My friends and I started an Imperial Assault Return to Hoth Campaign and are about halfway through.

Up until this point, the Agenda cards have felt almost entirely useless. I have a couple of questions.

1. How am I supposed to afford the 4 Influence cards? Do I just NOT buy any Agenda cards for the first half of the campaign and then hope I draw some of the better Agenda cards?

2. Are most of the Agenda cards really just one and done type cards? I'm finding that I buy the 1 or 2 Influence cards, use them at what I think are appropriate moments and then they're gone, having had minor effect. As an example, I had the agenda that allows one group to make two attacks per activation. I deployed Elite Stormtroopers, played the Agenda and the rebels activated first and took out two of my Stormtroopers before I was able to double attack. Makes me want to throw my hands up in the air.

3. Should I just be ok with the fact that all my stuff dies every turn? The heroes can kill more threat's worth of bad guys than I can deploy in a given turn. Halfway through the campaign and I'm getting 4 threat per turn. That's not enough to deploy even a basic Stormtrooper unit. Doing so takes me two turns and then they're normally all dead within the same turn. I try to deploy them to block doors, hallways, etc with the understanding that they're going to die immediately, but it's just extremely frustrating.

4. Are the unique characters basically never going to happen? I bought all these side packs. The quests aren't coming up, so do I never get to use the models I bought? Are these side packs really just for Skirmirsh and to turn tokens into actual models during story missions? I'd love to add, say, Dengar to my open groups, but that seems like a statistical impossibility. The stars need to align to make that happen.

5. Do my bad guys ever get better? If I pick the wrong class, am I stuck with boring Stormtroopers forever? I have the class that lets me reroll one attack die to start with. I finally got the 4 xp card that lets me just pick a die facing instead of rerolling... at the cost of 1 threat, which is in short supply. Feels like I'll never be able to use this ability.

I'm enjoying spending time with my friends and have actually won 2 out of the 6 missions so far, so it's far from one sided... but those two victories felt hollow with the rebels losing more from making poor decisions and letting the clock run out and less from anything I did.

Thoughts?

1) Depending on the missions you win, you can end up getting > 1 influence per mission. This can help you buy pricier agenda cards early on
2) Some of the cards are one and done, yes. But some of those are really useful. OoC, how did the Rebels kill 2 eStormies before you could activate the group? That seems like some bad luck
3) Your guys are squishier than the Rebels, yes. But between your open groups and the guys that come up as parts of the missions you should always have some things to play with. And in most missions, stalling or delaying the Rebels is a valid tactic
4) Depending on what campaign you're playing and what figures you got, you might end up with slim odds to see or earn the villains you want. Agenda cards help with that though
5) If you're waiting to buy 4xp cards first, you're going to be missing out on useful abilities in the early game, for sure

1. You get at least 1 influence from each mission. If you want to buy a forced mission (cost 4), you just save up the influence. However, you are mostly better off buying side missions (cost 3) and even better just buying the best 2-cost and 1-cost agenda cards.

2. The best ones are Deplete, which are once per mission, they cost 2 influence. The 1-influence ones are still good when used at the right moment. Apparently you did not play that one in the right moment, sending your toopers to the slaughter like that. (It takes time to learn strategies, and even more about choosing the good agenda sets.)

3. Yes, imperial troops are meant to be cannon fodder. But you can still use them judiciously. If the rebels one-shot them, use cheap figures. Force the rebels spend their actions for performing moves, i.e. try to avoid giving them two attacks per activation. Get Hired Guns, so you get at least one shot off even if the rebels defeat them.

4. You decide which agenda sets you include. Yes, figure packs are mostly for skirmish. Some agenda sets are quite good though whether you come up with the villain's agenda mission or not. I agree that it is a bit too hard to earn the villains, but some house rules can be added.

5. With experience the class deck affects which agenda sets you select, and that affects which open groups you select for each mission. I haven't played with Precision Training, but it looks like an ok class deck. For you first imperial campaign Military Might would probably be easier and more versatile. And it does not only work for Stormtroopers.

Rebels making poor choices and you delaying them are the main ways to win as the Empire.

Take the first campaign as a learning experience. If the rebels have a good time, you'll have them to play another campaign.

If you want strategy advice or see how people are playing campaigns, there is a lot of discussion in boardgamegeek.com and a lively Play By Forum campaigns to read up on.

My Troopers tend to die quickly because the Rebels pay attention and normally figure out where most of my deployment points are pretty quickly. They generally know more or less where reinforcements CAN come from. In the example above, I deployed, the Rebels got to activate and just unloaded damage on me. eStormies only have 5 hit points. It's not like they're very durable. The Rebels seem to be able to easily do that in a single attack. Between that, all the free movement from abilities and straining all over the place, it's not uncommon for the Rebels to kill 2-3 normal mobs or 1-2 elite mobs in a single activation. One dude got two free move points from another player, strained to move up two spaces so he was adjacent to me then did this melee followed by a shooting attack as his first action and then a regular shooting attack as his second. I don't know the names of all the abilities.

