Star Wars: Imperial Assault

Choose a mode and mission: campaigns support 2–5 players, with one controlling the Empire and the others heroes. A lone Rebel player controls two heroes; apply the fewer-heroes adjustments. Skirmishes are exactly two-player games. Set up the map, deployment, objectives, and ending conditions from the selected mission.

Alternate activations: rounds have Activation and Status phases. Rebels activate first in a campaign, then sides alternate choosing a hero or deployment group. Resolve each figure in a group fully before passing play. Each figure normally has up to two actions: move, attack, interact, rest, or a special action.

Move and interact: a move action grants movement points equal to Speed, which can be spent in portions around actions during that activation. Terrain and hostile figures can increase costs or block movement. Use permitted interactions for doors and mission objects; do not stop in an ordinary figure’s occupied space to perform an action.

Resolve attacks: choose a legal hostile target and resolve attack and defense dice through rerolls, modifiers, dodge, range, surges, and damage. Ranged attacks require line of sight and enough Accuracy for the distance; blocks cancel damage, evades cancel surges, and a dodge causes a miss. Campaign heroes can spend both actions attacking; non-heroes normally spend only one action attacking. Each special action is limited to once per activation.

Manage campaign strain: heroes can suffer strain for abilities, or suffer one strain for one movement point up to twice per activation, without voluntarily exceeding Endurance. Only heroes rest, recovering strain equal to Endurance and converting excess recovery into damage recovery. A hero’s first defeat flips the sheet to wounded; another defeat causes withdrawal unless a mission specifies otherwise.

Advance the campaign: the Status Phase increases threat, readies components, allows deployment and reinforcement, resolves end-of-round effects, then advances the round. The Empire spends threat on troops; heroes ready Class and Item cards at the start of their own activations. Between missions, use the campaign log to spend XP, shared credits, and Imperial influence on upgrades. Resolve a mission when its ending condition occurs; winning the finale wins the campaign.

Build a skirmish army: Deployment costs total at most 40, normally within one affiliation, with at most one copy of each unique card, two elite copies, and four regular copies of a name. Use exactly 15 Command cards costing at most 15 in total and obey their copy limits. Use Deployment cards instead of hero sheets; figures cannot rest or use the campaign hero exception for two attack actions.

Finish skirmish rounds and score: ready Deployment cards, draw one Command card plus one per controlled terminal, resolve end-of-round effects, and pass initiative. Under the official FAQ, each defeated figure scores its figure cost immediately: deployment cost for a single-figure group, reinforcement cost for a multi-figure group. Reaching 40 VPs ends the game and the higher score wins; losing all your figures causes immediate defeat.