Do you ever increase the number of rounds the heroes get to complete the map? It feels like to me that the base rules rarely give the rebel players enough time to achieve their objectives, especially if the imperial player just uses their figures to block the way.

For example, Overcharged or Perilous Hunt in Jabba's Realm

No. But I have mostly played against experienced rebels.

Heroes can spend both actions for attacking, recover strain from unspent surge, and suffer strain for movement points.

Hostile figures do not prevent heroes from moving through, it just takes more movement points. Usually it required all too many figures to block all spaces, and heroes don't really need to enter a lot of spaces that have hostile figures.

Specific heroes benefit from imperial figures being bunched up (Fenn, Drokkatta, Vinto, Shyla, CT-1701), and Shyla can even relocate figures with Mandalorian Whip.

Usually the best rebel strategy is to spend the first round and a half to defeat figures as efficiently as possible (starting with figures that have not activated yet). This reduces the attacks the rebels are going to receive, allows activation advantage, making following rounds easier, keeps the "crowding" strategy out of the table, and allows the rebels to later in the mission push the objective without worrying about the imperial attacks that much.

If you as the imperial player use a strategy that works too well, you should not use that strategy, or teach the rebels to play more efficiently. You have the responsibility to make the missions close, but if the rebels make "stupid" choices, they need to be hurt by it.

11 hours ago, player4521223 said:

Do you ever increase the number of rounds the heroes get to complete the map? It feels like to me that the base rules rarely give the rebel players enough time to achieve their objectives, especially if the imperial player just uses their figures to block the way.

For example, Overcharged or Perilous Hunt in Jabba's Realm

I have, yes. I tend to want people to have fun playing. I'm all for sticking strictly to the rules, but for fun sake, especially with inexperienced players, I've bent the rules once or twice.

Not really. Except for the "Finale" type missions that give the Rebels 9-12 rounds to complete their objectives, I don't usually see the need for more than 6 rounds. If they can't win it in six rounds, they weren't gonna win. If they need eight rounds to win a six round mission, odds are they spent too much time killing figures and not enough time focused on objectives.

Best case scenario, they've blown a huge hole in the IP players line and will spend most of that extra time just running to checkpoints while the IP has no chance of catching them. This sounds really boring for both sides, and I see no benefit to making all the players sit through that and rewarding the Rebels for poor planning. More likely outcome is they can't achieve the objective, but the IP would also have a brutal time wounding them, which turns the game into a +12 round slough that is also no fun for anyone. Better to call the game at 6 rounds and move on to the next mission. Better luck next time, Rebel scum.

We haven't.

But honestly, it's usually close enough that if the heroes lose, we can pretty well map out the next turn or two to see if they would win, or if they'd have been eliminated.

Our group plays with an "escalation" house rule.

• Say the mission ends at the end of round 7
• Instead of auto-fail, the empire goes into "escalation". They gain 20 threat and can add any 1 card to their open hand
• Usually means a more cinematic end with an AT-ST and a board full of grunts within 1 round

It's not perfect (90% good), we tend to penalize the heroes slightly if they win during escalation (usually less credits). But it makes the game feel better overall.

these are all interesting suggestions.

all i do, is if it is getting very close, cinematically close, i might sneakily change the round dial to the favour the rebels with another round. if it is really close, and i can feel the tension.

sometimes we have that player who has already counted the squares and the actions for the next turn and realises there is no way of winning, makes things feel sour. so i may add a bit of flavour text at the end of round event that may push them forward or give them a bonus.

On 1/6/2020 at 6:26 PM, Spidey NZ said:

these are all interesting suggestions.

all i do, is if it is getting very close, cinematically close, i might sneakily change the round dial to the favour the rebels with another round. if it is really close, and i can feel the tension.

sometimes we have that player who has already counted the squares and the actions for the next turn and realises there is no way of winning, makes things feel sour. so i may add a bit of flavour text at the end of round event that may push them forward or give them a bonus.

Going for the cinematic feel is always my goal. I absolutely want there to be tension and jitters among the players.

On 1/6/2020 at 12:00 PM, thinkbomb said:

Our group plays with an "escalation" house rule.

• Say the mission ends at the end of round 7
• Instead of auto-fail, the empire goes into "escalation". They gain 20 threat and can add any 1 card to their open hand
• Usually means a more cinematic end with an AT-ST and a board full of grunts within 1 round

It's not perfect (90% good), we tend to penalize the heroes slightly if they win during escalation (usually less credits). But it makes the game feel better overall.

