I'm at work and the core box just arrived at my house. I had some people who wanted to play when I get off so I was thinking I would pick it up and head to their place. My question is how much time would it take us to get started just cracking open the box? I've looked at the rules online and have some familiarity with the mechanics. I get how the dice and line of sight work but that's about it. I was thinking we would do the tutorial mission so what do you guys think? it will be kind of late so we aren't trying to spend 4+ hours on the game.
How Much Time Does the Tutorial Take?
The tutorial is just a tutorial to the basic mechanisms. Half an hour plus going over the rules should be enough. Also get the FAQ from
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/star-wars-imperial-assault/
After the tutorial read through the rules reference guide so you know when to refer to it. (Do that after the first few missions.)
Then read all of the nice hints about what to read before your first campaign to avoid the mistakes we others did..
You could also watch the tutorial on youtube to get an idea of how it should go.
Also note that the tutorial as written is unwinnable for the rebels. The faq adds a correction the objective
The tutorial is just kind of a playground for the players to mess around with their characters and the mechanics of the game. This is especially important if you're moving next into a campaign, since every single action counts in a campaign- there's certainly a learning curve, but you probably wouldn't want someone learning the base mechanics in the intro mission.
Honestly, I ususally just play two or three turns of the tutorial before we move on. Our channel has a tutorial video that covers some of the basics, if you're interested.
Note that in that video, one of the players (Andrew as Garkhaan) had never ever played the game before, and honestly the extent of having the rules explained to him was almost exclusively from what he sat through during that tutorial. It's a deceptively easy game to learn, and (not to be cliche) a difficult one to master.