Has anyone ever tried going all Iron Man on Imperial Assault? As in, when a Hero withdraws (is defeated two times in a single mission), it counts as a straight-up kill and that Hero has to be replaced by another available Hero in later missions? It could give a whole new level of strategy for the IP and for the Heroes... Start with Gideon or bring him in later in the Campaign? Go for the kill of a single Hero or for wounding all the Heroes?

Of course, the new Hero would have the same XP and general number of Items and Weapons somehow...

Just curious...

No, but I like that idea.

Kind of like how investigators can die in Eldritch Horror, but players can pick a new one and even encounter their dying former investigator to get their stuff.

I think that maybe the most fair way of doing it is this:

If a Rebel Hero dies, the player controlling it chooses a new hero at the end of the mission. That player then gets to immediately purchase XP cards equal to the total cost of XP cards the previous hero had. All unspent XP is lost, as a penalty.

That hero also gets all gear that the former hero had, as is almost a motif in Star Wars. This can also be considered a penalty in some ways, as it's not necessarily likely that the previous hero's optimal build will be identical with the new one's- but at least they're getting something, and they can of course sell things back for half the credits.

Yeah, cool thoughts. Although I'd hate for a kill to be more of a downside that it has to be - it's mostly just to shake things up a little over long campaigns.

I think I still like just transferring ALL the XP from the dead Hero to the new Hero, not just the ones spent. And either do your suggestion for Items (I mean, the Heroes can always trade them between each other) or just buy new randomized items for an equal amount of credits that the dead Hero's items were worth...

Thanks for the ideas..

Yeah, I can see it going either way, really. You're totally right that it shouldn't be too crippling, but I still think there should be some sort of penalty. Even in Eldritch Horror, an investigator's death moves Doom forward. What I kind of want to avoid is for the Rebels to be able to strategically rearrange their roster for a campaign with no serious repercussions by killing off specific team members. That has major balance and theme issues.

Maybe, taking inspiration from that, the Imp player gets some amount of extra threat at the beginning of the next mission, instead.

It's a cool idea, especially since (depending on the penalty) killing off a hero might not always be in the IP's best interests. Like maybe you'll want to kill off that annoying Gideon or Fenn that's been bugging you, but not so fast: that means that the new hero, whoever they are, essentially gets a free "respec", choosing all of their XP abilities based on what powers all of the other players have chosen. It's a neat decision.

It's a cool idea, especially since (depending on the penalty) killing off a hero might not always be in the IP's best interests. Like maybe you'll want to kill off that annoying Gideon or Fenn that's been bugging you, but not so fast: that means that the new hero, whoever they are, essentially gets a free "respec", choosing all of their XP abilities based on what powers all of the other players have chosen. It's a neat decision.

Except whoever you bring in won't be as good as Gideon or Fenn since they're probably the two best heroes.

It would really promote focus firing down Gideon, MHD-19 and Murne leaving the Rebels with no strain recovery.

It's death spirally and putting the Rebel's team composition in the Imperial's hands won't end well. Losing 4 or 5 missions to make sure there is no Fenn or support heroes left for the last mission, totally worth it. There is no down side for the Imperials.

Except whoever you bring in won't be as good as Gideon or Fenn since they're probably the two best heroes.

It would really promote focus firing down Gideon, MHD-19 and Murne leaving the Rebels with no strain recovery.

It's death spirally and putting the Rebel's team composition in the Imperial's hands won't end well. Losing 4 or 5 missions to make sure there is no Fenn or support heroes left for the last mission, totally worth it. There is no down side for the Imperials.

That's a valid point, and I guess it would depend on how competitive your play group is. Because you're right that if the imp decided to just habitually kill the support characters that the rebels could be in a lot of trouble.

It's a cool idea, especially since (depending on the penalty) killing off a hero might not always be in the IP's best interests. Like maybe you'll want to kill off that annoying Gideon or Fenn that's been bugging you, but not so fast: that means that the new hero, whoever they are, essentially gets a free "respec", choosing all of their XP abilities based on what powers all of the other players have chosen. It's a neat decision.

Except whoever you bring in won't be as good as Gideon or Fenn since they're probably the two best heroes.

It would really promote focus firing down Gideon, MHD-19 and Murne leaving the Rebels with no strain recovery.

It's death spirally and putting the Rebel's team composition in the Imperial's hands won't end well. Losing 4 or 5 missions to make sure there is no Fenn or support heroes left for the last mission, totally worth it. There is no down side for the Imperials.

That's true, and it's probably where the parallels with Eldritch Horror end. The Ancient One in Eldritch Horror won't exactly specifically target specific investigators it deems a threat (though I guess there are some mechanics that could potentially mimic this, like Lead Investigator). The damage is typically dealt a little more equally.

In IA, you could have a whole meta mission where the Imp ignores all objectives and instead tries to take down a specific Rebel threat. If every single Imp unit goes after a single Rebel in one turn, that could be a little more devastating- though, I suppose the Rebels could use that to their advantage, too.

How about a middle ground between the two, make it similar to the campaign in XCOM where a withdrawn hero has to "heal" and is unavailable for a mission or two? And keep track of the XP pool for the heroes in the "barracks" alongside the main group but with some kind of penalty/discount, so that they don't have as much XP as the main group but can still contribute to later missions. That way there's still a penalty to having a hero withdrawn from a mission (miss an important hero for the next mission or two and they only get part of the XP earned by the group during that time) but it's not too crippling (that hero is replaced by another, albeit less XP'd, hero and also can come back).

