Our group is playing lots of X-Wing recently.

We never really considered IA a thing, but since some of us won a few packs at a recent tournament we're thinking about starting with this game too

So, looking at the lists from worlds, it seems a bit one sided though ... either spam Royal Guard and Imperial Officers as a Imperial or spam Saboteurs, C-3PO and X as a Rebel. This makes us think that the game could not be as well balanced as X-Wing for example is, where lots of options are available.

On the contrary, IA is "only" 3 waves old if I remember correctly, so this could have some impact too.

Would be great hearing an opinion from someone who has more insight into IA than we do.

Thanks a lot, much appreciated!

To be honest you could say that X-Wing suffers from the same thing...certain units being top of the pile at certain times

a while ago, it was swarms of TIEs and X-Wings....then it shifted to phantoms, phantoms and decimators or turreted ships in general and now its at what?

I play both games and currently my favourite is Imperial Assault as it also scratches the hobby itch. Yeah i play in tourneys and yeah i win every now and again but with Imperial Assault i get much more enjoyment out of the story mode (campaign) side of it. It feels so much more Star Wars to me and less Stat Wars. The group i play with also share similar thoughts, Campaign is a social event rather than a war-game.

You said it yourself in that Imperial Assault is only 3 waves old. While initially the starting core set has far more options and variety than, say, the core set for X-Wing, it appears as though the cost for one particular unit may have been off by one. Thus, 4x4 or some iteration of it has dominated the lists, and Rebel Blast lists have been built to play against them.

X-Wing, by comparison, is on Wave 8, releasing 4 or 5 new models per wave. It is far into it's development cycle, but as someone has just mentioned, every cycle sees new lists pushed to the top pecking order. It was not so long ago that your choices for competitive lists were either "Phantom" or "Anti-Phantom".

Give Imperial Assault some time to correct the 4x4 through future waves. If they do it right, they won't ever come out with an "Anti-Royal Guard" unit, they will merely produce figures that can be as powerful. This is why it's taking a while, they don't ever want to produce a figure solely to combat one type of unit. In the meantime, I would invite you and yours to play the Campaign mode. It's a lot of fun, strangely balanced, and offers hours upon hours of replayability (if that's not a word, I'm making it one. Go English!)

(if that's not a word, I'm making it one. Go English!)

Technically that's not English, its any living language. Only dead languages can't have new words added to them. Go Latin!

I am also a competitive X-wing player, and while I can't really defend the balance of skirmish against x-wing's balance which has a 3 year headstart, I can offer a different recommendation for Imperial assault: Campaign. IAs campaign a refreshingly different experience from one-on-one battles, while still being a competitive experience. Grinding 1v1 games is great fun especially as you see yourself improving, but the intensity of it can get repetitive if it's the only thing you do, and I find multiplayer games are a great way to break up the repetition and prevent competition burn out.

A word of warning: while the campaign is balanced when taken as a whole, the learning curve is much much steeper for the rebels than for the imperial player, which often leads to frustration as the game recommends the most experienced player play as the empire. Also keep in mind that everyone gets multiple rules wrong in their first campaign, which really throws off the meticulous balance of each mission. With those things in mind, if you do jump into a campaign, it's good to consider your first campaign a learning experience and your second campaign as the "real thing".