Fantasy Flight Games - Imperial Assault Base Set - Board Game

Product Information

In every skirmish mission, you clash with your opponent in a battle of tactical skill and combat. Both players alternate activating a single deployment card and taking actions with the associated figures as they battle to complete conflicting objectives. Whether you’re competing to steal a valuable T-16 Skyhopper, or collecting contraband on behalf of the Hutts, the skirmish game offers tense, tactical battles in the Star Warsuniverse. Either Star Wars tabletop RPG should fulfill all your Star Wars roleplaying fantasies, to an extent. Although we can’t guarantee you’ll be able to actually use the Force and fly around in an X-Wing in real life. Opposing the Rebel players, a single player commands the forces of the Empire, including stormtroopers, probe droids, massive AT-ST walkers, Trandoshan mercenaries, and terrifying villains such as Darth Vader. As the Imperial player, you can draw upon the limitless resources of the Galactic Empire, increasing your threat every round and summoning reinforcements to keep the heroes from reaching their objective. In addition, Imperial Class cards allow the Empire to expand its power and gain new abilities over the course of the campaign.

In the campaign game, Imperial Assaultinvites you to play through a cinematic tale set in the Star Wars universe. One player commands the seemingly limitless armies of the Galactic Empire, threatening to extinguish the flame of the Rebellion forever. Up to four other players become heroes of the Rebel Alliance, engaging in covert operations to undermine the Empire’s schemes. Over the course of the campaign, both the Imperial player and the Rebel heroes gain new experience and skills, allowing characters to evolve as the story unfolds.Publisher Fantasy Flight Games just recently called an end to its Star Wars: Destiny line of products, just three years after the collectible dice game first launched. Which is a damn shame because Destiny is actually a rather remarkable entry in the genre, with some interesting mechanics that made it more than just a card and dice game featuring classic Star Wars characters. Another baffling design decision held over from the Descent games is the idea that the winner of the final mission is the winner of the whole campaign, no matter what happened in any of the other missions. How is that satisfying for either side? In my first run-through of the campaign, the Rebel side lost nearly all of the missions, but almost pulled out the win in the last mission. I felt bad. I didn’t even want to win. It wasn’t fair. Again, the solution is fairly straightforward. It wouldn’t be hard to create some kind of system of mission branching and result-calculation to lead to a closing paragraph explaining what your success and failures meant for the Rebels and the Imperials. Improvements And I can’t stress enough just how fun it is to blast around in the Star Wars universe. This is sentimental, but I love this universe–I have since I was a kid. There’s no other fictional universe that has stimulated my imagination so much throughout the years. This game feels like the scenes in Star Wars where Luke, Leia, and Han are running around, blasting stormtroopers. There’s something about this system that lends itself to imagining the story of the mission as it plays out. It’s like being a kid again. As you can tell, the Galactic Civil War is a popular topic for Star Wars board games, possibly because many fans don’t have a huge amount of goodwill for the prequels and the latest trilogy has yet to receive its own decent dedicated board game. Star Wars: Empire vs. Rebellion is a card game that sees two players engage in a tense standoff as the respective Rebel and Empire forces. It might seem like a bold move to distill something as grand as the Galactic Civil War into a straightforward card game, but it actually does a surprisingly good job of recreating the feel of the original trilogy.

What makes Rebellion so good is that it’s more than just a game about starship combat - although that element is certainly excellent enough. It’s also about depicting exactly what goes into fighting a war of this scale - from covert missions across the galaxy to searching for a hidden Rebel base. In the campaign game, Imperial Assaultinvites you to play through a cinematic tale set in the Star Warsuniverse. One player commands the seemingly limitless armies of the Galactic Empire, threatening to extinguish the flame of the Rebellion forever. Up to four other players become heroes of the Rebel Alliance, engaging in covert operations to undermine the Empire’s schemes. Over the course of the campaign, both the Imperial player and the Rebel heroes gain new experience and skills, allowing characters to evolve as the story unfolds. As you fly missions and smuggle cargo from system to system, your choices will shape your character. The cleverly linked mission cards give each game a cohesive but unique narrative. You'll upgrade your skills and ship along the way. But whether you choose to be a heroic rogue or a sky bounty hunter is up to you. Why not both? Both these miniatures games do a fine job of allowing players to re-enact classic Star Wars space battles, whether you’re looking for something faster-paced like X-Wing or slow-burning like Armada. The game became a victim of its own popularity, bloated with confusing expansions. But a second edition has cleaned things up and added a bunch of cool rules tweaks. Now, as well as the squad building and hidden movement tactics of the original, you can deploy force powers to aid your cause. Existing players can get upgrade kits with new dials and cards for their collection.

The campaign game is an asymmetrical experience for 2 to 5 players. One player takes on the role of the Empire, summoning in troops and deploying disposable forces to take on the rebels. Any other players control a Rebel character, unique to this game. Over the course of many missions, both sides will be able to upgrade themselves. This style of play is similar to many roleplaying games, where one player takes on the role of a Game Master (the Empire). However, there is no self-created storytelling in Imperial Assault so it is more of a tactical skirmish game with a sense of progression. In addition to surges, another currency available to the Rebels is strain, which can be spend to activate various character abilities and gain additional movement points. Strain management is the most compelling tactical part of the game from the Rebel perspective. Genuinely difficult decisions have to be made here, because while activating abilities is fun, and there are certainly going to be enough enemies to target, you need to make sure that you’re actually pursuing the goal of the mission.