Hi all,

X-Winger here. My brother is 30 soon (also an x-wing and huge SW fan) and his wife is buying him the IA core set. I was going to get him some extra stuff up to £40-50 but not sure where to start. I think we will be mostly playing campaign mode. Can anyone give me some ideas what I should be looking at here.

Many thanks!!!

I haven't played campaign, but I'd look at one of the smal-nox expansions. It comes with extra heroes and mini-campaigns.

Jabba's Realm is not small box but imho it is one of the best addition to the game. ~40£

Bespin Gambit is a small box expansion what i enjoyed to play ~25£

In the „Empire Strikes Back” my favorite scene when Han and Leia are taken by Lando to lunch and Vader sitting at the table when they enters the room.

That's because when they went to the Alderaan Han told to Luke:

"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid"

And in that room Vader as a good host shows everyone's favorite smuggler where can he put his blaster...

Well in this box when I saw the same map piece with that table I just picked it up to my hand and just smiled and started to nod.

You should also consider Ally and Villian packs. He is a fan so you can easily find him his favourite character

For campaigns, start with the boxes. Big or small depends on budget, but I would buy them in order of release date, so that you keep getting new mechanics in every box, instead of all at once in the last box. If you want to round out the budget, you can buy the blisters for villains/allies that get used in the campaign you plan on playing. For core that could be Han, Chewie, Ig-88 (these three are all great for skirmish aswell), general Weiss (would not recommend this one, you wont ever use it outside of the select missions he shows up, and even then you could just use the normal AT-ST).

If you plan on skirmishing, then buy jabba's realm + Heart of the Empire with prio. The figures in there are currently the most competitive, together with their corresponding blister waves.

Like a few have said already i woukd suggest getting him some of the physical minis to replace the token heroes and villians in the core box.

Expansions are all good but nothing beats putting a mini down instead of a card token or stand in mini. Plus they look awesome.

Han Solo

Chewbacca

Rebel saboteurs

Rebel troopers

Emperors champion

General in the at st (forgot his namelol)

To be honest everyone above this post is right - it just depends on what you and your brother are interested in

While you're playing the core campaign you will more than likely be visited at some point by some heroes/villains from the movies (e.g. Han, Chewie, IG-88 - the full list is in Kloudrunner's post above). However, unlike most of the game's standard enemies and your hero characters, which are plastic miniatures, these 'special guest' characters are only represented by flat, round cardboard tokens. If you buy the single-character ally/villain packs you can replace these tokensin your game with the actual plastic mini. So if it is important to you that all characters on the board are plastic minis and not cardboard tokens then you should get some of the ally or villain packs that came in "wave 1" (you can see a handy list of all waves here: http://cards.boardwars.eu/Ally-and-Villain-Packs/ )

In addition to that, all ally packs from all waves contain an extra side mission that you can use to replace one of the side missions that comes with the core campaign box, and all villain packs contain an extra mission that the empire can spring on his/her rebel players. So if you expect to be playing through the core campaign more than once and would like more variety , pick up the ally/villain packs of whatever characters you like the best. Just make sure to read the packaging closely before you buy it, because some packs from later waves need map tiles from later box expansions. I believe there is a list of these somewhere, but I'm not sure where; maybe someone who knows can provide a link.

Finally, if you know you'll love the game and will likely want to play more than one campaign then you'll want to pick up one of the later boxed expansions. These all contain new heroes, enemies, missions, items, etc. I have no idea what you can get for 40-50 pounds, but the two "small-box" campaigns (Twin Shadows and Bespin Gambit) are cheaper, but also the campaigns are shorter and contain fewer figures. Still lots of fun, though!

2 hours ago, Villan said:

Hi all,

X-Winger here. My brother is 30 soon (also an x-wing and huge SW fan) and his wife is buying him the IA core set. I was going to get him some extra stuff up to £40-50 but not sure where to start. I think we will be mostly playing campaign mode. Can anyone give me some ideas what I should be looking at here.

Many thanks!!!

