Now, let’s dig in.

Being bored and stuck alone in my city over summer, I caved and threw money at FFG for IA. I have not regretted this for even a second, and I’ve already completed 3 campaigns with my friends; I have happiness in my life now.

Core Campaign – Heroes: Jyn (ANNOYING!), Fenn; Imp Class Deck: Military Might

This was our first campaign and although we made a lot of mistakes, it was a lot of fun. The campaign story was sort of week, though, not in and of itself, but how it was executed and presented. My players never really grasped what was going on, and by the time I started “running” it as if it was a pen-&-paper RPG to highlight the plot, the campaign was over. That said, we had lots of fun and since it was our first campaign, the mechanics stuff and the game’s freshness was enough to entertain us. “A New Threat” demoralized our group (me included) a bit, but we got over it. The last few missions were very cool, and I managed to do some nice things in the finale by timing my use Darth Vader so that he elevated the story and tension rather than just trashing the heroes.

The heroes were cool (although I officially hate Jyn now) and I really liked the Military Might class deck.

Originally, I had suspected that Legendary Heroes would feel a bit off and super-hero’y, but it worked really well. We had a lot of fun and it didn’t feel stupidly unbalanced at all.

Winners: The Rebels

I also want to mention that our most successful mission in the core game was Luke’s side mission, Homecoming. That one was so frigging intense, with Luke being 1 point away from death but dodging one Stormtrooper and another Stormie rolled too low on the Accuracy; then Darth came storming in, but Jyn managed to interrupt and put a Stun on him, robbing him of the killing blow (he could chose to move or attack, but needed both to reach and kill Luke). We were literally shaking with excitement when that mission ended!

Twin Shadows – Heroes: Biv, Saska, Mak, & Gaarkhan; Imp Class Deck: Inspired Leadership

For our second campaign a couple of friends joined in, swelling the Rebel ranks to 4 heroes; I had thought this would make the game more interesting and “realistic”, but to be honest it just added more clutter. Still, I can’t complain, ImpAss works well with 4 heroes, too.

Twin Shadows felt a bit unbalanced, and the Rebels really struggled at times. Again, the plot was very vague but this time I was ready with additional exposition; still, the story drowned a bit. I also ended up padding the mini-campaign with additional missions, but due to time constraints my efforts were a bit half-arsed to be honest. We started out with Kayn Somos’ blister scenario, and I also added the Bantha blister & “Viper’s Den” from the Core side missions (since that one is sat on Tatooine). I also planned to do Sympathy of the Rebellion (Core side mission), only because that too takes place on Tatooine, but I had to drop it at the last minute to have time to play the finale.

Despite its faults (shortness, unbalance, half-hearted fixes on my part), Twin Shadows was a cool little campaign.

Winner: Imperials (partly because the Mak player forgot about his “Covert” ability for most of the campaign, only rediscovering it 1 round into the finale; the rest of us hadn’t noticed that something was off either!)

Jabba’s Realm – Heroes: Vinto & Onar; Imp Class Deck: Hutt Mercenaries

What a campaign! We really, really loved this one! It felt much better made than the two previous ones and the story was interesting, surprising, and well-presented in the mission. You could feel that the ImpAss team had come a long way since the first two campaigns (Core & Twin Shadows), and I’m now a bit worried for how Return to Hoth & Bespin Gambit will go down now that we have spoiled ourselves with the awesomeness that is Jabba’s Realm.

