Star Wars Imperial Assault - New Minis Incoming

FFG is getting really good at making miniatures.  They're also starting to branch out into some of the lesser known characters from the Star Wars universe.  Three new expansions were just announced.

First up is one of the coolest, for me.  0-0-0 (Triple Zero) and BT-1 are sort of like evil versions of C-3PO and R2-D2.  They hang out with Darth Vader and Doctor Aphra in the Darth Vader comics that Marvel has been putting out.  They're interesting characters that I'm hoping will also transition over to Star Wars Destiny.

Next up is a Star Wars classic.  Utinni!  Nothing much else to say.  Jawas are fun and ridiculously easy to paint.  This is the least exciting of the three new products.

Last up are Hera Syndulla and Chopper, the team leader and sidekick droid from the Star Wars Rebels show.  It's really exciting to see some of the other Star Wars properties being rolled into these games.  It's also interesting that Hera looks a little more cartoony than some of the other sculpts in the line.  I wonder how she'll look next to the Luke, for example.

We'll probably get more articles as time goes on.  It's hard to see what most of the abilities do.  Honestly, I'm not sure it matter much.  I mainly just like the models  They make for fun 'tokens' in the Destiny game.  I'll probably pick up Triple Zero and BT-1.  I might pick up the others.  It kind of depends what else is going on in the gaming world when they get released.

Imperial Assault - Play the Damned Mission

My friends and I met to play some Imperial Assault a couple of nights ago only to find that I'd stupidly not brought any of the rule books...  including the campaign book with all the missions.  As such, we weren't able to continue the campaign we'd started.  Instead, we played a couple of the expansion pack missions.

Now, to preface this, I've lost 5 missions in a row and won none at this point.

This first mission we played went just like the last 5.  I felt frustrated and at a loss as to what I was supposed to do.  I deployed my guys.  I shot at the Rebels.  I did Imperial things.  None of it mattered.  Afterwards, we talked about what went wrong.  The Rebels had to get down a corridor and open a door to progress a mission.  Instead of blocking that corridor, I basically did this...

I tried shooting at them and spread my troops out a bit too much.  I should have just bunched up and forced them to burn a few turns dealing with me...  which is exactly what I did in the second mission.  Now, the second mission arguably favored the Empire, but I still had a solid victory.  It took me six losses before I had a single victory.

The huge take away is something I should have realized.  I'm constantly telling the players that they need to play the mission.  I also need to play the mission.  If the mission progresses when a door opens, protect that door and clog the hallway with Stormtroopers.  If terminals need to be activated, stack up on one or two and defend it.  If the Rebels need to kill a specific model, have him run and hide.  Use double movements and try to block line of sight as much as possible.  Most of these missions have a time deadline.  Forcing the Rebels (or Empire depending on the mission) to waste time greatly increases your chance of victory.

I think I'll do much better next game.

My friends and I played some Star Wars Imperial Assault this past weekend.  The game has section of impassable terrain as well as little tokens to represent crates, terminals and other things.  For fun, and to jazz up the boards a little, I made a couple of "Sith Temple Columns" that fit perfectly in the one inch squares.

I also made up a couple of quick terminals that I felt like fit the Star Wars aesthetic.  I'm not sold on the bases, but such is life.

Below, you can see the terrain in action of two of the maps.  I was the Imperial player in both missions and had by rump thoroughly handed to me.  The top picture was taken shortly before the Rebel scum pulled two Shock Grenades in a row, basically stun locking me for long enough to make it statistically impossible for me to win.  Without the stun locks, I probably would have taken the mission.

This mission was a little more frustrating.  The Imperial figures never really improve throughout the campaign.  You might get a couple of small buffs here and there, but a Stormtrooper is, for the most par, a Stormtrooper.  The Rebels are so mobile, that in any mission requiring them to interact with tokens scattered across the map, they can simply ignore my dudes and run to the tokens.  There is very little I can do to stop them as it takes about 2-3 rounds of concentrated firepower to take out one Rebel.  In that time, the other three are all over the place.

So tired...

It's pretty late as I type this up.  I'm just wrapping up an 18 hour day.  Doesn't sound like much, but being mentally engaged for 18 hours straight is exhausting.

My Imperial Assault group met for a couple of missions today.  We had decided to reboot the campaign and let everyone pick new heroes.  I'll definitely say that the Rebels have a serious advantage when they know the mission AND have four very combat oriented heroes.  I was playing the Imperial side and felt almost like conceding a couple of times.  You know it's bad when you still have three or four turns to go and see no path forward whatsoever.  Generating only two threat per turn is barely enough to summon a single Stormtrooper...  and that's assuming that you the heroes leave you with at least one to reinforce.  I'm hoping that the next couple of missions are a little more balanced.

