I was talking to my coworkers (who are big star wars fans) about board games, and I brought up Imperial Assault. Two had never heard of it, one had - but all seem very interested in learning the game. I offered to take one night and try and play a game to teach it. So.....

What is the best mission to “rope players in”? My thought was to play a single mission to get people interested, and if that went well maybe setup a monthly session to actually do a campaign. Does this make sense? Or would people just recommend diving right in and assuming you will start a campaign and thus play aftermath or whatever.

I have Core plus Hoth, And Jabbas Realm. I have a decent amount of allies and villains as well. Greedo, Grand inquisitor, Terro, Leia, Obi-wan, Dengar, BT-1, Bantha, IG88, Jawas just to give a sense of some extra side missions I have access to.

Next thing I am struggling with is how do you teach people the rules? I was thinking I would go over activations , actions and movements. How to attack, calculate damage, taking strain, etc. Then start playing and go over the specifics (blocking terrain, line of sight, conditions,etc) as they come up in play. Anyone have specific tips on what to cover and in what order?

Also if we do go for a campaign, does it make sense to do the Core one? I was thinking Hoth as that was a fun campaign - but are there elements that make that harder/more complex for new players?

I have to admit, I was inspired slightly to talk about IA after reading the thread the other day about what WE can do as players to help grow the community. So I decided to take the plunge. Any tips you can provide to help me make this a success and gain a few more IA players would be greatly appreciated!

If you want to do Campaign I recommend you download the App for free and then use the mission that you play if you dont know the rules- it does a good job.

I think its best to always start by reminding people of what the goal victory conditions are and then explain how those are met (different each campaign mission; the firdt ayer to 40 total combined objective and kill points in skirmish). Remind them its star wars and awesome. If you have any painted minis bust those out, and the rancor cause it looks awesome.

If you do normal campaign, start on the 1st mission.

If Skirmish i recommend picking a map with all types of terrain (difficult, impassible, ;blocking) and one that has doors. Start with an easy objective mission (stand next to this and get x amount of points if your opponent isnt there too). I personally love using New Ownership on the Jabba Palace map. It lets you teach strain mechanics by falling into the pit, opening doors, how sometimes you have to shoot doors, line of sight (the middle area is great for teaching this), the importance of diagonal movement, deployment zones are different (safe vs unsafe terminal locations), and it has all different terrains and the weird spots in the rancor pit for teaching

I have a sheet printed out that lists all the different actions available for a character. First you can go over deployment cards (all thats on it- a great comparison would bw stormtroopers regular and elite, regular officers, and Vader- showing different "special action", passive, and conditional abilities, how number of figures in a group works and how you activate them), then jump into movement, followed by interact, then special actions, and finally the attack. Show them a printed sheet with the 7 steps of the attack phase, and make them go through it every time their first game (let them play each other and you watch the whole game). This is a great time to tell them about each die (use a printed sheet of the 6 result sides on all 6 dice in the game), then go throw sample attacks explaining what each thing on the die does). After this go over command cards and the rhythm of activations, and the structure of a round and the importance of initiative.

Some players will want to look through deployment cards and build their own list. I would bring 2 premade lists with command cards to save time as well.

If you do a campaign, core is simplezt BUT it has the biggest snoball effect. so that is there. I think of the ones you have, either the app or jabbas realm would be awesome.

Just a few thoughts! Hope it helps

For printable sheets of what i mentioned check out the boardgamegeek imperial assault forum.

I just taught 2 new players the game yesterday and they are hooked!

20 minutes ago, TheWelcomeMat88 said:

For printable sheets of what i mentioned check out the boardgamegeek imperial assault forum.

I just taught 2 new players the game yesterday and they are hooked!

Cool, I’ll check that out - thanks. I think I’ll stick to trying to do a campaign style mission, as we will likely have more than 2 interested players (and I don’t think I could make 4 compelling skirmish armies for a 4 way). Also I enjoy being the IP, so I won’t be using the app.

I think the biggest thing to stress if you're getting new players into the campaign is that it's not about win or lose on each mission, but trying to do your best to play through it.

Some missions are harder than others, especially with newer content added in. Sometimes it's best to know you're not going to win it and instead double down on crates for a few extra bucks to spend to buy better gear.

Player skill disparity makes one side or the other feel like they have no chance, so just be mindful of that.

