Getting back into IA again and although I love campaign, to try mix it up, I will try a few skirmish battles at home and to help save time im going to buy a Skirmish map or 2.

Can anyone recommend in their opinion which is the best 1-3 maps to plump for?

Not sure if it makes a difference but I have the Core Set, Twin Shadows plus all expansions relating to these and then also a few others such as Hera/Chop, Jabba, Bobba, Leia, R2/C3PO, Ashoka.

Edit, how are these two maps(i ask re these as they are in stock in my preferred outlet atm)

Anchorhead Cantina Skirmish Map

Jabba's Palace Skirmish Map

Welcome back to IA! I made the switch from campaign to skirmish over a year ago and haven’t looked back.

I think your question can be answered in two ways:

1) if you are looking to potentially/eventually get into skirmish more “competitively” (store champs, regionals, etc) then the maps to buy should be the ones currently in rotation (that will be around the longest). But FFG has been slow on map printing so they aren’t always (ever?) available when they first rotate in. So Nal Hutta swamps is on its way out, Mos Eisley Back Alleys is in for a while longer, and Uscru Entertainment District should be with us for the longest. (I don’t think you can buy Uscru in stores yet). People either love or hate Uscru and Nal Hutta, but Mos Eisley is a decently balanced map that is fun to play. (Side note: unfortunately, if you are looking to play competitively, there will also be some big box purchases to make to come up the power curve, particularly jabba’s Realm)

2. If you are really just looking for a fun map, go with jabba’s Palace. It just rotated off this spring and was also pretty balanced. Plus you don’t have the expansion tiles yet in what you said you own, so this is a map you couldn’t build on your own.

Just my two cents and I am sure others will have options too.

Play Ashoka map (Uscru District) because it's in current tournament rotation. The other two you mentioned got out from rotation in last 6 months, they are good maps anyway!

11 minutes ago, Golan Trevize said:

Play Ashoka map (Uscru District) because it's in current tournament rotation. The other two you mentioned got out from rotation in last 6 months, they are good maps anyway!

Thanks for the info.

I think when you mention rotation, is that for tourneys etc? I will only play at home with friends so not too worries about that if im right on that?

I was going to buy one of the premade felt map things you can buy. If they are good, ill grab one of those, thanks.

Yeah, if you're just playing at home I'd say go with the Jabba map all the way. It's fun, well balanced, and best of all you can fall into the rancor pit

Look for some of the old maps like ISB then. You may be able to get a deal on something second hand then

Yea, I would go with Jabba's and ISB headquarters. Those are two solid maps that all types of lists can do well on.

11 hours ago, VAYASAN said:

Thanks for the info.

I think when you mention rotation, is that for tourneys etc? I will only play at home with friends so not too worries about that if im right on that?

I was going to buy one of the premade felt map things you can buy. If they are good, ill grab one of those, thanks.

No need to buy playmats unless you often partecipate tournaments. It's good to play maps in official rotation because players tend to play those and only those and anyway you can get a better challenge when you know the map well and you can exploit environment. For casual gaming anything is good.

If you want to save money and just play at home, put all the pieces for a map into a single bag. Then it only takes a couple minutes to put it together since you have all the pieces right there.

Once you've played that one a few times, build a new one and put that in the bag.

On ‎6‎/‎29‎/‎2018 at 7:24 PM, DTDanix said:

If you want to save money and just play at home, put all the pieces for a map into a single bag. Then it only takes a couple minutes to put it together since you have all the pieces right there.

Once you've played that one a few times, build a new one and put that in the bag.

And actually, if you end up going to tournaments, do the same thing, but for all 3 of the tournament maps: each map gets its own Ziploc bag, and then make a note of what tiles are shared between the 3 maps. It's better than bringing all 3 maps in a single bag, and then having to sort through all of the un-used tiles when setting up a map.

Honestly, if you don't play in tournaments very often, then I'd suggest that you don't waste your money on the official FFG-printed rollout maps; they only last for about a year or so before being rotated off of the list.

But if you do play in a lot of tournaments then I think they're probably a decent investment, if you have the money...but only after you've bought all of the other stuff that you need in order to put together a solid squad list that you like.

20 hours ago, thereisnotry said:

It's better than bringing all 3 maps in a single bag, and then having to sort through all of the un-used tiles when setting up a map

This isn't actually as bad either. There really aren't that many tiles even with 3 maps worth and it's pretty easy to tell which ones go on a given map.

On 7/1/2018 at 5:12 PM, thereisnotry said:

And actually, if you end up going to tournaments, do the same thing, but for all 3 of the tournament maps: each map gets its own Ziploc bag, and then make a note of what tiles are shared between the 3 maps. It's better than bringing all 3 maps in a single bag, and then having to sort through all of the un-used tiles when setting up a map.

I attempted this a few times... and the shared tiles would end up getting shuffled into map 3's bag, then some in map 2's bag, which makes building map 1 so much more complicated. Maybe I would have gotten better if I tried it more.

But then I ended up buying some used IA Core Set bundles for cheap so that each map bag has every tile it needs. That's probably more expensive than just buying the maps themselves.

4 hours ago, cnemmick said:

I attempted this a few times... and the shared tiles would end up getting shuffled into map 3's bag, then some in map 2's bag, which makes building map 1 so much more complicated. Maybe I would have gotten better if I tried it more.

But then I ended up buying some used IA Core Set bundles for cheap so that each map bag has every tile it needs. That's probably more expensive than just buying the maps themselves.

Yep, that can be a pain. For that reason, I put a piece of scotch tape on each of my Ziploc bags, and on the piece of tape I listed each of the tiles that belonged in that bag. And then I underlined the tiles that were duplicates, in order to indicate that those tiles should not go in that Ziploc bag, but remain loose. The only times I had trouble were when I cleaned up too hastily after a match and didn't follow my own instructions.

But yeah, this is really only a stop-gap measure. If you end up playing in tournaments pretty regularly then it's probably worthwhile to just buy the roll-up maps so that you don't have to bother with any of the hassle at all. But as a person who often didn't have the luxury to buy those maps, I found that this Ziploc trick worked just fine, with a bit of practice.