My group is starting up the campaign soon and I need an idea to add a buff on my end (Imperial player) to even out the fact that there will be 5 Heroes. Right now, all I can think of is having each Stormtrooper squad have 4 units (instead of 3) and/or starting each mission with the threat level added to my threat. (Ex. Threat level for the mission is 2, so I start the mission with 2). Any other ideas are welcome.

well since the game was built for max four heroes really not sure this is a good idea. That being said i think what ever you do is fine there just needs to be balance at the end of the day.

I sincerely doubt that a quick fix will be enough to balance a carefully developed well balanced game

My goal is to get it as balanced as I can. I know it was designed for 4 Heroes but I'm not going to tell one of the people in my group they can't play.

Hey, it's (most likely) a free country and one may do as it pleases. But it might detract from everyone's experience

You're going to have to plan ahead for this one because each mission will be different. You might need to increase the health of the beacons to 5 rather than have more guys. Or you might want two groups of two stormtroopers instead of on group of three to balance out the fact that they get an extra turn. You might be on to something just starting with dial higher. Also, look at what the game gives the rebels if they are short a guy or two, usually more health and extra turn. So if you can figure out a subtle way of doing that you should be good. The only thing I can think of is red stormtroopers...

My suggestion is to play the game by yourself before hand. You will control the empire and the five rebels. This will let you tinker with thing to figure out where they have too much power. That way when they show up you are ready.

Given you don't want to turn away a friend at the table, let's focus on that fact rather than say it should not be done.

Suggestions given your situation.

1. Do not pull punches as the Imperial player.

2. Add your 4th Stortmtrooper per deployed unit.

3. Begin with the threat dial with the given threat for the mission.

4. Reduce the threat requirement by 1 of each complete unit, so to bring a new Stormtrooper squad would be 5 threat. Keep the reinforcement cost the same.

5. Give the initiative to the Imperial player the first round, then roll to see who has initiative each round thereafter.

6. Consider making one of the Imperial player's units Elite at the start of each mission, new units of the same type are regular unless the mission says they are elite.

7. Even with Five Heroes in a mission, If FOUR Heroes are wounded, the mission ends in the Imperial player's favor.

Don't include a fifth hero.

Instead, give the fifth player his or her choice of any Rebel ally to bring in during each mission . The game was designed for this!

As stated in the rulebook, the Imperial player then gets threat equal to the ally's deployment cost.

Alternatively, the fifth player may start with the Rebel troopers or sabateurs and you have to complete the missions to get access to the better heroes for your fifth player to use.

This problem is easily solved within the rules provided.

I'm just pulling this out of thin air, but what about doing a negative version of the Heroic and Legendary reward card? Maybe take two health off of each hero and give the Rebels the initiative token. The hero with the intiative token cannot perform attacks that round (including abilities that grant attacks). That hero may move and intereact as normal. At the end of each round, pass the initiative token to another hero. No hero may have the initiative token a second time until all heroes have had it. Use some sort of token to mark who has had it already.

I'm just pulling this out of thin air, but what about doing a negative version of the Heroic and Legendary reward card? Maybe take two health off of each hero and give the Rebels the initiative token. The hero with the intiative token cannot perform attacks that round (including abilities that grant attacks). That hero may move and intereact as normal. At the end of each round, pass the initiative token to another hero. No hero may have the initiative token a second time until all heroes have had it. Use some sort of token to mark who has had it already.

I was thinking of something along these lines, but it probably is more fun for everyone to buff the Empire somehow.

Don't include a fifth hero.

Instead, give the fifth player his or her choice of any Rebel ally to bring in during each mission . The game was designed for this!

As stated in the rulebook, the Imperial player then gets threat equal to the ally's deployment cost.

Alternatively, the fifth player may start with the Rebel troopers or sabateurs and you have to complete the missions to get access to the better heroes for your fifth player to use.

This problem is easily solved within the rules provided.

That seems like a pretty nice solution. You can even look at the skirmish cards to see the threat an actual hero would generate. Heros aren't so difficult to wound/kill that being able to afford two E-Webs right from the get go won't fix!