Play the intro to the core campaign.

aftermath is a quick mission, simple objectives and teaches the rebels about triggers like opening a door.

maybe go easy on them and ignore the trigger for closing the door or adding health on the terminal...

If they are not board game player of any sort, then I think the "Learn to Play" guide even has a simpler mission than Aftermath, which gets you the basics of "There are 4 types of action, and you can do 2 actions per turn" and then you can introduce the more advanced rules e.g. strain movement, and so on, in Aftermath.

As the IP, you can be quite forgiving with the timing of abilities initially, and also suggest strategies and how best to use abilities - e.g. one thing we didn't remember to do for a long time was to take a strain for a movement point before attacking (which means you have a chance to recover that strain during the attack) rather than after. Little things like that make you feel like a tactical genius when you remember to do them

You could also nudge them towards the simpler heroes - e.g. Gaarkhan and Fenn are both good choices for newbies.

I find the biggest thing is teaching line of sight and how to keep yourself covered. I personally still s-uC=k at that, but getting newbies to get it is tough.

There's a "tutorial" mission in the rulebook, but it's pretty barebones and actually misses quite a few concepts it probably should have covered. I think that there are things outside of the rules that the Rebels need to learn- the general "feel" of the game, even, the ebb and flow of mission triggers.

I actually designed my own mission based on the end of Rogue One to teach my new Rebels last October. It introduced a lot of the stuff the official tutorial missed, and also got them really hooked- it was exciting!

The Rebels start in a room with a probe droid and an Imperial officer. There is a terminal in the room, as well as a door.

Beyond the First room is another square room, the Second Room. There is a door off of that that leads to a narrow Hallway.

The first door is locked. The Rebels can interact with the terminal (two successes of the tech skill) to unlock the door. To progress the mission, the Rebels must open the first door.

Once the first door is opened, stormtroopers spawn in the second room.

Also, three Rebel troopers spawn at the far end of the Hallway. Next to them is also a Rebel mission token, the Rebel plans. As an action, any figure can interact with the Rebel mission token to retrieve it.

The door between the Second Room and the Hallway is locked. It can be attacked (8 health, 1 block).

The Rebels win when the Rebel plans have reached the First Room.

At the end of the turn in which the door to the First Room is opened, deploy Darth Vader to the end of the Hallway, and deploy Leia to the First Room.

It ended up being a blast, and played pretty well, with the Rebels on both sides of the door trying to hammer down the door while Vader sliced the troopers to bits. I liked it, too because it taught the Rebels about mission triggers, allies, villains, tests, progressive mission objectives, and threat accumulation (I also used open groups and an accumulation of threat).

I obviously didn't try too hard to balance it- the victory condition for the Rebels was pretty easy, even though the mission was tense.

You'll still need to do a quick runthrough of the rules, but I find IA rules are pretty easy on the surface, with some complexities that arise with time. Anyway, I find that something "shiny" like this will attract more players than a slower, more generic intro. In fact, in this case, I never even told my players it was a "Rogue One" scenario. It wasn't until Vader spawned that one my Rebels said "Oh ****, I know what this is". They loved discovering that for themselves.

When I demo skirmish, I typically try to layer information on.

After building the map, I pull out a deployment card and start explaining the basics (attack, move & movement points, interact, special actions). Then with a figure from that deployment, I have them roll out an attack or two against another figure I put on the board. I explain the steps of combat and what each symbol means as we calculate the attack results.

Next I take them through a prebuilt list that they'll use playing against me. Typically the list is a mercenary army with IG-88 (with Focus on the Kill), elite Weequays x2, Onar, Jabba & regular Jawa. I try not to go overboard with explaining everything in that overview, as I prefer to assist them during play. I explain the concept of command cards, but I don't go over each card -- I tell them to ask me questions about the cards during the game, so they can do the brainpower on how it works with current board state.

The map I pick is a bit on the smaller side. We play with no objectives other than to wipe the other army. I may play whatever list I'm currently tinkering with, but I typically pull all my punches - don't use command cards, don't use too many special abilities, etc. They learn about line-of-sight and I stress knowing the Accuracy bounds of each die.

They kill me and win! Hooray!

If we do a second demo, that's when I introduce objectives. I give them the option of building a list with my recommendations, especially if a deployment card or list type really catches their eye last time. I'm more hands-off in this round, but I still play on EZ Mode.

(I've been getting interest in from more strangers than friends in demoing IA lately. Pretty cool!)

