Hi, three of us will be playing Imperial Assault tomorrow night for the first time. Two of us have prior boardgame/wargame experience and I've had a quick read through the rules. We'll all be playing Rebel heroes and using the app for the Imperials.

Is there anything we should watch out for as new players? Any rules commonly gotten wrong, any tips for using the app, any recommendations for changes to missions? I've already seen there's some problems with the missions "A new threat" and "fly solo" so I'll have a look at how we can rebalance those. We'll probably use Solo's allegedly original ability to ignore two hits with a dodge roll for "fly solo" and maybe deploy a normal Nexu instead of an epic one in "a new threat". If we get that far, that is!

Which app? The Legends of the Alliance app has its own Flight of the Freedom Fighter campaign, you won't be playing the core campaign with it.

See https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1319188/what-are-some-crazy-or-common-rule-breaking-mistak for common mistakes people might do when starting. After playing one mission (or the tutorials), read through the Rules Reference Guide.

The most important:
- Heroes ready their cards at the start of their activations. Only their activation tokens ready at the ready step of the status phase.
- A hero can spend one surge per attack to recover 1 strain, and suffer 1 strain for 1 movement point up to twice per activation.
- The Move action allows to perform a move, which gives movement points according to Speed. Gaining movement points does not move the figure, moving the figure costs movement points. Movement points can be gained from abilities other than the Move action (see previous).
- Non-heroes can only perform one action per activation that allows them to perform an attack. Suffering strain for movement allows heroes to move and attack twice.

Rest and recover strain works differently in the LotA app.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/forum/547-legends-of-the-alliance/

Is there more than one app? We were just going to use the Legends of the Alliance one.

Not official, but

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1891360/imperial-directive-soloco-op-campaign-web-app

And also the other solo/co-op possibiiity:

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1724080/redjaks-automated-imperial-variant-raiv-v1-under-n

Just now, a1bert said:

Not official, but

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1891360/imperial-directive-soloco-op-campaign-web-app

And also the other solo/co-op possibiiity:

https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1724080/redjaks-automated-imperial-variant-raiv-v1-under-n

Cool. We'll probably stick with the official app to start with but it's nice to know there's some other options out there

So a hero with a movement rate of 4 could, by moving twice and suffering strain twice, move ten squares in a turn?

A hero with Speed 4 can spend both actions for Move, gaining 4+4 movement points, then suffer 2 strain for +2mp, then spend the movement points, which makes up to 10 spaces if there are no extra movement point costs from difficult terrain and/or moving through hostile figures.

Cool. Or they can take two strain for two movement points, and then use both their activations to attack?

Just to clarify. Legends is its own campaign, NOT an Imperial player replacement.

The app has it's own pre-determined missions. The missions in the core box/other expansions etc only work if there's an Imperial player (1 vs 2/3/4) or the redjak card AI a1bert referenced, which I've yet to try myself.

So your references to "A new threat" or "fly solo" won't matter, as there is no way for these missions to appear if playing the app. (They can only be drawn if playing the standard campaign with a human Imperial player).

Hope that makes sense Enjoy, it's a great system

p.s. yes you can make a hero strain for 2mp and attack twice.

Right, but the app takes the place of the Imperial Player during it's own campaign right? I have downloaded it but not really looked at it.

4 minutes ago, Chucknuckle said:

Right, but the app takes the place of the Imperial Player during it's own campaign right?

Yes, but not in the way as in the regular campaign. There won't be agenda cards or class cards for the app. Those are replaced by unit-specific bonuses and mission events.

The app doesn't track where figures are, what strain, damage, and conditions they have. The app tells which imperial group activates next, and the players handle the imperial activations according to an instruction list with the appropriate bonus for that activation. The bonus and the instruction list has been adapted to take into account the AI's lack of long-term planning.

Look for more talk and information in the LotA forum.

6 hours ago, a1bert said:

- Heroes ready their cards at the start of their activations. Only their activation tokens ready at the ready step of the status phase. 

Wait - really!? We've been getting that wrong all along, in that case!

4 minutes ago, Bitterman said:

Wait - really!? We've been getting that wrong all along, in that case!

Yeah, until recently we'd been playing that wrong too.

I get that it does have a different effect, but it just seems weird and needlessly complicated to me to not have that during the refresh phase.

48 minutes ago, subtrendy2 said:

I get that it does have a different effect, but it just seems weird and needlessly complicated to me to not have that during the refresh phase.

It is the mechanism that works when a hero has more than 1 activation token.

If you play with 4 heroes, refreshing at the start of the hero's activation affects the rebel activation order and who the imperial figure attacks due to item and class cards that have defense buffs which exhaust. I don't think either system is better in itself, but working the same way regardless of the number of heroes gives the edge to the system in the rules.

15 minutes ago, a1bert said:

It is the mechanism that works when a hero has more than 1 activation token.

Good point. We pretty much always play with four heroes (only once with three) but I can see how it would make a difference with fewer.

1 hour ago, Bitterman said:

Wait - really!? We've been getting that wrong all along, in that case!

Sadly my Core box did not come with an A1bert so we played that wrong too for quite a while!

3 hours ago, subtrendy2 said:

I get that it does have a different effect, but it just seems weird and needlessly complicated to me to not have that during the refresh phase.

It does have an interesting effect on abilities that can be exhausted outside of a player's activation.

For example, Jarrod can exhaust Mechanical Master twice in a round if it was not exhausted at the start of the round thereby allowing Jax to activate three times in a round - exhaust during hero activation before Jarrod activates, Jarrod activates and the card is readied, exhaust during hero activation after Jarrod activates.

6 hours ago, a1bert said:

Yes, but not in the way as in the regular campaign. There won't be agenda cards or class cards for the app. Those are replaced by unit-specific bonuses and mission events.

The app doesn't track where figures are, what strain, damage, and conditions they have. The app tells which imperial group activates next, and the players handle the imperial activations according to an instruction list with the appropriate bonus for that activation. The bonus and the instruction list has been adapted to take into account the AI's lack of long-term planning.

Look for more talk and information in the LotA forum.

Ok. As there's three of us, we can all be Rebel players and use the app as the Imperial player, right? I just think it would be a bit more interesting if all three of us can co-op the campaign. With another couple of players I'd just run the normal core-box campaign but with only three it might be a struggle, especially since none of us have played before so we'd be trying to figure out how to play as Imperials AND as Rebels.

You all control rebel heroes, the app tells how to handle the rest.

On 5/10/2018 at 6:25 AM, Chucknuckle said:

Cool. We'll probably stick with the official app to start with but it's nice to know there's some other options out there

So a hero with a movement rate of 4 could, by moving twice and suffering strain twice, move ten squares in a turn?

This app simulates the original campaign but not as good as legends of thr alliance. https://imperial-directive.herokuapp.com