Star Wars Imperial Assault Core Set - Epic Sci-Fi Miniatures Strategy Game of Rebel Resistance vs. Imperial Forces, Ages 14+, 1-5 Players, 1-2 Hour Playtime, Made by Fantasy Flight Games

Tremendous Star Wars board game that sees a team of 2-4 players taking on 1 other player who controls the Imperial forces. In a similar vein of board games like Super Dungeon Explorer, Imperial Assault takes the foundations that Fantasy Flight put together with their X-Wing and Armada games and takes it to ground combat between the classic hero and villain units of the Star Wars Original Trilogy. One player takes on the role of the Empire: spawning enemy combatants and essentially fulfilling the Dungeon Master role as in D&D. The other four potential players pick up the role of the Rebel Alliance and have to brave a series of campaign missions against the Imperial player. The two teams compete throughout the campaign (which runs across a few main missions and some optional side missions) earning experience and in-game credits along the way that can be used to purchase item cards or added abilities for both teams. Players can also unlock "hero" and "villain" characters to use in the campaign such as named classics like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader (who are included in the core game). Aside from the 5 player campaign, there is also a 2 player skirmish mode where the two players build a custom army not unlike in a Warhammer game and then compete to finish certain objectives before their opponent. Both modes of play are a blast and give great variety to the game.The core game is a beast and worth the asking price. It comes with a cluster of two sides map pieces that can be fit together like a giant puzzle in different combinations. Each mission for both the campaign and skirmish modes provide instructions on how to assemble the various maps. The game comes with a handy introduction booklet (good for getting started, but unfortunately vague on certain rules), a more in depth rule book, an introduction just to the skirmish, and a booklet that contains all of the campaign missions. You'll also get the core set of figures including the six starter player characters as well as the basic Imperial and Mercenary units: Stormtroopers, Probe Droids, E Web Gunners, Nexu creatures (from Episode 2), Imperial Officers, Royal Guards, Trandoshan Hunters, and the large AT-ST. Again, the core game now also includes Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker as well as their separate mission cards for use in the two game modes kept separately along with fold out papers that contain their campaign and skirmish mission instructions (think of these two as included expansions).Aside from the gorgeous miniatures, you'll have plenty of game tokens (red tokens for damage points, large red tokens for five damage points, blue tokens for strain points, markers for status effects like stun/bleed/focus, door tokens that can be set up on the maps, markers with corresponding stickers to attach to the various miniature groups to distinguish them from each other, and various other tokens to use for mission objectives). There are also numerous types of card decks that feature such things as in game items, character abilities, the missions you'll play in either campaign or skirmish, command cards that give you certain abilities in skirmish mode, as well as the deployment character cards for your individual units.Perhaps the best part of the game for me is the manner in which short one to two hour campaign missions can be strung together for a larger experience. Unlike, say, Super Dungeon Explorer which is a single game instance that can take from as quick as an hour to as long as three or four hours, Imperial Assault is designed so that you can get a few "quick" missions in at a time while keeping track of your larger campaign progress. Also, all players accumulate experience and rewards after a campaign mission so even if the Rebel players lose and the Imperial player wins (or vice versa) one team is not immediately at a major disadvantage in terms of loot and items. It is only during the final mission of the campaign where the winner takes all.The only real downside to the game is the developer's proliferation of expansion packs. There are currently four main expansions (Bespin Gambit, Twin Shadows, Return to Hoth, and the soon to be released Jabba's Realm) that add new map tiles, player characters, enemy types, and game rules into the experience. The deeper pool of player characters are only available in these four pricier expansions. All four have their perks and weaknesses, but most of them are worthwhile. The bigger money pit for fans of the game are the individual character packs. Numerous character units with corresponding miniatures, campaign and skirmish missions, and new cards have been released as single expansions. Some of these are better than others and a handful are rather rare and in-demand (Boba Fett, Imperial Guard Champion, IG-88, Han Solo). I would not recommend buying the rarer expansions through Amazon as they are only available through secondary vendors who have jacked up the prices (my choice of vendor is either Fantasy Flight themselves or Cool Stuff Inc).The biggest pain about the expansion characters is that there are a number of characters for the core game and each main expansion who are purposefully sectioned off so you have to buy them separately. These characters actually will show up in the campaign missions you already have, but will have to be played using mere tokens that come with game. An example is Han Solo and Chewbacca who both show up in the core game here but are not included as miniatures. If you actually wanted to play them in your campaign as anything other than flimsy cardboard then you'd need to hunt down the separate character packs (which then leads to you having duplicate deployment cards for the characters). Overall this isn't a make or break deal for me. Fans who love the game and want to collect all the models or support the developer will probably want to grab up certain character expansions anyway, but for those who might not want to spend any money past the core game you won't be forced to as the game does include those stand-in tokens for you to use in lieu of the miniatures. The only major drawback is that skirmish mode in the core game only comes with a single map that has two variants to play on it. Each one of the character expansion packs come with new skirmish map suggestions and instructions so if you want variety in that mode you need to shell out for those various packs.Overall the game is a blast and one of my favorite board games.

