Star Wars Imperial Assault - A Great Middle Ground Between Tabletop and RPG

I've been playing a lot of Star Wars Imperial Assault lately with a group of friends every weekend. We usually block a few hours at my buddy's place to play. He has a dedicated games room with a superb boardgame table. Most of the games in his collection take up some real estate with not just the game but all the necessary card decks pieces etc.  Imperial Assault has so many things going for it. It's so familiar but different enough to make it unique. Hey - it's STAR WARS after all!

The skill level to play I would personally rate somewhere between novice to medium if you have prior RPG gaming experience. There's some dice mechanics but it's all laid out in your character's card details. You just need to glance at the card once in while to remind yourself of any special abilities that might help you or your companions.

The artwork and game pieces are gorgeous. The owner of this particular set spent the summer individually painting each piece. Talk about leveling up! The characters are an assortment of types just like most other DnD/RPG games where detriments in one particular attribute are made up by others. The Wookie is big and strong, the infantry guy is great in battle, the commander has some extra mental and tactical prowess.

Not all situations encountered are strictly blaster battles. One particular encounter had the team in a canyon and we all had to roll collectively to inflict as much damage to some sort of giant turbo cannon.

The story element reminded me a lot of KOTOR where interactions with non-combatives would yield clues and side missions to gain more XP and gear which is all handled by the 'App'. Our host had it on his iPad mini which was screencasted to a small TV that we could all see. The app controls the game, the turns, the encounters and acts much like a GM. I found this particularly interesting and very inclusive as our host was able to play along side us instead of controlling the game.

The board-game itself is also fascinating. It's actually grid puzzle pieces that are double sided with different environments that fit together in different ways dependent on what part of the adventure you are on.

So there you have it, a great way to spend the winter months with friends in a familiar environment playing out a really cool story that is one part KOTOR and one part SWEOTE played on an ever changing board game map similar to Pathfinder.