My wife and I stopped playing IA because we fought when we played. Last night I had a friend start Descent (at his request) and I think we had fun, but we had a VERY frustrating two losses due to the same thing that made IA unwinnable (IMO) as the Rebels. Focus Fire!

So when my wife played as the Imperial, I felt that a wise Imperial always focuses ALL their fire on a single hero, who is unable to do anything to prevent this. Same in Descent. Without time limits, the heroes can hang back and rest, killing enemies more leisurely. But with time limits, they have to balance move, attack, and rest. I think nearly every mission can be won by the Imperials by simply clogging hallways and focusing on a single hero until they are wounded.

The mission for Descent last night had us chasing after the boss as she tried to escape, with monsters and a series of closed doors in our way. One of our characters had a good attribute for opening doors, and had the equivalent of 14 health. She had a potion to regain health, a talisman to give her extra defense, and an ally who could give her extra defense. The overlord (me, I play as both OL and two heroes in Descent) moved monsters in front of the doors two layers thick, forcing the heroes to thin them out for her to get up to the next door. This placed her in a precarious position each turn, and with 5+ attacks targeting her, she got knocked out each and every turn.

I feel like it is unrealistic for three squads of stormtroopers to be presented with a Jedi, a Wookiee, a guerrilla fighter, and a smuggler, and have all nine stormtroopers ignore the other three to shoot at the smuggler until she is dead. We have been tossing around the house rule that "If there is more than one viable target, each deployment group must target a different hero." But I can see this being a major power-swing.

In Imperial Assault you have alternating activations unlike Descent. A good rebel strategy is to limit the damage each imperial activation can deal by reducing their size.

The priority:

1) First attack unactivated figures which you can surely take out in one action - do not rely on long-shots

2) Defeat unactivated figures of multi-figure groups to make the groups smaller - instead of defeating 2 figures from one 3-figure group, defeat one figure each from two 3-figure groups. Due to alternating activations, the imperial can then only attack twice (instead of 3 times), and then on your next activation you can defeat the remaining 2 figures from the other group before it activates.

3) Defeat the last figure of an unactivated group to remove one imperial activation

4) Attack the greatest threat

5) If you have activation advantage, do not go to the imperial figures, let them come to you.

So, how can the imperial player attack with 3 groups of 3 figures each when the rebel heroes can potentially defeat 2 (or more) figures after each group activates? Are you playing with alternating activations?

Especially if you play with just 2 heroes, focused fire is pretty much the only way the imperial player can ever wound a hero.

"I feel like it is unrealistic for three squads of stormtroopers to be presented with a Jedi, a Wookiee, a guerrilla fighter, and a smuggler, and have all nine stormtroopers ignore the other three to shoot at the smuggler until she is dead."

They aren't shooting until dead, the hero is back for the next mission. They're shot until they can't fight anymore.

Shooting someone until they can't shoot you back... well, that is sort of the point. Saying it isn't realistic is pretty bizarre.

It's abstracted. Heroes aren't truly wounded until the card flips, before that strain and just you know, resting for a little, recovers "wounds." This is no different than the many blaster shots fired down the hall at Luke and his companions, they didn't really "wound" them so much as force them back or tire them out. It's not until they flip that they're really hit, and not until they withdraw that they're seriously injured.

Focus firing is the only way for the Imperials to win much of the time. If you spread the damage out then the Rebels can just take more Imperials off the board early on rather than spend actions resting which will just guarantee a loss for the Imperials.

I would recommend looking at the various coop variants? It will remove the fighting between players while still letting you enjoy the game

Positioning is really important and activation timings are important. Following the hints a1bert gave and don't play to much as a rambo with your heroes. But sometimes you have to risk that a hero or two gets wounded to get the deal done.

Yes, you can expect that one or two heroes (out of 4) get wounded during a mission. All heroes staying healthy is not a win condition for the rebels.

As someone who's played as the Imps for most of the campaigns I've been involved with... I really have no idea how I'd be supposed to win many of the missions WITHOUT focused fire.

