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I had my first games tonight. I played the Tutorial mission along with the first campaign mission. - So potential spoilers for Campaign Mission one!
Though, to be honest, it seems that I was a bit too worried over nothing about the 'Rebels should not read this book' - Yeah, there was a fun surprise I did playing as the Imperials, but meh.




I think I got a fair few things wrong in the game though. - We didn't know surge results couldn't do the same thing twice (we had a couple of situations where we converted 2 surge results to causing 2 damage points).

There were just the 2 of us but playing the tutorial mission, it seemed to be very much in favour of the Rebels. Basically, 4 Imperials against the 2 rebels, well, it seems that a rebel could take on all 4 alone, in about 2 rounds of fire (or at least, the smuggler could).

The wookiee seemed to be pretty darn deadly, but he seemed to have major trouble hitting the broadside of a barn. Looking at the rules reference as opposed to the Learn to Play, it seems to be that basically, Melee attacks effectively automatically hit? (Well, depending on the defence roll) If so... ouch.
I feel quite bad for screwing up that part of the game then.


Are there any downsides for a shooty person fighting an opponent in base contact? Or is it just that shooty weapons are generally less killy?

The E-Web seemed utterly terrifying, doing something silly like double figures amount of damage on the wookiee in one turn. - Did we do it right?

I'm just reading the 'Initial Groups' section. It mentions the Deploment card returning to the Imperial players hand when defeated. Does that then mean, they could be used later on, assuming the threat reaches high enough. Even if / when there's no open groups available? So, say, in Aftermath, once the rebels kill off my soldiers outside, destroy the outside terminal, if my threat has built up enough (I did reach 6 at one point), could I bring in the original stormtrooper squad back in again from the Green zone. - Or even the yellow zones once the door opens?

Cause that seems awesome. - Though, I'm guessing that doesn't happen in the tutorial mission as that's not in the campaign.

Another thing I wasn't too sure about, does legendary just give you your +10 health, total, or is it +10 health on the wounded side as well?

I've got to say that overall, it seemed quite hard for the Rebels to win Aftermath. Especially if they don't get inside until round 3. - Anyone else had any tries at the game, what did you think?

My friends and I played a 3 man tutorial mission and we all thought it was completely in favor of the Rebel player, that quickly fades, in fact it's far more weighted (for new players) in the Imperial Player's favor as missions are tough to complete and have to rush to complete. A party that wades through enemies to clear the rooms will fail every mission that has any sort of time limit because there simply isn't enough time available for the players.

The wookie is insanely deadly in melee combat, but you just need to score more bursts (hits or w/e) than the defending player rolls blocks, evades. He can take a hit and dish them out with his ability to 'charge', attack, and then hopefully use his surge ability to heal the strain he just took. As to the auto hit, he needs to at least deal 1 point of damage. Melee and b2b shooting doesn't have to hit any sort of accuracy number.

There are 0 downsides for a shooty person being in melee. Though as the Smuggler, who is a pistol wielding ranged attacker, I don't want to be next to someone because they can easily hit me and wound me (I've been wounded in every mission so far).

The E-Web is terrifying if it has a line of fire to its target. It can't move (this also means rotating) and shoot. Since it's not a Hero, it can't normally make 2 attack actions (though it has a special ability that lets it attack twice).

The Deployment card is what the Imperial player uses to deploy enemies during the mission. As the mission progresses, the threat level increases and they can then spend that "Threat Level" to re-deploy enemies at specific locations and generally only when the mission allows it to. The early story missions are very specific about who and what can be deployed and when. The side missions (like the first one that comes after Aftermath) can have a little more variety.

Legendary, as far as I know, gives you +10 health on both sides because you don't lose any rewards or items when you become wounded.

I currently have a love/hate relationship with the game. I think it's damn good, but it's a royal pain in the butt for the Rebels to win. I don't want it to be a pushover, but man trying to complete these missions in less than like 10 turns is ridiculous.

I have a copy inbound and I'm really looking forward to playing it. I have doom and the expansion and we absolutely love that game, even though it's hard for marines to win.

