Hey y'all,

I'm (Rebels) three missions into my campaign. Right after a close defeat at "Aftermath," I pulled "Temptation," Diala's quest. Super excited at the prospect of getting a lightsaber, I immediately declared that mission the mission I wanted to resolve. However, the Imperial player hinted (read: blatantly told me) that the quest might be too difficult for me to complete at that time.

My question is, would it have been too difficult to complete as the second mission of the game? If so, when would be the "best" time to do that mission? Also, is there an obvious difference in degree of difficulty from side mission to side mission? ie. are all the heroes' class quests much more difficult than "standard" side quests (like "Target of Opportunity," which I elected to do instead)?

I'd love to hear your input. Thanks!

We played Temptation as the first side mission in our campaign. I'm the Imperial player, and won the mission the first time we played it. But we discovered, being new to the game and all, that we had made many rules mistakes the first time around, so we decided to play it again. This time the Rebels won it, but not by much.

I would say it's absolutely winnable as the first mission, all the missions (so far) have been well balanced, and Temptation should be winnable as the first side mission. (Just make sure your Imperial player understands the difference between 'threat' and 'threat level'..)

The hardest part about doing Temptation early is the initial deployment for the Empire is more robust then most missions. That said the mission has a built in mechanic to help balance that out.

Some side missions will be harder or easier depending on when you do them. Unlike Story Missions that aren't timing specific.

I feel like that mission is best drawn first because

We started a campaign last night and that was the first side mission. Came right down to the last defense roll. I would call that balanced. It was **** fun too. Rebels won.

Diala's Precise Strike Ability makes this mission very easy when done early.

What Slaptac said.

Update: I did "Temptation" as my second side mission, so my fourth mission overall.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys!

As the first Side mission, Vader has 4 hp. 4. Run past the mooks and open the door, everybody walk the dinosaur.

Yeah, excpet you definitely want to take out the Royal Guards before you open the door.

Hello,

Maybe we were doing something wrong with this mission; but I as rebels ran to the door to open it (i had two characters both with legendary), the second character was just behind the other. One of the characters was Diala. So I had two characters which could activate twice.

After we hit vader for 1 point (he also had a guard next to him) the imperial player runs away for 8; just behind all the imperial figures still standing there.

How can the rebels win if vader keeps running and surrounds himself with figures and runs away again...in the end both the rebels will die because of the amount of imperial figures present or incoming due to reinforcement

Thanks

Erwin

Running away with Vader I feel is just... wrong. Falling back, that's fine, but Vader legging it in an attempt to run down the round counter without trying to fight is so antithematic in the pursuit of victory that it hurts me inside.

Temptation as a side mission in particular seemed pretty tough. We did it as the third side mission I think, and I (as the Imperial player) was one dice roll away from winning (seems to happen a lot, that). But that was mainly because on that occasion we were playing with only three Rebels, so Diala benefitted a lot from an extra activation every other round - it meant she got to the door super-fast. An extra Rebel player wouldn't have helped at all, and Diala would have taken longer to get there, with more chances to attack her as a result, so she probably would have died. Yep... very tough mission.

The side missions in general seem to vary wildly in difficulty - and that varies even further depending on when you do each one. We did the one with the Saboteurs last, and it was laughably easy because the heroes were all massively levelled up. Turn one, the heroes walked toward the door. Turn two, they blasted their way in and won the mission. Didn't need the assistance of the Saboteurs at all, and I as Imperial player barely had time to scratch them.

The only thing that really varies between when you attempt the side missions is Threat, and by the time the heroes are levelled up, Threat isn't enough. Something that might be a tough challenge when they're just starting out is trivial when they can each kill three Stormtroopers a turn, or whatever. Conversely, something which might be challenging when the heroes are tooled up, could easily be next to impossible when they've just begun their adventure, even though there's not enough Threat to bring much on.

But actually I think that's OK. The side missions are diversions, setting the scene, telling a story and giving all players the chance to level up. They don't need to linearly increase in difficulty, that's not what they're there for.

The wife and I played this mission 3 times as the second mission and I (as the imperial) was able to wound Diala easily before she could get the door open every time - so she didn't have precise strike to deal with Vader.

We didn't find this one to be very balanced, but our play style might be counter-intuitive to the game designers' style. And also dice. Dice are normally a problem.

With the difficulty we've had overall with the rebels in this game, I would actually love to be able to read play-test reports from FFG, just to see what it is we're either doing wrong or how we're breaking things...

The wife and I played this mission 3 times as the second mission and I (as the imperial) was able to wound Diala easily before she could get the door open every time - so she didn't have precise strike to deal with Vader.

We didn't find this one to be very balanced, but our play style might be counter-intuitive to the game designers' style. And also dice. Dice are normally a problem.

With the difficulty we've had overall with the rebels in this game, I would actually love to be able to read play-test reports from FFG, just to see what it is we're either doing wrong or how we're breaking things...

You have to force Diala to withdraw , not just wound her. When you're playing legendary, that's 44 damage behind a white die to chew through. It should be a slog for both sides in that case.

The wife and I played this mission 3 times as the second mission and I (as the imperial) was able to wound Diala easily before she could get the door open every time - so she didn't have precise strike to deal with Vader.

We didn't find this one to be very balanced, but our play style might be counter-intuitive to the game designers' style. And also dice. Dice are normally a problem.

With the difficulty we've had overall with the rebels in this game, I would actually love to be able to read play-test reports from FFG, just to see what it is we're either doing wrong or how we're breaking things...

You have to force Diala to withdraw , not just wound her. When you're playing legendary, that's 44 damage behind a white die to chew through. It should be a slog for both sides in that case.

I know - but wounding her before she sees Vader basically means you lose - because Vader is going to go nuts, and you can no longer remove one of his defense dice. Which is what happened every time. The key for us was getting Diala to open the door before she lost Precise Strike, so she could deal with Vader, but that never happened.

Nexus are awesome...