I find playing with the Rebellion easier it's hard with the empire to seem to lock down and Corner the rebels unless I'm misunderstanding the rules of Rapid mobilization are they forced to establish a new rebel base or can they Bluff with it,either way any tips would be handy

How do you mean bluff? If they choose to relocate the base to a new system they must reveal the previous location to you and that location card is placed into your drawn probe droid card pile.

What Rapid mobilization can be used for is to draw location cards early in the game but not move your base. Those cards are shuffled and put at the bottom of the draw deck.(Pg12 of the Learn to Play) Now you know 4 locations that, if the Empire uses the "Interrogation" card on a captured leader, you can name 2 of the 4 cards you drew (hopefully you remember them) which you know they don't have in their drawn probe droid cards.

I just reread the rules we were playing rapid mobilization incorrectly we thought you had to establish new rebel base so in that case I guess what I'm saying is I need a better strategy for locking out down where the rebels are more quickly maybe I'm over committing too many leaders to missions perhaps and not moving enough? It just seems they don't have enough leaders to oppose and move and do missions with

They can bluff Rapid Mobilization. They can also activate it, not have a viable option, and then be forced to stay put.

The rebels have a limited amount of options, and in some ways that actually makes them easier to play. The Empire has an excess amount of stuff they want to do, but are limited by actions. So the idea is to be as efficient as possible. Against a good rebel player, they are going to be trying hard to make you play inefficiently, so you really need to consider everything from a long term perspective. Make sure your moves are efficient.

Rush your probes. Always work on probes. Probes, probes, probes. Not only does this help you locate the base (sooner the better), but it reduces the amount of possible locations they have to relocate to.

I was able to track the base down, but before I made a move on it, I got my other fleets repositioned a little to the remaining unknown areas (and blocked a couple other places). When I made my move, and they repositioned the base, I was in position to move on almost all of the new locations that had little to no defense.

Worry about your ground forces. You need the AT-STs and AT-ATs to attack rebel strongholds, you don't want to leave them behind to garrison systems. Make sure you have a steady, reliable supply of stormtroopers.

Use that DS like a crazed madman early on. Push it around on the board and wipe out whatever rebels you can find. When they get into the 2nd tier objectives, make sure you have a lot of TIE support to keep it safe.

Attack first. Many of the objectives require the rebels to initiate combat to get the objective. If you see a situation where you think the rebels might be amassing to attack and score an objective, either run away, or attack first. Keep in mind that initiating the combat gives you a slight advantage. If you are in a situation where it looks like you are going to lose a SD and some support due to being trapped by a large rebel force, attack them instead. You will still lose the ship, but you will deny the objective and possible do a little more damage.

Capturing is powerful. Turning captives to the darkside or encasing them in carbonite so you can capture another leader is powerful. Denying actions to the rebels, or forcing them to spend actions rescuing leaders gives you an advantage.

Defend systems wisely. Low value system? Throw a single stormtrooper and a single TIE on there as defense. Even if they launch a surprise attack against the stormtrooper and take the planet, the TIE cuts off the production and building capabilities, so it's only a loss to you, not a gain for them.

Strategy in this game is situational to where your and your opponent's initial bases are, how you each deploy your initial forces and what leaders are recruited in the next 5 turns.

If the Rebels do not recruit any new leaders with the Logistics symbol (Ackbar and Lando) a good strategy for the Empire is to target the starting leaders with Logistics for capture (Mon Mothma and Rieekan). Then the Rebel player would be unable to play Rapid Mobilization and would be unable to move the base.

Another strategy is to deny the Rebels systems that would let them build Ion Cannons and Shield generators.(Yellow Squares) These are most helpful in defending the Rebel base and by denying them to the Rebels it makes it much easier to capture the base. Systems that let them build the Mon Cal Cruisers (Blue Squares) are not that critical to deny the Rebels but they are nice for you to have so you can build Star Destroyers. Remember, there are only 3 systems that have blue squares and 3 systems that have yellow squares. The yellow squares are more important to the Rebels and the blue are more important to the Empire.

One thing that hurt me was the empire's ability to affect the leader pool. If you capture and turn a rebel leader then capture a second one, you now have 3 more leader actions per turn than the rebels do.

Early strategy is two fold. The empire should expand their fleet and slowly push out. Capture a new system each round. In conjunction with capturing a new system (and seeing if the Rebel base is there), GET MORE PROBE CARDS! At least one mission each round should be dedicated to getting more probe cards. The second half of your attention should be obtaining one of the project cards that allow you to use the Death Star. Blowing up a system early on eliminates and entire region from your search!

By mid game start slowing the Rebels down by capturing leaders. You should have a 3rd fleet constructed by now. Us military might to bring the systems in line and find the Rebel base.

And make sure the Imperial March is playing in the background.

Thank you everybody for the tips, I can already see that my flaw early was not committing to Milling the probe deck more quickly and emphasizing capturing earlier than I should have.

I've found that the Empire does not need to rely on missions as Rebels do nearly as much. In the early game its much better to focus on moving your fleets around and subjugating new worlds. The only missions I tend to send my leaders on are R&D and any mission that allows me to plow through the probe deck. Other than that I'm using my leaders to land troops to find the Rebels. If you can land on at least 3 new planets per turn plus a minimum of drawing 2 probe cards (and thats not even counting probe cards drawn as part of mission cards), the possible places the Rebels are hiding narrows down real quick.