I'm really enjoying it.
Still getting all the rules in order by our third game, but we have a month between sessions so there is some catch up every time.

Everything I'm experiencing and reading shows it to be pretty balanced. Less so for fewer than 4 rebel players from what I can tell.

Some things to remember that seem to be overlooked a lot.
Heroes can convert one surge to remove a stress (or heal if you have no stress).
Movement points can be spent before and after another action.
Twice a round each Hero can spend one stress to gain a movement point.
You have to cause at least one wound to inflict Bleed, Cleave, Stun effects.

Rebels definitely have to pay attention to the mission objectives, but I really wouldn't say that the odds are stacked against them.

I can't wait to get mine. In Doom the marines have certain objectives to accomplish before the invader player scores x amount of frags (marine kills or running out of cards). Typically it's an uphill battle for the marines but everyone I've played it with really enjoys the challenge. Like most FFG boardgames there's a bit of pressure on the good guys.

 plastictrees wrote:

Rebels definitely have to pay attention to the mission objectives, but I really wouldn't say that the odds are stacked against them.

The biggest thing I've been reading (and experiencing) is that the Rebels MUST go for the objectives because there are about 3/4 turns less per mission than I would expect a party to be able to comfortably complete the objectives in. A 3 Rebel party is probably the worst because 1) if there are at least 3 objectives EVERYONE must split up 2) you generally don't have your basic "RPG" roles filled, so you don't have a tank/damage dealer/skill monkey/'medic' so there are deficiencies in what you can do. For example my party consists of the Exiled Jedi, the Soldier, and the Smuggler. The Jedi and Soldier can generally hold their own and do just fine. My Smuggler is pretty much useless because I have low health, bleck defense, and weak attacks so I almost HAVE to follow someone around which leaves us missing something. This includes the rewards for having less than 4 players.

Completely impossible to win for the Rebels? No, but I would certainly say they have a 50% chance to win and it drops quickly into lower percentage as you remove Heroes.

I am enjoying the game, but man it's disheartening when you think that you're doing well and then the Imperial Player goes "And you failed the mission because you failed to do X by Turn Y..."

The smuggler has so many movement shenanigans, she should be a pain in the butt for the IP to tag at the very least. Maybe you just haven't had the chance to buy any decent pistols yet?

Your last line makes me worry that your IP isn't giving you all the information that he should be. There are no missions that I can think of where you (as the rebels) wouldn't know about a turn limit. He should be reading everything in each event section (which includes everything in the Mission Briefing) except where he gets to make a choice in which case he just reads the chosen info.

I've definitely read that having three players run four Heroes might be a better idea than three Heroes if someone is up for it.

 plastictrees wrote:
The smuggler has so many movement shenanigans, she should be a pain in the butt for the IP to tag at the very least. Maybe you just haven't had the chance to buy any decent pistols yet?

Your last line makes me worry that your IP isn't giving you all the information that he should be. There are no missions that I can think of where you (as the rebels) wouldn't know about a turn limit. He should be reading everything in each event section (which includes everything in the Mission Briefing) except where he gets to make a choice in which case he just reads the chosen info.

I've definitely read that having three players run four Heroes might be a better idea than three Heroes if someone is up for it.

I don't seem to have many movement shenanigans or the stress to do much with my main movement ability (to gain out of activation movement), perhaps some tips and tricks are in order? And yeah no decent pistols have come up. The team bought a rifle and gave it to me so I could attempt to deal a little more damage, but I just don't last very long. Doesn't help when I'm going toe to toe with that stupid Cat thing that does like a minimum of 4 damage a swipe plus bleed :-\.

