I'm running Twin Suns for some friends in a few days, and I'm having trouble wrapping my head around Forced Missions and Side Missions from Imperial Agenda cards.

Since the mini campaign only contains story missions, do the missions from the the Agenda cards even get played? If they don't, do I automatically get the reward for them?

23 minutes ago, teddygundam said:

I'm running Twin Suns for some friends in a few days, and I'm having trouble wrapping my head around Forced Missions and Side Missions from Imperial Agenda cards.

Since the mini campaign only contains story missions, do the missions from the the Agenda cards even get played? If they don't, do I automatically get the reward for them?

you never play them or get anything from them. In mini campaign, during preparation phase, you put into the box all agenda cards that contain forced or side missions

House rules aside, all agenda missions are removed during minicampaign setup.

Even if you don't do that, there are no side mission slots, so rebels never choose a side mission, so you would never get the rewards. This is akin to purchasing agenda side missions after the last side mission slot in a full campaign - they do nothing. Only forced missions would be inserted, which happens if you include Into the Unknown (from the ISB Infiltrators pack) in the Bespin Gambit minicampaign.

As an introduction it's a pretty rough campaign, so if it's their first mission you're going to want to take it easy on them and definitely let them respend their XP when they find out the ability they bought having never played the game before isn't very good.

I don't think Twin Shadows is too rough, my Rebel players are 3 and 0 and we're heading into the finale next Monday. Every game has been extremely close. It is actually nice to not have to worry about picking side missions.

Honestly, since I am playing it with a crew from work I have to say Twin Shadows is extremely setup-friendly. Mission 3 is always the same and mission 4 uses the same map regardless of who wins so you can easily just pack up the tiles and models you need and leave the rest at home. I know this won't be an issue for most but I have a 2 hour commute on mass transit and the less I can bring the better. I managed to fit it all into the Return to Hoth box and it's worked out really well - I was able to pack it up for multiple missions so I don't have to lug stuff back and forth.