It was pretty great! I had four players to fill the four characters from the box, and while there were a couple of hiccups I think it went well.

Highlight of the night:

After securing and disabling the Nilos , the party headed to the Armory. Instead of locking the crates I locked the door to the Armory itself, and when they unlocked and opened the doors, they were face-to-face with the 3 Stormtroopers. After initiative was rolled, the 'troopers were smack dab in the middle of the Initiative, and the party briefly discusses a plan, then says:

"Okay, I drop a frag grenade into the room and finish my turn."
"I also drop a frag grenade into the room, then shut the door."

I stared blankly for a moment, then respond with. "Okay, well, no need to finish this combat. The door shuts. The last thing you see is one stormtrooper diving toward one of the grenades, one 'trooper rushing toward the door on the other side, and the other one reaching to the door controls that you're trying to shut. Then two muffled pops followed by a short, successive series of pops. The door also refuses to open, probably because of the opening mechanism being damage on the other end. Good job, the inside of that room probably resembles chunky salsa."

Also the looks on their faces when I realized I had gotten the Soak values wrong for the Speeder bike troops. The AT-ST gunner rolled a Triumph and enough Advantage to activate the Linked quality, and at first I was using the pilots' soak values...before realizing that the speeders themselves had no soak and only however many health. So I went from saying "Okay, the speeders are all still up" to "You blew up 3 of the 4 speeders simultaneously."

They were quite happy.

I think I may have overdone the number of combats: I threw one at them randomly when they failed to sneak through the base when it was on high alert, right before the "fight" with the armory guards. In the future I'll figure out a more interesting way to punish failed sneaking attempts. The Soldier was quite the trooper. He ended the game with two Critical Injuries that the medic failed to heal and no stim packs.

Very nicely done! The first thing that came to mind after you mentioned figuring a more interesting way to punish failed sneaking attempts was to maybe have that group of guards at the armory get either a boost die or an upgrade to their initiative check because they know someone is coming. I honestly can't remember if there is a concept of a "surprise round" in this system. Maybe you have the baddies take an action when the PCs come around the corner or something.

Just a thought or two. =)

Z

I honestly can't remember if there is a concept of a "surprise round" in this system.

No concept of "surprise round" in this system just a regular combat round, and narrate appropriately. We have had many, many debates over this on the EotE forums about how to house-rule "surprise rounds." RAW, Vigilance and Cool checks are meant to handle this type of phenomenon.

But really, the initiative system handles this perfectly for you: if it's a legitimate surprise on the PCs, take a page out of the first encounter in the Beginner Game and let 3 out of 4 of the enemies go before the PCs. Or however many you deem appropriate.