As for the lack of information, the first game we played I ran the IP for Aftermath, they did not complete the mission because I missed the part about giving the turn limit as information (because we basically broke out the game, read the basics and jumped into the campaign). So I gave up the IP role to the store owner and we went back in and beat Aftermath on Turn 5 (barely). A week goes by, the rules aren't as fresh in our head as they were a week ago, and our store owner gives us the first side mission (where you and Chewie bust up a spice den). We failed because Chewie was about to die, AND we didn't know we had a turn limit. Not that it would have helped because we determined that it was impossible for our team to find the keycard, get across the water, and start collecting spice in the turns we were given (so while we didn't know a turn limit, it was not possible for us to beat it). We moved on to the second campaign mission knowing we had like 6/7 turns BUT with 3 people we all had to run towards a different terminal and attempt to hack it on our own. I was left to go after the one with the stupid Cat and essentially had to survive long enough for the Jedi to get their terminal, hack it, get down to me, and distract the cat/open the door so we could move in. We lost the soldier that game and I was down to like 6 health on my wounded side. We haven't been playing it the past few weeks since our Soldier hasn't been to the store and we've been prepping a FoW tournament. But we'll keep the game going as we're liking it, but we're having to get used to the fact that it will never be easy for the three Heroes. Also my "Reward" was friggin' useless... +2 to use on allies... we haven't gotten any...

We've been playing this all wrong! I was informed Monday night. Our "rewards" for having 3 players were completely screwed up. But we didn't care.

If anyone has drawn it yet, Sympathy for the Rebellion is super easy for the Rebels. It's almost beatable on the first turn.

What had you been getting wrong? With a new game like this, I think it's good to share the things people are getting wrong to help increase the awareness of any potential potholes.

With the group that I am playing with, the Rebels have won every single game, except for the first mission. However with that game it could be argued that we lost as we were not given all of the information that we were suppose to be given.

It seems that in general, the side missions (especially the hero specific ones) seemed to be easier for the rebels while the story missions can go either way.

The game definitely needs a thorough lookover by the Imperial Player before playing though. There seems to be quite a bit of information that needs to be revealed to the Rebels and if something is left out, it can really screw things up.

I don't know if anyone else has this problem, but does it seem like that the more one side wins, the easier it gets for them? For example, with the Rebels constantly winning, we are getting more XP and more credits. As a result, we got a lot of our good abilities quicker and we were able to buy more equipment as well.

The sniper is racking up crazy amount of kills for us, especially when combined with Gideon who is constantly giving him an extra attack. I think in one game, we had him take out two Elite Stormtroopers, one Imperial Officer, one regular Stormtrooper, and one Imperial Droid within two turns.

I would have thought the 'tiered' equipment setup would have limited any over... err... overpoweredness.

I've only read/player the first mission (and Temptation, because everyone was talking about it online and I couldn't stop myself. - I've now banned myself from playing the jedi until someone else reaches that mission.)

As I understand it. The Imperial player reads outloud everything in the 'Mission Briefing' section. - Which should include the Rebel victory condition.

He'll also state which deployment zones are currently active (Usually rebel and green ones).

Then when an event triggers, he reads out any fluff text as dramatically as possible. Then, if there are options, he will read out the rulese for the option he picked (EG, EITHER 'Each terminal...' OR 'The door...')

When a non option triggers, he reads out anything that happens as he does it (EG I am now deploying at... He is now....)

Rebels can get any repeats as/when needed.

Have I missed anything? I'm mostly going from my understanding of Mission 1, admittedly.

 Compel wrote:
What had you been getting wrong? With a new game like this, I think it's good to share the things people are getting wrong to help increase the awareness of any potential potholes.

The "Learn to Play" book mentions that if you have less than 4 players each player gets a card from the Rewards deck, but doesn't mention which cards specifically, so we shuffled the deck and handed them out randomly. It just so happened that our "Jedi" got the beastly Lightsaber, the Soldier got an ability to give him Focused, and I got the lowered Ally cost (so utterly useless early on!). We had 2 new people show up within like 20 minutes of each other so I read over the Reward Card section in the Rule Reference Guide and it specifically mentions if there are 3 players give them each the Heroic Reward, if there are two give them the Legendary Reward. So I handed him his Heroic card, we also gave everyone the option of turning in their reward card for the Heroic card (I gave mine up in a heartbeat). Then the second new guy shows up, so we give him his character and get his setup and hand him a Heroic reward card. Since we're at 5 players + the Store Owner who was the IP, we decide to "deactivate everyone's reward and I took over as the IP since it was a busy night for the owner.