This is a great big-box war campaign game for multiple players with lots of nice looking models. I'm going to be comparing this game a lot to Space Hulk, so I apologize if you're a fan and it seems like I am beating up on that game a lot. I remember buying Space Hulk 3rd Edition a few years ago, and while I had lots of fun painting up the models for it, convincing my friends to trudge through the immensely complex rules was always a daunting task, and if I could actually convince them to finish the game they usually said "it was neat but I wouldn't play it again." The fact that it was a 1v1 game didn't particularly help matters either, since it wasn't exactly a hit at parties. Imperial Assault takes Space Hulk's appeal of the big box war game, and does it in a way that is approachable for new players and is actually great for a group. I've been playing through the missions fairly regularly with my friends, and everyone is always genuinely excited to set up each map. If you are playing for the first time the rules can take a little bit of work to learn, but they quickly become second nature and are easy to remember after your first play. It has a training mission that's perfect for learning the ropes, and once you know how to play it's very easy to introduce people to the game.One of the best things about the game for me is that players get to work on a team. Like Dungeons and Dragons you will have one player as the "dungeon master" controlling the Imperial forces, and several players each controlling a Rebel heroes who are individually much more powerful than most individual Imperial units. The difference here is that unlike Dungeons and Dragons, where the Dungeon Master may fudge certain parts of the game's rules in secret for the sake of pushing the players through his narrative, the Imperial player is just as bound by the rules as the Rebel players and all rolls are done in the open. However, there are still secret conditions and surprise events that will only be known to the Imperial player, and he is the one who reads the mission briefing and all the events from the mission book. If the Rebel team loses a mission, the game is not over, but rather it has some kind of effect on what will happen in the next mission, so the Imperial player is still encouraged to play hard and not go easy on the Rebel team. There is also an extra set of rules for skirmish gameplay which are competitive 1v1 battles for two players, though to be honest I haven't tried it yet. Even if you have friends who have never played a game like D&D, this game might just be the gateway drug to get them hooked on campaign tabletop gaming.In terms of what you get in the box, this game is very impressive. You get lots and lots of detailed miniatures, and unlike the more fragile polystyrene models included with Space Hulk, these are made of a slightly softer material with a bit more give so you don't have to worry about your friends breaking them. That unfortunately means they're not as detailed or sharp looking as Citadel miniatures, but they still pack some pretty impressive details, and the AT-ST chicken walker is quite a beast of a model. If you like to paint miniatures and you're a Star Wars fan, then I can say you should probably buy this game right now because you'll have plenty to work with (I highly recommend investing in some battle foam if you are painting the models, though). There's also tons of playing cards in two different sizes to represent characters, weapons, items, events, etc. which look very nice and really do a good job at keeping the rule book slim (something I wish Games Workshop would have done with Space Hulk). Beyond that you get a bunch of double-sided interlocking environmental tiles, some doors, various counter tokens, a turn counting dial, and a set of specialized dice. These are the same dice used in FFG's Star Wars RPG system, and while they are a bit odd looking at first, once you learn how to use them their usefulness becomes obvious. It's a very good dice system for a game that involves both ranged and melee combat, and it keeps things moving fast without requiring much interpretation by the player.Lastly, there's the expandability aspect of Imperial Assault. There are many expansion packs and additional characters that are being released for the game, so buying the initial game box could very well be considered the starting investment for a new hobby. There are lots of fan-favorite characters that are sold in separate packs, as well as game expansions that include new missions and such. You could potentially be playing and painting this game for a long time depending on how much you are willing to spend on those additional materials, although even judging the game just on its own, I would say it's a solid addition to the game collection of any Star Wars fan, or even board game fans in general. You get plenty of quality game content for what you pay, and the experience of playing the game with all its miniatures, special dice, cards, etc. is something you and your friends will not soon forget.