Fantasy Flight Games Star Wars: Imperial Assault

Wonderful game, takes time to learn but it's worth it for Star Wars Fans!!!

I really enjoy this game. My wife and I play the skirmish together which is a nice quick version of the game for two. We are also playing the campaign with more players and it's a lot of fun. As the imperial player it's important to gauge the Rebel players. If you are crushing them constantly, it's good to pull some punches to keep things even. It depends who you play with, because the Rebels can definitely dominate and cause headaches for the Imperial player. Overall a very fun thematic game with a lot of replay value.

Imperial Assault is going to cost you a lot of money. It's a big heavy box packed full of miniatures, cards, tokens and dice. What's more, you're going to find it very hard to resist buying all of the expansions as characters that are used in the campaign would otherwise be represented by boring flat tokens. Then, with the new Twin Shadows expansions on the way (and Boba Fett as a further expansion pack) it's going to eat up more than it's share of your board game allowance. But that's okay. Because it's worth it. When Fantasy Flight put out X-Wing a few years ago I got suckered in and have since spent way too much money on additional ships. Whilst I love the game, I hardly ever get to play it and as such feel like I'm just a slave to the FF marketing machine. Imperial Assault though is a game that I'm almost happy to throw my wallet at, as since I got it, I've barely played anything else. First of all, I've never played Descent (the game engine that this is heavily based from), so my review is from the perspective of someone fairly experienced with board games but fairly new to dungeon crawlers. In Imperial Assault, you combine modular tiles to create numerous classic Star Wars environments and attempt to complete objectives. IA is split into two modes: Campaign and Skirmish - with both providing a healthy amount of content for different situations. Campaign is undeniably the bulk of the game, with one person taking command of the Imperial forces and up to 4 others taking charge of an individual Rebel character. Combining a decent chunk of story and flavour, the Rebels will uncover an Imperial plot over the course of about 10 missions and develop their characters over time, gaining new skills, items and even allies from the Star Wars universe (like Luke and Han). At the same time, the Imperials will slowly add new tricks to put up their sleeves and become more powerful over time. What's more, the missions have branching paths meaning that the next mission you play will depend on the outcome of this one, giving the game a lot of replay value. This mode is fantastic and created with a lot of love for the franchise. Each mission feels authentic and varied, with objectives that change throughout the missions and multiple triggers that activate new chunks of story and Imperial deployments. It's incredibly exciting/terrifying when someone opens a door and suddenly Darth Vader arrives to spring a trap. After each story mission you'll also play a side mission, which could focus on an individual Rebel character or something totally divergent and these are always fun with interesting rewards. All of this will keep you hooked until the final mission where both sides will be at their maximum strength and the victor will be decided for the campaign. By the time you've finished this one campaign, you may very well have already put 20 hours into the game and quite likely might want to start another one, switching characters and roles. Then when you're in the mood for something with less commitment, or simply can't get the full group together, you can play Skirmish mode which puts two sides against each other in a one-off battle. The base game comes with 3 maps with 2 missions on each, all of which have fairly different mission objectives and still manage to include some backstory and theme which is admirable. Each side is able to build teams based on their faction cards deployment costs and a deck of Command cards that gives interesting bonuses during the battle. This mode actually has a fair amount of depth to it and can become especially competitive for one-on-one bouts. Unfortunately the Rebels are quite limited in terms of miniatures and might have to resort to using flat tokens unless you buy the expansions. I do have a few criticisms, but they're merely things to take into consideration rather than severely damage the game. Firstly, this is another example of FF's poor box insert designs ( a pet-hate of mine) which doesn't do a great job of organising the many many many components you'll have to store. Secondly, the campaign that we've played so far has been heavily weighted towards the Imperials - which isn't so much a criticism of the balance of the game as I've seen online many Rebel teams dominating - but more a balance of the group that you play with. We've actually had to resort to a handicap as the other players were starting to get frustrated with constantly losing which obviously isn't ideal. This is something that will fluctuate with who you play with and how good they are at these games, but I'd say try to always keep it light-hearted and enjoy the experience rather than play to win. Overall though, Imperial Assault is a fantastic package that is impressive from top to bottom. It's an expensive box, yes, but it's almost impossible not to get your moneys worth as you'll likely play this a lot more than other big games on your shelf. Also, I recommend getting 4 other friends together and each pitch-in to buy the base game, that way the cost is cheap and you'll make sure that the same group sticks together to play the full Campaign. The gameplay itself is fun and fairly straightforward in the beginning, with much of it's depth and complexity arriving over time as your characters grow in abilities - giving the game a helpful learning curve. The artwork is incredible and the production values on the whole are sky-high.. this is about as good as it gets when it comes to board game design. I think it's time for you to buy Imperial Assault.

Excelente juego de mesa con temática de Star Wars, lo recomiendo a amplia ampliamente

Great product. Great fun. Our family loved it. Incredible value for money.

This game is rated no. 3 on board game geek. It's not that easy to find (although expansions are). It's an excellent dungeon crawler game with a Star Wars theme. Has cooperative play, as well as head to head and campaign mode. The parcel was delivered promptly.