We ran through Sympathy for the Rebellion, which can very easily be won on turn 1/2 without ANY issue. But they did it without issue and we called it an early night. Hoping to get through this game learn our pitfalls and then run it for some more friends more fluidly.

Yeah, you can basically hide the Learn to Play book once you've run the tutorial. It's much easier to refer to the Rules Reference Guide and Campaign Guide.

The other rewards originate from missions so they definitely shouldn't be handed out to everyone!

We played the first round of the campaign tonight and I clearly enjoyed playing the bad guy far too much. - Especially when I locked the doors on the entire rebel squad except for Fenn Signis.

He got shot at. A lot.

However, the mission ended with a puzzle in the vein of those chess puzzles you see in newspapers.



It is the the final round. The only models left to activate are Diala Passil and Jyn Odan - And Jyn is wounded!

What do you do?

What they did:



So, the result...



And the first side mission? Temptations. Diala is facing the call of the dark side early on this campaign...

I'm so glad to see this game getting some love!! There haven't been enough threads to hail this spectacular game!!

I figure I might as well treat this thread as something semi bloggish.

I'm most of the way through painting my first Rebel hero tonight! Got a lot of things to tidy up though and I really have no idea what to do about her gun, it didn't seem to take paint very well...

I drybrushed a wookiee now!

Temptation

A heavy mist settles about the forest as you travel in silence. A pained expression crosses Diala's features, more than just the sorrow of returning here.



There is a darkness here, all of you can feel it. As you draw near the place where Diala's master died, ghostly figures, your foes of past and present, rise out of the mist and attack!




Upon opening the door, in the darkness stands the ghostly figure of Shu Yen, Diala's master. "Diala, please!" He cries. You must come back!"



Screaming in agony, the spirits form changes, flowing outward and taking the shape of a familiar, terrible foe.....

Warning. Spoilers

Under Siege

Rebel Scum have taken over and fortified an Imperial base!
The Empire wants it back. Unbeknownst to them, however... The mission is merely a decoy for a Rebel Commando strike elsewhere. - Can the Rebel Scum Heroes hold off the Galactic Empire for 8 rounds?






The Empire must capture 4 out of 5 rooms shown on the map. A room counts as captured when there is no 'unwounded' heroes in the room.



It's Round 7, near the end of the game and none other than Darth Vader enters the base, having been "recommended" by a nearby Imperial Officer to get a move on.

Jyn Odan, the Smuggler and Jedi Exile, Diala Passal, have successfully managed to defeat the two Trandoshan Bounty Hunters, however the Royal Guard continued to provide an obstacle for the jedi.



While the central junction was successfully defended against an Imperial Officer, Lord Vader had now arrived by was apparently just too far away for a successful Lightsaber strike.





Except... of course. The Dark Lord of the Sith has more tools at his disposal than a simple blade. He reaches his hand out to the belligerent wookiee.



Who begins to slip into unconsciousness... Now wounded like the Smuggler Jyn Odan and Veteran, Fenn Signis.

With 4 out of 5 objectives in Imperial hands at the end of Round 7.

Mission 4: Dark Obsession

You accompany Luke Skywalker on a secret sabotage mission. The target is an Imperial stronghold and your task is to guard the Rebellion's hero.
You're holding the facility entrance as a communication comes in. "Vader is coming! Get out. Get out now!"

This was a pretty darn tough mission for the Empire as it's very much all about managing Vader's actions, he only has 6 rounds to cross from one end of the map to the other, then do things in order to win.



I did a bit of math, working out the most efficient moves for Vader (top left) to reach Luke (bottom right). - Basically, he'd have to spend half the game just simply moving to win.



