As a campaign Imperial Player, its definately given me a feel for the Rebels. Playing a mission seems a fair bit slower than normal competitive mode on the basis of trying to interpret the AI commands to benefit the Imps. Not that its bad, just slower.

As for comments about the app knowing more, I think the balance is reasonable. Any more and it becomes a complete video game. Plus adding more into the app means more upkeep every activation when, as stated above, the game has already slowed down enough as it is. As a case in point, the Mansions of Madness app seems to slow that game down too much for my liking.

3 hours ago, a1bert said:

Do you have a suggestion about how that could be implemented without adding huge amounts of work transferring that information between the table and the app?

You would need a camera system and a reliable pattern recognition to differentiate figures that have been painted with various color schemes to have automatic tracking of figure locations.

You would need to have dice rolling in the app to make damage calculation automatic. You would need to manipulate all hero abilities in the app to make the damage calculation automatic. (Or you would be spending massive amounts of time clicking the app. See the Mansions of Madness 2nd ed app, where attacks are much less frequent.)

You would have the whole game in the app by then. What use is the physical core game then? You would end up with a videogame and need to charge for it, inviting licensing squabbles.

*slightly confused* What does the camera have to do with anything?

All it would have to do is track the players and itself. It already has all the tokens in the game already as evidenced by the tutorial. Players would then do all their rolling live and update hitpoint via the app (as was expected). Simply touch the token on screen it brings up the stats for that unit and boom. Done. Five seconds. They did something like this already with the Mansions of Madness app (tried it out myself, though I don’t have the game, since so many people have mentioned it).

As per a previous comment, based on locations, of the players, some sort of logical targeting priority could also be obtained such as.

1. Attack player closest to objective.

Or

2. Attack weakest player (Go for the kill)

Or

3. Attack closest player.

This would mean that on the AIs turn it can then use a combination of the preset difficulty setting, the aforementioned targeting algorithm, and the information provided by the AP (wounds and strain) to then roll for itself, behind the scenes, and decide the best option to take for itself on a case by case basis.

Based on positions alone, even the most basic AI (any chess app out there) could make vastly better decisions, and those decisions would improve gameplay by making them a surprise for the player rather than be that GM who goes “Well these are my options, what do you guys want me to do?”

As for the original campaigns, I suppose one could just play the core campaigns and use the app anyways. I get the feeling threat could potentially be off, and you’d just have to place new units willy nilly. But if the player is really the one doing all the thinking, and enemy movement is not based on either player location, it’s own location, or (realistically) the map itself (moving and attacking closest player and whatnot).

Have to give it a shot and see what happens...

All in all though, I think they did a better job with the MoM app. We’ll see how I feel after trying to play the game anyways. Though I wish there was a way to turn off the apps house rules and just use the actual game rules.

1 hour ago, ElizLestrad said:

*slightly confused* What does the camera have to do with anything?

All it would have to do is track the players and itself. It already has all the tokens in the game already as evidenced by the tutorial. Players would then do all their rolling live and update hitpoint via the app (as was expected). Simply touch the token on screen it brings up the stats for that unit and boom. Done. Five seconds. They did something like this already with the Mansions of Madness app (tried it out myself, though I don’t have the game, since so many people have mentioned it).

As per a previous comment, based on locations, of the players, some sort of logical targeting priority could also be obtained such as.

1. Attack player closest to objective.

Or

2. Attack weakest player (Go for the kill)

Or

3. Attack closest player.

This would mean that on the AIs turn it can then use a combination of the preset difficulty setting, the aforementioned targeting algorithm, and the information provided by the AP (wounds and strain) to then roll for itself, behind the scenes, and decide the best option to take for itself on a case by case basis.

Based on positions alone, even the most basic AI (any chess app out there) could make vastly better decisions, and those decisions would improve gameplay by making them a surprise for the player rather than be that GM who goes “Well these are my options, what do you guys want me to do?”

