Ok, so I've been playing imperial assault with my six year old son. It has required some "streamlining" of the rules to trim back the complexity. I wanted to share my changes to encourage everyone to play with their children.

1) No class decks. No rebel class decks, no imperial class decks. Rebels keep their starting weapons. No credits, no agenda cards.

2) No elites. Any time a story mission calls for an elite deployment group, sub in a standard unit instead.

3) The rebels play with two heroes and the legendary reward cards.

4) There is no limit to the number of allies the rebels can bring. Each ally generates half of its normal threat.

5) more as I think of them.

Ok, so I've been playing imperial assault with my six year old son. It has required some "streamlining" of the rules to trim back the complexity. I wanted to share my changes to encourage everyone to play with their children.

1) No class decks. No rebel class decks, no imperial class decks. Rebels keep their starting weapons. No credits, no agenda cards.

2) No elites. Any time a story mission calls for an elite deployment group, sub in a standard unit instead.

3) The rebels play with two heroes and the legendary reward cards.

4) There is no limit to the number of allies the rebels can bring. Each ally generates half of its normal threat.

5) more as I think of them.

Whatabout the time limits?

I keep the time limits. The game usually only lasts as long as his attention span with the time limits in place. I also remind him at the top of the round, every round, what the mission goal is. He's pretty good about not getting bogged down.

But yeah, I keep the time limits.

5) (optional) Replace the grey mission cards with green mission cards, ignoring the limits on duplicate rewards. The allies make the game more "Star Warsy" and the added activations keep the game from dragging for the child.

Why not keeping the credits?

Could give him a basic knowledge of the goal of earning "money" to spend in equipment (and managing said money)... capitalism and free market... oh wait... nevermind...

That's awesome, Sam. How's that whole "show no mercy" tactic going for you when you're playing your little boy?

I played a Skirmish game with my 4 1/2 year old son, or a least half a game. He had a gazillion stormtroopers, even the e-Webs, (not a lot of strategy required there) and had a lot of fun. He kept laughing and laughing about how many stormtroopers he had, I think he'll make a great Imperial player one day.

My 8 and 9 year old girls are playing a full blown campaign with me, and the intensity got to my 8 year old and she cried last game. I gave her the option to quit, but she was tough and kept playing and they eventually won. She's playing Jyn, and LOVES interrupting to shoot. With them being older they can handle the different skill cards and equipment, if coached from me or their mom.

Oddly enough, Boba, with the listed restrictions I can play about as mean as I want and still lose. When he's rocking a legendary Garkhaan and Daila with Han Solo and R2/3po backing them up, you pull out *all the stops and throw as many nonelite soldiers as possible at them. It becomes more of a tactical challenge rather than the "biggest gun wins" it can sometimes devolve into.

I glad to hear I'm not the only one enjoying the game with their kids! I threw this up here to get people to try exactly that!

My boy got upset for a second, but once I explained to him that (after I alpha-striked Han Solo to chunky salsa) that his heroes aren't dead, they just retreated to rest and would be back next mission, he was far more ok with the whole thing.

My boy got upset for a second... (after I alpha-striked Han Solo to chunky salsa) ...

that......is brilliant

When I play with my son (12 years old, but extremely ADHD) , I remove all the side missions and agendas and just tell him which mission is next. When it comes time to do a side mission, I let him choose a hero and we do that mission, and when he runs out, I let him choose which ally missions he wants to run to try and unlock them.

I don't use any imperial upgrades, but we still use credits and hero XP. (he loves shopping and upgrades!) While he shops, I set up the next map.

I help him out with the timing instances of skills and recommend "best moves", even if it is to my detriment. This also means I can pretty much slam the hammer down with the imperials so that he learns what he needs to deal with and what he can ignore. I always remind him of the game turn limit, and I even suggest to him to do the math to find out how many actions he needs to win the mission (and if he realizes he cannot, then he goes crate hunting for credits!).

His interest is piqued into the skirmish side now, which is just gravy. For that, we'll play a few "unbalanced" games with no command cards, where he has 40 points, and I only bring 20. And as his skill level improves, i will slowly increase my point total. Once we're at 40/40, we'll add command cards into the mix.

I have 5 kids, and I know 4 of them could play Imperial Assault to some degree. I'm going to set up the 4 player skirmish and let them have at it (with a lot of supervision and promises to not cry or get mad if you lose type thing). Should be great.

This is great news! I've been playing X-Wing with my 8 year old daughter and we are enjoying it immensely. She has expressed interest in Imperial Assault, but I wasn't sure if she could handle it. I know Armada is too much, but it is good to see there are options to scale down IA to fit our younger fans.

