Hi All,

To the folks who have (partly) played both campaigns (RTH, JR), I am wondering how you would compare them. I haven't seen any reviews/comments on the Jabba realm campaign, so very interested in reading the first experiences.

Thanks in advance!

To me, it just keeps getting better. Very thematic, decent story, good surprises. We had fun although the heroes got CRUSHED in the last mission. Can't remember exactly which one it was, I'm sure I can look it up.

...I can't find how to make spoilers, html code doesn't seem to work on the preview so I'll leave out the short details.

I remember a plot twist which will ruin it for repeat play(tactics will change), but we'll see how it goes on a second run if we do that mission again.

Jabba's Realm has made improvements to the overall campaign structure. Being able to choose your story mission is good and the reward structure is much better. They took the idea of a thematic interlude and made it even better. In fact, there are a lot of really great thematic elements.

They scrapped threat missions, which I am thankful for. The more I played the Hoth campaign, the more I hated them.

However, Jabba's Realm kind of took a step back in terms of individual mission balance. There are a lot of missions that are heavily skewed either to the rebels or to the imperials and only a handful that are relatively balanced. While there are a similar # of imp favored missions to rebel favored, it does pose a problem for replayability where rebels will simply avoid picking a imp favored mission (and sometimes the other choice is Rebel favored). It is pretty disappointing.

If it wasnt for the balance issues, Id say this is way better than Hoth, but as it stands, I am currently unsure my overall feelings for the campaign.

I wanted to do a second playthrough and a bit of testing before I posted, but my initial thoughts are that it's pretty horribly balanced. Now, again, I need to do some testing because the first playthrough used the new heroes and the new heroes are... different. So it might be balanced with the old heroes, but my suspicion is no. Also most story missions have 2 choices and so MAYBE we took the easy ones the first time through? Have to see.

We've had almost every mission be a complete and total Rebel victory, this includes the Luke Skywalker Jedi Knight mission which was easily won in 2 turns. The missions that weren't complete victories for the Rebels were the Vinto side mission which looks pretty near impossible except our Imperial player made some mistakes, possibly intentionally, and the interlude mission which is completely impossible for the Rebels and broken (at least if you go Rebel side.)

It is an interesting campaign because there is a lot more stuff going on, things to do, events happening etc. and they have done some fixing of problems in other campaigns, so that Rebels often spend movement rather than do interacts, an overall good mechanic if not perfect when you have Shayla and her 15 movement points/turn. But it really feels like there was no playtesting as stuff is far too easy or occasionally completely impossible. It's even more noticeable with Bespin being ridiculous and often impossible leading into Jabba's Realm which is the complete opposite and usually far too easy. But again, needs more testing, it is possible the new heroes are simply far more powerful than previous ones, they certainly start with better weapons anyway. But the fact that the fixed mission in the middle is (potentially) impossible is pretty problematic regardless.

To compare directly to Hoth, I'd say they have a lot in common, as Hoth tries to add a bunch of new things, like getting Echo Base Troopers without doing a side mission, collapsing tunnels, hidden map areas etc. but Jabba's Realm even more so. Difficulty wise, Hoth was the easiest campaign before JR, although not so easy it was a cakewalk. JR seems far easier. They both offer good sets of additional miniatures, with JR ones probably being a bit stronger, but Hoth were on the weak side even at release.

I know the Story mission 1 that I chose was heavily imperial favored

. My friends campaign also chose it and had a similar experience.

The story mission 2 I chose was close.

The story mission 3 I did was a complete imperial blowout.

Story mission 4 was also close

. My friend said the other option was heavily rebel favored.

I also thought both Trespass and Moment of Fate were both pretty heavily Rebel heavily favored.

I did think the finale was challenging but winnable. Harder than the Hoth finale anyway.

16 minutes ago, Deadwolf said:

I know the Story mission 1 that I chose was heavily imperial favored

Overcharged

. My friends campaign also chose it and had a similar experience.

The story mission 2 I chose was close.

Trophy Hunting

The story mission 3 I did was a complete imperial blowout.

From All Sides

Story mission 4 was also close

Almost Home

. My friend said the other option was heavily rebel favored.

I also thought both Trespass and Moment of Fate were both pretty heavily Rebel heavily favored.

I did think the finale was challenging but winnable. Harder than the Hoth finale anyway.