In other news, my Iron Warriors are coming along nicely.  I did some serious sanding and priming and have the army at a stage where I can begin painting soon.

Imperial Assault - Return to Hoth Night One

Sunday night was an Imperial Assault night.  I'd called it a success, with a few caveats.

We decided to play the Return to Hoth Campaign despite none of us having played Imperial Assault before.  This isn't really a big deal though.  From what I can tell, this expansion is just "more of the same" but with different art, monsters and missions.  There are three new heroes and thirteen new bad guys.  The game also comes with tokens to represent bad guys whose models weren't included.  A good example is Dengar.  FFG sells little expansion packs for around 10-15 USD that include those models (so you don't have to use the tokens) as well as some additional upgrade cards and a side mission.  It's a pretty solid deal and I don't really mind that FFG is effectively selling "Day 1 DLC".

Here's an example of what are initial mission looked like.  As you can see, this isn't an enormous map.  I think this shot is from a couple of turns into the game.  The mission represents the player's initial flight from Hoth.

So, onto the caveats...

The first caveat is that the game seems balanced for four rebel players.  We had only three.  With three heroes, each hero gets three extra hit points (moving one guy from 12 to 15 as an example) and they collectively get an extra activation each round to share between them.  This means that for every round, each Imperial unit gets to activate and the three heroes collectively activate four times, with one hero activating twice.  Now, the hit point bump might seem nice until you realize that the average hero has around 12 or so and you're trading that potential 12 for 9.  In that sense, the extra three each is almost a penalty.  Four each might be more balanced.  The second major issue is that with one hero activating twice each round, they "tire out" quicker.  Activating twice as often also means you're resting twice as often.  That allows the Imperial player to capitalize on the down time and deal damage without fear of repercussion.

The second caveat might be wrong, but here it is.  The heroes don't know what they need to do to win at the start of the mission.  They're just told how to progress the mission.  Generally, once they progress the mission, they're told what to do.  It seems that if they don't actively progress the mission, they won't be in a good position to go for a win once they uncover the win condition.  In the second mission we played, the heroes needed to first open a door.  Once the door was opened, they needed to deal four damage to a "Force Vision" version of Darth Vader, similar to what Luke fought on Dagobah.  Unfortunately, the party took long enough opening the door that they were only able to deal three of the four needed points of damage to Vader before the clock ran out.

Given these caveats, we did a midstream correction.  The Rebels picked a fourth party member that they'll collectively pilot and we just gave that character enough XP and credits to catch up.  I'm also hoping that they play to the mission going forward.  The missions tend to have Bad Things(tm) that will happen either as the rounds progress or when certain events trigger.  Trying to achieve the mission objectives quickly means that fewer bad things will happen.

All told, it was a fun night (for me).  I think everyone else left feeling a little frustrated.  I feel like a bit of a jerk since I won both missions and three other people lost, but I'm pretty confident that future missions will be more balanced.  I'll post more as we progress through the campaign.  I really want to see the Rebel scum win so that everybody has more fun.

Star Wars Imperial Assault - Hired Guns Done!

I ended up getting some free time this week and knocked out the two Hired Guns for Star Wars Imperial Assault.  I went with the purple shirt scheme from the box art.  At least, I think it was purple.  My wife said they ended up looking like Joker's goons.  Oh well.  I think they turned out pretty well.

Next up is either Dengar or the General.  We'll see.  Chances are pretty good that I'll knock both of them out at the same time.

Waiting... Always Waiting...

While I'm waiting for my Cyclone Missile Launchers and Servo Harness to come in from Anvil Industry, I decided to work on a couple of the miniatures from Star Wars Imperial Assault.  I'm running a campaign for a couple of my friends, so I have a solid reason to do some painting.  They're not as detailed as an average GW miniature, but they're pretty decent.  Fantasy Flight Games may not make the best models, but they're consistent and the casting quality is generally pretty solid.

As you can see, I have Dengar, General Sorin and the two Rodians from the Hired Guns kit.  Dengar and General Sorin have a more or less fixed color palette based on the movies.  I'm going to try to stick to that.  The two Rodians will likely get brown pants with shirts to match whichever of the colored tokens I decide to go with.  The skin will obviously be green.

More to come as I intend to have these all ready for a game next week.  Right now I'm waiting for the paint to dry.