If you want to buy him some packs that have the best bang for you buck in the campaign, I'd recommend Greedo, The Grand Inquisitor and Obi-Wan Kenobi.
You can read my full thoughts on the packs here: http://avpacks.boardwars.eu/

If you want to get him a small box (~$40?), you should be going with Bespin Gambit, as it's better on all accounts than Twin Shaodws.

Honestly, I'd let your brother get the boxes himself if he's interested. If you pick up some wave one heroes like Han, Chewie, and IG-88, you can spare him a huge headache and get some (admittedly overpriced) but also iconic minis. They may not be quite as useful to the game as a new box might be, but if your brother's at all a completionist, he'll definitely appreciate it.

I like all the options listed above. There is an app coming out for full co-op. I don't know what products outside the core will be supported first, but if the Descent app is any indicator, the ally and villain packs from the first wave will get the love. On top of getting some iconic figures like Han, Chewie, IG-88, Rebel Troopers, etc., getting them now might help him stay ahead of the curve if he gets into using the app. One of the Descent mini packs was notoriously hard to find for a while.

Wow!!! Loads of great replies!! Still no closer to deciding

45 minutes ago, qwertyuiop said:

I like all the options listed above. There is an app coming out for full co-op. I don't know what products outside the core will be supported first, but if the Descent app is any indicator, the ally and villain packs from the first wave will get the love. On top of getting some iconic figures like Han, Chewie, IG-88, Rebel Troopers, etc., getting them now might help him stay ahead of the curve if he gets into using the app. One of the Descent mini packs was notoriously hard to find for a while.

They have said that the heroes and supply cards from the expansions will be supported from the start.

42 minutes ago, Villan said:

Wow!!! Loads of great replies!! Still no closer to deciding

If your brother is a story-mode player and you guys will play the campaigns with him, then I strongly recommend expanding your campaign selections with Jabba's Realm ; you will not regret it!

Unless you guys are in a position where you have to decide right now what you're going to buy (going to Antarctica?) I always say just wait and play some games with the Core set and then see what you really think you need once you've got a couple of games under your belts. The Core set is already jam-packed with content for new players, but maybe you guys end up burning through it faster than you expect and really want another big box campaign, or maybe you're loving the core box campaign and want to play through mutiple times but realize that those tokens just aren't going to cut it for representing Han Solo and Chewbacca and Rebel Troopers and General Weiss so you might buy the Wave 1 figure packs. Or maybe you realize that a full-length 11 mission campaign might be way too long for what your mutual free time can allow, so maybe you might want to consider buying one of the 4 mission mini campaigns like Twin Shadows or Bespin Gambit.

You don't need to buy expansions right away, maybe give him another game or a gift card for the local game store so he can pick out which expansions he needs at a later date.

There is 3 campaigns worth in the core box.

Normally I would suggest to try out the core game first. After playing for a while you will have a better idea what you want out of the game.

Here, your best bet is buying a set of the wave 1 figure packs to replace tokens with plastic figures. Not all of them will appear in every core campaign though, so go with what you think are cool for the presentee.

If you do go for Wave One packs, just another few things to note:

Wave One is definitely the biggest buy-in in the game. Most expensive box, and most expensive figure pack wave (mostly because there are just a lot of figure packs). When I bought my stuff, the core box ran me about 60 bucks, while the figure packs were about 110 dollars total. Of course, you don't need to get him each of the figure packs. Also, pretty sure I bought a few minis (like Han) when they were out of print, so they were a little more expensive than usual.

Other waves tend to be cheaper. Return to Hoth, Jabba's Realm, and Heart of the Empire each ran roughly around 100 dollars (that's figure packs included ), while the small boxes (were more like 70ish.

