I'm a big fan of SW LCG and now I wanted to try one of the miniature games (Imperial Assault of Rebellion) to play with a group 4-5 people.
I'm very happy with SW LCG so far, but I've had some hard time getting my friends to play it, since the first impression is that the game is too complex (edge battles and balance of the force are difficult to explain and it's often unclear how important they are). I want to get more people to play a SW game which is super fun to play, but also makes a good first impression on people who play only casually some less complex games

I wanted to ask which one of these two do you recommend (Imperial Assault of Rebellion)? The factors I consider:
- easy to learn for people who are not gamers
- scales well with more than two players
- appeal to non-SW fans
- fun to play

What are the best things to buy at the start? I know for example that in LCG the optimum is Core set and Edge of Darkness (preferably doubles) to get the best experience. Is that the case with Imperial Assault that the core is not enough to have lots of fun?

Is the campaign or skirmish better for the above-mentioned group of people?

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Rebellion is practically a 2-player-only game. (And so is the skirmish mode. Although you could play in teams, it is just not the same. And 4-player skirmish really requires expansions to make much sense. You practically need more figures to build more than 2 armies.)

There are a lot of finesse and ability interactions in Imperial Assault, but they are dealt piecemal and are very learnable if you just take the time. It also doesn't matter that much if you make a few mistakes when you start playing. Just check the rules after each of the first few missions and get them right the next time. (And you can check Boardgamegeek for the commonly misinterpreted rules or common mistakes.) After that everything is upto the players. (And the first campaign is a learning campaign.)

It also depends on how laid back your group is and how good of a teacher you are.

You only need the Imperial Assault core box - you can get 2-3 campaigns (each 11 to 14 missions, usually 11 or 12, 1-3 hours each) out of it due to various factors that increase the replayability (even if you play a mission second time).

I don't get to play games 2-player, so Rebellion is out for me, but I love Imperial Assault campaign. Both the tactical face-to-face experience and the much more strategic Play By Forum experience.

What are the best things to buy at the start? I know for example that in LCG the optimum is Core set and Edge of Darkness (preferably doubles) to get the best experience. Is that the case with Imperial Assault that the core is not enough to have lots of fun?

Is the campaign or skirmish better for the above-mentioned group of people?

Any advice would be much appreciated!

For anything other than two players only, play the campaign. Campaign is also a smaller buy-in since you don't need any figure packs. You technically don't need any for skirmish either, but skirmish play for two players with one core set is kinda meh.

For the campaign, you'll be all set with the core set (ha, I'm here all week!), there's lots to explore in there and that's at the very least around a dozen of 2-4 hour sessions for your group. Only thing you might consider to buy alongside the core set is the Wave 1 figure packs, since these cointain figures that replace ally and villain characters that are part of the core set campaign, but are represented in the core box as tokens. But that is by no means necessary, while you get some optional side missions with those, they're mostly an aesthetic thing.

After you do the core set campaign, you can play it again switching around the heroes and having another person playing Imperials. The campaign has some branching paths and alternative scenarios, so even on your second playthrough of the same campaign, you'll still see a lot of new content mission-wise. After that, or if you dont want to replay the core campaign, you can get a boxed expansion to get a slew of new missions and figures and cards and content. If you find playing a campaign tiring and would like a more bite-sized experience, get Twin Shadows or Bespin Gambit, these have "mini-campaigns" that you can play in 4-5 sessions. Otherwise, I'd recommend splurging for Return to Hoth, it's the best bang for your buck and comes with a second full size campaign with a lot of interesting new gameplay mechanics in the scenarios.

Figure packs really are optional so you can pick them up as you go and for the characters/units you prefer, though bear in mind that if you really sink into the game, you'll definetly find it hard to resist getting them all.

Rebellion is pretty much out. While it technically has rules for more than two players, it's essentially just two players controlling half the normal game each for the two sides.

Imperial Assault is tricky. It sounds like it might be too complex for them - certainly, it's a level of complexity similar to the LCG. If their gaming experience is more RPG focused you might have some luck, but if they are traditional board gamers, casual gamers, or not really gamers at all you it'll be difficult.

Having said that, buy the Core Set, buy the Han/Chewie figure packs, and maybe IG-88 and Royal Guard Champion. That will let you represent pretty much everything in the Core Set with minis - you can play with cardboard tokens, but if you're trying to get people into the game, that's not going to help. You could hold off on these though, and buy them if you specifically go into missions with these guys, as you won't encounter them in every campaign (assuming you've got easy access to them).

In my experience, both Imperial Assault and Descent go over pretty well with the 'occasional gamers' crowd, unless they're the type of casuals that flat out refuse to play anything with any conflict or fantasy or sci-fi in it. They can usually get into the story okay (everyone heard about Star Wars or saving the land from an evil dragon and people generally like those stories, if only for nostalgia), getting their own character lets them focus on one fairly straightforward set of rules and interactions out of an otherwise more complex game, and the co-op gameplay in the party helps immensely, both with strategizing and socially.

What you shouldn't do is make inexperienced casual players play as the Overlord/Emperor, but I think that's fairly obvious.

You can explain enough for people to start playing Imperial Assault in less than 5 minutes.

The problem when introducing people to new games is explain enough to start vs everything.

I did notice in the announcement that there would be 2 more 4-player skirmish missions in the Jabba Realm expansion

Thanks for the feedback, that was very helpful. I think I'll risk buying IA and I'll go with explaining 5 minute long basics and go further with the details during first mission. Has that worked out okay in your case? I hope my crowd won't be too tough to get into... the most complex game we've played together was Ankh-Morpork

Imperial Assault requires time commitment and attention. 1 group fell apart because they wanted something more casual and didn't like how IA prioritized objectives over killing baddies, the other group fell apart because of lack of time. We'd have months between missions, and they'd forget all the rules and character abilities. I'm currently gaming with 2 groups that's working quite well as they're all pretty into the campaign.