As for the original campaigns, I suppose one could just play the core campaigns and use the app anyways. I get the feeling threat could potentially be off, and you’d just have to place new units willy nilly. But if the player is really the one doing all the thinking, and enemy movement is not based on either player location, it’s own location, or (realistically) the map itself (moving and attacking closest player and whatnot).

Have to give it a shot and see what happens...

All in all though, I think they did a better job with the MoM app. We’ll see how I feel after trying to play the game anyways. Though I wish there was a way to turn off the apps house rules and just use the actual game rules.

The problem with recording that level of detail is longer downtime/book keeping instead of playing.

1 hour ago, ElizLestrad said:

All in all though, I think they did a better job with the MoM app. We’ll see how I feel after trying to play the game anyway s. Though I wish there was a way to turn off the apps house rules and just use the actual game rules.

And there it is

Reading your post, I was thinking "it doesn't sound as though she's played the game yet". Honestly just give it a shot and see how you feel afterwards, but at the same time don't go in expecting it to feel exactly like the 1 vs 4 campaign. Think of it like you would think of skirmish mode - it may use 99% of the same rules set as the campaign mode but it feels like a completely different game.

The app is similar - it uses most of the same rules as the standard campaign mode, but playing it feels like a different game. Some aspects are certainly worse (at least in my opinion), particularly that you don't get the same level of head-to-head strategy as you do against a real human. Some aspects are not better or worse, but are just different - even on normal mode it feels like you're facing off against waves and waves of enemies, way more than you'd usually see in a campaign with a threat level. Just because the enemy doesn't play "well" doesn't mean that you don't have to think through your moves and play strategically to get the most out of your actions. Some aspects are better: you get to use a bunch of allies/items that don't normally see play, the story and mission variety is leaps and bounds above the standard campaign, and best of all you can play by yourself! (or co-op)

The downside is that, from the sounds of it, you were expecting the app to take the role of the imperial playing in a standard campaign and unfortunately it just doesn't do that. You might be interested in trying out Redjack's Automated Emperor Variant, which implements an AI system on all of the standard campaign missions. Search for that on BoardGameGeek if you're interested and it should be easy to find. Alternately you could just play both sides against yourself as I used to do pre-app, but I get that that's probably not most people's cup of tea.

But most of all, just try the app with an open mind and see how you like it! It's definitely not the same game, but you might enjoy it all the same

2 hours ago, ElizLestrad said:

*slightly confused* What does the camera have to do with anything?

All it would have to do is track the players and itself.

If you want the app to have information about the full board state, someone or something has to tell the app every little move you make.

If it isn't automated (by a camera), it will be the player(s) spending most of their time entering data into the app rather than playing the game. I have played MoM2e and LotA, and I prefer playing and interacting with the app as little as possible.

I tried the app over the weekend and I liked it.

We're very casual players though and don't need a crushing difficulty, but we narrowly managed to win the first story mission.

What I missed were stats (attack/defense dice, hit points) for the imperial units in the app so I wouldn't need the cards for them.

And did I miss something or why can the e-web engineer now move and shoot?

2 hours ago, pun1sh0r said:

I tried the app over the weekend and I liked it.

We're very casual players though and don't need a crushing difficulty, but we narrowly managed to win the first story mission.

What I missed were stats (attack/defense dice, hit points) for the imperial units in the app so I wouldn't need the cards for them.

And did I miss something or why can the e-web engineer now move and shoot?

Basically, enemies in the app aren't beholden to all of the restrictions they previously may have. For instance, last night I had a Royal Guard use one action to move far more spaces than his actual speed.

If an enemy action in the app contradicts what they can do in a different campaign, you can probably assume the app overrides it.

3 hours ago, pun1sh0r said:

And did I miss something or why can the e-web engineer now move and shoot?

Because it's included in the instruction list. And it's included in the instruction list because the app doesn't know how to best deploy an E-Web Engineer to have the best line of sight.

The same applies to other figures. The app can't split movement points before and after actions, so they get Move & Attack, and Reposition.

