Exactly what the title suggests.

I love X-Wing.

After a few more buys I'm going to begin Armada.

I was going to complete my Star Wars collection with Force and Destiny and Age of Rebellion. These would have used miniatures anyway, as I'm that sort of player, and the miniatures would be from Imperial Assault.

With the cost of the Core Rulebooks, Supplements, Cards etc I'd probably spend as much if not more than if I got Imperial Assault.

I've downloaded the rules for Imperial Assault. I'd still get the box, this was just to see if I'd be interested, and I feel it would be well worth it.

What stood out most was that it looks to be a game of narrative adventure with a group of heroes. Just what I want from a boots on the ground game.

You can help sell this game to me with the answer to the following questions:

1. How easy is it to create your own, narrative driven, scenarios and campaigns? I'd assume using the "Skirmish" side of the game.

2. Is it possible to switch to Empire "heroes" and Rebel "villains" for when the Empire strikes back?

3. How easy would it be to create your own characters?

There's no guidelines but it's entirely doable.

1&3: If you can GM then I imagine it's easier than that; you wouldn't use skirmish.

2: At the moment the empire has much more diverse troops than the rebellion which makes doing so feasible but mediocre.

Ok, don't get me wrong, I really love IA, but for the skirmish game mainly.

I play both the RPGs and IA, and I prefer the RPGs by far over IA campaign. All you really need for the RPGs is at least one of the core rule books, all else is useful but secondary. It offers total narrative flexibility where the whole gaming group can add to the story in real time, whereas IA is a very tactical, competitive miniatures games within a set story. IA has some severe balance problems if one side starts to win more than the other, they'll just end up steam rolling over the other side, and there's no built in mechanism to re-balance it. In an RPG a GM can easily adjust this on the fly. IA is closer to 4e D&D and the FFG star wars RPGs feels more like the old WEG d6 star wars (which is still very popular).

Creating a your own campaign & scenarios id doable, but it seems daunting to get me, I'd rather just write an RPG adventure and use the IA minis, tiles, and tokens.

I worked out some guidelines for making your own IA heroes a few months ago.

Character Creation Points: 5 to spend on stats and dice (1 CC point per Stat increase, 1 CC point per Ability die added)

Base Stats:
Health: 10 (see Combat Role Health Bonus)
Endurance: 4 (max: 5)
Speed: 4 (max: 5)
Defense: Black die for tough heroes, White die for nimble heroes

Combat Role Health Bonus:
Ranged: 0
Ranged / Melee: +1
Melee: +2

Abilities:
Strength: Blue
Insight: Blue
Tech: Blue
(max: 3 dice per ability; min: 6 dice total for all abilities; max: 7 dice total for all abilities; no 2 of same color; no red die; must add a green die before adding a yellow)

Wounded Heroes:

• Endurance and Speed are reduced by 1 each.
• Strength, Insight, and Tech abilities have same number of dice as on the Healthy side, but the sequence is changed to Blue, Red, then Green (rather than Blue, Green, the Yellow). If the ability normally has only one Blue die, that die is now Red.

These rules work for the heroes in the core, and Biv from Twin Shadows. The only exception is Jyn, who is only 4 Character Points above the base stats/abilities.

Thanks for the answer Norgrath.

Radarman5: thank you for the comparison. I'll also refer back to your post for my character creation. Think I'll still go for Imperial Assault alone, as I'd be getting the more miniatures anyway, but you've certainly given me something to think about.

Just be careful for allowing custom built heroes by your players... you can regret it later... lol