Hey all,
I've been writing a skirmish strategy article for my FLGS's blog and I thought I'd run it by you people on the forums to see what you think, and if there's any concepts or areas I've missed.
The article aims to be a very basic level 'Skirmish Strategy 101'. So there's nothing particularly new or ground breaking here, it's just trying to bring together basic concepts in a digestible way.
Any thoughts/comments/criticisms would be great - thanks!
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First things first, this is a great game that has FFG’s usual ‘rules light – strategy heavy’ feel. You won’t spend ages stooped over a rulebook and will instead be able to almost immediately begin enjoying a fantastic game.
If you want to play the game casually you can do so, throwing lists together and having fun with your favourite characters and combos. But if you want to go deeper you’ll find extra levels too – the game is as big as you want it to be!
I’ll talk you through some key concepts and tie it up at the end for how this might influence your listbuilding and approach to games.
Activation Economy
The first major decision you have when making a list for Imperial Assault is: how many activations am I shooting for?
As with most games you can try to ‘min-max’ – that is, try both extremes of a spectrum and maybe settle on a good balance somewhere in the middle.
9 or 10 activations is probably the max for Imperial Assault at the moment, go past that and all of your figures will be too weak individually. The other extreme is 3 or 4 activations – you’ll have powerful activations like Han, Chewie, Boba Fett, Royal Guard Champion, General Weiss but you’ll most likely be outnumbered and may well struggle on objectives too.
Most players find a ‘sweet spot’ to be 6-8 activations.
If you have more activations than your opponent you can delay activating your important or more powerful figures until later in the round. By doing so, you can force your opponent to make the first move and then react to them; you get to dictate the flow of the game . By them activating their powerful figures first, they have to move up and then got shot; you get to shoot and then potentially run away or grab objectives.
Previously, before the pass rule came into effect in August 2015, having more activations than your opponent was more powerful. But it’s still an advantage.
Let’s say the following two lists are playing each other:
Imperials:
- Officer
- Officer
- Officer
- Officer
- Stormtroopers
- Royal Guards
- Vader
Rebels:
- Chewie
- Han
- Gideon
- Mak
- Rebel Saboteurs
- (Rebel High Command)
So we’ve got 8 vs 5 activations. Imperials win the initiative roll. The activations might go like:
- Imperials: Activate Officer, move, order a RG
- Rebels: Pass
- Imperials: Activate Officer, move, order a RG
- Rebels: Pass
- Imperials: Activate Officer, move, order Vader
- Rebels: Activate Gideon, focus, tactical maneuver
So at this point the Rebels have to activate, they go with Gideon to focus Chewie or Han, and give either of them a couple of movement points. Now the Rebels have 4 activations left for the round, the imperial have 5 left but haven’t really committed to anything, they’ve move up both their guards and Vader, but those 3 figures all still have their move and attack. (This is a lot to do with the power of the Officer too of course, not just about having an activation advantage).
By having more activations than your opponent you get the jump on them, being able to move up and delay your powerful activations until later in the round. You’re able to react to their moves.
Activation Order
The order in which you activate your figures is huge in this game and creates great moments of tension.
There are several questions you’ll want to ask yourself when deciding what to activate next.
- Which of my figures are closest to death? Should I activate them before they die?
- Which of my opponent’s figures are closest to death? Should I activate whoever is most likely to kill them, before they can activate?
- Which of my opponents figures have or haven’t activated yet? Should I go after those that have already activated, knowing that they can’t react until next round?
- Which of my figures can grab a crate or work towards some other objective? Can I make a late dash to control a terminal?
- Are any of my figures likely to be given a harmful condition by the enemy and should I therefore activate them now before that happens?
- Can I give a harmful condition to an enemy figure now before it gets a chance to activate and/or run away?
This list is not exhaustive and the fact that it’s so long and varied tells you a lot about the juicy, tension-filled decisions you get to make during games of Imperial Assault.
