And now for something
completely different .
Hi everyone.
So I thought let's do something a little bit different today. I picked up a copy
of Star Wars Imperial Assault
a board game from Fancy Flight Games. So let's have a look
through an unboxing and a first look at the kind of game play we can expect
from Star Wars Imperial Assault. Now
first and foremost this is a board game. It has miniatures
similar to Games Workshop in that regard but it also has
cards, board pieces, and well,
plenty of rule books as you might expect. Now what first attracted me to this
particular game is I've been looking for a more involved board game for a while
but something that wasn't as complicated as some of the other Fancy Flight games.
Now this dice system is based on the old Descent board game
so it's fairly familiar and more importantly it's quite a straightforward
set of
game mechanics from a point of view of understanding dice rolls,
damage and defence. A much easier system to get into for people who've
never played these style of games before.
So what do we get in the box? Well firstly we get
four booklets, a learn to play starting guide, ,
which basically is a tutorial. Takes you through all of the core components
of gameplay. We have a campaign guide,
this sets out a really interesting set of stories
all linked as part of the campaign. The rules reference guide
gives you more in-depth information about each of the rules as well as being
the rulebook to rule them all. Anything that might be mentioned in any of the other books is
superseded by rules in the rulebook
but at no point is it overly complicated. The skirmish guide
allows you to play those one-off battles of Star Wars Imperial Assault as it were without having to rely on the
campaign.
You get a set of stickers to help you mark-up
the squads for your models and various different game pieces
and board pieces as well, everything from counters
to physical locations. It's all
beautifully hand-drawn as it were. It looks
gorgeous and it really is beautiful looking artwork.
We then have the hero cards
and various sets of action cards, weaponry cards
boosts and bonus cards. Also included in this pack
was Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker and yet more cards.
The dice,
as I've said are very reminiscent of the Descent dice pack
allowing for a pretty easy way of being able to read the dice quickly. You're not going to
have to add anything up particularly here. You get a selection of
different models as well both for the rebel side and for the Imperials.
The Imperials have a lot more models including an ATST walker.
The heroes, there are six of them in Star Wars Imperial Assault that you can play with
but also additional heroes that you can take advantage of as well through
booster packs as
you might expect game with a game of this type. Now,
all-in-all this is a bumper box really of
very cool stuff, all highly detailed artwork
really nicely detailed models although maybe not as detailed as you might expect
from say
Games Workshop's plastics these days. We also found there was a slight problem
with the ATST model
where his cannons which go onto the front don't seem to fit properly. There seems
to be a moulding issue there.
Hopefully Fancy Flight will replace that for me. But overall,
what you get in the box for Star Wars Imperial Assault is pretty stonking really.
There's certainly a good £80 worth of stuff here.
It does feel like good value for money. Having played through
the initial tutorial and the first map of the campaign
we found Star Wars Imperial Assault's been very easy to get to grips with.
Once you've actually played through the tutorial, obviously step-by-step
you actually have a very good idea as to how all of these game mechanics works.
Obviously there's some more nuanced options there which are available through
the more standardised rulebook but certainly the idea of being able to just
quickly jump into a game using the rule book feels very
reminiscent of many great board games out there. One thing that always annoys me
in Fantasy Flight
games is when you end up with a rule book that's effectively 150 pages long
and before you can even spend any time trying to play a game
you have to work your way through the rulebook backwards and forwards, forwards and
backwards multiple times
usually stopping halfway through a game to attempt to check out a rule. With
Star Wars Imperial Assault
things feel a lot more fluid and even when you do need to go back to the book
it all there really easy to understand. Occasionally you might have to talk to one of
your colleagues while you're playing and just say what would your interpretation
of this be?
But normally it's never something where it's a sticking point.
It's normally pretty obvious and easy to move forward.
That's something I really like about this game Star Wars Imperial Assault. They've not try to make this
too complicated. They've
not added in layer upon layer upon layer of RPG
that's getting in the way. In some respects you could describe this is as more of an RPG
lite style of game. It's more of a strategy game in many
respects and I really like that. We're planning a big play through this weekend,
well we'll probably go through a good bulk of the campaign so I'll be back in
a couple of weeks' time
to give you a final verdict on Star Wars Imperial Assault.
But if this is the style of game that you're kind of looking for - something to
break away from a computer,
get some friends round, have a few beers and play something completely different,
then Star Wars Imperial Assault appears to be well worth checking out.
There's a bumper box of stuff here for your money. It's not just
all bits of paper and card. The models are nicely detailed.
Not as detailed as other companies out there but certainly a
really good representation of the Star Wars universe. The fact that in the box
you also get Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker as a bonus
is great and saves you about another £30 to £40.