Typically, you can expect something like these prices:

Big Box: $50-60

Small Box: $35-40

Figure Pack: $8-12

Large Figure Pack (like Weiss or Bantha): $15-20

Also, regarding the most used figures in the campaign (and this is a little spoilers)

Ha ha, I was just going to recommend not buying Weiss. He's the most replaceable since you already have an AT-ST. My vote would be for Jabba's Realm, but you really can't go wrong here though :-)

Fair enough, I expect you'll be getting some contradicting information here

Possibly even bigger spoiler for the core campaign

This really is an open ended question, so I'd expect everyone to have their own answer, First factor is how much does the token bother you and do you have to have the plastic mini on the table (i was that way). If you're ok with the tokens, then hold off on those wave 1 packs and get stuff that will add some variety to the game. If you're mostly playing campaign, I think the figure packs most likely to hit the table are the non-unique packs (non-rebel). Hired Guns, Jawa, Bantha, ISB infiltrators. Imperial player can add those to open groups to add some variety to the swarms of minions.

Also, give the Skirmish mode a try. We started with campaign and have nearly completely abandoned in favor of skirmish because it's awesome.

I would go with wave 1 models as others have said.

http://cards.boardwars.eu/Ally-and-Villain-Packs/Wave-1/

Having Han, Rebel Troopers, Royal Guard Champ, and Wiess on the higher priority.

Twin Shadows would be my second choice though I feel like the champions in that box are a bit on the weaker side compared to the core guys.

Bespin Gambit is my fav. Very cool tiles. Good adversaries. Good campaign missions. Davith is a good hero. Stealth is a cool condition.

Next is Jabba's Realm. Excellent campaign and missions are a bit different from the standard.

Hoth was not as fun as I'd hoped.

Twin Shadows is not as cool as Bespin IMHO.

Haven't played Heart of the Empire campaign yet but I do not like the map tiles.

Favorite allies are Obi Wan and Echo Base Troopers.

On 11/28/2017 at 5:57 AM, Kloudrunner said:

Like a few have said already i woukd suggest getting him some of the physical minis to replace the token heroes and villians in the core box.

Expansions are all good but nothing beats putting a mini down instead of a card token or stand in mini. Plus they look awesome.

Han Solo

Chewbacca

Rebel saboteurs

Rebel troopers

Emperors champion

General in the at st (forgot his namelol)

This. Just complete the core box with the add on minis for it. If he likes the base game, he can move on from there.

Another option is one of the inbox storage options. My favorite is from go7gaming.com

Cheers chaps. Hi wife has got him the core set with Han and Royal Guard. Ive got him Twin Shadows with C3PO and R2

3 hours ago, Villan said:

Cheers chaps. Hi wife has got him the core set with Han and Royal Guard. Ive got him Twin Shadows with C3PO and R2

If you haven't: Take a look at the recently released APP. It doesn't cost anything and can help you get in the game because it cuts out the adversarial element.

I was new to IA 7 months or so ago. If you are playing campaign, in MY opinion, go for the smaller figure boxes that go with the Core set or the heroes you can meet in the core set.

Off the top of my head-

Han Solo

Chewy

Rebel Troopers

IG88

Royal Guard Champion.

General Weiss(although from a cost point of view, a normal ATST would do the trick too)

Rebel Sabatuers

Reason for this imo is that buying more big expansions of the bat can be a bit daunting. However, adding in characters that already feature IMO add a lot to the core campaign (which you can spend a long time playing initially before moving onto expansions). Having tokens for Han on the board is nothing like having the figures for new players (at least for me). To me it gives a more complete experience and for a Star Wars fan, having figures such as Han/Chewy and the Rebel Troops are just plain iconic.

you must do what you think is right, of course.

Just typed all that and noted you replied with what you have got him but no worries

On ‎11‎/‎28‎/‎2017 at 5:57 AM, Kloudrunner said:

Like a few have said already i woukd suggest getting him some of the physical minis to replace the token heroes and villians in the core box.

Expansions are all good but nothing beats putting a mini down instead of a card token or stand in mini. Plus they look awesome.

Han Solo

Chewbacca

Rebel saboteurs

Rebel troopers

Emperors champion

General in the at st (forgot his namelol)

This right here.

It's "Royal Guard Champion" and "Generial Weiss."

Also, Hired Guns are great for campaign games too.

PS - as an X-Winger myself I tend to think X-wing is superior for list building and head-to-head skirmishes, but IA has a simply wonderful campaign system that is unparreled in X-Wing. Focus on that part of the game.