The starting mission was bizzare in that it gave the Rebels help and we just rolled it and probably would have won easily had the help gone to the Imperials instead.

We did the other mission for the 2nd story mission and it was interesting given that Imperials could steal, but greater Rebel movement speed won it fairly handily. I could see this one being lose able with some bad attack rolls though.

Trophy Hunting we picked Boba Fett. Even with the Imperial using the Agenda card to make the officer even tougher, it wasn't even close. Shayla moved 10 and beat his face in, Boba moved 12 into position, Vinto shot him. Next round between Boba and Shayla it was a massacre.

Moment of Fate was impossible because the Imperials had the +2 movement class card and the objectives are close enough the +2 means a freshly deployed squad can get to them.

From All Sides... Rebels can rush the Imperial side neutering a lot of the Imperial's deployment, or block the last healthy hero in a corner making this not really possible for the Imperials to win. Given we had Onar with his black sun armor, Vinto had his combat coat and Desperado reward card, Shayla had her combat coat and +evade class card, and Murn had her admiral's coat, it was a cakewalk. It would take some creative use of agenda cards to make this possible for the Imperials.

8 hours ago, Union said:

The starting mission was bizzare in that it gave the Rebels help and we just rolled it and probably would have won easily had the help gone to the Imperials instead.

We did the other mission for the 2nd story mission and it was interesting given that Imperials could steal, but greater Rebel movement speed won it fairly handily. I could see this one being lose able with some bad attack rolls though.

Trophy Hunting we picked Boba Fett. Even with the Imperial using the Agenda card to make the officer even tougher, it wasn't even close. Shayla moved 10 and beat his face in, Boba moved 12 into position, Vinto shot him. Next round between Boba and Shayla it was a massacre.

Moment of Fate was impossible because the Imperials had the +2 movement class card and the objectives are close enough the +2 means a freshly deployed squad can get to them.

From All Sides... Rebels can rush the Imperial side neutering a lot of the Imperial's deployment, or block the last healthy hero in a corner making this not really possible for the Imperials to win. Given we had Onar with his black sun armor, Vinto had his combat coat and Desperado reward card, Shayla had her combat coat and +evade class card, and Murn had her admiral's coat, it was a cakewalk. It would take some creative use of agenda cards to make this possible for the Imperials.

interesting.

One major difference is I went hyper offensive where you went defensive. Explains some differences in experience.

A couple things tho, in From All Sides, the last healthy hero has to be in the center room so it is pretty hard to "hide in a corner".

And the +2 movement card you mentioned is ringleader right? That is villian only so your scenario seems off. Anyway, my hyper offense paid off there, the imperials ran out of units.

Will have to play again for sure.

Union, what class deck were the imperials using in your playthrough? Looking both of the new ones it seems like the Hutt deck with the bounty tokens (don't remember the name) is stronger, or at least easier to play well, than the Nemesis deck.

I'm a bit worried if you're saying that this campaign is too easy on the rebels. I play the campaigns against a friend of mine, with one of us controlling four characters. However I tend to play the game a lot more than him, so as a result I've usually got a bit of an edge. When we played Bespin, though, with me as the Imperial, it was so one-sided as to take a lot of the fun away - not only did I win every mission, but none of the missions were even really close. I think he left the experience feeling pretty frustrated (and before anyone suggests that I just try to play in more of a DM role, he's not really interested in that and actually calls me out if he thinks that I'm going easy at all).

Now we were planning on starting the Jabba campaign tonight, with me playing the rebels this time, but I'd really like to avoid another one-sided slog (especially in a full-length campaign). Were the missions that the rebels won at least close, or did you feel that it was a complete cakewalk?

Has anybody else had a similar experience with Jabba's Realm? Or are there some imperials who have had some success?

Our imperial player is running 2 rebel groups through the campaign (both took the 3 new heroes+1 other) and he took the two new decks (one for each rebel group). He is crushing both groups, not even close.
By far the worst set of missions I've seen balance-wise.

5 hours ago, Deadwolf said:

And the +2 movement card you mentioned is ringleader right? That is villian only so your scenario seems off. Anyway, my hyper offense paid off there, the imperials ran out of units.

+2 movement is "Prepare The Ambush" in the Nemesis deck. It seems an awful lot like they didn't playtest it because it pretty much hands the interlude mission to the Imperials. I had Jedi Luke with a 4 threat discount from Murn, and was obliterating stuff with her Waylay giving Luke a 3rd attack, and Onar another RED GREEN BLUE attack. Then pretty much instant loss.

