The Empire Strikes Back Again!

A long time ago, in a Galaxy far, far away....

So recently I finally had the chance to try out Star Wars: Imperial Assault from Fantasy Flight games. Since its release I've always kept an eye on this game. Most reviews would compare it to descent and that's exactly what it is, in a better, more recent version, plus the star wars background of course. A big plus if you ask me.

I used to own a  copy of Descent and even started a campaign with 4 players and myself as the villain mastermind. The game was very well made but I for one didn't like the grid thing much after playing a lot of D&D skirmish back then. The overall before-game setup was quite something too. Also, a 4 players campaign means a lot of commitment for a lot of people; even playing once a month, a single little game of about 3 hours with some friends proved impossible for most of my regulars so I ended up selling the game.

Back to SW, an interesting aspect of the game is that there's two play modes; campaign or skirmish. We opted for the campaign mode to start things off and I was pleasantly surprised by the startoff; it's a storyline in the aftermath of Return of the Jedi starting on the moon of Yavin 4, where a suspect signal, possibly of imperial nature, demands investigation.

The first thing you do as a player is to choose your hero(es). Since I was the only rebel player, I got to choose 4 of them. All fictional characters, from a sly smuggler to a rebel trooper, a force-sensitive Twi'lek to a seasoned veteran. This is a completely new story, not a reenactment of stuff from the movies and such, so you play fresh new characters that will eventually get to interact with the iconic characters later in the storyline.

On the gameplay side, this game is hard on the rebels my friends. We played only with the core set and let me tell you that I only won because the imperial mastermind made the slightest mistakes and rolled quite poorly during our 3 games, otherwise I would have been anihilated. This is very climatic and star wars-like; the rebels always on the verge of loosing the war but coming out victorious in the end against all odds. I didn't look much at how the game was played from the imperial side but in the climax spirit of the game, they have a rising threat level with which they can summon new troops of all kind, making it harder as the game goes on for the rebels. The last game we played was a side quest where Han was asking for support to take care of an imperial officer and let me tell you that those emperor's guards are very, very scarry. When you see two trandoshan bounty hunters show up on top of that, things are definitely turning sour for the rebels!!!

Expensions even let you play with everyone's favorite bounty hunter!

I also like the fact that you level up and gain new abilities as the games go by, as much for the rebels as for the Imperial player. Overall, this is definitely meant for dedicated players looking to experience a solid campaign and as far as I can tell this system looks great, if a bit overwhelming when playing 4 characters at a time and having to manage all their different abilities. I would recommand 2 rebel players, controlling 2 characters each; just enough to get into it without ending up with a headache. Now 4 rebel players with 1 character each can sound fun but after trying it with descent and now with this game, I can safely say that 1) if you play a campaign, forget it, some people are going to drop the ball 99% sure after your first session for whatever best reasons in the universe even if they told you they were'nt going to drop it this time around and 2) cellphones are going to come out, people are going to loose focus since there is going to be too much downtime between their activations. I can also add 3) veteran gamers are going to get bored playing only a single character with not enough abilities and options to challenge them.

On the miniatures side of things, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the minis; I am really tempted to paint them up actually! A bit of flash here and there but nothing to write home about. Overall the sculpts are quite good and I've seen some very nice paintings over the web.There is a fair amount of models in the box, my only downside being the fact that there's only a single pose for the stormtrooper models. I know they are the most basic models out there but still. Maybe later? The core box my buddy got also included two extra blisters, Luke and Vader, making this thing totally worth it modelwise.

All the same...

What about that skirmish mode now? I don't know. Didn't have time to try it. A gaming buddy told me it was fun and more balanced than expected, and I'm definitely looking forward to try this motha out, but this is another story to come.

Big bad Vader!

Now the only downside here is the price of the game; first it varies widely from one store to the other, and at its worst it is 45% higher than the original price. Now I know everyone's got the best possible justification for this but as a customer, I just can't resign to pay that much. A friend gave me access to the pricing for the FF SW products from the only distributor in Montreal and nothing can honestly explain this pricing discrepancy, which is even worst in X-Wing. I saw the distributor's prices, end of the story. I feel sorry about all the different justifications I was given now that I know the real price. Sad.

Soooo did I have a blast ? Totally. Do I recommend the game? Yes, a lot. Should you paint the minis? Of course! Is the price too high ? Definitely. Find it online, buy it second hand, whatever but do not resign and pay that much for this game. Let the wave pass by and buy it later, this game will still be as good in 6 months! May the Force be with you!