Hey folks,

I'm a pretty active competitive Skirmish player and I have played through the App Campaign but have yet to play through a regular campaign. I've played a few missions here and there in the past but nothing substantial like this. My group wanted to start with the Core Box and move on from there, so my question is if you guys have any tips for Imperial Players in general (and not on what agenda decks to choose or anything like that) and specifically for running the Core Box campaign. Is there any house rules you would view as necessary? Any help would be greatly appreciated to make the experience run smoother for my play group! Cheers

Rules-wise, this is a really helpful thread: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1319188/what-are-some-crazy-or-common-rule-breaking-mistak

You'll probably have most of the rules already from skirmish, but there are a few small changes that can trip you up. The big things IMO are to look up the difference between "threat" and "threat level" and to remember a few extra abilities that all heroes have (e.g. they can spend up to two strain to gain that many movement points; they can always spend a single surge from any attack to recover a single strain; any time you're told to recover strain but you have none, you recover that amount of damage instead)

Also, remind your rebels that it's not generally a great idea to open doors with their last hero's activation - imperial troops often spawn, and that's a bad thing if all of the heroes have already activated. With that said, they should learn this on their own in the first mission .

As for house rules, I don't really use too many. The one thing I like to do is to use the errata'd characters for allies/open groups but the non-errata'd characters for things that were spawned by the mission. So for example if the mission says to start with royal guards, rebel sabs, Han Solo or IG-88 on the board then I use their original cards since that's what the mission was designed and balanced around. But if the rebels earn Han Solo as an ally or if the Imperial earns Iggy as a villain, I'll let them bring them in as though they had their skirmish upgrade card (including the reduced cost). This makes earning the allies and villains feel more "worth it", since otherwise a min/maxing player would never want to bring in any of the cool figures that they had earned.

Also, some people like to try to prevent "snowballing" by giving both sides the extra XP if they've lost two or more story missions in a row. You might want to see how it goes and implement this if one side starts off at a huge advantage.

Edit: Also, in post-Jabba campaigns there's a rule that the imperial can only hold up to four agenda cards at once (to prevent the imperial from just saving them all up for the finale). This is probably a good rule for any campaign. And also also, if you are using expansion content for the weapon/item purchase decks then the new rule is to put half of the available items up for sale instead of the limit of 6 that is called out in the core rule book.

The most important thing missing from the Learn to Play / campaign rules, is a suggestion that you have a talk with your Rebel players before the die has been cast, aligning your expectations to the campaign.

Are they looking for a thinky game with heavy strategising of every choice and an opponent Imperial Player, that pulls no punches? Or would they prefer an Imperial Player more akin to a gamemaster in a roleplaying game - the custodian of a fun experience, that might challenge them, but never enough to break them, not really playing to "win" in the traditional sense?

16 hours ago, Cremate said:

The most important thing missing from the Learn to Play / campaign rules, is a suggestion that you have a talk with your Rebel players before the die has been cast, aligning your expectations to the campaign.

Are they looking for a thinky game with heavy strategising of every choice and an opponent Imperial Player, that pulls no punches? Or would they prefer an Imperial Player more akin to a gamemaster in a roleplaying game - the custodian of a fun experience, that might challenge them, but never enough to break them, not really playing to "win" in the traditional sense?

This.

You might even want to consider reevaluating mid-way through the campaign. As the Imperial player in one of my groups, before we started I offered the options of playing at a difficulty level of Easy, Medium, Hard, Nightmare (no holds barred). At the start of the campaign, my Rebel players didn't want me to pull any punches. However, now 8 missions in and after losing very hard in a few missions, they're feeling like they have no chance to succeed. Thus, we've made some adjustments to hopefully make it a bit more competitive (-1 threat level, removed ~Stun from Imperial Industry attachment, -2 influence).

In another campaign, I offered the difficulty levels and they chose Medium so I am shooting for about 50-50 win/loss ratio. The Rebel players are having a lot of fun in that campaign.

Honestly, the most satisfying feeling for me as the IP is eeking out a win on the last turn of a very close game. I’m feeling pretty good if it goes the other way as well - provided that everyone was having fun. If it’s one sided one way or another I don’t feel great about it.

Also having the campaign be 6-4 or 5-5 for overall wins is usually a good thing for both sides.

Hey everyone thanks for the tips! We finally had our first game this past Thursday night and it went really great. There's a few experienced campaign players, 1 experienced campaign/skirmish player and 1 guy who is new to everything so it's a good mix. We ended up playing Heart of The Empire since no one had done that campaign yet. I took the "power of the dark side" (how could I not? so awesome) and they have Loku, Biv, Drokkatta, and Onar. Drokkatta and Loku were the ones I focused on taking down whenever I did attack. Crazy highlight of this game was between both of us around 5-6 dodges were rolled and maybe 4 or so 3-blocks on the black die. Thanks again for your kind and awesome tips!

Know their cards don't misuse threat, get high value target(and use it) don't get to many villians and If your the next imp player, look at the cards closely before playing the next ones. Don't dicount class cards that use threat, but don't get too many. The imperial industry card is important no matter what if you can get it. read the internet not just on the forums. focus fire heroes, don't stagger damage. That is the imp player in a wrap.

look for weaknesses and if possible stun and bleed. I love bleed, as my rebels won't usually clear it right away.

Also, evaluate if this campaign is intended to be "just for fun" or "highly competitive"

If just for fun, try to get an idea of how close to either side winning you can push things. Make it close by pulling punches or going for the jugular intermittently. Spread Damage or Focus Fire to keep things fun. Give helpful advice or insinuate event triggers so they can maybe adjust their tactics a little. If one side pulls ahead don't be afraid to look for balancing mechanics. Don't throw missions, but don't always look to withdraw a hero or block a hallway. Avoid putting too many conditions on the heroes if you can. Sometimes leaving units in a position that lets a hero show off their new skill brings more fun to the table than positioning them optimally.

If highly competitive, look at @ATM2100 's suggestions for optimising.