Star Wars: Imperial Assault (2014)

How to Play Star Wars: Imperial Assault

Overview

Each game of Imperial Assault takes place during a cinematic mission. The objective of your mission can be nearly anything: recovering a critical data core, working with Chewbacca to steal crates of lucrative spice, or escaping bounty hunters eager to collect the price on your head. Whether you’re infiltrating an Imperial base or helping Luke Skywalker escape Imperial entanglements, every mission offers more danger and excitement.

In the campaign game, Imperial Assault invites you to play through a cinematic tale set in the Star Wars universe. One player commands the seemingly limitless armies of the Galactic Empire, threatening to extinguish the flame of the Rebellion forever. Up to four other players become heroes of the Rebel Alliance, engaging in covert operations to undermine the Empire’s schemes. Over the course of the campaign, both the Imperial player and the Rebel heroes gain new experience and skills, allowing characters to evolve as the story unfolds.

Imperial Assault offers a different game experience in the skirmish game. In skirmish missions, you and a friend compete in head-to-head, tactical combat. You’ll gather your own strike force of Imperials, Rebels, and Mercenaries and build a deck of command cards to gain an unexpected advantage in the heat of battle. Whether you recover lost holocrons or battle to defeat a raiding party, you’ll find danger and tactical choices in every skirmish.

Gameplay

The gameplay happens over rounds, each with two phases. The activation phase is when each Player takes a turn with the heroes alternating with the different enemies controlled by the Imperial Player. For example, Hero 1 goes first, Stormtroopers 2nd, and Hero 2 goes 3rd, followed by the Officer.

Players, in their turn, can perform two actions and repeat actions with a few exceptions. A player can take actions, including Moving, Interacting, Resting, or using a unique player action.

The players can also perform an Attack Action. Each Player’s character has dice they can roll as denoted on their character card. Depending on their weapon type, they attack adjacent to their enemy or from a distance. The opposing Player also rolls dice to defend, and those results get deducted from the amount of damage done. There are also ways to miss or evade an attack.

During the Status Phase, the Imperial Player increases the Threat dial by the scenario’s threat amount. They then ready their cards (rebel heroes don’t equip their cards at this time). The imperial Player can then spend the Threat to deploy figures to the board optionally. Then if the campaign book or cards have abilities or mission roles for that round, they get triggered at this time. Finally, the round dial is advanced by one, and a new Activation Phase begins.

Overall that is how a round plays out. Players also have special abilities listed on their Hero sheets and class cards. These require players to take Strain, use Threat, or surge from the dice roll.

Star Wars: Imperial Assault Review

“We did enjoy this Star Wars: Imperial Assault. And it is a fun addition to the Star Wars games from Fantasy Flight Games. We love that it feels a bit like Mansions of Madness, one of our favorite games. We haven’t played cooperatively, but we think it will be similar to Mansions.

Overall the quality of the game is high, and the sheer number of campaign missions (there’s a whole book) ensures this game has a high replay value.”

detectivehawkgames.com

“Honestly speaking, I’m not a huge fan of the Star Wars universe. I liked the originals and was one of the few people to really enjoy the Prequels, but beyond that, I had no further interest in the universe.

This allowed me to focus more on the gameplay aspect of the game, while I let my friends help me form an opinion on how well the theme was executed. Star Wars: Imperial Assault succeeds on both fronts — as a board game, and as a faithful adaptation of the Star Wars universe.”

Luka Kusic, gamecows.com

“And I can’t stress enough just how fun it is to blast around in the Star Wars universe. This is sentimental, but I love this universe–I have since I was a kid. There’s no other fictional universe that has stimulated my imagination so much throughout the years. This game feels like the scenes in Star Wars where Luke, Leia, and Han are running around, blasting stormtroopers. There’s something about this system that lends itself to imagining the story of the mission as it plays out. It’s like being a kid again.”

thethoughtfulgamer.com

The content of this article is originally from Board Game Geek and detectivehawkgames.com. For more information and a better understanding of the game, you can watch the videos below.