As far as starting deployment goes, I've had the most success dividing my starting units into 3 equal sized fleets (and a small force to guard Coruscant). One fleet will have to be larger than the other two, so that fleet will be in the middle of the board. The other two fleets will deploy to the leftmost starting world and the right most starting world. If you want, the Death Start can be by itself as a 4th fleet since it is literally invincible until the Rebel players starts drawing his Stage 2 objectives, but keep it close to another fleet so its not alone when Stage 2 happens. If you do this I'd recommend saving a leader to oppose the Rebel's Infiltration mission. Otherwise make the DS part of that larger fleet that starts in the middle. The reason why I keep a small force on Coruscant is to to both protect it from that Objective card that can give the Rebels 2 Rep per turn, and to also easily check the systems close to my side of the board (the first time I won as the Rebels I hid my base on Ilium, so I like to make sure my friends aren't doing the same thing lol).

I rarely do capture missions unless I have drawn some other mission that affects captured leaders or if I recruited Boba Fett (who I will send on a capture mission every turn since he doesn't move fleets).

Use action cards when you recruit new leaders. Once of the MVP cards is Local Rumors, which lets you choose a region and the Rebel player has to tell you if the base is in the region or not. Scouting Mission is a good one if you want to check 2 adjacent systems at once.

Long story short, don't worry about missions so much, deploy your starting units evenly across the board as best as you can, focus on moving around the board and burning through your probe deck, favor action cards that help you find the Rebels. If all goes well, by turn 4 or 5 you should have a good idea where the Rebels might be hiding.

Another thing that I've found useful as the Imps.

If you know the Rebels are going to relocate, spread your control as wide as possible.

I had a game against a Rebel player where I just happened to wander into their base by accident. It was an exploratory force though, so I lost fast. I knew they'd move the base next turn as I had a couple fleets nearby that I could crush them with in 2 turns.

So the next turn, I sent transport ships to every nearby non-populous system I could reach that I didn't have probes for. I also spread small forces into locations near other possible bases knowing it would be lightly defended. The rebel player was really confused by this move. I spent almost all my actions moving minor forces around the board, and sent forces to worthless systems.

At the end of the phase, they drew the cards and then realized what I was doing. They drew 2 systems that I just stuck transports in, and could no longer move to those locations. I had small forces parked next to 3 more locations. None of the other cards were viable. All they could do is pick one and hope for the best.

Next round I moved into all those areas before they had a chance to build up a defense.

My Imperial opponent used a tactic against me which was incredibly frustrating. If the Rebels Sabotaged a subjugated system, the Empire player just moved his units off of it reverting it to Neutral. Not only did this explore another system (via the move), but it denies the Rebels the use of the sabotage Objective card as that card only counts Imperial systems. I ended the game with six systems with Sabotage markers (pretty much one per turn) yet never got to play the Objective card.

Since the Rebel's can't repair the system (at least I don't think they can), the system will be of little value to then. Even if they burn a diplomacy to make it a Rebel system, the Rebels won't get bullds and can't put units there which denies them the "Rebel system with units" objectives as well.

By the fourth turn, the Imperials should have two leaders on missions and six in the leader pool. That way you are exploring 8 systems per turn, 2 via Probes and 6 via moves. Spread out your ships. Your goal isn't so much to find the Rebels but deny them places they can move the base to as well as making sure that any system to do move to have Imperial troops next door ready to move on them.

I just don't see how the Rebels can win against an efficiently played Empire other than through complete luck (i.e. the Empire randomly picking two systems to move to and picking wrong).

Your goal is to find them and deny them new locations, and the wide net approach is useful. But against a good Rebel player, it can be suicide.

If you were to focus sabotage on one type of unit (ground or space), and let them abandon them, they'll lose a lot of production, and it could halt their progress. Plus, if they abandon the system, they haven't denied the location. Sure, the rebels don't have a reason to claim control of the system, but they could still move the base there later.

If they are moving 6 groups of units, they'll cover a lot of planets with tiny fleets spread all over, meaning if they find the base, they can't defeat it. Then it would take several turns to gather the forces for an assault. If they've combined this with abandoning systems, the rebels have lots of places to run and hide to. If they've been leaving token defense forces, the rebels have lots of cards to assault subjugated systems.

Basically, if the Imps push any one tactic too hard, they leave themselves open to retaliation in another area.

The one time I won against my wife as Imperial (yeah she's won 2 out of 3 ). I went for mass-production and capturing. I moved into every single system I could to both deny the Rebels resources and gain them myself. At around turn 8 I had a massive fleet. She simply couldn't stop it and I found her base through the Interrogation droid mission. Colonel Yularen is a key recruit. If you have a captured leader and the Interrogation Droid Mission, he almost always succeeds. That mission is probably the best for finding the base quickly. Usually you know at least 1 system out of the 3 that its not there.

Capturing also cripples their actions. They either got to tie up leaders to prevent it, or for rescue.

One of the great things about this game is that the strategy changes depending on what Leaders you get, and what the other player does, which depends on the Leaders _she_ gets.

The Empire should spend the first three turns expanding and landing on resource planets. This denies the Rebels units, adds units to the Empire and removes the possibility of the location of the base. By the end of Turn Three it is possible to have removed 15 locations from the equation.