As the game proceeded, the Rebels started to get rather desparate. - At one point, even though Vader had already blasted through their strongpoints, the Rebels were very worried about Imperial reinforcements and... locked a door, leaving the already wounded Fenn Signis on the other side against the reinforcing Imperial army.



He... didn't last long. 2 Bounty Hunter shotguns ended him there and then.



Overall, the Rebels hadn't done too badly though... There were only 2 rounds left by the time Vader got through to Luke

The smuggler, Jyn Odan attempted to Stun him, in the hopes of delaying him even further. Unfortunately.... A stormtrooper got in the way, ruining her shot.




This left Vader with ample opportunity to find and locate Luke Skywalker....






Imperial Victory

My rebels are starting to feel a bit despondent now, to be honest... The current tally is 3 Imperial wins and a draw. One thing I'm planning on doing more often now, is leaving the room for 5 to 10 minutes after setup and let the rebels plot and plan their general concept, before coming back.

It seems only fair, considering I usually have a week plus to plan out the next mission.

Wow, you won as the Imperials on Dark Obsession. This is the one mission we found heavily weighted against the imperials since it was almost the typical reverse rolls where he had a specific goal(s) and time to reach it. Unlike most that seemed to me weighted for the imperials.

Were you able to wound all the rebel heroes because the mission guide says "When all heroes are wounded, Darth Vader can interact with the sabotage site to locate Luke"? We all agreed that this seemed almost impossible unless the imperial player was almost perfect especial if the heroes rested some. We won as rebels but our imperial player was mainly trying to get close to the sabotage site quick and hope his reinforcements could do most of the wounding so he could get Luke then. Although we defeated him anyway in round 3 right before he could get to the room in front of Luke because of all the doors getting shut and Fenns 2x havoc did some major reinforcement damage and we could then focus on the charging Vader.

Has there been an errata to change this so that he only has to get to Luke and not wound all the heroes first? Because then i could see it being weight to the imperial advantage.

If I remember right, Fenn took the early hits and got wounded. Gaarkhan and Diala got brutalitied a couple of times. Jyn just got shot.

The rebels made their stand in the red corridor which was perfect brutality territory.

Stormtroopers show of forcing the doors worked great too

And so, after 3 months of war... It has come to this. The Rebellions Most Desperate Hour.



This squad of Stormtroopers proved to ultimately be the Rebellions undoing. They were ISB Enforcers, Combat Veterans are were wearing Assault Armour. These guys cause untold devastation, wounded even Gaarkhan in short order, doing the same to Fenn Signis shortly afterwards.



The Rebel heroes did work out how to defeat them eventually, stunning every model and following up with two activations in a row from Fenn to kill them off.



However, they were soon faced with none other than the dreaded General Weiss himself.



Fenn was ultimately killed by a fresh squad of Stormtroopers who arrived just after seeing their brethren gunned down.

Jyn Odan, the smuggler was the first casualty, however... An inglorious end, eaten by a nexu who had been unleashed inside the Imperial base.



Gaarkhan's death came at the hands of none other than General Weiss, who unleashed his full firepower finally ending the wounded wookiee. This left Diala Passal, the exile in hiding as the last Rebel standing.



But even she was not strong enough to contend with the might of the Imperial Army by herself and was ultimately, taken prisoner.



And so, ends the tale of these 4 brave, yet ultimately doomed heroes.

Final Tally:

12 games played
8 Imperial Victories. 2 Draws. 2 Rebel Victories.
3 Hero Personal Quests completed
24 Imperial Influence points gained
48 Rebel XP points gained
13 Imperial XP points gained
1 AT-ST Fielded
1 appearance of Luke Skywalker
4 appearances of Darth Vader
Fenn Signis, KIA, multiple blaster wounds from the 501st Stormtrooper Legion.
Gaarkhan The Wookiee, KIA, brought down by fire from General Weiss.
Jyn Odan, the Smuggler, KIA... Dinner.
Diala Passal, MIA, arrested by Imperial Forces.

Will other heroes stand up now to save the Galaxy? Find out in a few months... Maybe....