How about a middle ground between the two, make it similar to the campaign in XCOM where a withdrawn hero has to "heal" and is unavailable for a mission or two? And keep track of the XP pool for the heroes in the "barracks" alongside the main group but with some kind of penalty/discount, so that they don't have as much XP as the main group but can still contribute to later missions. That way there's still a penalty to having a hero withdrawn from a mission (miss an important hero for the next mission or two and they only get part of the XP earned by the group during that time) but it's not too crippling (that hero is replaced by another, albeit less XP'd, hero and also can come back).

Would a different hero take his spot? Or would the Rebels just be down a hero, and redistribute the activation tokens?

If it's the latter that could be problematic. For one, it could sometimes actually work as an advantage for the Rebels. Also, if each player controls a single Rebel hero, someone would have to sit out a round, and that's no fun.

Maybe (and this is really theoretical) the Rebels can choose an ally to come in for that player to control, but are forced to pay that ally's threat cost).

How about a middle ground between the two, make it similar to the campaign in XCOM where a withdrawn hero has to "heal" and is unavailable for a mission or two? And keep track of the XP pool for the heroes in the "barracks" alongside the main group but with some kind of penalty/discount, so that they don't have as much XP as the main group but can still contribute to later missions. That way there's still a penalty to having a hero withdrawn from a mission (miss an important hero for the next mission or two and they only get part of the XP earned by the group during that time) but it's not too crippling (that hero is replaced by another, albeit less XP'd, hero and also can come back).

I don't think you need to reduce XP, not being able to bring who you want is already penalty enough. This is already hitting the Rebels hard as any rewards on characters can't be transferred etc. Mak win his special camo cloak... bam, no Mak for the next mission, wasted reward.

And there is still no real downside for the Imperials. You might want to consider reducing influence if a Rebel withdraws as the Empire puts it's support elsewhere that is more needed.

Would a different hero take his spot? Or would the Rebels just be down a hero, and redistribute the activation tokens?

If it's the latter that could be problematic. For one, it could sometimes actually work as an advantage for the Rebels. Also, if each player controls a single Rebel hero, someone would have to sit out a round, and that's no fun.

Maybe (and this is really theoretical) the Rebels can choose an ally to come in for that player to control, but are forced to pay that ally's threat cost).

I was thinking that a different hero would take his spot, I think the game is max fun when all four heroes are playing so wouldn't ever recommend being down one.

I don't think you need to reduce XP, not being able to bring who you want is already penalty enough. This is already hitting the Rebels hard as any rewards on characters can't be transferred etc. Mak win his special camo cloak... bam, no Mak for the next mission, wasted reward.

And there is still no real downside for the Imperials. You might want to consider reducing influence if a Rebel withdraws as the Empire puts it's support elsewhere that is more needed.

To each their own, whether or not to reduce XP is just a balancing thing at that point. As far as downside for the imperials, I don't think the idea of Iron Man is to make the game easier for the Rebels so again this would just be a matter of balancing the details to taste. There should be some kind of penalty to having a hero go down, that's kind of the whole point.

I would only consider this if I was playing against an Imperial AI. PvP is already challenging enough for the rebels as it is.

My basic intention with the idea was simply to shake up the Heroes over a long campaign, so I really like the XCOM-idea of them sitting out a single mission, when they withdraw and bringing in a new Hero at the same "level" (XP, abilities and items). It really should not be a downside for the Rebels in a game that's already challenging enough.

I'm going to suggest the idea to my playgroup tonight, so let's see what they say.

Only downside I see is players not being familiar with the replacement heros. If your group has played all the current heros, no problems. If not maybe give a few mulligans for missed opportunities. Could also force the Imps to change their class deck if the Imps lose a mission.

Only downside I see is players not being familiar with the replacement heros. If your group has played all the current heros, no problems. If not maybe give a few mulligans for missed opportunities. Could also force the Imps to change their class deck if the Imps lose a mission.

Well, again, I think that there should be some sort of "punishment" on the Rebels' behalf. If being less familiar with a hero is it (though that's not all that reliable, as some Reb players will know other heroes pretty well) but at least that's something.

I really like the idea of forcing a withdrawn hero to sit out for a period of time. I think the semantics of it can depend on how many expansions you have and thus how many heroes on in your pool. I've got all the expansions (Jabba's Realm on pre-order, yay) so I think I'm going to try it where the rebels go through the pool of heroes, and if that gets exhausted, then they get to start over with choosing from that pool.

Except whoever you bring in won't be as good as Gideon or Fenn since they're probably the two best heroes.

It would really promote focus firing down Gideon, MHD-19 and Murne leaving the Rebels with no strain recovery.

It's death spirally and putting the Rebel's team composition in the Imperial's hands won't end well. Losing 4 or 5 missions to make sure there is no Fenn or support heroes left for the last mission, totally worth it. There is no down side for the Imperials.

That's a valid point, and I guess it would depend on how competitive your play group is. Because you're right that if the imp decided to just habitually kill the support characters that the rebels could be in a lot of trouble.

In my experience, the Imperial is focusing on a specific hero is not all bad. You can lead the imperials away from the action and let the other heroes complete the mission objectives. Or you can just sit and heal twice a round while drawing fire. It doesn't always work, but any Imperial figure not impeding the progress of objective focused heroes is a win for the Rebels.

Lastly, it would entirely depend on the level of my group and how many heroes a person is controlling on whether or not they have to switch out their Heroes. I've played campaigns where a single person controls 4 rebel heroes, campaigns where a person controls 2 heroes, and campaigns where a single person per hero. There's no way I'm making a person controlling 4 heroes swap out one of them, it's hard enough as it is to remember all the abilities a single hero has, and now you're asking them to figure out a new one. I might give them the option, but I wouldn't force the issue. When you have 2 or more persons controlling the heroes, I'd have to make a decision based on their skill.

I'm going to play around with some variations of this and see how it goes. If I get any useful data I'll try to remember to post it here.