Imperial Assault: The Senate Offices

It has been a long time since I've gotten a chance to play Imperial Assault.  Looking through my stuff, it was all the way back to March when I last got in a few games at a local tournament.  With Wave 10 finally hitting the shelves here in October, my buddy and I decided it was time to break out the new stuff.  We weren't really playing anything overly optimized, mostly trying out as many new cards as we could.

Here's what I ran:

New stuff army (11/15/40)
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[18] Darth Vader
[-5] Driven by Hatred

[8] Emperor Palpatine
[7] Elite Riot Trooper
[7] Elite Jet Trooper
[2] Imperial Officer

[2] Imperial Officer
[1] Zillo Technique
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[2] Force Surge
[2] Prepared for Battle

[2] Parting Blow
[1] Armed Escort
[1] Deathblow
[1] Deflection
[1] Face to Face

[1] Pummel
[0] Element of Surprise
[0] Force Rush
[0] Officer's Training
[0] Planning
[0] Rally
[0] Ready Weapons
[0] Take Initiative

My basic thought was to just be aggressive and see what happened.  My opponent was running Maul, Onar, Greedo, Shyla, eGammorean Guards, C3P0 and Gideon.  

With both of our lists having a bit of a melee focus, we decided to do the map from the Emperor's new pack, the Senate Chambers.  The map I think is nice and versatile for both lists that want to engage ecah other and for lists that focus on keeping some distance.  We played the Battle at Dawn mission, which provided a lot of extra victory points for controlling token areas.  It also provided the melee units with a bit of extra cover by early on affecting accuracy, so for the first three rounds shooters had to have extra to even have a chance to hit.  

This was how we set up early.  I had most of my units together with the eJets and an officer to the left to contest those VP point areas and the terminal there.  I didn't get any pictures during the game, but it basically went that we both opened the door on the right the first turn.  We both played aggressively, with myself pushing Vader up and him pushing Shyla to contest the two token area.  I was able to force choke Darth Maul and then perform the extra attack on Shyla, doing three damage on both.  On the second turn I decided to Take Initiative.  I probably should have just had the Emperor Force Lightning her, but I instead went up with Vader to try and do max damage.  Shyla then whipped Vader back to Onar and did some good damage.  Vader then hacked up Onar thanks to the emperor handing him an attack, as he also tempted Shyla to bring her to just three health.  Onar then went to attack Vader, but I played Deflection.  Thanks to the negative accuracy from the scenario, and the -2 from Deflection, Onar couldn't surge for any extra damage. Adding insult to injury I rolled well enough with Vader to negate any damage, dealing 2 more to Onar.  Maul was able to pummel Vader however, bringing him down to just a few health.  The next rounds saw Onar, Shyla, Greedo, Vader and a Riot trooper all go down to various attacks.  The best would be Greedo taking down a wounded Vader, with my opponent playing Primary Target and Price on their Head to gain a ton ov VP and just squeak enough damage past to finish him off.  From there it was a little more work to finish off my buddy but it went my way at 40-29.

My initial thoughts on some of the new stuff:

• New Vader is fun and punishing.  My defense rolls were really poor overall, but 16 health he stayed alive enough to deal about 22 damage.  
• The Emperor is a great support piece.  Him and Vader is a bit pricey, but I can easily see him sliding in with the AT-DP or BT-1 for extra attacks.  Force Lightning is also a great bit of damage and Weaken.
• The Riot Troopers I need to play with more, but they did a good job doing a fair bit of damage, as well as being pretty tough overall.  I think they're going to suffer a bit though as the other non-Hero melee characters do though from the size of some of the maps.  
• Troopers might see a slight resurgence as a group with Riots and several of the new command cards that benefit them.  I might look into something with Terro leading a group.

I'm looking forward to playing a bit more Skirmish going forward, hoping some of the local stores hold a few more tournaments soon.