Hey everyone. So I just started a campaign, I'm playing as imperials and I've got 2 players playing as one hero each. We've played the first mission and gone through upgrade phases, and I've been playing a lot of skirmish with one of the rebel players. Very broad question here: any tips for making the campaign as smooth and fun as possible for all the players involved? Thanks in advance!

Couple of ideas:

Have them select two more characters so there are 4 rebels on the board. In the beginning, might be a bit tough for them to manage, but the campaign has a better balance to it when played with 4 rebels.

Tell Rebels to use their strain as much as they can, I find, new players like to "save" it for some reason and this usually makes the game feel impossible for the Rebels and leads to a lot of frustration. They should always be thinking how to optimize attacks by using strain to move up to 2 spaces, or getting good use of their abilities.

If you are the Imperial player, do not use the Subversive Tactics deck the first time around. This deck, for new players is incredibly difficult to deal with. However, on the counterbalance to that, experienced Rebels can counter this deck very easily (on our third campaign, playing against ST and the imperial is at a loss on how to stop us at 5 missions in). But, without this deck, it will make the game more fun for your group.

As for the Rebels, if you wanted to change your characters I think the easiest to play are: Biv, Gaarkhan, Gideon, and Fenn. This group has solid defense and high health, which will help the survivability of the team.

As an imperial player, get to know all your troops and be careful about selecting open groups. My first go through I tended to go towards high deployment cost groups and rarely got them in play. You need to be balanced with the current threat level. Rule of thumb, never take a deployment group with higher than double the threat level.

One setup thing I find handy, have the tiles pre-selected for the next mission you are going to play the day before your gaming night, easier to set up and get started right away.

Hope this helps, have fun! The campaign is fantastic. Our group can't get enough of it.

Definitely agree on the point to play with 4 characters. Playing with 2 and 3 heroes tends to put the Rebels at a distinct disadvantage in several of the missions, and especially in the late-campaign.

Thanks for all the tips! Ironically, the two they chose were the 2 you didn't suggest. Oops lol. I'm not super worried about them though, I've been playing games with one for years and the other, while newer to us, has been playing games a while too. I'll take the rest of the tips as advice though, thanks a lot!

I've found that fewer heroes have put them at a major advantage, with the extra activations, they charge through the maps pretty quickly and complete the objectives before i can generate any useful amount of threat.

On the other hand - the three players played a 4 player Twin Shadows campaign, with Gideon as the 4th character (shared between them), and struggled so much they conceded the second mission without finishing it.