Generally speaking, everything I deploy gets wiped out in one turn, sometimes without getting to go.

My Troopers tend to die quickly because the Rebels pay attention and normally figure out where most of my deployment points are pretty quickly. They generally know more or less where reinforcements CAN come from. In the example above, I deployed, the Rebels got to activate and just unloaded damage on me. eStormies only have 5 hit points. It's not like they're very durable. The Rebels seem to be able to easily do that in a single attack. Between that, all the free movement from abilities and straining all over the place, it's not uncommon for the Rebels to kill 2-3 normal mobs or 1-2 elite mobs in a single activation. One dude got two free move points from another player, strained to move up two spaces so he was adjacent to me then did this melee followed by a shooting attack as his first action and then a regular shooting attack as his second. I don't know the names of all the abilities.

Generally speaking, everything I deploy gets wiped out in one turn, sometimes without getting to go.

Then either they're the luckiest at rolling the dice and you are not or something is wrong.

Especially early on, I don't know how any hero can kill a stormtrooper every single action. That's pretty darn good. Take Fenn for example with his weapon. That's rolling a perfect 4 damage (no matter what even with surges) and you rolling a 1 block. Now not saying it can't happen, but if it's happening quite often, then like I said, you're just unlucky. If that's the case, use Royal Guards. For one, they're doing good damage and are beefy in general. But you can stick them with Stormtroopers and they're blocking damage now.

Then as others have stated, use your Influence for the 2 Influence Deplete cards or the 3 Influence Named Villains. And only play those when you know you'll automatically get it because the heroes just flipped a hero side mission. This way they give up their chance of getting say Diala's Lightsaber or Gaarkhan's Life Debt earlier. And no guarantee they'll stop you anyways from getting Boba Fett for example.

Don't go for the 4 Influence "Impounded" mission. It's worthless. It's 50/50 you'll win, but the 1 action for +1 threat on a leader, isn't a dire thing. Sure it can work well with some synergy class decks (like Inspiring Leadership), but it's not worth saving up 4 Influence. What makes it worst, that even though it's a Forced Side Mission, no body gets anything (no exp or credits or influence) unless you win and all it is then, is the reward card. There are better things than that for 4 Influence.

~D

I've used the card that let me reduce the deployment cost of a group by 5 before on Elite Trandoshans to start a quest and it won me the mission. I've used the card that adds a surge to an attack and an evade to the defense on Royal Guards and it won me the mission. I've used the card that lets you attack again with a trooper and add a surge as my very last action to Stun Luke, preventing him from reaching his ship at the end of the final round and letting the Rebels recruit him as an ally. Those are just off the top of my head, and all 3 happened in the same campaign. If you are playing these discard cards right they are definitely game changers, but you need to give it some thought before you use it. Don't throw them away.

I tend to get one or two exhaust/deplete cards per campaign then the rest I spend on discards.. oh and Imperial Industry of course. There is a deplete that lets you increase the threat by the threat level when you wound a hero that is very useful.

I definitely cherry pick my agenda deck, which is allowed, but I think my next play through I will vary up my selections and play some decks I am not used to because they are honestly getting to be over powered.

Seems to me like the players have seen the movie before.

I know it's not easy to keep all the missions as secret as the creators hoped - which is part of the charm and challenge early players of the game had;

I'm thinking that if the players have done it all before, read ahead or just seen/read all the spoilers, then maybe the imperials gain an extra threat level or influence.

I am expecting to see a new 'update sheet' or something from FFG to cover this contingency (that way the game doesn't get stale and people stop playing).

My Troopers tend to die quickly because the Rebels pay attention and normally figure out where most of my deployment points are pretty quickly. They generally know more or less where reinforcements CAN come from. In the example above, I deployed, the Rebels got to activate and just unloaded damage on me. eStormies only have 5 hit points. It's not like they're very durable. The Rebels seem to be able to easily do that in a single attack. Between that, all the free movement from abilities and straining all over the place, it's not uncommon for the Rebels to kill 2-3 normal mobs or 1-2 elite mobs in a single activation. One dude got two free move points from another player, strained to move up two spaces so he was adjacent to me then did this melee followed by a shooting attack as his first action and then a regular shooting attack as his second. I don't know the names of all the abilities.

Generally speaking, everything I deploy gets wiped out in one turn, sometimes without getting to go.

You're getting totally boned on dice rolls or something else is going on. Yes, eStormies only have 5 HP, but if two of them are dying with one hero activation, or if you're having a whole deployment wiped before you can even activate the group, I suspect something is wrong.

Can you walk us through the steps that are happening when 2 eStormies get killed with one hero activation?

I'll take a look at the Heroes setup next time we meet up and figure out how they did what they did. I don't have all their ability cards in front of me right now. Unless I hide my dude out of line of sight, they pretty much all die pretty darn quickly.

I'll take a look at the Heroes setup next time we meet up and figure out how they did what they did. I don't have all their ability cards in front of me right now. Unless I hide my dude out of line of sight, they pretty much all die pretty darn quickly.