A general rule of thumb is that you’ll want to activate your most powerful figures as late as possible in the round – they’ll have more information to go on and enemy figures won’t be able to react.
Vader…you must confront Vader
There’s no getting around the fact that Darth Vader is almost certainly the single most powerful unit in the game, in a vacuum. And rightly so. He’s a total powerhouse. He’s strong, can attack twice, can kill troopers just by looking at them, can re-roll defence dice and has 16 HP. His weakness is his speed, but this will almost certainly be mitigated by the order ability from Officers.
When building lists you’ll need to ask yourself: If I see Vader across the table from me, how can my list deal with him?
I think you’ve got a few options:
- Go read this excellent article (Zach Bunn confront Vader)
- Ignore him – aim to gain up to 22 points from the rest of the enemy list and gain 20ish points from objectives
- Stun him to slow him down and turn off Brutality – this can be achieved with Chewie and Rebel Saboteurs, amongst others
Stun and Weaken
This leads us onto some of the most important harmful conditions – namely Stun and Weaken . They’re both great for different reasons.
To explain how influential stun is, let’s wind the clock back a little bit. Most games of Imperial Assault last 3 or 4 rounds. This means that most figures (assuming they live for the entire game – which is rare of course!) will therefore take 6-8 actions over the course of the game. Stunning a figure will take up 1 out of its 6 actions away from it. That’s just under 20% of its actions for the entire game. What about those figures that are likely to last only 1 or 2 rounds? It could be 1 out 4 actions. That’s taking a huge amount of ‘game-time’ away from your opponent. If you can stun a figure in consecutive rounds? Wow!
Weaken is also very good – removing evades makes them…weaker. And getting rid of surges from attacks is huge too – they’re less likely to dish out harmful conditions themselves, less likely to pierce and push through damage, less likely to blast or recover.
But the best thing about Weaken? It says: “Discard this condition at the end of your activation”
It can’t be dealt with like the other harmful conditions. It can’t be discarded for an action. Only special cases – such as command cards like Rally or XXX can get rid of it.
Now how to capitalise on this? Weaken can be used in a few different ways:
- Weaken a figure that’s already activated early in the round, so that it has less dodges on the multiple attacks that could target it – it won’t be able to discard the condition until it’s activated in the next round
- Weaken a figure that hasn’t yet activated, forcing your opponent to strongly considering activating it early, if only so that it doesn’t face multiple attacks with a weakened defence. Weaken a powerful figure like Vader, Royal Guard Champion or Chewie, before it’s activated and you might force the hand of your opponent into activating them way before they’d like to
Weaken is pretty much universally good at reducing the effectiveness of a figure’s attacks – getting more effective on those that don’t roll many surges to start with – attacks such as Red + Blue, or Blue + Green.
But keep in mind though that Weaken is pretty much strictly better when targeting those figures that roll the white defence die – and even better on figures with the ‘Cunning’ keyword. The white die has 3 faces with an evade symbol, so weaken will effect half of their defence rolls. Whereas the black die has only 1 face with an evade.
Blast
Blast is another great tool to consider when listbuilding. At the moment the Rebels can more easily and reliably include it in their lists, than the other factions.
Both versions of the rebel saboteurs are very good at blasting. The regulars have Blast 1 on a surge; whilst the elites have Blast 2 and can trigger it up to twice, using their overload ability.
Blast is important for 3 broad reasons:
- It can totally wreck any lists that use or are designed around troopers. Rebel troopers + Fenn Signis is a cool archetype that wants to stick together to make the most of “Aim”, “Trooper Assault” and command cards such as X and X. Kayn Samos + Stormtroopers + Heavy Stormtroopers is also a cool list that wants to be adjacent to itself in order to maximise its abilities. Most troopers only have 3 health and so Blast 1 is pretty **** good. Blast 2 is just evil to them. Double surge from an Elite Saboteur? Yes, all your guys are now dead…
- It can stop the really powerful combo of Royal Guards using “Protector” to provide cover for Officers using “Cower”. Any list running Royal Guards and Officers is already really powerful. The Officer rolls a white dice and is hard enough to kill as it is. You can stop them from being adjacent by having access to blast in your list – or punish them if they forget or can’t avoid it
- Blast is ‘uncounterable’ damage – the defending players doesn’t roll dice against it – anytime time you can deal damage in this way is a good thing!
