"Imperial Assault - opinions on game play?" Topic

Hi,

I'm thinking about getting this for Son #1, a proper wargamer and all-around Star Wars fan. Considering the cost, I was wondering how much people have enjoyed the game itself. How is the replay value? Are the expansions a luxury, or a built-in necessity? Are they fairly balanced? We are not tournament gamers, so this would be for home play amongst friends.

Cheers,

Christopher

I absolutely love the game and while the ending does not change, how you get to it is almost infinitely variable. The supplements add new cards to the mix, which brings in new characters or elements. The larger supplements like Hoth bring more characters and new endings as well.

The person running the Imperials also benefits from the missions and can gain experience and tricks as well as the rebels. They gain influence which can get extra cards that further change missions or can make them more difficult. The imperial is also the ONLY person who has a clue about the mission and its surprises.

We have found that it is best to have an Imperial player who does not mind losing as they will lose a lot. If the Imperial person has a tournament mentality or is one of those gamers who can only have fun when they get to stick a screwdriver through your eye and try to make your legs twitch, then I guarantee you nobody will have fun and at best, your game will get played once, maybe twice. And that would be terrible as the experience of playing it is great.

I think of the Imperial player as a good GM. Everyone knows where they are going but how you get there is where the fun is at! I have played both sides in the game and admit liking both equally. Both can be fun.
Larry

On boardgamegeek, its the 15th highest rated game of all time, so must be doing something right :-)

From friends that play, the general consensus has been that there's a lot of replay (and the missions are pretty beefy).
A few have mused that the star wars theme could be more extensive but if your kid isn't a hardcore board gamer who have played everything ever, I doubt that'll be a problem :)

There were some grumblings about the rulebook being poorly organized but I dunno if that's just nitpicking, if its fixed in a more recent printing or what.

Since, I have tons of the WOTC minis, I was thinking about trying to locate a copy of the game without the minis.

I assume I could use these instead of the FFG unpainted minis without issue (realizing that the FFG are great sculpts!)

For the characters expansions that are not in the core sets, do the expansions come with more stuff than just the mini that are necessary for the game? Thanks.

I too have lots of WOTC prepaints, but the figures covered dont match all the figures you will need to play Imperial Assault. Of course, you can substitute figures if you wish.

The expansions come with new campaigns, new skirmish missions, new cards, and new minis. The expansions are of varying value.

This is my current addiction. Definitely worth playing!!!!!

Thanks for the info guys. Since I'm used to being the GM/DM, I think we should be able to handle the campaign dynamic. Sounds like it will be fun!

Yea the expansions come with additional cards, tokens, etc beyond the minis.

-Will

It's a good skirmish game but it could be any setting. It does not feel very Star Wars to us.

As a one off game it plays well but the campaign for us went on too long and the Imperial player became too strong and won the last 4 games.

One side or the other can become too powerful in the campaign.

It's a Star Wars dungeon crawl, aka Descent 2.