That's an interesting way of doing it.

I kinda feel like 20 threat is potentially not enough in some cases, like if the board is already mostly clear of Imperials.

But then again, if the Rebels managed to clear that many enemies, maybe they deserve a bit of an advantage?

On the other hand, would that encourage killing Imps, instead of playing the objective?

On the other other hand, does that matter, as long as it's fun for the group?

I guess if it's worked for you guys, that's all that matters!

2 hours ago, subtrendy2 said:

That's an interesting way of doing it.

I kinda feel like 20 threat is potentially not enough in some cases, like if the board is already mostly clear of Imperials.

But then again, if the Rebels managed to clear that many enemies, maybe they deserve a bit of an advantage?

On the other hand, would that encourage killing Imps, instead of playing the objective?

On the other other hand, does that matter, as long as it's fun for the group?

I guess if it's worked for you guys, that's all that matters!

So, three bits on this ...

A) Almost all maps have a spawn point within shooting distance of the final objective. That full 20 threat reinforcement is going to almost always drop right on top of where the rebels want to be.

B) We do play with anti-snowball house rules. (there's a few out there, pick your poison). Basically "if one side wins two games in a row, the other side is NOT denied their victory prize." Frankly, I think this should have been worked into the raw rules.

Reason I bring that up is that with our group there's rarely a significant power gap in firepower between the two factions. If you did NOT play with an anti-snowballing rule, then playing with this "escalation" variant would totally break the game in favor of the rebels. (I'll touch again slightly on this in point b)

that being said

C) Clearing the board of imps requires loads of actions. If the rebels are dumping all their actions into combat (and the imp player is playing intelligently so that this isn't an easy task) ... the rebels aren't using actions to advance the mission. I'll give two scenarios of what I've seen happen repeatedly (don't kid yourself into staying in hypothetical cloud nine with this one...)

example A: Rebels play to the point, Imps have done a good job harassing the rebels constantly. At the end there's only 1 healthy rebel left. Suddenly the room containing the objective is flooded with full reinforcements of all troops in the open hand, and the Emperial player has also brought in Elite Trandoshans for close quarters slaughter. The rebels basically have 1 activation with their healthy hero before he gets destroyed by everyone else in the room. Generally this is a nail-biter moment as the game hinges here (or, Gideon fails a tech check for the 3rd time in a row and gets lit up by a dozen imp figures and an ATST ... like he did with me).

example B: Rebels get distracted by clearing out breathing room against a skilled Imp player. Not only does combat take actions, but sticking around causes damage to be suffered ... which results in rest actions if they want to keep from getting wounded. Slowing down the pace this much will cause escalation to happen when the hero crew is well outside a full round of achieving the mission (i.e. 10 spaces away). Dealing with a 20 point onslaught on the final objective marker is awful ... but it will keep happening EVERY SINGLE ROUND AFTER. It's basically a broken dam of white plastisteel armor, allowing the imp to literally occupy every space of the final room before the heroes can get there (if they really just want to make a point).

All this doesn't work if the anti-snowball house rule isn't being followed. ... the game is legitimately broken if you don't take that into account to begin with ... and this cinematic escalation end will aggravate the raw design flaw.

I did also invent similar 'escalation' house rule. I just announced that after round 6 Imperial player receives double threat every round and can deploy any of the non-unique defeated groups. Also, I did adapt mission prize based on the outcome (the rebels don't get cash from credits or they don't get any additional XP etc), but they do get a chance to finish the action and overall, as Thinkbomb and Rikalonius have already said, it does feel better and more cinematic.

23 minutes ago, Grruberr said:

and can deploy any of the non-unique defeated groups.

What did I miss? This is how it already works.

Or did you mean without paying their threat cost?

Indeed, that's how it already works. The only house rule difference is that the Imperial player receives double the threat during the Status Phase of the last round and every successive one..

I see that I have been mild comparing to thinkbomb's solution with 20 Threat and any one additional deployment group. 😎

Thematically, I would not include the part with adding any open group as I think every mission should have its specific unit types related to the story. Also, announcing double threat rise at the end of official last round already gave my - inexperienced - rebel players creeps and they felt like they would be doomed if it would come to that. Now thinking about it, perhaps increasing threat exponentially (3, 6, 9...) would also be a good model.