Giving the 5th player a Rebel Ally would work well, but that player will miss out on the fun of buying Class Cards with XP, and new gear with Credits.

I think it would be more fun to increase the Threat Level for the mission, and start the Imperial's Threat Dial at the Threat Level. You could try an increase of 1, thus for the "Aftermath" mission, the Threat Level is 3 instead of 2, and the Threat Dial starts at 3.

I would try that and tinker with the numbers if needed. That way, you don't have to mentally adjust deployment costs, or arbitrarilly choose additional deployment cards to add to the Imp's hand. Threat is the Imperial's in-game resource, so to make the Imperials more powerful, give them more Threat.

We started today and I used these ideas:

- Non-Elite Stormtrooper squads consist of 4 units

- Threat starts at the current mission's threat level

- All deployments cost 1 less

"Aftermath" was a success for the Rebels but it was down to the wire. The last Hero on round 6 was just able to take out the last terminal. I wounded 2 and defeated a 3rd Hero.

Just have two imperial players, split the squads up among yourselves and call it a day.

My group is starting up the campaign soon and I need an idea to add a buff on my end (Imperial player) to even out the fact that there will be 5 Heroes. Right now, all I can think of is having each Stormtrooper squad have 4 units (instead of 3) and/or starting each mission with the threat level added to my threat. (Ex. Threat level for the mission is 2, so I start the mission with 2). Any other ideas are welcome.

Hello Gunner

Well I would play with the Heroic rule a bit. This states that if you play with 3 heroes (so 1 less), a hero gets 1 activation token extra. So in that logic, if you would add 1 more player, I would say only 4 Heroes can be activated during a turn (so 1 less). So a choice is made on who to play and who doesn't.

Otherwise, I would let the 5th player be also the Imperial player and you both control the Imperial figures; not that hard to each pick a squad and so on. Plus you have an extra "Dark "mind to discuss tactics and to purchase stuff.

Just a thought...

7. Even with Five Heroes in a mission, If FOUR Heroes are wounded, the mission ends in the Imperial player's favor.

8. This one is if you have very experienced players. As the Imperial player, use two class decks to draw from, but keep the cards the same number.

You could use Military Might in conjunction with Technological Superiority for example.

It's my opinion that you try to mimic a combo of the Heroic/Legendary and Allies rules.

1. Reduce all players health by two and/or allow one use of Heal action per activation (ex. A player can't do a double heal.

2. At a minimum the IC adds +1 to the Open Group allowance (this matters most for AFTERMATH mission), a lump amount of Threat with an optionnal pregame deployment each mission (just like the Allies rule). Fyi Luke is 10, Han is 12, and Chewie is 15 Threat Value...but allies

can't choose Heal actions, open chests, or stay on the board when wounded. The TV is going to be hardest to nail down. Definitely no less than ten points though.

The creds and XP thing shouldn't matter so much.

Good luck!

I did not try it, but I'd go with a -2 HP (5*-2 to balance with the +10 when there is only two players) for each rebel scum and they keep only 4 activation token and thus 1 rebel stay still every turn.

It may still shift the advantage in some mission, but I guess it won't kill the fun.

The ally idea is not so bad either but with 2 little disavantadges :

- You don't have ally at the start of the campaign

- It seems to me it will be less fun to play an ally

We started today and I used these ideas:

- Non-Elite Stormtrooper squads consist of 4 units

- Threat starts at the current mission's threat level

- All deployments cost 1 less

"Aftermath" was a success for the Rebels but it was down to the wire. The last Hero on round 6 was just able to take out the last terminal. I wounded 2 and defeated a 3rd Hero.

Did you play any other Mission yet? If so, did you feel your approach is good? Do you as imperial player have a chance to win at all?

Im thinking about bringing in a 5th rebell player and start with Threat at half of his deployment costs. So rebells will have a slight advantage in the mission. I had the impression that every deployment card in the game is balanced out by its deployment cost but I'm not sure if this is not too much.

Giving the 5th player a Rebel Ally would work well, but that player will miss out on the fun of buying Class Cards with XP, and new gear with Credits.