Thanks for starting this topic. Any other advice will be appreciated.

This is great news! I've been playing X-Wing with my 8 year old daughter and we are enjoying it immensely. She has expressed interest in Imperial Assault, but I wasn't sure if she could handle it. I know Armada is too much, but it is good to see there are options to scale down IA to fit our younger fans.

Thanks for starting this topic. Any other advice will be appreciated.

As a side thing, I played X-Wing with my 9 year old once this week and she thought it was "okay." She played two FO Ties and I was Poe, and blew them up. This week I'll be getting the Millennium Falcon, Boba Fett's Ship, and the original red core with Luke Skywalker's T-65 X-Wing in it. What can I do to make that game easier/funner for my kids?

EDIT: I don't want to hijack this thread, so I created a "X-WING FOR KIDS" subject in the X-Wing forums, please respond there: https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/199879-x-wing-for-kids/

My advice would be to just find a copy of epic duels. it's fantastic for the casual crowd and younger set. (i really wish FFG would reprint epic duels)

I've been playing with my 8 year old , my 6 year old & my wife. The only thing I change is I give them an extra round if there's a time limit( sometimes I don't even do that). Generally they do really well, I just scale the pain depending on how well they are doing. It's been really fun, great family game. We've played through the base game and twin shadows.

I've only played skirmish with my 11yo and she really enjoyed it.

We have been playing Heroclix for a few years, so the complexity didn't faze her at all.

Her biggest learning curve is mission objectives, not necessarily killing everything to win.

She is a decent little gamer and I enjoy our gaming time together.

I play IA with my kids all the time, both skirmish and campaign. They enjoy both. I generally toned down my tactics a bit at first, but once they got a hang of things, it was all I could do to keep up! My boys are 9, 11, 12, so they're able to handle all the rules and twists. But we're also a gaming family; we play games of all sorts all the time (the more complex or epic, the better).

The suggestions that Sam mentioned in the first post are all excellent for kids just starting out. Then, as the kids grow and get the hang of things, you can gradually step up the difficulty or complexity. The main thing is fun. For the first times playing IA skirmish, we didn't even use Command Cards because the kids already had enough to keep track of with the brand new game.

I play skirmish with my 7yo. He loves building 40 point squads and it really helps develop his arithmetic.

We play without command cards, terminals are 2 point if you control one at the end of the round, and we play the mission objectives most of the time.

We can play a 40 point match in about 45 minutes. Chucking dice and moving guys around it plenty fun.

Reading this post makes me proud to be a geek/nerd dad, knowing that the future is in good hands.

The Force runs strong in your family. Pass on what you have learned.

My 4 year old son told me the other day (as his sisters rushed towards the TV) that he'd rather play a game than watch a movie.

My 4 year old son told me the other day (as his sisters rushed towards the TV) that he'd rather play a game than watch a movie.

^^^^ Big bucket of win. ^^^^

You all have convinced me. One copy of Star Wars Imperial Assault is on order for me and my 8 year old! Looking forward to the fun!

My 4 year old son told me the other day (as his sisters rushed towards the TV) that he'd rather play a game than watch a movie.

I like his way of thinking! You go dude!!

Wow! Good Dads on here! I've been playing xwing with my 5 yo but after seeing this I will definitely bring out the IA. I have a bunch of scum ships on order too for xwing so my daughter can join in the x wing battles

As a long time lurker, this topic got me create a sign on and post.

I have been playing IA with my 13 and 10 year old boys. We are about half way though the first campaign. They won the first few games, but the last two have ended with Gaarkhan going toe-to-toe with an AT-ST.....He's 0-2. They really like it so far.

I have been collecting the sets, but haven't opened anything but the base set until this last weekend. The boys wanted to try Skirmish so we opened most of the stuff on the self.One built a Rebel list, One built a Scum list, and that left me with the Imperials.

Note: Vader is a great tool for teaching the boys the dangers of over extending themselves and grouping up to much. With the last activation of one turn, and the first of the next, Vader killed IG-88 and Boba.

Of course, in a later game, Vader used Brutality against CPO and R2......for zero damage...Stupid "X" man....

I'm thinking of picking this up to play with my 8 and 6 year old boys. The last sort of game I've played like this was Heroquest when I was a wee lad.

Do you guys think this would be suitable for this age group, they both love Star Wars and can play X Wing TMG with stripped down rules (no upgrades etc). I'm also a bit worried about my ability to interpret the rules and convey them to my kids.

Any advice would be much appreciated!