In the final analysis I’m a “spend-it-all-at-once” kind of player and found this nickel-and-dime approach a difficult fit and not in my wheelhouse. It is, however, fiddly: Reactive Defenses requires a keen memory to ensure that all the little buffs and debuffs are used to best effect by the end of the round. Played well it is the closest thing the Empire has to a “support role” hero like Gideon Argus and Murne Rin. This deck nickles-and-dimes damage output, movement, and defense at a consistently punishing rate. I can say with confidence, Reactive Defenses is not a weak deck. They chose (predictably!) the Reactive Defenses deck over the Power of the Dark Side. There are some Imperial class decks that bleed the fun out of the game and I wanted to make sure that if the two Heart of the Empire Imperial decks were really tough at least the one they faced was of their own choosing. The final tweak – and I think maybe one tweak too many – was allowing players to choose the Imperial Class deck they wanted to face from the two new ones in the Heart expansion.

Players like this as well because it gives each of the heroes their chance to shine and have a crack at earning their special reward card or ability. Because players usually choose new heroes from the current expansion, side missions now stay focussed on the campaign location with only the occasional off-world hop. Since then we’ve stuck to loading the side mission deck with Hero missions only. I knew we needed a change, even as far back as the Hoth campaign, when side and character missions had us doing a freeze-and-bake cycle where we’d do a Hoth mission and then end up with a side mission somewhere on Tatooine.

With such a range of side missions now available (er, mostly because I keep buying all the expansions) the structure of campaigns has become increasingly less focused. Things still felt desperate for the Rebels and they were always pressed for time, activations, movement, and attacks but the tweak gave players at least the feeling of having more control over their fate. The missions were still close but instead of constantly improvising on the fly – often to the exclusion of attaining key objectives – the Rebels got a chance to coordinate better. Foreknowledge of the battlefield and conditions was really skewing things toward the Empire in the first few missions. I simply forwarded a photo of the board and mission text.

After a couple of missions, I started sharing maps and initial mission objectives a few days in advance if I managed to get things set up in time.

Heart of the empire imperial assault