Something I've been thinking about lately is that often there is more incentive for an Imperial player to withdraw/incapacitate a wounded hero rather than wound a different hero. Removing an entire activation which may include 1500-2000 credits of items as well as a bunch of XP upgrades greatly increases the chances of the Imperial player's success. Also, often some heroes will be much easier to damage than others; once wounded, continuing to attack the wounded hero can be significantly more efficient per attack especially if the other heroes have more defensive tools (not to mention wounded heroes have a more challenging time recovering damage due to lower endurance).

When a hero is wounded, they typically lose 1 speed, 1 endurance, one starting ability and become worse at attribute tests but is this enough? Wounded heroes are nearly as effective as healthy heroes in removing Imperial figures from the board which makes it quite enticing for the Imperial player to withdraw the hero altogether.

For me the main deterrent to withdrawing heroes when playing a campaign with friends is that I would imagine that doing this frequently is a good way to reduce the number of people that want to play the game again. However, as someone who approaches the game more competitively (vs more GM style), it seems like taking this option away from the Imperial player shifts the balance in the Rebels' favor. I would prefer that it be more rewarding to wound a different Rebel player so that everyone can still play but I don't think the current wounding system always supports that.

As an Imperial player, have you found it to be a good strategy to withdraw/incapacitate Rebel heroes? As a Rebel player, has the Imperial player ever withdrawn your character from a mission? What was the impact?

Depends on the mission, the map and the situation. Sometimes killing a hero will make the Rebels fail to win which is all the Imperials need, but sometimes wounding all the heroes will be the win for the Imperials. If one of the heroes is Murn I do tend to find it easier to kill two heroes rather than wound all 4 including her. Similarly if they have MHD-19 with bacta radiator you are often forced to focus fire down heroes and kill them rather than let damage be spread out.

There is a trade off to focusing on one hero though, you pretty much have to play your units suicidaly in order to get line of sight etc. This is much more destructive on your own forces than taking convenient shots and backing your units off so they're behind corners or aren't in position for cleaves etc.

Withdrawing a Rebel hero is better in some cases and depends on timing. I find the balance between would and withdraw mechanic is fine

if it's early in a mission or if there is no time limit, withdraw is usually better. But if it's later in a mission and you have 2 wounded and 2 healthy, it's usually better to wound the last two for the win

Rebels will usually protect their early wounded hero from getting withdrawn and it's not easy to chase them. Now if they leave them out to dry early on, go for the withdraw then. It's their fault for not fearing that possibly

ultimately it depends on the situation

It's totally worth it, at least sometimes. If you can completely withdraw a hero early in the game, you'll have a huge action advantage that eventually spirals constantly in your favor- as the game is balanced in favor of 4 hero activations a turn, you'll be likely to see your units having more staying power than normal as that threat continues to accumulate.

That being said, there's a lot to be said for simply wounding heroes when that's all that's required.

Personally, I try to avoid completely withdrawing a hero when the player to hero ratio is 1:1. Elimination is no fun,

Most of the items work equally well in the hands of a wounded hero. So, in most cases withdrawing a hero is markedly better than wounding two of them, and with certain situations the only way to win. (For example Last Stand.)

I'm the IP in the middle of our second campaign with my wife and kids. One time I brought the hammer down and forced a hero to withdraw, my son was visibly upset. He basically said "Why are you still coming after me, you need to wound all the heroes, I'm already wounded!!!" At least he could play Luke who was an ally in the mission.

I think its usually a better tactical play to withdraw a hero if possible, but given that its my 12 year old son and 9 year old daughter playing - I try not to withdraw them. The wounded hero can still attack, can still interact, can still pick up crates, etc - wiping them off the board so you get more actions is probably the way to go if playing competitively. When playing it more as a GM, its probably best to just focus on other heroes, particularly if the mission objective is to wound all the heroes.

10 minutes ago, totalnoob said:

I'm the IP in the middle of our second campaign with my wife and kids. One time I brought the hammer down and forced a hero to withdraw, my son was visibly upset. He basically said "Why are you still coming after me, you need to wound all the heroes, I'm already wounded!!!" At least he could play Luke who was an ally in the mission.

I think its usually a better tactical play to withdraw a hero if possible, but given that its my 12 year old son and 9 year old daughter playing - I try not to withdraw them. The wounded hero can still attack, can still interact, can still pick up crates, etc - wiping them off the board so you get more actions is probably the way to go if playing competitively. When playing it more as a GM, its probably best to just focus on other heroes, particularly if the mission objective is to wound all the heroes.

