I finally took the dive into buying some Imperial Assault stuff for myself after playing a bit of the campaign and now I'm looking into entering the skirmish scene. I'm looking for general squad building tips like what are the key things to build a squad around. I'm looking to focus on imperial if that changes anything. Thanks for any and all tips.

I'm by no means a top player or anything, but I think these simple guidelines will help you a lot.

1. You need someone to do the heavy lifting in your squad. The main damage dealers. For Empire, this could be eStormtroopers or Captain Terro. They can take some punishment, and certainly deliver some too.

2. You need some cheap models to hold positions and open doors / interact with other objects. rOfficers is the cheapest Empire can get at 2 points. He fortunately also comes with some very handy abilities on top. For a prime example of this type of cheap leg-work units, take a look at the rAlliance Smuggler. He embodies a lot of what you want from this type of unit.

3. You need support for your other guys. This is harder for the Empire player, as they are currently lacking good support other than the rOfficer. You could look into the eOfficer for that, or, if you do a lot of troopers, Agent Blaise can work as a supporting figure as well. For prime examples of supporting figures, look at Jabba The Hutt, Gideon Argus or C-3PO.

These are the three bases you need to cover. If you lack or overspend in these categories, you'll probably find yourself having trouble at some maps more than others, or against some lists more than others. Obviously Command Cards can help out on this. For instance, Empire doesn't have a lot of Focus, but there are a lot of Leader cards that can Focus guys - and Empire has access to the formidable (and cheap) rOfficer who is a Leader and probably doesn't have much else to do, other than moving your guys around and play Leader cards.

Based on the above you could make a quick list that looks something like this:

eStormtrooper 9 (1)

eStormtrooper 9 (1)

Captain Terro 7 (1)

rOfficer 2 (2, 3)

rOfficer 2 (2, 3)

Agent Blaise 6 (3)

rJet Troopers 4 (2)

Zillo Technique (Must have Empire Upgrade) 1

This is probably not a great list, but it just quickly followed the steps above. The number in () indicates which of the three categories I took the unit under.

I posted an article about the meta a couple weeks ago for people who want a quick overview of what's popular right now. Here's the link:

You'll definitely want to put some thought into unit roles and map rotation as well:

http://www.jodocast.com/2017/02/02/planning-for-victory-applying-strategic-operational-and-tactical-planning-to-imperial-assault-skirmish/

Thanks for the input guys! Definitely gave me some food for thought on constructing lists.

Now how big is the actual tournament scene for IA? I already know that there are no tournaments in Alaska to my knowledge lol.