tl;dr: Had a blast playing this with a bunch of friends into the wee hours of the morning.
I picked up IA a few weeks back and played through a full campaign by myself (don't judge me). I hate not knowing answers to questions about rules when I'm introducing new games so I do this a lot.
Saturday night a few friends and I have nothing to do so they ask me about this game and we break it out. I'm a bit reluctant since the group is varied in nerd levels and board game experience. It's as follows:
Buddy 1 - Avid boardgamer with little Star Wars Knowledge (SWK- I just made that up)
Buddy 2 - No boardgame experience outside of Monopoly and 0 SWK
Buddy 3 - No boardgame experience and moderate SWK
When I'm unpacking the game, Buddy 2 and 3 are intimidated by the amount of pieces, Buddy 1 is trying to help with setup. We begin Aftermath at 9pm and fell into a time loop. Everyone is having such a great time and every match is coming down the very last roll of the dice. Every game is a nail-biter and we are all sweating bullets. Then we look up at the clock, it's 3am! We've been playing this game for 6 hours!
We didn't finish the campaign so everyone is ready to pick up where we left off.
There's not much to this post other than to say Imperial Assault is great fun, which most of you know. And despite the theme, it's fun for most everyone.
SWKTM
Maybe one day everyone will have enough free time to play more than one mission at a time with me. 