Command Cards
The most important thing about command cards?
Don’t forget them! They’re not an afterthought – you should put as much thought into the construction of your command deck as you do your list of deployment cards. Through this little deck you have access to game-changing abilities!
Obviously the deck is informed by your list. What I like to do first is look at my unique characters and their corresponding cards and then decide which to include. These cards are all pretty powerful, so you can’t go wrong with them really, but their cost is that they often cost 3 points and as they’re limited to a single copy, you’ll have plenty of games when you don’t see them or draw them at the wrong time.
If you’re making a rebel list you’re more likely to have multiple unique characters. Don’t go overboard on ‘character’ cards for the reasons above. Luke and Chewie’s cards in particular are great.
Other staples include ‘Take Initiative’ which pretty much should be in every command deck ever. Being able to go 2 nd in a match and steal initiative on round 3 is awesome!
‘Celebration’ should probably find its way into most decks – it’ll be a dead card against very few lists. It’s particularly good against the Rebels who have many weak unique characters like Mak, Gideon, Jyn and C-3PO. Once you get to 33 points or more and have ‘Celebration’ in your hand, you’re in a great positon to steal the game. Likewise if you’re against someone on around 33 points you better start protecting those weak uniques of yours!
‘Single Purpose’ is another staple card to strongly consider:
- Double force choke for Vader, killing those last two troopers and gaining 6 points? Double choke to a strong unique like Chewie, Han or Luke, finishing them off with an unanswerable 6 damage out of nowhere?
- How about double order from an Officer? Or double ‘Executive Order’ from an Elite Officer?
- Double Slam from Chewie?
- Double Scomp link from R2-D2, drawing you 2 cards during the round?
- Focus two figures with C-3PO or Gideon?
There’s so many applications!
‘Jump Jets’ is another great card. Allowing you to move a figure inexplicably through terrain and hostile figures to suddenly appear somewhere unexpected or make a later objective or terminal grab.
Objectives
Once you’ve considered all of what I’ve discussed, you’ll be sat down with your list and about to play a game. But it’s not just a fight to the death. You’ve got two ways of gaining points: killing enemy figures and completing objectives.
You’ll rarely if ever get to 40 points by exclusively achieving one or the other. Therefore, at the start of a game, resist the temptation to charge down the nearest figures and attack.
Consider the mission at hand, how many points the objectives offer and how many of those points you can reasonably expect to gain. Then consider which of your opponent’s figure you’ll need to target in order to get to 40 points.
Throughout the game you’ll constantly need to evaluate how you’re doing against the objectives compared to your opponent and which figures you’ll need to target to make up any deficits you’re facing.
Considering all of this from the point of view of your opponent will also give you a leg-up in your path to victory.
This balancing act is a key part to the game and its enjoyment!
Final Thoughts
So to summarise:
When list-building consider the following:
- Am I maxing out, with 8+ activations?
- Am I going for a powerful minimum of around 4?
- Am I trying to strike a balance and find a sweet spot of 6-8?
- Can my list deal with Vader or is that match up close to an auto-loss?
- Does my list have access to key abilities like Stun, Weaken or Blast?
- Does my deck compliment my list, including powerful staples like ‘Take Initiative’, ‘Celebration’, ‘Single Purpose’ and powerful cards for my uniques?
When starting a game think about:
- The objectives and what they offer in points
- How many of those points can you achieve?
- Where in your opponent’s list will you achieve the remaining points you’ll need
Thanks for reading and May the Force be with You!
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Thanks for reading!