I think it would be more fun to increase the Threat Level for the mission, and start the Imperial's Threat Dial at the Threat Level. You could try an increase of 1, thus for the "Aftermath" mission, the Threat Level is 3 instead of 2, and the Threat Dial starts at 3.

I would try that and tinker with the numbers if needed. That way, you don't have to mentally adjust deployment costs, or arbitrarilly choose additional deployment cards to add to the Imp's hand. Threat is the Imperial's in-game resource, so to make the Imperials more powerful, give them more Threat.

True, but that player gets to try different allies on a per-mission basis, which gives them more flexibility. Plus, they get to be the awesome named heroes of awesomness. I think it's a pretty sound idea that the designers have implied they've allowed for.

I wounded 2 and defeated a 3rd Hero.

Gunner070, Hi. Our group just came across this so I thought I'd share it as an aside to save you time and not at all to be snooty. Defeat means you do wounds equal or exceeding the wound rating. So if you wound a healthy hero up to its wound rating you "defeat" the hero even though they do not withdraw--they just flip. It's an important concept becasue some things trigger when you defeat a figure and my players thought defeat meant to make them withdraw. Just thought I'd save you the 10 minutes we wasted going over this. A hero can be defeated twice.

We started today and I used these ideas:

- Non-Elite Stormtrooper squads consist of 4 units

- Threat starts at the current mission's threat level

- All deployments cost 1 less

"Aftermath" was a success for the Rebels but it was down to the wire. The last Hero on round 6 was just able to take out the last terminal. I wounded 2 and defeated a 3rd Hero.

Did you play any other Mission yet? If so, did you feel your approach is good? Do you as imperial player have a chance to win at all?

Im thinking about bringing in a 5th rebell player and start with Threat at half of his deployment costs. So rebells will have a slight advantage in the mission. I had the impression that every deployment card in the game is balanced out by its deployment cost but I'm not sure if this is not too much.

We have only played the intro so far. We pick it up again on Sunday. I'll let you know how it goes.

We recently played with 7 players, the two extra joined the empires side and were in charge of squads, heroes have been deploying Chewie so I keep deploying Vader and I'm in-charge of him. If they were on the first mission it would have made it difficult because the squads died so fast... but anyways... that's how we play with 7 players 4 hero vs 1 leader who is in charge of 1 squad and in charge of the hand, the other two are in charge of individual squads and any others the leader gives them. For the most part as the imperial leader I act as a actor and role player setting the mood and atmosphere to keep the game moving fast. We ended up electing one of the heroes to be the leader of the group and in-charge of the ally to keep it moving. If somebody gets up we don't pause the game instead the leader oversees his character and all actions, if he has to get up he elects a new leader and they are in charge until they get up... kinda a fair thing. We probably could go 4 vs 4 if we need too.

this way none of the mechanics change of the game, and you can keep the game moving as fast as possible because you are having 7-8 humans make decisions and some of them could be slow and if they keep getting up it takes longer. My 2 campaign takes a lot less time and when we are in big groups it takes extra to keep the other players involved and not board which I believe is the responsibility of the story teller (imperial overlord)

We started today and I used these ideas:

- Non-Elite Stormtrooper squads consist of 4 units

- Threat starts at the current mission's threat level

- All deployments cost 1 less

"Aftermath" was a success for the Rebels but it was down to the wire. The last Hero on round 6 was just able to take out the last terminal. I wounded 2 and defeated a 3rd Hero.

Did you play any other Mission yet? If so, did you feel your approach is good? Do you as imperial player have a chance to win at all?

Im thinking about bringing in a 5th rebell player and start with Threat at half of his deployment costs. So rebells will have a slight advantage in the mission. I had the impression that every deployment card in the game is balanced out by its deployment cost but I'm not sure if this is not too much.

We have only played the intro so far. We pick it up again on Sunday. I'll let you know how it goes.

So... the next mission was Mak's Loose Cannon and between Mak's toy and the not so great rolls I had, I didn't stand a chance. I did wound 1 player but the mission was over before the end of the 4th round.