So for those who have played this side mission, is this the most impossible mission for the Rebels to win or what? Admittedly, I haven't played a lot of the missions yet (a friend and I just started today, and we're about halfway through the campaign before taking a break for the day).

As the rebel player, I made him reread the whole thing 3 times to make sure he wasn't missing something, then I myself read through it after it was over. But neither of us could find any mistakes.

Basically, given that there was a timer and I needed to upload the virus quickly, I rushed my tech expert (Jyn) to a terminal right after my other character took down a door. Nowhere was I given any indication this would be a bad idea - until he read the part that happens next. I needed to have healthy rebel units within 2 spaces of each terminal, or he could just interact with them to discard them. So given that my activation just ended to upload the virus, it was his turn to activate. So he activated his Royal Guards who happened to have been just deployed right next to the terminals, and each one discarded the 2 remaining terminals, leaving me with one and making it absolutely impossible to win the mission from that point.

I'd been having an absolute blast with this game until this mission. I appreciate hard missions - I lost a couple of hard ones, but I put forth my best effort and knew I had at least a chance for them.

But this mission? Absolute BS. The rebels have no chance of winning unless they know in advance that they need to guard each of the 3 terminals before uploading the virus.

To make matters worse, I didn't even get a partial bonus reward because I didn't know you needed to get 3 tokens. I only had 2 since I decided to go for crates when winning no longer was an option.

My friend and i played this mission as well. So far he's pretty much given up on the game. He was rebels. I was imperials. Don't think we made too many mistakes (if any) but the difficulty for the rebels on a bunch of the missions it really high.

I hope that perhaps its just different tactics required? I dunno.

I love the game and there is nothing that will diswayed me from continuing with it.

I'm not giving up on the game at all yet. I love Star Wars. But as a Descent player, they really ramped up the difficulty level for the hero players in this game. Prior to this one, I had a mission where I had to reach 3 terminals behind locked doors at 3 separate corners of a huge map. And 7 turns to do it! It took me 3 turns just to get through to one of them with 4 heroes. (I'm playing all 4 heroes myself since I figured that would be slightly more balanced than playing 2 "legendary" heroes). But even though I lost that mission pretty badly, there was a semblance of hope that I could have won it with really good rolls and if I had split my party up better.

But for this mission. It's completely unfair to leave the Rebel players in the dark on how to meet the victory conditions until it's too late. By the time the Rebel player learns that he needs to guard ALL THREE terminals, it's too late because it's the Imperial player's turn, and he can just discard 2 of the terminals immediately. I find it difficult to believe this scenario was never playtested to realize how badly written it was. Or maybe it was playtested by people who were already familiar with the entire campaign book, so they didn't think twice about it.

Anyhow, as much as I'm ranting about this particular mission, I'm not quitting the game. I love Descent, and I love Imperial Assault, and I see a lot of potential in this game with future expansions. Maybe they shouldn't have made the campaign book a secret. Descent's campaigns are open knowledge to all players, and it's still pretty well balanced. With this game, even though I now know the objectives of the missions I've done, they'd still be hard to accomplish due to the time limit.

...We won that won three nights ago as rebels. We thought the First mission was the impossible one. But let me get this straight first. Did you rush the one hero into that facility basically alone? I mean surely being experienced at these games you knew there was bad juju in there to fight, though I'm sure the AT-ST on a three turn arrival clock was a surprise. While I agree that two of the terminals should have been taken by the Imp player easy, he didn't for some reason. We stuck together as a group all the way in and kept the upload terminal because there was some thing in there about the Imp's not being able to activate terminals if there was a Rebel to close or something. And then in the end he couldn't wound the last guy for his win. So we walked out with like 2k credits or some such nonsense. But wasn't that the mission that didn't have a Rebel 'Victory' condition? Wasn't it just, hey, see how many credits you can steal without dying?

I was as the Imp player, and I had to read it like 3 times over to make sure I understood exactly when stuff triggers. Then of course in all the confusion I only deployed one royal guard model (big DOH).

They had all 3 heroes together at the door, and where able to spread out very easy, since one hero could hold consoles easily.

There isn't a victory condition for either side in this mission, only a few conditions that end the scenario. Basically it's just a cash grab to see how much the rebels can do before any of the end conditions are triggered.

The intro says "you will have to stick around for a while" and "expect the security response to be severe". The fluff gives hints about what will happen in the mission, in this case they were warned bad things would happen... that should have made them cautious.

I've not played this mission, but reading through it, it does look like the OP has a point.

Sure, the fluff hints that "bad things will happen" when the virus is uploaded. The fluff does not hint that ALL THREE terminals must be guarded. The mission only says that the Rebels need to interact with "a" terminal to upload the virus. It's not as though it's a mistake to send one hero in "basically alone" either - the most obvious terminal to go for is only two squares' movement away from the nearest door!

