IA will go on for quite a few more years I suspect. The pace (sadly) seems to have slowed, but there's simply too much wealth of material to draw on and a solid fan base (both for IA and Star Wars gaming in general) that I doubt we're facing a gaming closure at any point soon.

personally I feel part of the slowing of pace is due to design capacity being diverted elsewhere. Destiny possibly had an impact earlier in the year, but more likely the creation of Legion has eaten massively into the SW gaming design space. And that's before you consider the marketing element - they want all of us to buy into Legion in a big way; releasing somewhat overlapping products at the same time doesn't seem smart.

I don't anticipate seeing another box release until Q3 2018 at the earliest. But it would be nice to see a blister wave before then.

1 hour ago, ellhaynes said:

Destiny possibly had an impact earlier in the year, but more likely the creation of Legion has eaten massively into the SW gaming design space.

I imagine the switch from Warhammer 40k to Runewars Miniatures would've taken a lot of design and in-house testing.

1 hour ago, a1bert said:

I see the biggest hurdle to overcome in the role reversal to be that you wouldn't be able to use existing side and agenda missions

Another hurdle is enemy figures. Unless we suddenly get loads of rebel figures (which would not be much use in a standard campaign) with an Imp-heroes expansion, then who are the Imps going to fight during the campaign? The odd trio of Rebel Troopers and the Rebel Ally of the week? There's a lot less figure material to field as enemies of Imp-heroes, so they would have to figure out a way around that which didn't involve selling an additional 30 Rebel fighter miniatures that are unusable for the rest of the IA game. There might be ways of getting around this of course -- such as allying Core Game Rebel tokens with Trandoshans and IG-88 to bulk enemy numbers, or they might even do a post-Endor campaign where some Imps have defected to the Rebellion/New Republic so that the Imp-heroes can fight stormtroopers etc -- but it would definitelly have to be considered for an Imp-heroes box expansion to work.

It could be Mercenaries + Rebels against Imperials (4-5 uniques to choose from). But you're right that even with that, such a campaign would require multiple expansions, and FFG very rarely develops anything for any game requiring more than the core (and at most one expansion).

12 hours ago, The Cocky Rooster said:

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that there will be an option to play as Imperial vs. a Rebel AI.

That would be awesome if it gave me that option in the app.

12 hours ago, The Cocky Rooster said:

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict that there will be an option to play as Imperial vs. a Rebel AI.

That would be quite a lot of work to make it, well, work (but then, the app is still being developed, we hope). There is just way too many decisions too make as a rebel player compared to a simple enemy that just moves and attacks.

4 hours ago, a1bert said:

I had the same idea of role reversal even before Jabba's Realm came out. It goes only half way though.

I see the biggest hurdle to overcome in the role reversal to be that you wouldn't be able to use existing side and agenda missions - at least not with additional rules. Might be doable though with a little bit of development. Also, being a mini- or shorter campaign would probably be ok as well.

Huh, never thought of that, but a mini-campaign might be a good way to do that. That way, we wouldn't have to worry about side mission integration, either.

Maybe making the enemies Saws rebels (or some other rogue Rebel sect) we could make these missions even able to be incorporated into other campaigns.

What I would like is a new core box for a game called 'Rebel Assault'. It's a new game where 4 Imperials fight against one Rebel player in an campaign. The missions and Agenda cards would not be compatible with Imperial Assault, but the Deployment Cards and The Skirmish game would.

That way you could keep the skirmish game going and introduce a new audience to the game. The same could be done with a sequel trilogy era game. Introduce a new corebox with new factions and in Skirmish you can battle the First Order with your classic rebel army

3 hours ago, angelman2 said:

Another hurdle is enemy figures. Unless we suddenly get loads of rebel figures (which would not be much use in a standard campaign) with an Imp-heroes expansion, then who are the Imps going to fight during the campaign? The odd trio of Rebel Troopers and the Rebel Ally of the week? There's a lot less figure material to field as enemies of Imp-heroes, so they would have to figure out a way around that which didn't involve selling an additional 30 Rebel fighter miniatures that are unusable for the rest of the IA game. There might be ways of getting around this of course -- such as allying Core Game Rebel tokens with Trandoshans and IG-88 to bulk enemy numbers, or they might even do a post-Endor campaign where some Imps have defected to the Rebellion/New Republic so that the Imp-heroes can fight stormtroopers etc -- but it would definitelly have to be considered for an Imp-heroes box expansion to work.