Ha, I play with a 26 year-old who acts the same way:)

Does Withdraw hero receives 1 xp and 100 credits? where can I find more info about it? I didn't find the rule on RRG

Yes, the rewards do not care if a hero is wounded, withdrawn, or incapacitated. Just read and interpret the appropriate mission reward sections literally.

Also note that "all players" mean "all hero characters and the imperial player".

In our last mission (Reclassified) our imperial player spent so much time trying to get me to withdraw that the rest of our team was able to rush objectives. He probably dealt 35 damage to get me out between healing and my upgrades.

It took him to the last round to get me (Fenn) to withdraw, but at that point we had Jyn and Shyla both at the objective with Gideon ready to move them out of there.

Of course... Jyn completely whiffed on the focused 2 tech roll. Luckily Shyla hit it, and just bolted.

It probably depends on the mission and its winning conditions, but generally losing one hero is really tough... In the last campaign we played (Jabbas Realm) the rebels were winning most of the missions until the ip decided to completely take out MHD in the finale. Two rounds after MHD and his bacta radiator were off the board he had everybody wounded and thus won comfortably (against REALLY well equipped and skilled rebels...).

Since we were two rebel players playing 4 heroes together, losing one hero didn't exclude any player from the game. And since we had won so many missions before it was less horrible to lose the finale. I think machfalcon and subtrendy have a point that withdrawing heros could be very effective but quite demoralizing. However if your group plays competitively it's a very plausible and legitimate strategy for the IP (and less annoying than aganda hoarding imho).

No rebel player is ever excluded from the mission as such. Imperial Assault campaign is a co-op between the rebel players, so all players give their input to the strategy even when players perform their activations on their own. (The need for your "own" character should lessen the more you play.)

Withdrawing has to be a real threat or wounded heroes would get into heroic acts without any drawbacks.

19 hours ago, subtrendy said:

Personally, I try to avoid completely withdrawing a hero when the player to hero ratio is 1:1. Elimination is no fun,

My thoughts exactly. Unless the only reasonable target you can hit is an already Wounded Rebel, I call this dirty pool.

57 minutes ago, pheylorn said:

My thoughts exactly. Unless the only reasonable target you can hit is an already Wounded Rebel, I call this dirty pool.

I mean, I've definitely done it before. One time, an already wounded Shyla ran into an area right in front of a tank.

I asked her "Are you sure you want to do that", as there were better ways to reach the objective anyway.

She confirmed, and... well, you can't not Focus Fire a hero when they do that for you. Kind of a lose/lose situation. You risk demoralizing the Rebels if you eliminate one of them, or demoralizing them by revealing that you're not playing optimally.

1 hour ago, subtrendy said:

You risk demoralizing the Rebels if you eliminate one of them, or demoralizing them by revealing that you're not playing optimally.

It's interesting how fine a line this is. I mean, they're sometimes REALLY keen on when you're going easy on them. You gotta be sneaky...

Our Imp player has decided that Onar, with the Hand Cannon and Don't make me hurt you, has to go every game. This happened after Onar took out two eTroopers in one turn.

Usually I find it would not be the optimal play to eliminate a player. Yes, reducing the number of heroes is a big deal, but usually it does not advance the Imperial Player to winning in anyway, often happening when they don't have the time to concentrate on one hero and often will take the Imperial player out of position for preventing the heroes winning. Most of the time the wounded hero is usually so much less effective, even though it doesn't seem like that much of a loss. They usually lose one of their abilities, which can be key for some characters (The stealthy Jedi, for example, goes from being very mobile to basically being a slug, which is a problem for a melee character). I think one of the major deciding factors is that they are no usually no less resilient to being shot at so it can be just as much of a slog to chop through them as it was the first time.

Not that I haven't seen it happen. There have been the occasional times when it has been in the Imperial's best interest to take out a particular character, or when there was literally nothing else productive to do with some models' turns. However, it is the exception to the rule, or only happens really near the end of a mission.

As a point of principle, I only ever attack an already-wounded Hero if it either (a) directly leads to a mission win somehow, or (b) there is literally nothing else for one of my models to do, in which case the players wouldn't expect me to do nothing at all. (OK, there's also (c), the mission is one where defeating a wounded Hero incapacitates them instead of making them withdraw, but that's really just a variant on (a)).

Most missions are won by wounding all four Heroes, so that's what I aim to achieve. Making one of them withdraw may make the rest of the mission easier for me, but it doesn't actually advance me towards a win in its own right, so I don't usually bother. But much more importantly, I play this game with my friends, and it really sucks for one of them to have to sit there and watch everyone else have fun while they get bored with nothing to do.