It seems as though the intention of the mission is for the rebels to go and clear out the command room before uploading the virus. That way, they can get into position to defend all three terminals before the reinforcements show up. But there's absolutely nothing whatsoever that hints that that would be a good idea, until after you've read the mission and realised that it's trivially easy for the Imperial player to destroy two terminals as soon as the first is interacted with.

I mean, the players in my campaign are very quickly realising that they need to be on their toes at all times. It took them a bit by surprise in Aftermath because they took five turns to destroy the terminal and open the door, not realising that gave them three turns to destroy three more terminals - and there were more troops to deal with than they expected. Now, if they open a door, they expect there to be a reserved group in the room (as indeed there is, in this mission). The supply card that forces me to reveal my hidden cards has become their prized asset (ever since they discovered that in the first round that Darth Vader was a reserved card, in Under Siege, and were able to use various other supply cards - that they might otherwise already have used - to hold him off). Frankly they're becoming a little paranoid - and that's a good thing! But I don't think anyone of them would guess for a moment that interacting with one terminal in this mission, would require them to already be in position to defend all three.

If I ever run this mission, I will mix it up. For example, make the terminal in the Command Room the only one that can trigger the virus. That way, they're likely to have cleaned out the room as seems to be the intention, and they still have the choice of defending one terminal heavily or all three lightly - but it's their choice, not forced upon them.

My thoughts as well. This mission is a cash grab.

The problem, as I already stated, is that the Rebels have no way of knowing it was a cash grab mission, and that they get rewards for every THREE tokens they accumulate. ForceSensitive states that rushing to a terminal with a lone Rebel was a bad idea (which I still disagree with), but then goes on to admit that the Imperial player could have easily shut down 2 terminals but chose not to. So the only reason he "succeeded" at the mission was because the Imperial player was being extremely merciful or, to be a bit blunt, isn't very bright.

The information I was given was that I needed to acquire 12 tokens to complete the mission. Once two terminals were discarded, it became impossible, so I had absolutely no reason (based on the information given) that I should stick around, and so I just went for crates. Thus the mission ended without any bonus reward for me.

Today we picked up where we left off in the campaign and did the rescue Han Solo mission. I played a bit more cautiously, but still had to rush a bit since there was a time limit involved. And with a roomful of Elite Stormtroopers, Han did his best to get away with his actions dedicated to double movements. Too bad they gunned him down in a single turn with one Stormtrooper hitting for 9 damage thanks to a couple powerful cards the Imperial player had (one which allowed him to attack twice, and another to add an extra die to his attack).

Sure that could be attributed to luck of the dice, but for Han freakin' Solo to be taken out by Stormtroopers is a bit ridiculous. When did Stormtroopers become such amazing shots? In all seriousness, the losing streak has really burned me out from this game for a bit, and I decided to shelve it and go back to Descent for now.

As a additional point, keeping your party in relative close proximity for any mission is a relatively good idea. Take the intro Aftermath. If your party is split and they shut the door between you that can be way worse than the terminals armoring up, particularly if you are running say two legendary heroes. But yes, our Imp player aint the brightest, to be fair he has quite a bit to keep track of and since he isn't the game owner doesn't have access to the scenario book to study up and strategize with. I got the feeling though that the general aim of the mission was that the players got an extra 300cr or so to buy some gear with. Which would be a considerable amount to be fair, when many early missions get you a 100/player. The fact that we walked out with like 2k total was something of a fluke I think. After the mission and we got a chance to read the scenario, as we too were a bit perplexed by it's faux win condition and parameters of completion, I actually do like the mission design. I just feel they could have written the story part a bit better.

Sucks to hear about Solo though. Give it another shot in a month or so?

Yeah, I'll definitely get back into the game once the feeling of despair has died out. I don't expect to win every scenario, but when the "heroes" of the universe lose one mission after another, it's frustrating. And the Imperial player keeps getting stronger and stronger, while I can hardly afford any items to upgrade my own heroes. (It would have been a LOT easier maintaining and winning with 2 legendary heroes. I chose to play 4 heroes because I [mistakenly?] thought it would be more balanced for the Imperial player. Next time I'll just go with 2 legendary heroes.)

And a prime example of why keeping your party together isn't necessarily a good plan is the mission where you have to reach 3 terminals in different corners of a very large labyrinth of a map, all within 7 rounds. I kept my party together, and it took 3 rounds just to reach one of them. After what happens on round 5, it was all over for me.

After going back to Descent and playing as the Overlord yesterday, I realized just how easy the Imperial player has it. Having to wait until the Heroes ALL go before I can go, having no reinforcements (for the two quests I ran), and having a random chance of even getting to the class cards I purchased, much less having to discard them after using them - huge disadvantages compared to Imperials and yet I still just barely won. Running Imperials would be a cakewalk in comparison.

It probably won't even be a month before I give Imperial Assault one more try though. I'll get my friend to the Interlude in Descent, and then let him kick my butt in Imperial Assault again. He's feeling a bit merciful and said since my next mission reward is to acquire Chewie, he'll make sure I at least get him.