Rebels have a solid foundation of generic troops to field just in Sabs and Troopers. Alliance smuggler and Hired Guns covers the 2-4 pt cost. Season with Echo Troopers, Alliance rangers, and Wookiee Warriors to taste, as well as any generic mercenaries. Then the expansion itself would provide another 2-4 generic Rebel units that would fill out the remaining points slots as needed, including possibly a Massive unit for Rebels. And if it's still an issue, FFG always has the option of including tokens to pad the ranks like they do in the other boxes. I was working on a custom campaign that uses Imperial heroes and it wasn't that hard to find troops for the Rebels to use.

15 hours ago, Nrin said:

It would be kinda fun if they did a campaign box with some Imperial "heroes" and the overlord player played rebels. Just saying.

That would be great.

I hope they come out with a system to play the heroes. A lot of people don't want to play a campaign as random rebel PC, they want to Han or Luke etc. Maybe the app will allow this.

3 hours ago, Mortalo said:

That would be quite a lot of work to make it, well, work (but then, the app is still being developed, we hope). There is just way too many decisions too make as a rebel player compared to a simple enemy that just moves and attacks.

The enemies in Road to Legend do more than just move and attack. Pretty much every activation they're using powers and/or moving/attacking.

1 hour ago, Young David said:

What I would like is a new core box for a game called 'Rebel Assault'. It's a new game where 4 Imperials fight against one Rebel player in an campaign. The missions and Agenda cards would not be compatible with Imperial Assault, but the Deployment Cards and The Skirmish game would.

That's always one thing I found odd about this game- with few exceptions, most missions are a "Rebel Assault".

Re: Is IA going to die?

Answer: No, it will just be forced to withdraw.

Keep in mind that nothing lasts forever. The average lifespan of a "gaming-game" is about five years. There's a lot of them that are released and immediately fold, and a few Warhammers and Dungeons & Dragonses. In between there are a ton of games that have about a good run of a few years.

5 hours ago, Young David said:

What I would like is a new core box for a game called 'Rebel Assault'. It's a new game where 4 Imperials fight against one Rebel player in an campaign. The missions and Agenda cards would not be compatible with Imperial Assault, but the Deployment Cards and The Skirmish game would.

That way you could keep the skirmish game going and introduce a new audience to the game. The same could be done with a sequel trilogy era game. Introduce a new corebox with new factions and in Skirmish you can battle the First Order with your classic rebel army

That's what I hoped HoTe would be. An Endor box where a few Imperial heroes are trying to make it off the planet alive after the battle. The squads in this box would have been ewoks, mon cals, etc.

I wouldn't hate a box with imp heroes, but I think the biggest problem is that it would lack replayability to a certain extent. You wouldn't be able to use the heroes/class decks/side missions/etc. from the other campaigns (unless they really manage to stretch the story somehow) and so I would think that any campaign like this would feel largely similar the second time you play it.

14 minutes ago, ManateeX said:

I wouldn't hate a box with imp heroes, but I think the biggest problem is that it would lack replayability to a certain extent. You wouldn't be able to use the heroes/class decks/side missions/etc. from the other campaigns (unless they really manage to stretch the story somehow) and so I would think that any campaign like this would feel largely similar the second time you play it.

Yeah, that's the issue I have with it.

If it was a small box campaign, maybe you could have different prompts in the guide book- for instance, the guidebook intro for a mission might read something like "The pesky Rebels are creating explosives at their hidden base on Dantooine. Infiltrate the facility and shut them down.

Whereas the mission card itself (a side mission that could be used in other campaigns) could read differently, such as- "An extremist cell has been creating explosives to use against the Empire, but so far have done far more damage to innocent civilians. This operation must be stopped as soon at all costs."

Then, that way, it would be plausible enough for the heroes to square off against Rebel extrremists regardless of whether the heroes are Imperial or Rebel. The heroes themselves should probably feature their own side mission that could also be played either way. For instance, in the smallbox campaign a mission could focus on one of the heroes who has been mistakingly identified as a traitor and must fend off attacks by bounty hunters while working to prove his innocence, while in a full campaign the hero would have actually been a traitor and is trying to falsify information to knock the Empire off of his tracks.

It's finnicky, and may not even be worth it, but I'd prefer something like this to a fully committed Imperial set that would be incompatible with the rest of the game.

What if the imperials had a hero unit they can deploy that upgrades similar to rebel heroes and have them as secondary villains.

I think to increase some longevity for the game, (as mentioned earlier - and I know it has been called for by others), a custom campaign set for 'build your own adventures'. up to six different end-game goals, with at least 4 different episodes in each; all tolled, with the side missions and customised decks... it'll equate to dozen or so campaign boxes. Then some of the story arcs could be for higher XP and Credit value characters - forcing the characters to have cut their teeth on earlier campaigns (sort of like how Basic D&D moved to Expert, and so on).

