Star Wars: Imperial Assault: New Year's Eve Against Darth Stalin!

   Darth Stalin! That is what I might rename my wife in gaming! It never fails that our friend William and I get ourselves suckered into a Star Wars campaign against my wife, Kalissa as the Dark Side. We did not learn from the first campaign at all. It was like a little voice dangled inside our heads saying, "Surely, it could not be as bad as the last time! We can do this!" This, of course, is all lies. I know better than to let my wife play as villains in any game, because I am aware that the villains will somehow be upgraded to "Super Villains" that would even put Darth Vader to shame!
     In the last two missions, William and I decided to start a brand new campaign. Kalissa and I went over to the local Hobbytown, U.S.A. to pick up a new expansion box. We ended up getting Twin Shadows for the expansion. I wanted to get Jabba's Realm, because why not a Rancor Monster? Either way, we are not going to lie to ourselves, because we know that Fantasy Flight Games is going to get more of our money. The horror! Because we got this box set, we had decided to end our previous campaign that we were almost done with to start using this one. I even had speed painted the figures the hour before we started. I was not trying to make it look perfect.
     If you recalled in the last post, we had been playing with the new Star War: Imperial Assault application on the iPhone. This was why I had not been posting about this, since I have been using the iPhone's camera for most of this blog's photos. This would have been the case for this campaign, however, it is still a relatively new application, so they have not updated the expansion packs into the system. This just means we were not going to get six Nexus Cats in the same room all at once, and I get to use the camera. The downside is the Darkside is clearly going to be run by my wife. Because she can think and roll well, this was not going to be an easy campaign. In fact, it was going to be a losing battle throughout the campaign.

      So after two campaign games of the mini campaign, William and I came to two truths. One, we don't stand a chance in this game against my wife. I was even thinking of the Widespread Panic song, Hope in a Hopeless World. Horde armies seem to fit her well. We had taken a beating in the first campaign, but none of our characters had got anything worse than wounded. In fact, I think the Wookie William played in the previous campaign got wounded in two of the games. And in the previous campaign, we did complete most of the missions or won them. In the current campaign, no missions were won! Two characters have been killed, and all have been wounded. The Storm Troopers under the command of my wife can hit their targets unlike their movie counter parts. This campaign I might even rename this: Rogue One. Han Solo has been killed as well as R2-D2. The best quote of the two games from my wife was: "I don't know if I should chase after you or defend?" This was said after my two characters were wounded and both of William's were dead on turn six of a seven turn game with three of the four objectives for our side untouched! The last picture will on this post will illustrate the situation.

We were stopped by two turns, because of my wife's smart fighting withdraw style.

You may not realize this, but two objectives on this game were on the other side and one was out of the picture on the right. The one below my character on the bottom was the only objective I got to. This was turn six out of seven and I could only move three spaces per turn as this point. Needless to say, we did not win this! 

AAR: Star Wars Imperial Assault: Continuing Our Campaign.

      It was another festive night of Star Wars: Imperial Assault. Our friend, William and I started a campaign a while back with my wife, Kalissa as the Imperials. This fits with her, because she seems to be a master as being ruthless. Such examples as having Darth Vader show up first thing on our first mission seemed a little harsh. I guess what makes this game more interesting is that Kalissa is willing to play the bad guys. She never does in our historical games.
    Either way, William and I have been told numerous times that we cannot read. Mainly, the whiskey seems to say this. This is the only game I drink playing at night. Neither of us are drunk playing this game, but it is a good excuse to use rather than admitting that are by rolling and bad decisions we would have had anyway.
   In this mission, we were suppose to find two communication terminals that were yellow inside the Imperial base. Like the rest of the campaign missions, there are always extra surprises awaiting us after certain thins happen. Such as this game, where I entered the corridor and a bunch of Red Guards were just in the way. No problem! We had seven turns to complete our mission. We did not. We were only able to find on of the two terminals, thus getting ourselves captured. How outstanding! So when we play our next mission, it will be a jail break! I will have to play that AC/DC song at the beginning.

ARR: Star Wars: Imperial Assault: Campaign Rounds and Such.

       Of course, I have to post up some of my other Geek side games, such as playing Star Wars: Imperial Assault. I played a couple of games and somewhat painted some other the figures. After all, there is no reason the Darth Vader should not be in Black. I will not lie and profess to have done a great painting job. In fact, you could say I did some drunken speed painting for some. Really, friends and I could not play with all of these figures in their original plastic form even sober. However, not all of the games were alcoholically motivated. Most of the Star Wars games have been played between our friend, William and I versus my wife, Kalissa as the Darkside. We started a campaign in the game where we have made it to mission three. It had been a rough campaign. William and I have won one out of the three. My wife puts the Dark in Darkside. The worse in the long pause of her thinking between turns. I drives us crazy, because we know she is going to do some beyond the call of evil against us. That is what makes it fun.
      However, we  also played Imperial Assault at our local Hobbytown, U.S.A. to show the Cape Fear Miniatures Wargaming Group still exist. We have been playing a few other board games recently. We just want to just play whatever. We did have a half finished Zombicide game that was cut short. We might be able to finish that game soon. Anyway, below were some pictures of the Hobbytown game and the later Campaign games.