We went fairly offensive in our picks. Onar's first was Don't Make Me Hurt You, his second was the Black Sun Armor. Murn Propaganda > Company of Heroes (giving us a free C3-PO each mission) > Waylay same mission Luke was won > Professional Aid. Vinto Shot on the Run > (Desperado) > Merciless > Rapid Fire. Shayla Responsiveness > Deadly Grace > Full Sweep.

Shayla's +3 movement made a few missions much easier and pretty much broke Jedi Luke's mission, but her movement isn't all that exceptional considering what Gideon can do to people, and even Diala can throw people 3 and Fenn 2.

Okay, I think that was a case of the imperial card giving a large advantage, just as you said Shyla's movement broke the Luke mission (My friend said he lost that mission quite handily).

Against Hutt Mercenaries (in which i was playing improperly), that was one of the few missions where I didnt have issues. Shrugs.

Different people will have different experiences but we don't disagree that the campaign has balance issues.

There are a lot of missions that favor one class deck or another. I don't think it can be avoided with all the different flavors in the game at this point.

7 hours ago, a1bert said:

There are a lot of missions that favor one class deck or another. I don't think it can be avoided with all the different flavors in the game at this point.

You'd think class decks for the expansion would at least work well with the expansion. It's not as bad as Bespin which turn's Davith's lightsaber into a massive trap with holocam rules or the stealth class card, or Murne's ally discount which can't even be used in the finale, but there do seem to be some things that don't really mesh well.

On 2/9/2017 at 1:04 AM, Union said:

We did the other mission for the 2nd story mission and it was interesting given that Imperials could steal, but greater Rebel movement speed won it fairly handily. I could see this one being lose able with some bad attack rolls though.

We (Rebels) recently played out this mission and thought we had a strong upper hand by Turn 3-4. We had 5 crates in our stockpile and then it was clarified that they could be stolen so we pulled back to go on defense. Unfortunately, we just stopped killing figures period, and then the Trandoshans appeared and by Turn 6 two Heroes went down and a pile of scrubs cleaned out our 5 crates just like that. It was extremely demoralizing and we couldn't figure out how we could have done anything different beside "kill guys" and "don't die" (neither of which panned out).

23 hours ago, Smashotron said:

We (Rebels) recently played out this mission and thought we had a strong upper hand by Turn 3-4. We had 5 crates in our stockpile and then it was clarified that they could be stolen so we pulled back to go on defense. Unfortunately, we just stopped killing figures period, and then the Trandoshans appeared and by Turn 6 two Heroes went down and a pile of scrubs cleaned out our 5 crates just like that. It was extremely demoralizing and we couldn't figure out how we could have done anything different beside "kill guys" and "don't die" (neither of which panned out).

We only got 2 on, 1 on the 2nd last round and 1 on the last round. Too busy murdering stuff. It was a bit funny, I think we had one crate dropped 5 times.

19 hours ago, Union said:

We only got 2 on, 1 on the 2nd last round and 1 on the last round. Too busy murdering stuff. It was a bit funny, I think we had one crate dropped 5 times.

Just ran this last week as the Imperial player. It was fairly close -- I had one on the stockpile and the Rebels two. They had Jedi Luke and didn't attempt to get the spice until the end. They just concentrated on killing me, which worked out well for them. The Rebels don't often have the chance to essentially ignore objectives and just kill. I think they relished the opportunity. Bossk coming in and getting killed before he even activated was the most crushing blow I've ever been dealt in IA. I hate Jedi Luke so, so much.

Question: We interpreted the rules as Luke being able to carry the spice since it technically wasn't an interact. Thoughts? It didn't really affect our play much. He only picked one up and almost instantly dropped it.

After playing Hostile Negotiations, I think it is one of those missions that will vary wildly from one experience to another.

I lost but it was close. Happened a couple times where I wiffed on a couple key attacks allowing the unit carrying the spice to run away.

On 12.2.2017 at 4:12 PM, vapodge said:

Question: We interpreted the rules as Luke being able to carry the spice since it technically wasn't an interact. Thoughts? It didn't really affect our play much. He only picked one up and almost instantly dropped it.

There is no problem. Allies can interact. Only heroes can interact with crates, but all non-companion figures can interact (except when disallowed by something like Non-Sentient).