Token Shuffle = Lazy Design

By sneth, in Imperial Assault Campaign

How many of these mission involve random placement of event tokens?

I know exactly why FFG did this. It makes missions skewed depending on where the random tokens are placed. Sometimes Rebels will have an easy time because of placement, other times, the imperial player has the advantage. It makes the win ratio more even no matter how bad the rest of the mission is laid out. Online trackers show even statistics, but it has nothing to do with mission balance. Some Groups are just f'd.

This drove me crazy in descent. I'm sad to see it here as well.

Edited by sneth

About two of them. :D (I remember Friends of Old and some other that I don't remember.)

Usually the colored mission tokens are placed as instructed or the imperial player gets to decide their placement.

Edit: Exactly two of them among the currently released missions including all released expansions and ally/villain packs (Friends of Old and Incoming - although in Incoming they are terminals). I was counting only those, but there are also very few (around 3) of the other type where the imperial player selects the colors.

Edited by a1bert

Usually randomness is introduced to increase replayability...

Edit: Exactly two of them among the currently released missions including all released expansions and ally/villain packs (Friends of Old and Incoming - although in Incoming they are terminals). I was counting only those, but there are also very few (around 3) of the other type where the imperial player selects the colors.

This is 2 (or 5, depending how you count) out of

  • 30 missions in the core set
  • 7 missions from wave 1
  • 6 missions from TS
  • 3 missions from wave 2
  • 3 missions from wave 3
  • 2 missions from wave 4
  • 16 missions from RtH
  • 4 missions from wave 5

71 missions or ~3% (or about ~7%) of all released missions so far.

I think we are okay for now.

I would certainly count "A New Threat" as having random token placements...that mission is ridiculous hard partially because of that.

I would certainly count "A New Threat" as having random token placements...that mission is ridiculous hard partially because of that.

Sounds like the random token shuffle isn't so bad. Good to know. It's heavily used in Descent, i was about to abandon this game if it's as common. I don't buy the replay-ability argument. I have never played an encounter twice in descent or IA. Tho it does seems IA almost requires second playthroughs for some of these maps. This stuff is ridiculous.

I don't think anyone is happy after "a new threat", regardless of token placement.

Edited by sneth

A New Threat is hard because it needs a lot of movement in addition to crowd control. It becomes harder if you selected characters that severely lack in one attribute. In one game it took Gaarkhan three tries to get his strength test finished, so it really was not because of lucky terminal placement.

A New Threat is hard because it needs a lot of movement in addition to crowd control. It becomes harder if you selected characters that severely lack in one attribute. In one game it took Gaarkhan three tries to get his strength test finished, so it really was not because of lucky terminal placement.

And that's why Saska + toolkit is amazing :-)

A New Threat is hard because it needs a lot of movement in addition to crowd control. It becomes harder if you selected characters that severely lack in one attribute. In one game it took Gaarkhan three tries to get his strength test finished, so it really was not because of lucky terminal placement.

And that's why Saska + toolkit is amazing :-)

And Diala with Force Adept and Fenn with Tactical Movement are the two best 1 XP abilities (almost abilities in general) in the game.

Edited by brandothecommando