New Orders from High Command

“Not a bad bit of rescuing, huh? You know, sometimes I amaze even myself.”
   –Han Solo, Star Wars: A New Hope

Massive AT-STs stride across the battlefield, leading squads of white-armored Imperial stormtroopers. Ragtag groups of saboteurs work for the Rebel Alliance and use their technical expertise to destroy the Empire from within. No matter which mission you play, the Imperial Assault  skirmish game invites you and a single opponent to battle head-to-head for the fate of the galaxy with strike teams of your own creation.

For now, though the Imperial Assault developers have an important announcement: a new rule is being added to the skirmish game, bringing new diversity to the squad lists and moving the game in its intended direction. Although this new rule will not go into effect until after the Imperial Assault National Championships, it's important for all players to be aware of these changes to the skirmish game.

For the developers’ introduction to the new rule for the Imperial Assault skirmish game, read below! You can also download the latest tournament rules (pdf, 753 KB) and FAQ (pdf, 3.8 MB) here or from the Imperial Assault support section.

The Tournament Rules will go into effect July 29th, 2015. Changes to the FAQ will go into effect August 15th, 2015. The new skirmish game rules will not be used during the Imperial Assault National Championships at Gen Con Indy 2015.

A New Rule for Imperial Assault Skirmish

We’re very happy to see players enjoying the skirmish game and we’re extremely excited to host the United States National Championships at Gen Con Indy 2015 this August. As the early metagame has unfolded, however, some concerns about balance have rightly been raised. We found it necessary to implement a new skirmish rule to push the game in the intended direction.

The new rule is: “During a skirmish, if your opponent has more ready Deployment cards than you, you may choose not to activate a group and pass play to your opponent.” This rule goes into effect on August 15th, 2015, and will not be used at the Imperial Assault National Championships at Gen Con Indy 2015.

When a player passes, his opponent immediately takes another turn, choosing and exhausting one of his ready Deployment cards. A player can pass as many times as he wishes, so long as his opponent has more ready Deployment cards. If a player ever has the same amount of ready Deployment cards as his opponent, he must take a turn.

This rule was implemented because we believe that the activation advantage created when one player has more activations than his opponent has become too powerful, and we needed to recalibrate. With the new rule, a player with fewer ready Deployment cards has the opportunity to pass his turn, which negates the advantage of several low-cost groups.

In our testing, this new rule has performed exceptionally well and it hasn’t swung the balance from high-activation lists to low-activation lists. More diverse armies are now viable and every turn is full of important back-and-forth decisions. In short, the game now behaves as it was intended to: more balanced and more fun for all players.

Moving Forward

We also understand that there is player concern about the power level of some individual figures, and to that end, several figures are still being closely monitored for balance. While the Regional Championships season has produced some clear winners, we expect to see some shifts in the metagame as a result of the new rule and the addition of a new wave of figures: Twin Shadows and its associated figure packs. When things have settled and we have collected significant tournament data, we will decide how to proceed.

Thank you to everyone playing and discussing Imperial Assault! Your feedback is critical to the development of the game. We hope to meet many of you at Gen Con Indy 2015 for the Imperial Assault National Championships.

Fantasy Flight Games Organized Play on the Updated Tournament Rules

The tournament rules have seen a bit of an update this time around. While the initial document was solid, our tournament software, currently in beta, has allowed us to run these tournaments as we always wanted to.

Tournament goers should be aware that if they attend a tournament run using our tournament software, TOME, the tiebreakers will be slightly different than they previously were. While some players will not participate in a TOME-run tournament in the near future, this addition to the tournament rules will inform them of changes to TOME-run tournaments. Players participating in a tournament that does not use TOME will use the same tiebreakers as before.

In addition, with a new season (National Championships) comes a new set of legal skirmish maps, starting July 29th, 2015. We are keeping the Moisture Farm map from the core set and rotating out the other two. To fill the gap, we are adding the Kuat Space Station and Ord Mantell Junkyard maps. This change will shake up what players can expect from the maps in the new season.

Finally, we’ve used this update to syncronize the language of the tournament rules across Imperial Assault, X-Wing™, and Star Wars™: Armada. There haven’t been any actual changes to the rules, but you may find various rewordings throughout the document.

We look forward to seeing the continued growth of Imperial Assault skirmish through the National Championship season and beyond!