I’m not sure if Jabba’s Realm is slanted to favor the Rebs, but I had a really hard time winning missions in this one. Partly, this was due to a Legendary Onar being a beast to wound, but often I just didn’t have the resources to deal with the pesky Rebs. Still, this didn’t worry me too much, except for the one mission (can’t remember which) that was a laughable walk-over victory for the Rebs; it was if the Imps had forgot to send off the e-mail to muster troops in that sector… Everything changed with the last two missions though, when I finally caught up with and surpassed the Rebs’ class decks; suddenly, wounding the heroes was not that hard anymore, and my victory in the finale was embarrassing – the Rebs barely got onto Jabba’s barge, but by that time Vinto was already wounded and Onar had 2-3 health to go… it wasn’t even close. To make matters worse, the conclusion for an Imp in that campaign is HARSH! We felt down all evening after the Rebs lost and their families (expressly stated to include children) were sold into slavery. Bloody ****…

I modified the game by adding two scenarios to the start, like prequel missions. These were the Allied Smuggler and Captain Terro blister missions, and both sides won their ally very, very easily. Both allies are awesome, and I really love the Allied Smuggler who, despite being squishy as ****, was very nifty to have for the players (especially considering there were just two of them).

House Rule – Extra Allies: We had already experience with this rule, but for JR we went for it without holding back.

--Any ally won during previous campaigns carries over into the current one, giving both sides an ever growing hand of available allies. We did this because, a) we like having allies in the game, and b) we don’t want to replay missions if we can help it.

--Process: If the Rebs decide to bring in more than 1 ally, then the Imp get to increase their Open Group hand by 1 per additional Rebel Ally.

--Problems: None really. It all worked very well and added to our enjoyment of the game. Cluttering was a very slight problem, but nothing you won’t be used to if playing ImpAss.

--Benefits: Many. Basically, it allowed for greater variation and player-choice in the missions, and I heartedly recommend people trying to bring several allies into play sometime; fun stuff. (I should mention that we were conscious of being story appropriate and avoided stupid combos or inappropriate [timeline-wise] allies).

Hutt Mercenaries: This was a boring class deck. I had expected it to be thematically appropriate and exciting, but in reality it was not. I just got to add x extra damage to the first attack every round, and there was no much rhyme or reason to the whys and hows. Basically, it added nothing to the story. Also, with only two heroes, it was never difficult to get full use out of the class decks, and the Rebs manipulating my resources by keeping the last bounty-ed hero out of line of sight was just not an option for them. I will probably not play this class deck again, unfortunately.

All in all, we love the game and can’t wait for more campaigns (and the app), but we will likely have exhausted everything by Easter next year… Since late July, we have now bought everything ever published for ImpAss, with the last missing bits (incl. Heart of the Empire) coming our way in the mail.

FFG, I love you and may you never end this great game line! (Aka, shut up and take my money, already!)

Btw, even when stunned, Vader could've Force Choke d Luke if he just was in line of sight already.

19 minutes ago, angelman2 said:

--Any ally won during previous campaigns carries over into the current one, giving both sides an ever growing hand of available allies. We did this because, a) we like having allies in the game, and b) we don’t want to replay missions if we can help it.

That's a pretty great way to prevent both sides from ally mission repeats! I like it!

Quote

--Process: If the Rebs decide to bring in more than 1 ally, then the Imp get to increase their Open Group hand by 1 per additional Rebel Ally.

Interesting. I still feel like it might swing in favor of the Rebels, but it sounds cool. I might try something like (after the first ally, each additional ally costs one more additional accumulating threat- so the second ally would cost an extra threat, the third would cost an extra two threat, etc). That way, it's posible to bring in multiple allies, but the Rebels are discouraged from totally swarming the board, which ultimately would've worked out in their favor.

But apparently it worked for you, so that's cool too!

Quote

Hutt Mercenaries: This was a boring class deck. I had expected it to be thematically appropriate and exciting, but in reality it was not. I just got to add x extra damage to the first attack every round, and there was no much rhyme or reason to the whys and hows. Basically, it added nothing to the story. Also, with only two heroes, it was never difficult to get full use out of the class decks, and the Rebs manipulating my resources by keeping the last bounty-ed hero out of line of sight was just not an option for them. I will probably not play this class deck again, unfortunately.

Yeah, seems like the new Imp min/max deck. Good for more competitive groups, but ultimately the more abstract of the two decks that came with JR. Nemesis is where the fun's at.

Enjoy HotE, looks like a real treat!

