Fantasy Flight Games | Imperial Assault Expansion Return to Hoth | Board Game | Ages 14+ | 2-5 Players | 60-120 Minute Playing Time

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.

One of the first things you notice when you open the box is that there are several dozen thick cardboard floor pieces that are all double-sided, providing hundreds, maybe even thousands, of possible combinations. There's a hell of a lot of replayability in each mission and there are many, many missions included, plus the potential to play limitless games of Skirmish battles on any configuration of floor tiles you so desire. Compared to Monopoly, for example, where there's a single board and that's all you'll ever be playing on, it's a real bounty of variety and longevity. As much as it sounds like marketing spiel, there really are hundreds of games in one.Once you've popped all the cardboard pieces out of their sheets and put the ground tiles together, the simple tutorial mission can be completed in just a few minutes, yet in that duration you'll get a good grip of the basic rules of battle. It can be easily repeated with new players to get them up to speed with the rules before you go ahead with a full mission. Anyone from a young child up to an old board game veteran will have an easy time with this rules.A full mission can either be a skirmish, which plays like a smaller scale wargame akin to Warhammer 40k, or part of a large, story-based campaign. With skirmish, both sides create an army within a certain point allowance and fight for victory. It's the game at its simplest and most direct. A campaign mission is different each time, some will have an objective where you need to sneak something out of an enemy base, others will be about protecting something, just to name two examples. The main difference is that in this mode, it's one Imperial player vs a group of Rebel players, each with just a single hero. The Imperial player is like a Dungeon Master in a roleplaying game; he can continually bring new troops to the field in an attempt to destroy the Rebel heroes and thwart their plans. He can't just do this at will, it depends on a resource called "threat", and the accumulation and spending of "threat" is a big part of being an Imperial player and not at all a part of being a Rebel player.As such, it's more challenging to play Imperial. Not only do you have to deal with "threat", you also have multiple units to control at any given time, not just a single hero like the Rebels. For that reason, the most experienced player should be Imperial. On the other hand, elements of teamwork are totally absent from the Imperial experience and a large part of the Rebel experience. The Rebels need to work together to achieve success and can be potentially dragged down by a lone wolf player. To perhaps encourage breakdowns of teamwork, each Rebel player will be given side missions to accomplish that aren't connected to the main mission objective. Doing this can lead to personal reward but not necessarily reward for the team as a whole. There's also an incentive to rush off and grab loot for yourself as this will lead to bonus credits at the end of missions which you can use to upgrade you hero for future campaign missions. As you move through the campaign mode, a story unfolds which is influenced by the actions of the players in each mission. The story is set after A New Hope but before The Empire Strikes Back.As you can see, the campaign has a lot more to it, and I've just scratched the surface here. It's what you'd call an asymmetrical experience - both sides are not doing the same thing, it's just a few Rebel heroes who must also plan for the future against one Imperial player with a much larger force at his disposal that he can quite happily throw away just to bring down a single Rebel hero (e.g. a load of Stormtroopers sacrificing themselves to kill a single bounty hunter). Skirmish mode is a symmetrical experience, two players with equal forces fighting against each other. It's the game experience distilled, yet lacks the hero upgrading and continual, story-based experience of campaign mode. The good news is you get both here, so there's no need to choose just yet.Relatively simple rules with a lot of potential for depth, it's hard to imagine anyone not liking this unless they just don't like board games in general. You don't even need to be a Star Wars fan, I'm certainly not a huge fan although I can't deny the upcoming Episode VII had a role to play in me picking this particular game. The plastic pieces are very well sculpted and none require assembly other than the AT-ST. The iconic walker is a bit annoying to put together, though. It doesn't need glue but it needs a lot of elbow grease to get it to click together, particularly the "nose cannon".