My groups is playing IA and has been for a bit now. It is myself as Imp and three others, Wookie, Jedi and Madalorian, (or that is what I call him because he reminds me of Candous from KOTOR).

So, my conundrum that lead to my house rule. One of the most exciting parts is "completing" your character. Jedi getting there lightsabre, Wookiee building some loyalty, etc. The way the rules are written, there is a fair chance that each heroes individual mission will never come up. This would lead to some disillusionment at the very least.

Houserule. Instead of flipping two missions and picking one, they flip four, pick one, then reshuffle other missions back into the deck. Anyone see any issues, game mechanics wise, with that?

Just looking for some input or a better way of doing things. Or the off chance I am doing things wrong.

I see no game breaking issues there, however I would only play that way if the IP is winning more than losing, because it could make the heroes a little bit stronger than normal if they can pick their side-missions that well (if they lose a few of them that will have no effect, if they win all of them they could be quite stronger than normal).

True, but, I try to keep them in line with forced missions and such

I fiddled with a house rule that allowed the heroes to choose a random red hero mission instead of running the available side missions. My heroes seemed to like it just fine.

I fiddled with a house rule that allowed the heroes to choose a random red hero mission instead of running the available side missions. My heroes seemed to like it just fine.

Oh, kinda like THAT idea.

One of the ideas I've been toying with is the rebels are assigned a random "red" side mission and a random other one (either the grey or green ones). I haven't put it into practice, but having two ally missions kind of sucks AND not ever seeing your hero mission really sucks...

I really don't think it'll make the heroes too OP. I still think a half decent imperial player can win against an expert team of rebels pretty handily.

I think the biggest problem is the green side missions. They get a little better as you buy ally packs and have some better options, but I've been sitting there with 2 green side missions up and wanting to do neither of them. You shouldn't want to not do a side mission.

Winning an ally I'll never use isn't a bonus when giving that much threat to the Imperials is like slitting your own throat. This gets more and more true the further into the campaign you get as the Imperials keep getting attachments or some of the abilities that improve all units on the board, making every threat you give the Imps even more effective.

Also since you can't use more than one ally at a time, there isn't a lot of reason to even run a second green mission.

So as a houserule you might want to say that once you have a permanent ally (from any source, i.e. Gideon, Hoth's first mission) then you can discard and replace green missions.

Maybe you could do something like "pay 100 credits per hero to draw new cards and discard the current ones", and "200 credits per hero to draw a specific side mission". That way its a choice between a side mission they want to do, or an item they want to purchase...

Personally, I don't think missions should be the solitary method that unlock Allies or Villains.

I would like to see a system where the rebels generate "Influence" as well, and can spend that influence as a group to deploy for a single mission (lower cost), or unlock permanently (higher cost). This would also translate to the Imperial Player spending Influence to unlock Villains as well.

Just spit-balling here, but a rough method would be the Deployment Cost of the Ally would be the permanent unlock cost, and the reinforcement cost would be the single mission Influence cost. Unique characters or figures that do not have a reinforcement cost would either not be able to be used for a single mission, or perhaps cost half the deployment cost (rounded down). So, in the case of Luke, he would cost 10 Influence to unlock, and either 5 to use in a single mission, or not at all. Whereas the Rebel Troopers would cost 6 to unlock, or 2 Influence for a single mission deployment. Threat granted by Allies after deployment would be entirely unaffected by this process.

The existing side missions could still have an ally as a reward, which would save Influence for other allies/villains, and might be a better way to unlock the Elite versions of things like Troopers and Saboteurs. In the case of unique allies/villains, you would generate additional Influence instead. Example:

Mission Rewards:

"The Rebellion receives Luke Skywalker (Hero of the Rebellion) as an ally. If the Rebellion has already unlocked this ally, they receive X influence instead."

Additional Rewards:

"Each hero receives 1 XP. The Rebellion receives 100 credits for each hero present in the mission. The Empire receives 1 XP and 1 influence. The Rebellion receives 1 influence."

Rebellion line added to delineate the difference between single hero rewards and "group" rewards, something this game could have used right from the beginning.

A system like this could easily translate to the solo hero missions, where a victory would grant a specific reward (such as Mak's Shadow Suit), but instead of preventing Mak from getting it entirely if the heroes lose the mission, allow for the reward to be purchased with influence after the mission is failed.

We're nearing the end of our campaign, and I'm thinking about giving my players the option to just do at least one of their side missions (the equivalent of one of their characters saying "wait, before we go face the big bad, there's something I have to do-- are you with me?"). Why not just make it a house rule that if a personal mission hasn't come by by the time you're within X slots of end-game, the remaining players can choose among themselves one personal mission (or if they can't agree, shuffle and draw) to do instead of their normal choices?