15 minutes ago, a1bert said:

Btw, even when stunned, Vader could've Force Choke d Luke if he just was in line of sight already.

You know what? This actually happened, but I had forgotten about it (this is like two months and 2 dozen missions ago)! Vader Force Choked Luke down to his last Health, and then the stormies missed/were dodged! Thank you for reminding me

10 minutes ago, subtrendy2 said:

Interesting. I still feel like it might swing in favor of the Rebels, but it sounds cool. I might try something like (after the first ally, each additional ally costs one more additional accumulating threat- so the second ally would cost an extra threat, the third would cost an extra two threat, etc). That way, it's posible to bring in multiple allies, but the Rebels are discouraged from totally swarming the board, which ultimately would've worked out in their favor.

But apparently it worked for you, so that's cool too!

Yeah, for us the added Threat more than made up for the extra Reb activations (although... come to think about it... I did lose a whole lot of missions early on, even though I killed the Alliance Smuggler pretty routinely). I should also add that we're playing a little loose with the Open Group card selection, allowing me to chose my hand (or at least the additional Rebel Ally-induced cards) after the Rebs have decided which allies to bring in. Strictly speaking, I'm supposed to chose my Open Groups before the Rebs bring in allies (if I've understood correctly), but we felt that was a bit boring and didn't allow me to customize the oposition to maximinse the fun (i.e. pairing thematical allies etc.).

Lastly, it should be mentioned that we don't play very competatively in my group, and the Rebs rarely bring in two named characters (R2 & C3P0 being the exception), but rather focus on cheaper stuff like Alliance Smuggler and a Reb. troope choice (we really like/hate the Alliance Rangers).

jyn = superior agmentation arc blasters

I agree that jyn is ANNOYING.

37 minutes ago, angelman2 said:

Winner: Imperials (partly because the Mak player forgot about his “Covert” ability for most of the campaign, only rediscovering it 1 round into the finale; the rest of us hadn’t noticed that something was off either!)

you can't forget covert, you can forget ambush but never, ever, ever forget covert, all else is secondary.

everything else looked good. we are at a similar stage to you it looks like but we have the exact opposite stuff, we have hoth and bespin gambit.

My girl friend (who's a bigger geek than me! Ain't i lucky ) wants to chime in that the Rebs have tended to lose the missions where additional Rebel Allies were brought in. (Basically, the only things I won in Jabba's Realm before the tide was turned in the semifinale & finale were missions where they brought in more than one ally; this, by the way, was also the case for the semifinale and finale of that campaign. Not sure additional allies is a boon to the Rebs!)

2 hours ago, a1bert said:

Btw, even when stunned, Vader could've Force Choke d Luke if he just was in line of sight already.

What kind of father would do that to his own son?!?

2 minutes ago, IanSolo_FFG said:

What kind of father would do that to his own son?!?

Homer Simpson.

6 hours ago, angelman2 said:

My girl friend (who's a bigger geek than me! Ain't i lucky ) wants to chime in that the Rebs have tended to lose the missions where additional Rebel Allies were brought in. (Basically, the only things I won in Jabba's Realm before the tide was turned in the semifinale & finale were missions where they brought in more than one ally; this, by the way, was also the case for the semifinale and finale of that campaign. Not sure additional allies is a boon to the Rebs!)

It's a recurring issue in the game. My Rebels have mainly decided that in most cases they are simply not willing to bring an ally for the additional threat it gives the Imperial.

That said, some of the more recent allies are very good value for the points you give, and it would be hard for the Imperial to come out ahead in that instance. (Jedi Luke, Hera) Also, R2 and/or 3PO are pretty good value for their points.

With Murne's Company of Heroes, Jedi Luke costs 8 threat. That just about breaks the game. I had a hard time justifying attacking him with ranged at all, given his deflect ability could pretty much make up even his paltry deflect ability (well, that's a bit of hyperbole, but still). Seriously though, anyone who says allies are still overpriced is probably just thinking about how badly they want Han and Chewie.

