Hi, I am new to this game. Please help me understand which imperial deployment cards return to my hand. Rules say: when an initial or reserved group is defeated, ...bla bla..., the card is returned to the hand and can be deployed again.

This happens every time or just once?

How about cards from open groups section? They come back to hand as well?

Sorry if its obvious, english is my second language.

Thanks a lot for answer.

Whenever a non-unique group is defeated, the deployment card comes back to your hand. It doesn't matter if it was originally an initial or open group or reserved group, or if it was already redeployed.

If a unique group (villains, unique allies) is defeated, it is not returned to hand and cannot be redeployed during the same mission by any means.

See the rules reference guide and http://www.iki.fi/a1bert/TheConsolidatedImperialAssaultRules.pdf .

6 hours ago, a1bert said:

If a unique group (villains, unique allies) is defeated, it is not returned to hand and cannot be redeployed during the same mission by any means.

I've always been meaning to ask about this. I fully agree about the limitation on redeployment of a unique figure.

But where does the card go? Is there a rule that specifies it does not go back to hand?

5 minutes ago, Majushi said:

I've always been meaning to ask about this. I fully agree about the limitation on redeployment of a unique figure.

But where does the card go? Is there a rule that specifies it does not go back to hand?

Recently I needed to figure it out and found out that unique deployment cards stay on the table (there is no rule that moves it anywhere when the figure is defeated) , but because there is no longer a figure corresponding to that card on the map, there is also no ready figure that correspond to the card, and thus the group is not a ready group and cannot activate even when the deployment card itself might be ready.

The issue I had was in how this works with relations to Nemeses Class Deck and Inspirational in particular.

Obviously, if there is no relevant Villain on the board you cannot use that part of the wording.

If the deployment card stays in play it is also unusable as it is no longer in your hand.

Now, because there is no specific rule about where it goes it was my assumption the card follows the rules for normal deployment cards?

Does the RRG specify only non-unique deployment cards are returned to hand? (I can't recall)

3 minutes ago, Majushi said:

Does the RRG specify only non-unique deployment cards are returned to hand? (I can't recall)

Like I said, the return-to-hand rule applies only to non-unique groups.

Defeated
· During a campaign, when the last Imperial figure in a non-unique group is defeated, the Deployment card
is returned to the Imperial player's hand and can be optionally deployed later in the mission.

Repeated for Reserved groups. Open and Initial Groups entries do not have "non-unique", but it is clearly an omission (because unique cannot be redeployed, thus would create a contradiction if it were intentionally dropped), and also because Defeated doesn't give any exceptions.

Allies
· When an ally is defeated, it is removed from the map and cannot be redeployed for the remainder of the
mission. The ally may be used in future missions following normal rules.

Villains follow the same rules as allies.

It seems an omission then that the fate of the unique deployment card is not specified?

Is this because the Imperial does not have an "out of play" area?

If it specified "returned to the box" it would be confusing?

Maybe it should be "depleted"?

Returned to the box takes things out of the campaign. Depleted would be a simple way to fix any confusion.