Playing Imperial Assault

Just as promised, here I am with an Imperial Assault AAR. Just played it last weekend, but couldn't post about it til now. OK, I guess that a full report talking in detail about the mechanics and so is quite out of place right now; the game has been rolling for a while and it's hardly new by now. I bet that everything regarding those things has already been discussed (way better than I could) in many other places. Shame I don't know them, so I'm talking about the game just my own way :D

So first things first. To play this game you'll need... your original trilogy OST for background. No, not the other trilogies. You need the original trilogy, of course. That's out of question :P

Once we've established our minimum requirements, we can go on the game itself. The quickest way to describe it is... well, Descent with Star Wars minis. Yup, it's essentially the very same game (you had a review of Descent here, so I may refer you up to that post for the insights of the game).

The scenarios are always modular, so you can have quite a good rate of different configurations with the board pieces. We played this one first:

Three rebels against the Empire

In this scenario, the rebels must destroy all four comm stations on the board. The Empire will be receiving reenforcements as turns go by.
Each character has a couple of actions, they can move up to their speed value and attack/defence work with the funny colour dice. Depending on ech character you'll roll different dice, the numbers on them stating the distance the shot can reach and the symbols determining how much damage it inflicts. The defence dice work quite similarly, each symbol displayed reducing the harm in one point. Besides, special features (the lihgtning symbol) can appear, each one depending on the character (i.e., extra damage points in attack, reroll a die, etc.)

So the action begins!

But you know... the Empire strikes back

Rough start, that's a hell of a firefight

Not only for the Imperials, the rebel veteran has 5 wounds

 Rebels were not doing bad, but they weren't fulfiling their objective at all! This was not about killing Stormtroopers, but destroying those stations! This game was to be 6 turns long and we had spent two of them!

Time to push forward!

Imperial reenforcements. All officers enjoy poking eyes!

Finally some harm is done to the first machine!

The station is destroyed and the rebels advance

The door is also destroyed! Free pass to the Imperial outpost...

No! The door blocks again and new reenforcements arrive!!

Things are getting pretty difficult...

The rebels realise they are not going to achieve their objective, so at least they kill everyone they can

The door is finally destroyed, but that's no good news for the rebels!

Last act of defying heroism. Whatever

So the end of the sixth turn arrived, and the end of the game with it. The rebels had failed to meet their objective, but they had given a hell of a fight. Well, that's something!

So first impression... I had forgotten the pros and cons of Descent, and Imperial Assault has them all. Once you get into the game, everything is quite easy going; but until you reach that point, all the preparations and different cards, tokens and stuff are rather overwhelming. Gasp. Approaching the game for the first time can be slightly disencouraging, as the learning curve is a little bit steep. However, the game experience totally pays off after a couple of turns.

In fact, as the game was quick (not more than half an hour maybe?), we run another scenario! Rebel Fanfare!!

We used the other three rebels, so we could see them all in action. Fun thing about this one is that we could get to use an AT-ST... but operated by rebels! The Bothan in the party has gone frenzy and has taken control of the machine. But the Imperials are not defenceless. They have a Royal Guard Champion and Darth Vader himself!

Well... this escalated quickly

This is going to be bloody

So the firefight starts! There we go again!

The Champion proves himself to be a tough nut to crack. Darth Vader... No comment

The rebels focus their attacks on Vader... until he falls!

But the Imperials do exactly the same on the AT-ST

Until it's finally destroyed!

By now, the three rebels were severely wounded (when a character receives as many harm points as their life value, the mini is not taken from the board; the character stat card is flipped and the rebel keeps on playing with decreased stats and skills, showing that has been injured). So the Imperials had imposed their rule again!

The Imperial March sounds while the Rebellion is being crashed. Maybe next time we will have... a new hope (the Force theme sounds smoothly on the desert...)

So, in conclusion, the game is fun and swift once you get immersed into it, but getting to that point for the first time will require some of your undivided attention. Oh, and a table to deploy the hundred cards you need! :D