I brought out Luke for 12 in the HoE finale, but the tank he spawned took out 3/4 of his health. Overall, he did a bit better than breaking even but not much.

But yeah, at 8 Luke is crazy.

(So, I'll revive this old thread of mine and continue discussing my experiences here rather than starting new topics after every finished campaign).

Last night, my girlfriend and I finished our first running of Hearth of the Empire (she played Diala & Drokkatta and I was the Power of the Dark Side Imp). We enjoyed this campaign, which has the best structure and progression of any campaign we've played (i.e. very story focused), but there were a few hurdles along the way. First off, the campaign was quite easy for the Rebels, and they won every mission bar one; in that mission, I bought discount Darth Vader (i.e. Driven by Hatered mod) and that sorted the Rebels out (I think discount Vader might be too powerful, but that's another discussion). Secondly, the campaign is WAY too short, with its 5 story missions not enough to fully flesh out and establish the story. HotE 's strength is its 3-branches story tree, but it is unfortunately also the campaign's weakness; you sacrifice a full story experience for dual-replayability. That said, we really enjoyed what story there is, but the campaign would have more impact if the Rebels got to struggle with the plot for a few more missions before the finale; 3 side missions to 5 story missions was not a good balance, we found. We are looking forward to playing it again, though, trying out new villains (Grand Inquisitor), heroes, and Imp class cards

After playing Jabba's Realm , we sort of feared that Imperial Assualt had peaked campaign-wise, and HotE does indeed feel inferior to us; it is still a good campaign, but Jabba was cooler and more engaging story-wise. All in all, HotE is a nice expansion that bring completely new milieus and threats; I recommend it

You can always make campaigns longer by adding an intro mission (like I have done with minicampaigns), but it is much harder to make campaigns shorter.

For me, 8 missions is near optimal.

Played HotE twice. Rebels lost the first campaign. At the start of the second HotE campaign, from a narrative point of view we referred to the previous HotE campaign heroes as the ones who got captured. During the second campaign, aside from the intro mission and final mission, the remaining story mission were different. That is great for replayability

I really like how Palpatine is used in missions. It really give the feel of the bad guy in charge of running the whole Empire and surely a small band of rebels can't harm him (thousands of Jedi couldn't after all!)

Besides, one side mission that popped up during the second campaign was Han's side mission (from the blister expansion pack). We included it because we had never played it so far.

I have also found that rebels bringing allies is of more benefit to the imperial player. As such I have house ruled that when rebels bring an ally the imperial player gets the threat paid out in three separate phases as evenly as possible. The first phase is during setup, the next two are at the end of each round. I have found that this has balanced the game so that the imperial player can't simply start the game overwhelming the rebels. I also have lowered the threat cost of all base heroes and villains by 4.

The ally system in this game has definitely been broken since day 1. Allies and Green side missions are just not justified for the most part except for the really cheap allies like 3PO and Hera. I have actually been using a house rule for a while now that was recently implemented into the Legends of the Alliance app. Basically any ally that was earned from a side mission can be brought into a mission (except for the finale) for free but the Rebels have to return that ally to the game box after the conclusion of the mission. They can still choose to give the Imperial player threat if they want to keep the ally for multiple missions. It gives the Rebels a huge advantage for that mission (hence why it's not allowed during finales) but it's only for 1 mission and makes up for the fact that the Rebels had to spend an entire mission earning that ally in the first place. It also gives the Rebels more incentive to take on multiple green side missions which would usually be redundant. I also use the same rule for villains, as they are not justified for their 3 Influence cost and exorbitant threat cost, and this also incentivizes the Rebels to actually play get those side missions to the table.

I was very happy to see this had been officially implemented into the app, although I realize that the motivation for doing so may have been different.

On 12/13/2017 at 3:38 PM, a1bert said:

You can always make campaigns longer by adding an intro mission (like I have done with minicampaigns), but it is much harder to make campaigns shorter.

For me, 8 missions is near optimal.