Cool.

But in general, you recall the first hero activating... first attack OHKO's one eStormie... second attack OHKO's a second eStormie? That's bad luck!

My friends and I started an Imperial Assault Return to Hoth Campaign and are about halfway through.

Up until this point, the Agenda cards have felt almost entirely useless. I have a couple of questions.

1. How am I supposed to afford the 4 Influence cards? Do I just NOT buy any Agenda cards for the first half of the campaign and then hope I draw some of the better Agenda cards?

2. Are most of the Agenda cards really just one and done type cards? I'm finding that I buy the 1 or 2 Influence cards, use them at what I think are appropriate moments and then they're gone, having had minor effect. As an example, I had the agenda that allows one group to make two attacks per activation. I deployed Elite Stormtroopers, played the Agenda and the rebels activated first and took out two of my Stormtroopers before I was able to double attack. Makes me want to throw my hands up in the air.

3. Should I just be ok with the fact that all my stuff dies every turn? The heroes can kill more threat's worth of bad guys than I can deploy in a given turn. Halfway through the campaign and I'm getting 4 threat per turn. That's not enough to deploy even a basic Stormtrooper unit. Doing so takes me two turns and then they're normally all dead within the same turn. I try to deploy them to block doors, hallways, etc with the understanding that they're going to die immediately, but it's just extremely frustrating.

4. Are the unique characters basically never going to happen? I bought all these side packs. The quests aren't coming up, so do I never get to use the models I bought? Are these side packs really just for Skirmirsh and to turn tokens into actual models during story missions? I'd love to add, say, Dengar to my open groups, but that seems like a statistical impossibility. The stars need to align to make that happen.

5. Do my bad guys ever get better? If I pick the wrong class, am I stuck with boring Stormtroopers forever? I have the class that lets me reroll one attack die to start with. I finally got the 4 xp card that lets me just pick a die facing instead of rerolling... at the cost of 1 threat, which is in short supply. Feels like I'll never be able to use this ability.

I'm enjoying spending time with my friends and have actually won 2 out of the 6 missions so far, so it's far from one sided... but those two victories felt hollow with the rebels losing more from making poor decisions and letting the clock run out and less from anything I did.

Thoughts?

1) You have to go without to get the 4 cost cards. I usually always get the "deplete" cards early to mid-campaign, and the discard ones later. If I get a discard card, I try to use it in the very next mission, which can help push me over the hump to a win, which gets me more influence to do it again.

2) Yes, most are one-and-done. But like I said, I personally build around cards that deplete and not discard.

3) Your guys can only die if they can be shot at. Maybe you could spread out, shoot, and then move behind something. Make them waste activations chasing after you. If your guys die super easily, put some of these Hired Guns in so they can at least get a dying shot off!

4) The special guys get their time, but not as much as we'd all like. I really like Twinn Shadows, because you get a lot of Boba Fett. Did you paint your guys?

5) The bad guys do get better, but honestly I'm NOT impressed with spending threat for some special action. If I spend threat, I want more troops!

One dude got two free move points from another player, strained to move up two spaces so he was adjacent to me then did this melee followed by a shooting attack as his first action and then a regular shooting attack as his second. I don't know the names of all the abilities.

Generally speaking, everything I deploy gets wiped out in one turn, sometimes without getting to go.

I've been on both ends of this, playing as a rebel and taking out entire deployment cards worth of figures in an activation (regular freshly deployed troopers in a delicious group) or high-value single targets (E-Webs, etc.) because I was Gideon, and could basically use the best Rebel attacks to do lovely damages. I've also been an Imperial player, and quickly learned the value of deploying out of line of sight, and moving things to make them hard to kill quickly. Force preservation can be key. It can be frustrating for the IP player though, as they often have very little to do in a turn if everything is dead.

The specific example above sounds like it should have required two activations to me...

I am assuming the 2 free movement points came from Fenn's Tactical Movement, but that happens in his activation. Everything else sounds like a standard activation for Biv, but to take out 2 5HP figures like that is unusual for him. Does he have the vibrobayonet and an improved gun? Did you roll the 1 block (or surge cancel?) on both stormies?

I'll take a look at the Heroes setup next time we meet up and figure out how they did what they did. I don't have all their ability cards in front of me right now. Unless I hide my dude out of line of sight, they pretty much all die pretty darn quickly.

So either we're doing something wrong or you are - because this sounds like our game in reverse. We hardly ever kill any imperials. The dice/detail swings in this game are a bit too much for me sometimes. It's very hard for it to be a strategic game (as opposed to an RPG) if you can't reliably plan for things. And with these kinds of swings due to ONE missed rule or something you can't make plans. So you spend long periods of time staring at the board on your turn because everything just changed on the last activation. You can't plan ahead because everything is altered so much with just one move. It's very detailed and very strategic -- it's just not very fun, you know, like -- a game.

It's very detailed and very strategic -- it's just not very fun, you know, like -- a game.

Pretty much sums up my feelings.