“General Solo, is your strike team assembled?”

–General Crix Madine, Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

Immerse yourself in Star Wars adventures that you create with Imperial Assault, a miniatures game of tactical ground combat for two to five players. You’ll take up arms alongside the Alliance or the Empire in the midst of the Galactic Civil War. Whether you take potshots at Stormtroopers or pilot a massive AT-ST walker, Imperial Assault pulls you into the tension and excitement of the classic Star Wars films.

Within Imperial Assault, you’ll find two complete game experiences. The first is a campaign game, allowing you and up to four friends to play as heroes in an elite Rebel strike team or command the legions of the Empire. Either way, you’ll tell a cinematic tale that stretches across a series of missions. The other game is a skirmish game that invites you and a friend to muster your forces and battle head-to-head over conflicting objectives.

In our last preview, we explored movement and combat in Imperial Assault. These actions make up the heart of gameplay, and are shared by both the campaign game and the skirmish game. As we move forward, previews will focus on either the campaign game or the skirmish game within Imperial Assault. Today, we turn our attention fully to the campaign game as we preview heroes in the campaign, and two heroes in particular: the valiant commander and the sly smuggler.

Heroic Endeavors

In an Imperial Assault campaign game, the Rebel players aren’t just any characters – they’re heroes of the Rebellion! To reflect this, heroes are the only figures that can use more than one action to attack, but they also have access to certain special abilities and actions.

Heroes in a campaign can push their own limits by taking on strain. Many special abilities require the hero to suffer strain in order to trigger the ability. A hero may also suffer a strain to gain a movement point twice per activation. By using strain to gain movement points, you can conserve your actions for other tasks, such as attacking or interacting with the mission. Even strain has its limits, however. A hero cannot suffer strain beyond his endurance, which is shown on his hero sheet.

Fortunately, there’s a way for heroes in a campaign to remove strain by using an action to rest. Resting removes strain tokens equal to the hero’s endurance, freeing the hero to take strain once more. In addition, if you have fewer strain tokens than your endurance when you rest, any remaining endurance heals damage. For example, Jyn Odan has an endurance of four. If she chooses to rest when she has two strain, she removes two strain and two damage. You can even rest when you have no strain and recover only wounds! Resting is vital to keep your heroes in the fight, but it also consumes crucial actions, giving the Imperial player more opportunities to concentrate fire and bring you down.

Defeating a hero is also more difficult than defeating an ordinary soldier. Each hero has a health listed on his hero sheet, and when the hero takes damage equal to his health, rather than being defeated, he is wounded and flips over his hero sheet. A wounded hero loses a special ability and his speed, endurance, and attributes decrease. If a wounded hero again takes damage equal to his health, his grievous wounds force him to withdraw, and he is removed from the mission.

The Commander

Gideon Argus, a seasoned Alliance commander, is just one of the heroes you may play over the course of an Imperial Assault campaign. Well-trained in battlefield tactics, Gideon Argus possesses a fierce intellect and the sangfroid to command calmly in the heat of battle. Argus may not deal the decisive blow, but his squadmates never get far without his guidance.

Gideon Argus’s hero sheet displays a variety of information about the hero, including his two abilities. The Command ability can be triggered by spending an action and suffering two strain, and it allows Gideon Argus to choose a friendly figure within three spaces. That figure interrupts Argus’s turn to move or attack, allowing you to position the members of your squad or coordinate a decisive attack at the opportune moment.

Gideon Argus can also draw upon his years of experience with his Disabling Shot ability. Whenever Argus attacks with a ranged weapon, he may spend a surge to inflict the stunned condition on his target. If a figure is stunned, it cannot attack or exit its space, and must spend an action to remove the stunned condition. By stunning your opponent’s figures, Gideon Argus can hamper the Imperial plan, even as Gideon’s commands allow other heroes to maneuver and attack in concert.

Gideon Argus’s Class cards allow his already formidable leadership skills to grow even more potent. Called Shot allows Gideon to grant a surge to himself or another hero attacking a target in Gideon’s line of sight, while For the Cause! allows Gideon to suffer a strain to focus a friendly attacking figure. Other Class cards enhance the power of Argus’s Command ability. Air of Command grants more health and allows Argus to choose any friendly figure in his line of sight with his Command ability. Masterstroke, one of Gideon Argus’s most expensive Class cards, allows him to immediately use Command again after using it, doubling his ability to lead other heroes.

The Smuggler

After building a reputation on smuggling and gunfighting, Jyn Odan pledged her skills to the Rebel Alliance. She’s fast on the draw and light on her feet, and she’s left more than a few Stormtroopers watching helplessly as her ship blasts out of orbit. In your Imperial Assault campaigns, Jyn Odan might be just the hero you need to run rings around Imperial troops.

Jyn Odan bears two innate abilities that frame her gunslinging talents. The first ability is Quick Draw. By suffering two strain at the beginning of a hostile figure’s activation, Jyn Odan can perform an attack with a Pistol that targets the activated figure, potentially dropping an enemy before he even takes an action. Being a crack shot is one thing, but even that can be useless if you don’t have a way to escape enemy blaster fire. Thankfully, Jyn Odan also has the Opportunist ability. Whenever she attacks, if her target suffered damage, she may move one space, allowing her to get behind cover or set up another shot.

Jyn Odan’s Class cards enhance her already prodigious skills. Quick As A Whip allows Odan to move one space immediately after an attack against her, giving her more opportunities to escape from harm or prepare for her next attack. The Sidewinder Class card gives her even more movement by allowing her to move up to two spaces after resolving an attack – an ability that stacks with the extra movement from her Opportunist ability.

Jyn Odan’s gunfighter talents also benefit from her Class cards. Gunslinger allows Odan to trigger any of her Pistols’ surge abilities when she attacks with a Pistol. In addition, she can suffer a strain and exhaust Gunslinger to apply an extra surge to her attack results, giving her even more options for Pistol attacks. Jyn can pull off seemingly impossible shots with Trick Shot, a card that allows her to draw line of sight for a ranged attack from any space within three spaces of her actual location.

Muster Your Squad

Call upon the talents of Gideon Argus and Jyn Odan, or use another hero included in Imperial Assault in your campaigns. We’ll preview two more heroes from Imperial Assault in a future preview, but join us next week when we examine how your heroes grow and change throughout the campaign, gaining experience and credits.

Pre-order Imperial Assault at your local retailer today!