Focus fire is the right way to play the Imperials, in most cases - arguably forcing multiple characters to waste turns resting is more beneficial to run out the clock, but you still have to be doing enough damage to them that they feel threatened enough to rest. So avoiding that is the Rebels job.

As people have mentioned, the Rebels should be spending time thinning out active enemies before they can do damage. They should be using positioning to reduce the shots they take, they should be taking upgrades/items to help them survive (including 'kill the enemy first' effects, like Jyn). Vulnerable units should be activating later in the turn so that they can heal if needed, or activating early if they need to heal RIGHT NOW. A double rest undoes a *lot* of work the Imperials put into it.The idea that Rebels can't do anything about focus fire is just wrong - it sounds like maybe the players are choosing not to.

Even then, they should be expecting to lose at least some characters in a mission - wounding all characters is often an Imperial win condition, not expecting them to at least threaten doing that is kind of silly. You've also got to consider the Imperial class deck - e.g. Military Might has the tools to very easily wound heroes in 1-2 activations. That's what it is designed to do, and the Rebels have to take that into account while they are playing.

Beyond that, and assuming no misplayed rules or anything, it also seems like you're using fairly 'gamey' blocking/tarpit style tactics. If your other players aren't also playing at a competitive level, that may be part of the problem. There's a lot of discussion about how much the Imperials are a player vs a GM, and ultimately it comes down to the players. If you're competitive minded and they aren't, it might be a case of having to ease up a bit on the 'optimum tactics' if you want to keep your players around. And yes, depending on the skill level of your players, that might mean not focus firing on them. But if you're doing that, I'd suggest it probably should be part of adapting a different playstyle, rather than implementing rules like 'you've got to shoot different people'.

Focus fire is the right way to play the Imperials, in most cases - arguably forcing multiple characters to waste turns resting is more beneficial to run out the clock, but you still have to be doing enough damage to them that they feel threatened enough to rest. So avoiding that is the Rebels job.

As people have mentioned, the Rebels should be spending time thinning out active enemies before they can do damage. They should be using positioning to reduce the shots they take, they should be taking upgrades/items to help them survive (including 'kill the enemy first' effects, like Jyn). Vulnerable units should be activating later in the turn so that they can heal if needed, or activating early if they need to heal RIGHT NOW. A double rest undoes a *lot* of work the Imperials put into it.The idea that Rebels can't do anything about focus fire is just wrong - it sounds like maybe the players are choosing not to.

Even then, they should be expecting to lose at least some characters in a mission - wounding all characters is often an Imperial win condition, not expecting them to at least threaten doing that is kind of silly. You've also got to consider the Imperial class deck - e.g. Military Might has the tools to very easily wound heroes in 1-2 activations. That's what it is designed to do, and the Rebels have to take that into account while they are playing.

Beyond that, and assuming no misplayed rules or anything, it also seems like you're using fairly 'gamey' blocking/tarpit style tactics. If your other players aren't also playing at a competitive level, that may be part of the problem. There's a lot of discussion about how much the Imperials are a player vs a GM, and ultimately it comes down to the players. If you're competitive minded and they aren't, it might be a case of having to ease up a bit on the 'optimum tactics' if you want to keep your players around. And yes, depending on the skill level of your players, that might mean not focus firing on them. But if you're doing that, I'd suggest it probably should be part of adapting a different playstyle, rather than implementing rules like 'you've got to shoot different people'.

Double rest??? That is an entire activation, leaving you exactly where you were when you were wounded to the point of needing a double rest. Yes, there may be times when this is possible, but missions like Aftermath and Homecoming simply don't give enough time to double rest. And especially when you have to protect a specific character, like Luke or Han, then the heroes HAVE to absorb the damage.

As far as competitiveness... it's difficult to balance. It's no fun being steamrolled (which I think the missions allow in too many situations), but it's also no fun knowing that you're being ALLOWED to win. It's supposed to be fun, and personally I think RAW strongly favor the Imperial. However, when talking to others, they have different viewpoints. But I think it's hard to compare one group's "heroes always win" to another group's "the heroes have no chance."