I guess it would be different if the hero players were controlling multiple Heroes each (e.g. we were playing one-on-one and the only Hero player controlled all four Hero characters); but with one player per Hero, taking the Hero out of the game takes the player out of the game too, and who wants to do something like that to a friend? There's a reason supposedly-"classic" board games like Risk and Monopoly suck, and that reason is player elimination.

16 minutes ago, Bitterman said:

taking the Hero out of the game takes the player out of the game too, and who wants to do something like that to a friend? There's a reason supposedly-"classic" board games like Risk and Monopoly suck, and that reason is player elimination.

Risk and Monopoly are competitive games, Imperial Assault is co-op between the rebel players.

How quiet are your rebel players, do they play the game competitively or as a co-op? Do they not talk about strategy or tactics and what each figure can do, before deciding which to activate next? Do they just randomly decide which group to activate and then all the burden is on the activating player?

There should still be a lot of engagement left even when you don't have your own character to roll dice for.

6 minutes ago, a1bert said:

Risk and Monopoly are competitive games, Imperial Assault is co-op between the rebel players.

How quiet are your rebel players, do they play the game competitively or as a co-op? Do they not talk about strategy or tactics and what each figure can do, before deciding which to activate next? Do they just randomly decide which group to activate and then all the burden is on the activating player?

There should still be a lot of engagement left even when you don't have your own character to roll dice for.

They do talk to each other, and can still talk when eliminated, but the fun factor is hugely reduced for the eliminated player.

No-one would agree to play a whole day's worth of games just advising others, and I try not to put them through it during a single game either. Especially when, as noted, forcing a Hero to withdraw almost never directly contributes to the Imperial player winning, so it just feels mean.

I actually think the Wounded mechanism is one of the very best things about the IA campaign rules. In most similar games, once you're "defeated" (or whatever equivalent) you're out. In, say, Descent you can be defeated and in most missions it doesn't matter, you just wait a turn and get back up (at which point the Overlord is encouraged by most mission rules to knock you down again - repeat ad nauseum). In IA, you get defeated... but can still play , albeit at slightly reduced effectiveness, and the Imperial player is now incentivised by the mission rules to attack someone else instead, so no-one feels picked on. It's really clever. I choose to work with the cleverness designed into the game by wounding the Heroes (because that's my objective) but rarely incapacitating them (because it isn't, even if it might still be beneficial to me indirectly).

I think the only time I make a hero withdraw is on the last round of the mission. Usually if I'm doing really well and want to give the Rebels a minuscule chance of winning...

12 hours ago, Bitterman said:

No-one would agree to play a whole day's worth of games just advising others, and I try not to put them through it during a single game either.

I think the threat of becoming withdrawn has to exist. Otherwise the heroes can do heroic things without fear of it causing them harm.

Usually withdrawing happens due to the rebels playing stupidly heroically, and late in the mission. So, it has been their choice. It may have been a choice of necessity when wounded heroes are protecting the last healthy hero.

If you cannot wound all heroes due to MHD-19, lucky supply card draws, or good defense, then you are only left with delaying, and if you can withdraw a hero, you should. Of course depending on the win condition.

Also, like I have said before, for example the easier core finale almost certainly requires you to withdraw a hero to have a fair chance of winning, especially if Gideon is in play. You try to withdraw either Gideon or the best fighter, and then wound the others.

Just my opinions, you are entitled to your own.

I think a1 and Bitter both make pretty good points.

There's no point in playing if the threat of the Imperial player doesn't permeate the game. That being said, it's also no fun for the Rebels to constantly be dominated.

I think really, this is just a microcosm of the age-old debate (since way back in 2014) of IA campaign players: How much am I an opponent, and how much am I a GM?

Remember too that some Missions require Healthy Heroes to interact with objectives: Terminals, Carrying Spice, Freeing Hostages, Etc.

We play 2v2, with two Imperials sharing control of the Imperial forces and 2 Rebels sharing control of 4 heroes. (It works pretty well; I definitely recommend it if you have group that would prefer that kind of setup).

Even though each of the rebel players has their favorites (one usually controls Murne and Onar while the other controls Vinto and Shyla), they make decisions as a pair, so if one hero is withdrawn that doesn't really change how much each of them gets to play. And with Onar on the team (and soon to be Murne+Solidarity), it's pretty hard to wound everyone. Withdrawing someone to make it harder to finish the mission in time is often a more viable choice.