Hello! I just recently was given an Imperial Assault boxed set and have been reading through it. I'm particularly interested in campaign mode, which from the description seems a lot like HeroQuest from when I was a kid, just with Star Wars. Which sounds awesome. I'm going for an L2P session at my local game store this week and I'm stoked.

One thing I'm curious about, though: I understand how villain packs will be used in campaign mode, since the GM/Imp will use them. Are Ally packs useful? From what I can tell they do not seem to include extra heroes like the core set and Return to Hoth have, so I don't know if they would have a great deal of utility in campaign mode.

This is probably something answered in the books that I just glazed over by accident, so I apologize in advance.

Ally packs either have a new grey side mission with some reward card (Han, Chewie) or a green side mission to recruit the ally (the rest). In the case of rebel troopers and rebel saboteurs getting them twice allows you to use the elite version. Either way the new mission adds some diversity to the campaign if you don't feel it has enough. They do add to the campaign but both ally and villain packs are more for skirmish than campaign.

So they do have utility but not a great deal of it.

I was confused about this myself at first. The core set already comes with cards and round tokens for several allies and villains.

If you want to use them in the campaign, you can already do this without buying anything else. For example:

I'm running a campaign with my kids and they just completed "The Spice Job" side mission. The reward for that is "Chewbacca (Loyal Wookiee)" as an ally. They can now use him in future missions. They just have the token instead of a nice plastic miniature.

The reason to buy the pack is for the actual miniature and the other cards that come with it. You get another side mission, a new skirmish map, new command cards, etc. To get an idea of what sorts of things come in the packs, you need look no further that the Luke and Vader packs that are included in the core set.

Hope that helps!

Thanks very much, Norgrath!