9 minutes ago, a1bert said:

Because it's included in the instruction list. And it's included in the instruction list because the app doesn't know how to best deploy an E-Web Engineer to have the best line of sight.

Could have fooled me. It usually drops one right at point-blank range of one of my Heroes. If I don't kill it first, it usually lights me up pretty horribly!

You can always hope that the E-Web Engineer doesn't activate next.

(The same applies to elite Royal Guards.)

Re: e-webs, even though they can technically move and shoot in the same turn I like how they tried to keep it somewhat similar.

All the e-webs I've seen start by shooting twice, which is what a human player would usually do. In the event that they do move and shoot the next instruction tells them to become stunned. That means that, on their next activation, they skip the first two attacks and go down to the third one (again the move+shoot, of which they can only do the shoot) and then they become stunned again (although I'm not 100% sure I'm playing this part correctly).

So yes they can move and shoot the first time, but thereafter they lose the ability to double-attack. Seems like an ok compromise to me.

7 hours ago, a1bert said:

If you want the app to have information about the full board state, someone or something has to tell the app every little move you make.

This is the assumption I disagree with. The app doesn't need to know every little thing you do. It just needs to know where you are at the end of the turn and what tokens you have. It is just a matter of design to get that info in a simple and effective way.

13 minutes ago, McTavish said:

It just needs to know where you are at the end of the turn and what tokens you have. It is just a matter of design to get that info in a simple and effective way.

You would need to do that after each rebel activation. Otherwise, what's the point of giving the app that knowledge?

(The app already knows for free where the rebels are when they interact with objects.)

1 hour ago, a1bert said:

(The app already knows for free where the rebels are when they interact with objects.)

Well, only within reason. If you're activating a door you're in one of two spots.

If you're interacting with a terminal or crate, you're in one of potentially 8 spots...

That said, everyone who is complaining about the app not tracking enough stuff basically come across as wanting a video game version of Imperial Assault. (track health, position, show which dice they roll, etc)

Which would be pretty stupid for FFG to do, as it would pretty much negate the need for someone to buy a physical copy...

2 minutes ago, Majushi said:

If you're interacting with a terminal or crate, you're in one of potentially 8 spots...

9 actually.

11 minutes ago, jonamok said:

9 actually.

yes, you're right.

I think people that are complaining about having to think too much for the app are just overthinking things. Just find a spot on the board that meets all the criteria in the instructions and put the model there, don't worry if it's not the exact perfect place that a human player would place it. The app has plenty of advantages that a human player doesn't to compensate for any technical play shortcomings. Human player stormtroopers don't get to move a total of 6 spaces and attack with an extra die or extra pierce, human player Officers don't boost other figures attacks and can't use Command on figures across the board to attack and then still move 1 space and make their own attack, human player Nexu can't Pounce to 6 spaces away and then move 6 spaces after attacking, etc. Once I just started to adopt the mindset of set-it-and-forget-it, I found my games going by much faster and the app was quite simple to use once you get used to seeing the terminology of Engage and Reposition and once you internalize the criteria for skipping an instruction which comes after a mission or two of playing.

And if you're a more advanced player that understands things like minimum range or when a reroll can't hurt a dice result, you can start applying those concepts to the app's movements with very little mental effort because there's no reason to ever not do them. For example, I know that a stormtrooper's base attack can't miss at range 3 or less with no other accuracy penalties, so when the app tells me to move that stormtrooper 3 spaces and attack, even though it says not to stop moving until he's adjacent to the target, I just stop moving it when it gets to distance 3 of its declared target, and that means that when it tells me to Move 2 to Reposition 4, that stormtrooper will actually be able to get 4 spaces away from everyone with those 2 movement points, making it a harder to hit target for my heroes if they don't spend movement points to get closer. Another example being rerolls, if an Officer adjacent to a another Imperial figure is going to die and didn't roll and Dodge, you can bet I'm going to let him use Cower, there's no reason he wouldn't! Which kind of means that the app's difficulty scales with the experience of the person playing against it, which I think is really neat.

