some games with him first, it might get him to warm up to the game and maybe the campaign.

It took us two goes to finish a campaign, and that was only because the second time we tried, we played through the whole campaign in a single 18-hour session.

We found it easier for the Rebel players than for the Imperial player; there were a few close shaves where it came down to the last turn or die roll, but it was mostly the Rebel players' scenario to lose. Some of that was the luck of the scenarios (some have randomly-placed objectives) and some may well have been the Imperial Player's choice of upgrade and agenda decks.

I'm told the skirmish is good, and I like the basic mechanics (it's the fifth version of the Doom mechanics, so they should be pretty good by now ), but there's something about the idea of it I don't like. Partly it's because I'd rather play a proper miniatures game with terrain, but partly it's because I find the limited number of scenarios (two, if you've only got the basic game, although I suppose if you bought the first two Rebel troop packs, that gives you more) a bit restricting. Mind you, I've got loads of fan-made maps for the old miniatures game from WotC, so I suppose I could just invent my own.

If you buy the core boxed game, you have 6 skirmish missions based on 3 maps.

Campaign, Luke, Vader.

I came to a realisation today that's made me more interested in the skirmish. I'd been wanting something a bit more freeform, but realised the RPG-lite mechanics and upgrades and such made it play a lot like a CRPG, like Guild Wars structured PVP. Which I loved. As soon as I came to that conclusion, I'm much more eager to give the skirmish game a try.

About the amount of skirmish missions, don't you get one in every pack? Once you start replacing the tokens in the game like Han, Chewie and the Royal Guard champion, the skirmish content really starts to go up.

Yeah, each character pack includes 1 additional Skirmish map (with 2 skirmish missions that can be played on it) as well as an additional campaign side mission.

A character pack also comes with:
Several Skirmish Command Cards.
Possibly an item reward card for the campaign mission.
If Imperial, it will come with a new Agenda deck of 3 cards as well.

I have been kind of interested in this game. I watched a few videos and was considering giving it a try. I have not played Descent. Is there anything else it compares too? From looking at it, it seems to remind me of the old Hero Quest style games just with Star Wars theme.

I do have a few questions:

Is the game new player friendly? And by new I mean people that have zero experience with miniature games or board games. I feel like with the Star Wars setting that everyone likes it will be easier to draw people in that have never played a game before. The mechanics coupled with the fact that it is fantasy flight makes it seem certain that it will be easy to understand. Getting my non players and miniwargamers to play together is the primary allure outside the game looking pretty fun.

Is it just me or are the maps pretty small?

How long does it usually take to get a game in? How many players does it work best with? (I am assuming one imp and one for each rebel)

What would you buy? I don't mind dropping cash on the main set. And maybe a single hero or villain. How long will that hold us over? I like the idea of the campaign system, but my understanding is there are only 6 missions and that doesn't seem very much.

Six skirmish mode missions. A campaign is thirteen to fifteen missions, each of which takes about an hour to play through. There are many, many more missions than that - the precise ones you play depend on your path through the campaign.

The core game alone is all you need. You can buy the expansions if you want miniatures instead of tokens for the allies, or you want extra side missions, but they're optional extras. I've played through an entire campaign using nothing but the contents of the core game, and none of us felt we were missing anything.

The maps are small, but that's partly because the squares are smaller - 25mm compared to about 30mm for Space Hulk, for example. It does feel odd cramming the AT-ST into the enclosed spaces, but other than that, it's OK.

You can play with between two and four players. It does require at least two Rebel hero characters, and has rules for improving their stats if there's only two or three heroes present, but I find it easier to just have players use more than one hero if you have less than five players.

I think the rules might require some careful explaining for non-gamers (they're quite complex, and there's a lot of careful procedures you need to follow to get all the nuances), but if they're Star Wars fans it shouldn't be too difficult to pick up.

Yeah, I'd recommend always using all 4 rebel hero characters.
As for how long it takes? I think an hour per mission is rather generous to be honest. You'd have to have the rebels working in silence for that. I'd say, you're probably talking about 3 hours for a campaign mission, including classic rebel scum bickering about what to do.

The maps are small, but a lot goes on in those small spaces.

I'd say X-Com the computer game might be a fair comparison, especially when you're talking about the more story based missions in X-Com than the, "kill all the aliens" ones.

I would say it is the most complicated of the 3 main star wars games (Armada, X-Wing, IA), but a lot of the complexity is kind of optional.

What I mean is, you can do several really clever, complex moves but you could always just do something more straightforward instead. You might end up with the problem of, say, the Imperial playing doing all the complex moves and the rebel players playing it more straightforwardly. While the Imperial player should always be the most experienced one (usually known as 'the bloke who owns the box'), it would help if there's a rebel with similar game knowledge too.

For example, my (2) rebels were seasoned wargamers but even then, because they didn't own the game, they kept on forgetting a couple of special rules (may spend a 'surge' result to remove a strain), that would have been really handy for them.

But, then again, it's up to the rebels to choose when to use that 'complex' rule or not. So, it's not as if acting and moving in the game is complicated.