AAR: Star Wars: Imperial Assault

Take that, Darth!

      It took a while, but it had finally come to pass that Kalissa and I bought Star Wars: Imperial Assault. We played this game about a year or more ago. We just had other interests in our wargaming to start into a new system or game. However, Kalissa rather had some good luck and pretty much got it for free. Cheap games really help the push into a new game!
    What I like about this game was that you get cool figures that are pretty easy to paint. They will be painted! After the first game, I primed and painted Darth Vader. I am pretty sure the lack of paint gave away any of his advantages. There probably would have not been the situation above at hand, if he was painted. This game also got our friend, William on board with playing. William has played a few wargames, but none that really took his interest. However, he is a big Star Wars fan! There was an easy push into a game. And there are both, a skirmish game and a campaign. Originally, I thought there was only a campaign. That same weekend, we discovered that people play skirmish tournaments. There you go! Awesome!
      Between William, Kalissa, and I we played three games. The pictures show the skirmish game between William and I. The first game was just a tutorial game. The last was the first game of a campaign that William and I set out to play. My wife ran the Imperials to the point of making the Darkside live up to its name. She played them so evil that we don't even have pictures of that game. Darth Vader was also painted by this point. She found a way to bring him on in the first mission. Needless to say, the Rebels did not win the first campaign game. I am sure this might become a theme. If you have not tried out this game, give it a spin. It is well worth it.

Imperial Assault and an Angry Wookie!

      Last Saturday while playing at our local Hobbytown U.S.A., we noticed that a man was there to demo Fantasy Games' Star Wars: Imperial Assault. I was intrigued enough to ask the man named Andrew, if he was able to demo the next day, since my wife and I had other plans for the evening. Andrew agreed to met us the next day. This is one of the great things about wargaming is that you get to meet new people all of the time.
    Now, as I have said in the past, that I am not normally into playing many fantasy/sci-fi games. However, I have always been interested in a Star Wars Miniatures game. It is surprising this one did not already exist, but I know that this is based of the whole license issue with dealing with the evil world of Disney. Yes, they are evil for being so greedy to need to by Lucas Films! As far as I am concerned, they rank up there with my hatred of Walmart. Will I still buy stuff from both companies? Yes, until someone else takes over. But despite my sidetrack, Imperial Assault is more of a board game to avoid license issues and to make this product. There are plenty of expansion packs for this game, and they do use some miniatures made of plastic. Normally, this would bother me, but the way they are made is with one mold. Yes, you loose the customization, but the quality is pretty good essentially for a board game. They do not come painted, but I like to paint my own stuff anyway. What surprised my wife was the fact that the artwork for sharing this game showed none of the figures painted for the game. We are used to seeing the flare of the games involving over-the-top painting schemes for these type of games. Again, not a big deal.
   How did the game play?  For one of the few games my wife and I played together, Kalissa and I were both on the Rebels side. Andrew, our teacher, was running the demo as the Imperial Forces. He mentioned that the scenario we were playing was from another expansion that you can get. He also mentioned that you can choose to run this game as a campaign piece for those who like to build characters or you can run it as a skirmish type game. In our game, it was our mission to get some codes and release a ship's docking locks, so we could take the ship. Each of our characters would go once per turn with two actions with special abilities and what not.  This was a you go/ I go system between characters. The imperials have two to three people in a group instead of a characters.
   So, having a mission, the scenarios stack against the Rebels. Though, you might kill a few, they can get constant re-enforcements. However, my wife decided to go a little off the grid with her Wookie character. She was in bloodfest mode. I won't lie that we forgot about the time limit of six turns to do this, so we did not win this game. For my wife, she had her own personal victory. Her Wookie killed fourteen people, while everyone else, killed two. We lost Han Solo who was more of an Ally than a character that made a major difference. The campaign's do this to enhance your character instead of focusing on main movie characters. We also lost the Wookie on turn six by making Andrew work for it. If we had one more turn, we could have pulled off our goal and won the day. But this was a demo game!
   Overall review is that this game is good and fun two hours of playtime. If you like Star Wars and not as much into X-Wing and Armada, this might be a good game for you. We will probably get it later this year.