Hi, I was playing the game this evening and had some questions:

1.) During the assignment phase, when choosing leaders to activate systems, does the player need to choose which systems will be activated, or can the system to activate change during the command phase before that leader is played?

2.) If a player can change which system their chosen leaders activate during the command phase, what is to stop the Imperial player from activating every system which the Rebel player chooses to play missions in, thus stalling the Rebel on every move? I know that activated systems have to be adjacent, but within the first two or three turns it's pretty easy for the Imperials to be adjacent to nearly every system.

Thank you!

On 9/1/2018 at 6:38 PM, jessgold412 said:

1.) During the assignment phase, when choosing leaders to activate systems, does the player need to choose which systems will be activated, or can the system to activate change during the command phase before that leader is played?

The Assignment Phase for missions does not involve systems at all. This phase is for putting leaders on facedown mission cards.

The exception is the use of action cards that trigger in the Assignment Phase. If I remember correctly, most (all?) of their abilities are resolved in a particular system, using the specified leader.

On 9/1/2018 at 6:38 PM, jessgold412 said:

what is to stop the Imperial player from activating every system which the Rebel player chooses to play missions in, thus stalling the Rebel on every move? I know that activated systems have to be adjacent, but within the first two or three turns it's pretty easy for the Imperials to be adjacent to nearly every system.

At the start of the Command Phase, each side has no knowledge of which systems the other side will be playing missions in. Each side can make educated guesses on where a facedown mission will be played based on which leaders are assigned, but it's still a guess.

If the concern is that the Imperials might react to a Rebel mission by activing units for attack, or playing a capture mission: that's a risk/reward decision that the Rebels need to make.

If by 'stall' in your wording, you mean "can't move Rebel units out if the Imperials place a leader at same spot as a Rebel leader": the Rebel leader (from the already attempted mission in your example) already prevents their own units from moving.

From a strategic view, it's mostly the Rebels stalling the Imperials, rather than the other way around.

Hope that helps.

10 hours ago, phaze said:

From a strategic view, it's mostly the Rebels stalling the Imperials, rather than the other way around.

I agree with everything else. You did a good job of explaining.

This last bit, however, greatly depends on the players. Yes, if the Imperial player is on top of their game, they should capture the initiative and force the Rebel player into being reactive. However, if the Rebel player is on their game, then they're the one with the initiative, forcing the Imperial player to react to Rebel initiatives. As in many strategic games, knowing how to capture that initiative is part of the art of competition.