Now let's talk about something that I really dislike about the app that can lead to some really frustrating moments, which is the lack of an Undo button. In one of the missions I played, I activated Onar as my 4th activation and he was able to kill the last figure in a Royal Guard group. I go to click on Onar's portrait and to my horror I realize that Onar had been the first one to activate that round and had opened the door that revealed a ton of map tiles and spawned like 5 enemies. And I had no way to bring back the Royal Guard Group that I had fraudulently defeated, other than resetting the mission back to the beginning. Luckily that Royal Guard had already activated so I just had Onar be the first hero to activate on the next round, but accidentally activating or defeating a group can really mess up the flow of the game and they need to have an Undo button for that stuff, or at least be able to go back to the start of the round. You can bet that now I dig out those activation tokens even though the app tells you not to use them.

18 hours ago, Majushi said:

That said, everyone who is complaining about the app not tracking enough stuff basically come across as wanting a video game version of Imperial Assault. (track health, position, show which dice they roll, etc)

What I want is to really not know or be able to influence what the imp forces do. It would remove any ambiguity in the instruction or any bias (conscious or unconscious) in interpretation or tie breaking. It would also make the game significantly faster and may add an element of surprise as you wouldn't know the elements of the decision tree. I do not want a video game. I want it how it is now with the instructions boiled down to 'go there, attack that guy'.

and an undo button...

Guys, guys, guys! (Don't worry no spoilers!)

I played the first mission of the campaign proper with my 11yr old, 9yr old, and my 20 something cousin.

WE HAD A BLAST!

It. Was. So. Great.

I cannot express the sheer fun we all had. It is so great not knowing what's coming! We didn't even finish the mission, because my cousin had to go, but the APP saves our progress, and we just took pictures of the map, our HP and Strain, BAM. I am SO EXCITED to play the rest of the Campaign, and every single subsequent campaign.

They got me. Took me back to being 14 and reading the Thrawn trilogy, wishing the Millennium Falcon would crash land in my back yard and I would stow away. It's that kind of feeling. We were THERE, as much as you can be without playing an RPG, and I don't have to be the GM of this!!!! I can be part of the team and experience the adventure WITH my kids/friends.

Mission 2

50 minutes ago, King_Balrog said:

Mission 2

So the captured rebels run like chickens with their heads cut off. The Imperials gun down Rebel #1 before we are set up to help him (they flood the hanger) he runs right into them. Rebel #2 we keep up with. #2 gets attacked by 2 rRoyal guards and an rE-web. He gets hit the first time by a royal guard and takes 3/4 dmg. he then x-mans 3 times to escape onto the ship (we use a dice tower so the luck on this was crazy- we got so hype). Rebel #3 got killed by Stormtroopers despite blocking line of sight they forced their way through our blockade. Rebel #4 died from bloodloss because we couldn't find a medpac. the mission was bitter sweet but very fun.

3 hours ago, Tvboy said:

Why didn't you just double move your heroes adjacent to the fleeing Rebels? I don't think the bad guys that deploy in the hangar are able to shoot at the Rebel tokens before the round resets and a single hero can protect 2 prisoners by standing between them. I didn't free the hostages until I had cleared the scum units out of that room, and then I just followed the prisoners out to the hangar and took the hits for them. I think I had all but 1 of my heroes get wounded in that mission.

@King_Balrog

And now for some related text without spoilers, it turns out that on subsequent playthroughs of the 2nd mission and penultimate mission, the detective portions are completely different each time you play, but are still internally consistent so it doesn't feel like random things are just happening.

I have played the MoM app. No disrespect to it, but LotA blows it away. The Encounters are so fun! Gah. I am for sure getting HotE and every single blister pack now. Hope campaigns keep coming at a regular clip!

Based on the reaction the app is getting here, and the anticipated uptick in core and expansion sales, I imagine we'll be seeing new digital content for quite some time.