My point was not that HotE feels too short, but that with only 5 Story Mission it is not well suited to carry a fully fledged story as HotE is obviously supposed to be. Apart from the intro & finale missions, there are as many side missions as there are story mission in the campaign log, and the story drowns in random and lack of focus. (We actually added two side missions to the beginning for the campaign, as prequels, but even by choosing thematically appropriate missions [Ashoka & Palpatine] this didn't do anything to further the plot, although it did help establish the ally characters). My point is that JR is a much better story since it allows more story missions to flesh out the campaign -- one of the CORE campaign log side missions slots are even converted into the mandatory Interlude mission on which the entire plot hinges. Story wise (with the caveat that I haven't played RtH or BG yet although I understand that both are inferior to JR ?), ImpAss seem to have thus far peaked with JR , which gives me some slight cause for worry. To me, HotE feels like a good attempt where they tried out some new ideas, but JR remains the better story.

16 hours ago, angelman2 said:

Story wise (with the caveat that I haven't played RtH or BG yet although I understand that both are inferior to JR ?), ImpAss seem to have thus far peaked with JR , which gives me some slight cause for worry.

I think JR was heavily focused on experimenting with story elements and incorporating the story more heavily into the gameplay while HotE was focused on perfecting the full campaign structure to maximize replayability and minimize group fatigue. RPG players are used to lengthy campaigns, but the average board gamer is not, and a lot of full length campaigns were probably fizzling out around the 8 mission mark. After we finished Return to Hoth, my campaign group didn't want to play IA for almost a year. HotE's structure also means that you can play it 3 times and never play the same mission twice except for the intro and the finale which is cool.

Also you pointed out that JR has 2 more story missions than HotE, but keep in mind that 2 of those story missions are just glorified side missions that don't really contribute to the larger plot. JR was actually kind of weak for me story-wise because the story basically stopped for 4 missions in the first half of the campaign and doesn't really get started until mission 5, which meant it took several months in real time for the story to actually start. Once you get to the Interlude the story is incredible, but that first half of the campaign is a narrative wasteland with nothing going on. HotE is more evenly paced with its story.

I think you might be onto something, Tvboy. It is entierly possible that the strong story I remember form running JR was due to, a) my group focusing on story and probably elaborating on it at times [although I cannot remember having done that like I did for CORE & Twin Shadows ], and b) that JR was so much stronger story-wise than CORE and Twin Shadows [where you really had to work hard to find the story] that I now have an exaggerated view of JR . Perhaps I simply just prefer longer campaigns and your point re board gamers not as interested in long campaigns as RPG players. Good points, man!

So, I'll revive my post again to add my views of RtH .

We played this campaign over two, stretched out power-gaming weekends (the first was more like Wednesday through Monday), and the focused gaming was a great way of playin IA. We had a LOT of fun With RtH , employing some mission alterations that @IanSolo_FFG came up with, and managed to maximize its story potential through exposition and roleplaying. The Rebels had a hard time in the beginning, but snowballed into an unbeatable 4-headed monster by the end, which I am more than fine with. The story was simple, but effective, and we managed to play it up pretty well. It was cool how the campaign took a brake from the plot after evacuating Hoth, allowing the heroes to go off on Side Missions for a few weeks (or whatever), before the plot caught up with them and dragged them back to Hoth again. Haven, the I-can't-believe-it-is-not-Hoth location that the campaign relies on for much of the campaign, felt flat and underdeveloped, and I wished the campaign had had the time to properly establish Benex' base before all the troubles there; in a perfect world, the campaign would have started on Haven before everyone joined the rest of the Rebels to launch the Ecco base, as that way there would have been some context for the heroes going there later. Oh well, one cannot demand too much of the limited space available in an IA campaign

To me, RtH felt better presented and focused on than the Core campaign and the Twin Shadows (both of which had vague plots my players struggled to keep track of), but it was also a very straight forward, action-driven story, which made it easier. I still think JR had the best story, and HotE the best structure (although the campaign was too short for my liking), but RtH is quite alright, indeed