Imperial Assault: a Star Wars tactical board game

Our love for board games is no secret. A while back, we decided to combine this with our love for Star Wars and invest in Imperial Assault, our most complicated game to date.

Imperial Assault is quite pricey, but you get a huge box stuffed with tons of cards, figurines, tokens, manuals, and a vast array of tiles to build all the different maps for the different missions. And all of it takes place a long time ago in a galaxy far away.

The basic premise is that you play through a campaign consisting of different rebel missions - the missions depend on the success or failure of the previous story mission, as well as which side mission cards were drawn, so each campaign will be different. There are six rebel characters, of which you choose four per campaign (we usually divide them between 3 players) and one Imperial player, who basically functions as the GM, consults the reference and play guides, and controls all the Imperial units.

Each mission has a different tile setup, different objectives and winning conditions, and different Imperial units that may be deployed. Sometimes the rebels will face Storm Troopers and Royal Guards, and other times they may face an AT-ST, feral Nexus or even Darth Vader himself. There are also quite a few expansions available, with extra missions and characters, but you might find that it will take you a while before you feel the need for an expansion.

To be honest, we actually haven't finished a campaign yet - the tutorial mission along with the first three missions took us about 7 hours, including setup and cleanup. So this game is a long-term commitment - you will have to split the campaign over a few sessions, unless you have a group of people willing to commit for an entire weekend of play.

We recently started a new campaign with two good friends - Carla and Wolf. Everyone had loads of fun, and we're planning to continue the campaign as soon as possible to find out who will win the final mission - rebels or Empire.

Here are a few photos.

We purchased some storage containers to help separate all the different figurines and tokens

Marius consulting the campaign guides as he prepares for setup

Some of the game tokens, cards and figurines

These are the six rebel characters

You can print out a campaign log to keep track of missions, credits and player XP

Loads of dice make combat interesting

One of the rebel character cards

As Star Wars as you can get

Finished setup for the tutorial mission

Marius - the Imperial player - preparing to take on some rebel scum

The tiles can get quite crowded as battle rages

The infamous AT-ST

Marius reads the mission objectives to Carla and Wolf

Our elite squad of rebel players

This mission had a large map area and lots of twists

Carla and Marius battle it out as the Imperial player attacks the Wookiee

Some background decor to get everyone into a Star Wars mood

Darth Maul provided snacks

Our captivated audience