Let's start at the very beginning. A very good place to start. When you read you begin with A-B-C. When you sing you begin with Do - Re - Mi..

We are till trying to find the right day that we can all get together and play. But everyone is very interested to try. It’s going to be 3 new players (gamers, big SW fans but new to IA) one experienced IA player and me as IP.

What I want to do is play a “one off mission” where we can see how it goes, teach the game - then hopefully the new players are engaged and we can try to do a once a month campaign. Ideally this one off mission is basic enough that it isn’t overwhelming for the new rebel players, but engaging enough where everyone is excited to start a campaign. For this one off mission, they can pick the hero to try and the starting weapon. Threat level will be 2

I was looking at Imperial Entanglements (Han Solo pack mission) and Top Target (Greedo side mission).

Pros for Imperial Entanglement

- Han Solo is involved!

- seems like a fun objective mission

Cons

- might be a little confusing since you have attribute tests as part of it,

- multiple steps are needed to be done in order for rebels to win

- does having an Ally (Han) confuse new players??

Pros for Top Target

- also seems like a fun mission

- Greedo has a fun thematic unique characteristics - slow on draw and parting shot

Cons

- attribute tests again

If anyone has any opinions on these missions and how they would be for new players , would love to hear it! Personally I feel like either of these two missions will be more interesting and more likely to rope players in vs Aftermath. But maybe not.

2 hours ago, totalnoob said:

We are till trying to find the right day that we can all get together and play. But everyone is very interested to try. It’s going to be 3 new players (gamers, big SW fans but new to IA) one experienced IA player and me as IP.

What I want to do is play a “one off mission” where we can see how it goes, teach the game - then hopefully the new players are engaged and we can try to do a once a month campaign. Ideally this one off mission is basic enough that it isn’t overwhelming for the new rebel players, but engaging enough where everyone is excited to start a campaign. For this one off mission, they can pick the hero to try and the starting weapon. Threat level will be 2

I was looking at Imperial Entanglements (Han Solo pack mission) and Top Target (Greedo side mission).

Pros for Imperial Entanglement

- Han Solo is involved!

- seems like a fun objective mission

Cons

- might be a little confusing since you have attribute tests as part of it,

- multiple steps are needed to be done in order for rebels to win

- does having an Ally (Han) confuse new players??

Pros for Top Target

- also seems like a fun mission

- Greedo has a fun thematic unique characteristics - slow on draw and parting shot

Cons

- attribute tests again

If anyone has any opinions on these missions and how they would be for new players , would love to hear it! Personally I feel like either of these two missions will be more interesting and more likely to rope players in vs Aftermath. But maybe not.

Personally I would go for the first mission of the Core campaign. Its easy and simple and allows for teaching the basics of the rules. Use the nemeses class from Jabba's Realm and bring in Greedo for some fun with the Rebels.

I like both of your options (and @neosmagus ' suggestion above). If you've got the Twin Shadows wave, another one you might consider is the first mission from Twin Shadows (I think it's called "Hunted Down"?). It's a good choice IMO if the people you're showing the game to are big Star Wars fans: it's got Han Solo, it's got Boba Fett and it uses the big Mos Eisley Cantina tile. I don't remember it being too complicated (I think you just have to interact to pick up a token and then bring it to a terminal) but it's got some of the best Star Wars theming of any mission

I would play the app and do the first mission(not tutorial). They don't have to know how imperial activations work to play. You will control all of that and they will pick up on it as you go. Briefly explain interact and rest as you can better explain it when they are ready to use that action. Then focus on how attacks resolve, drawing line of sight, and using surges. For movement be sure they get the difference between a move action and movement points. You could add in taking strain when you talk movement. Finally explain their special actions. This will get them started and you can explain stuff as need as you play since you will all be on the same team.

6 hours ago, ManateeX said:

I like both of your options (and @neosmagus ' suggestion above). If you've got the Twin Shadows wave, another one you might consider is the first mission from Twin Shadows (I think it's called "Hunted Down"?). It's a good choice IMO if the people you're showing the game to are big Star Wars fans: it's got Han Solo, it's got Boba Fett and it uses the big Mos Eisley Cantina tile. I don't remember it being too complicated (I think you just have to interact to pick up a token and then bring it to a terminal) but it's got some of the best Star Wars theming of any mission

Thematically fun but considerably more difficult for noobs. My new group almost didn't want to come back after that mission. I won't use Twin Shadows as an introductory game again.