The rules work WONDERFULLY for skirmish, in which two "equal" forces are directly competing. For campaign though...

Double rest??? That is an entire activation, leaving you exactly where you were when you were wounded to the point of needing a double rest. Yes, there may be times when this is possible, but missions like Aftermath and Homecoming simply don't give enough time to double rest. And especially when you have to protect a specific character, like Luke or Han, then the heroes HAVE to absorb the damage.

As far as competitiveness... it's difficult to balance. It's no fun being steamrolled (which I think the missions allow in too many situations), but it's also no fun knowing that you're being ALLOWED to win. It's supposed to be fun, and personally I think RAW strongly favor the Imperial. However, when talking to others, they have different viewpoints. But I think it's hard to compare one group's "heroes always win" to another group's "the heroes have no chance."

The rules work WONDERFULLY for skirmish, in which two "equal" forces are directly competing. For campaign though...

Don't forget that heroes can incur strain to gain movement points, twice per activation. So you can move two places and still double rest on one activation. Also don't forget about blocking line of sight. Using cover, keeping heroes positioned in a way that they can selectively block for each other, all in addition to the other advice given above. There's a lot of talk on the forums about balance and I think the consensus is that the core campaign is relatively balanced, but slightly favors the Imperials. That's also over the course of the whole campaign, certain individual missions (like Aftermath as you specified) are much more heavily balanced in Imperial favor.

In you group do the rebels absolutely never win? Or are you just finding Imperials winning more?

The campaign that we played with my wife as the Imperial led to my Rebels losing the first 7 missions. At that point, I conceded defeat and we moved on to Twin Shadows.

The first campaign, I played as the Imperial, and definitely pulled my punches and targeted different heroes. I didn't have a set plan in place, but if I shot Fenn up a good bit and then Gaarkhan killed an officer, I would shoot at Gaarkhan. I approached the missions more as a dungeon master than as a competitive force, trying to challenge her without steam rolling her. Sometimes, even that didn't make a difference.

My wife definitely did some more "****" moves though. For instance, the mission with IG-88 where you have to get Han out of the back room, she deployed a Nexu adjacent to the space in which Han spawns wounded from the fight. A nexu that can move faster than Han and leap to combine movement and attack... of course he died immediately. She still swears she didn't plan that in advance, but the fact that there can even BE an active spawn next to that space in the first place seems ridiculous to me.

Aftermath is, IMO, completely unwinnable against a competent Imperial barring tremendous lucky dice. The problem is, if you never win Aftermath, you always branch the campaign in the same direction.

She still swears she didn't plan that in advance, but the fact that there can even BE an active spawn next to that space in the first place seems ridiculous to me.

There actually isn't an active deployment point there.

Only green deployment points are active at the start of a mission, and deployment points do not become active from one-time deployments. And there are only two green deployment points, one blue one that doesn't become active, and deployments to tiles in Fly Solo.

Fly Solo is still a very hard mission for the rebels.

Aftermath is slightly tilted to rebels. If they pull up shock grenades from a crate, they are sure to win. But losing Aftermath is best for either side.

couples couseling

Aftermath is, IMO, completely unwinnable against a competent Imperial barring tremendous lucky dice. The problem is, if you never win Aftermath, you always branch the campaign in the same direction.

I'd agree \with a1bert that Aftermath is tilted for the Rebs AND that the mission progression favors the loser.

There actually isn't an active deployment point there.

Only green deployment points are active at the start of a mission, and deployment points do not become active from one-time deployments. And there are only two green deployment points, one blue one that doesn't become active, and deployments to tiles in Fly Solo.

Fly Solo is still a very hard mission for the rebels.

Aftermath is slightly tilted to rebels. If they pull up shock grenades from a crate, they are sure to win. But losing Aftermath is best for either side.

Oh... my... God! I just looked at the mission. You're right! I wonder how many other rules she messed up to add to my frustrations!

"I trusted [her] to [play right]. It's not my fault"