Is it just hero selection and item availability? It only draws on core villains/allies/units, so far, correct?

has anyone taken the approach of going core components only for this first campaign and releasing additional heroes/items as they add the expansions to future projects?

My one group has only experienced up to hoth so I thought exposing them to three additional (bespin, jabba and hote) expansions worth of heroes/items at once might be a bit of overkill and perhaps it was better to space this content out when it's being experienced for the first time?

thoughts?

If you're worried about overwhelming your new players, adding in the expansions isn't really going to do that. There will be more heroes to choose from yes, but once their heroes are chosen then all the other heroes become irrelevant for the rest of the campaign, so it's not like they need to understand how 19 heroes work for 5 missions, it's still just 4 at a time. Similarly, you all will only have ~6 items to choose from after each mission no matter how many expansions you add, so you don't have to worry about being overwhelmed by too many choices. In fact I think having expansion items in the app is a great way to slowly introduce players to concepts from the expansion because you might have an item with Weaken show up, and then later an item that uses power tokens. You can explain to your group how these rules work between missions instead of right in the middle of one, and if they don't want to deal with it they can just not buy the item. In fact I'm taking a new player through the Core campaign right now before we start Heart of the Empire, and that's exactly what happened when we went to draw items after Aftermath. He got to ask what everything did at his leisure without slowing down a mission and will be able to digest that information while we wait for the next mission.

That being said, if everyone's playing the game for the first time, then they won't really know what they're missing without the expansions, and the Core game is good enough on its own so long as you plan to play it again with the expansion material. Communication with your playgroup is key, this definitely doesn't need to be a unilateral decision.

Great answer Tvboy.

I really like having the variety in items personally! My kids do too. The Expansions really do add fun Items to every tier, as well as Rewards and crate items. Also, a chance of Hera or Ashoka showing up is always a welcome bit of fun, especially since my kids are big Rebels fans.

Or maybe I misunderstand, aren't all allies enabled? I know I did an Ally Encounter for the Rebel Sabs that was great fun.

I think it's limited to core allies for now?

20 hours ago, FrogTrigger said:

I think it's limited to core allies for now?

Correct. Only allies, villains and deployments from the Core box are currently available.

Heroes from all expansions are playable, and most supply and item cards too (including the three from Inquisitor, Greedo and Obi-Wan packs)