Star Wars: Imperial Assault
Imperial Assault casts you and your friends into the climatic events following the Death Star’s destruction above Yavin 4, and offers two full game experiences within the Star Wars saga.
60m - 120m
2 - 5 Players
Ages 14+
a1bert
[thing=164153]Imperial Assault[/thing] (2p skirmish, 2-5-player campaign, 1-2 hours per mission) There are two games in the box: the campaign game and one-shot skirmish mode (with 6 scenarios). After 2 skirmish games and 9 missions of the campaign, the game has been everything I have expected, although because this is the first game of this type to us, it should be easier to exceed my expectations. Imperial Assault is extremely fun to play and the missions are varied (not just killing). A campaign has at least 11 missions, half of them side missions that vary between campaigns (random draw and rebels choose one from the 2+ available). The different weapons (attack dice) and defenses (defense dice) allow push-your-luck moments, and sometimes the dice are on you side and sometimes against you. You have an overall strategy, but the game is played in a very reactive, tactical way due to the alternating activations. As the imperial player I cringe when I see the level-upped rebels take out my stormtroopers in one shot before they even get to activate on that round, but if the rebels take too long killing my troops, they neglect their objectives, and I come out on top again. And the rebels are not the only ones that get to have new abilities. Also: I have painted the miniatures. Even a quick paint-job will make the game look amazing. (Unfortunately for a painter, every painted game needs to look better than the previous one, so a good job takes quite a while. Well, at least painting is a good peripheral hobby to go with boardgaming.) Now also solo with the free Legends of the Alliance app.
adebisi
Thanks a lot FFG for yet another crappy rulebook. Sure, it is true that the system has been streamlined from previous generations of dungeon crawlers (Descent and Doom), but the way it is presented to the players is rubbish. The rulebook has an onion structure distributing all essential information of a rather simple game over tens of pages. Another weak point is the infinite levels of pain the setup induces. Sure the game is beautiful but the search for the right bits and pieces is a quest of abysmal frustration. Oh why could not you just make a pile of generic pieces instead of individual ones. In the end we got sick and tired of the setup and trying to find the information we needed. Without giving it further thought we covered the gaps in the rules with our own and quickly grabbed a bunch of troops and cards to play with. Once the game finally started, it shone like only a star could. Take my word with a grain of salt though. After all those brain burners, a fast paced dice fest always welcome to my table. I do not mind if the game does not offer the cleverest of mechanics as long as offers a retreat to another universe. If you fancy a game calling for deep thinking, skip this one. You will just ruin the experience with your analysis. But should you enjoy quick decisions based only on your intuition, you might find Star Wars Imperial assault a rather refreshing experience.
Achrilon
I Love this game, it is Star Wars in a box. My problem with it lies in my playing as the Imperials. My play group takes a significant amount of time to plan out each of their turns, this works well for them but it means a typical round is: Rebels take 10-20 minutes per player, imperial takes