Another way for FFG to 'up the ante' with the game; run an Imperial Campaign, and have Imperial characters (the players) running against Mercenary opponents. There might be some Rebel entanglements involved in the game (disrupt a smuggling run, or weapons shipment, etc.), in reality, the Imperials were still required to keep the peace, and bust up bad guy cartels. The GM supervillain character could be a Hutt overlord, overstepping the boundaries of some unwritten arrangement, and now the local captains have to clean up the Governors mess ("The Regional governors now have direct control over their territories."). The players could represent either some strike force, an Investigative team (ISB Agents), or even a junior officer contingent (bring in some alternative Imperial Officer models/characters).

5 hours ago, Tvboy said:

Rebels have a solid foundation of generic troops to field just in Sabs and Troopers. Alliance smuggler and Hired Guns covers the 2-4 pt cost. Season with Echo Troopers, Alliance rangers, and Wookiee Warriors to taste, as well as any generic mercenaries. Then the expansion itself would provide another 2-4 generic Rebel units that would fill out the remaining points slots as needed, including possibly a Massive unit for Rebels. And if it's still an issue, FFG always has the option of including tokens to pad the ranks like they do in the other boxes. I was working on a custom campaign that uses Imperial heroes and it wasn't that hard to find troops for the Rebels to use.

Oh, if one pooled every IA release to date you'd certainly end up with a lot of Rebel "baddies" for the supposed Imperial Heroes to fight. However, FFG can't release a campaign that requires possession of every product released for the game. An Imp. campaign would have to be usable with only the Core box + campaign resources and, unlike Hero-focused campaign, an Imp.-focused one would have very few "badies" as the baseline resource before adding the expansion box' Rebel enemies.

From an Imperial Campaign big box expansion we might expect about 12 small Rebel soldiers (or whatever) + a Snowspeeder or similar, and 4 Imperial Heroes (‘cause the standard 3-heroes-in-a-big-box-expansion just wouldn’t do).

However they do it, I just wanted a boxed expansion that added 8 or more rebel troops all at once. Large numbers of rebel plastic troops are really skewed in terms of monetary cost, since they only come in clampacks. A small Endor campaign that added 4 ewoks and 4 Mon Calamari would have been good but, I'd take any large number of OT rebels. If it was still a rebel campaign, it would work just due to the huge number of Imperials in the core box.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it's more "thematic" to have a few rebel heroes running around and not many squads of rebels. But I don't think getting one small boxed expansion's worth of them would wreck the tone of the entire product line.

One option that I think someone eluded to was a “make your own scenario” tool. I know that Descent has its own official FFG website that allows the community to do just that. I’ve had a browse and think it’s really good stuff.

I’d guess it’s something that FFG would consider for Imperial Assault whenever they are able to work on it, as I imagine their roadmap is dominated by Legion stuff at the moment. Especially trying to take advantage of the Star Wars and Xmas market in December.

How would people feel about prequel/sequel content? The (likely) success of Battlefront II’s prequel stuff could signal that there is certainly a market for such a thing again. Although this could potentially be a completely new “Separatist Assault” series of boxed games. Something I know I’d like to see if Imperial Assault is capped off.

18 hours ago, The Cocky Rooster said:

The enemies in Road to Legend do more than just move and attack. Pretty much every activation they're using powers and/or moving/attacking.

Yes, but heroes do more, they can search, use stuff (I don't know how these actions are called in English) and their goal is more than "kill all heroes".

On 11/7/2017 at 2:45 PM, Darth Az said:

Ok great, that only leaves me with the fear of no reprints coming (and no new stuff announced). I really hope they continue developing and fixing more and more stuff. I guess I'll panic again if they announce the next X-Wing Wave and no IA stuff

I'm beginning to think IA is done. There isn't a single IA item in reprint or development. You can see here. There are plenty of other SW items like the X-Wing, Armada, the card game. Very fishy. They want their store fronts to still be able to sell the items they currently have in stock without the disclaimer of "This game is dead" looming over their sales. We won't get an announcement from FFG that's for sure. The sure sign obviously will be when the LGC doesn't restock.

I can't say for certain, but I think there has never been any "In Development" entries for IA in Upcoming. We tend to receive product announcements, then when the Upcoming page finally gets updated (seem to be much less often after the Asmodee merger) we get "At the Printer", and "On the Boat" soon after.

Also see the release history. (Doesn't show any In Development dates.)