Star Wars: Imperial Assault Campaign Module

Updated 2016-06-10

This is the Star Wars: Imperial Assault Campaign module you are looking for!

Welcome to Imperial Assault, the Campaign Game!

I love the game. I took over bringing the campaign module upto speed when Twin Shadows came out. Thanks to JamesManhattan, Kezerk and sithbunny36 for the base work and Thereisnotry for the Skirmish module.

You need a physical copy of the game to be able to play the campaign. You will need the Rules, the appropriate Campaign book and any side mission campaign sheets you want to include as agenda sets or ally missions.

If you want to play the Skirmish mode, this is not the module you're looking for. Get the Skirmish module from above ( http://www.vassalengine.org/ ).

If you have suggestions or requests to improve this module, or questions about the use (the documentation is still lacking), feel free to send me a private message. My screenname is "a1bert" on BoardGameGeek.com (and elsewhere).

This module supports Imperial Assault campaign mode, with figure expansions and boxed expansions upto and including wave 4 and Return to Hoth.

Star Wars: Imperial Assault and its expansions are © and TM Fantasy Flight Games, Inc. Star Wars is © and TM Lucasfilm Ltd.

No challenge to the legal status of this content is intended. You need the corresponding Campaign Guide to be able to play campaigns with this module, so go and buy the products!

Thanks to Kezerk for getting me into PBF and continuing the modification of this module from the JohnManhattan version. Sithbunny for starting to add Twin Shadows before I highjacked the project from him. Thereisnotry for the great skirmish module and the dice roller.

For more information visit Star Wars: Imperial Assault at FFG.

This module was originally intended for Play By Forum games in www.boardgamegeek.com and to be only used by the imperial player. Only minor effort has been made to allow hiding things from the rebels. This will be improved if needed. The module has not been tested for online play.

You will see at the very top of the screen 'File, Tools, Help' buttons. These are self explanatory and you will probably not be using them very often besides for standard actions. The next line down contains the 'bread & butter' of the module. You will see Undo, Step, Double Arrows, Retire, Player Area, Markers, Tiles, Rebel, Imperial, Rewards & Misc. , Deck Building, Imperial Hand, Dice, Campaign Maps, and Game Notes. (Some of them appear only when you start a game or load a saved game.)

Top Row Explanation

Undo Last Move: Lets you retrace your steps of each move made. This includes all manipulation.
Step Forward: If you load a logfile, you can step through it with this.
Double Arrows (Show/Hide Server Controls): This is used to show the servers available when playing online. For more information on this button, please see www.vassalengine.org.
Retire: This allows you to become an observer or change "sides" in game or let someone else take over. Currently, there are the following choices for sides: Observer, Imperial, Overlord, Hero 1, Hero 2, Hero 3, Hero 4, Rebel 5, Rebel 6. The selected side affects which things you can affect. Only Imperial or Overlord can open the Imperial Hand window.
Player Area: This button opens the player area window. It provides space for hero sheets, items, supply deck, and so on. (Is only visible when game started.)
Markers: This button opens a tab beside the chat window that contains generic tokens and counters, and condition tokens and their reference cards.
Tiles: This button opens a window containing the basic things to build maps. You get the tiles, coordinates (numbers and letters), and door objects. Terminals, mission tokens, entrance, and similar tokens are found in the Markers window.
Rebel: This button opens a window containing most Rebel-related things: Hero sheets, class cards, Rebel tokens, Rebel deployment cards, and side missions.
Imperial: This button opens a window containing most Imperial-related things: Imperial and Mercenary tokens and deployment cards, Imperial class cards, Agenda sets, and Story missions.
Rewards & Misc. : This button opens a window containing Reward Cards for both Rebels and Imperial side, item and supply cards sorted by expansion, and miscellaneous objects needed to update save files.
Deck Building: This button opens a window used for building the item and supply decks at the start of the campaign. The window also includes a place for the side mission deck to not clutter the Player Area window too much. (Is only visible when game started.)
Imperial Hand: If you are the Imperial player (or Overlord), you can press this button to open the window which contains the agenda deck of the imperial player, and all of the secret and public agenda cards the Imperial Player has bought. It can also hold the earned Villain deployment cards and the purchased class cards. (Is only visible when game started.)
Dice: This button opens the dice window, mostly copied from the IA Skirmish module. If you play online, this will be required. (Is only visible when game started.)
Campaign Maps: In this menu you can find map windows for every mission released. They do not contain maps by default. You need a suitable save file that come with the maps pre-built, or build each map you need yourself from the tiles.
Game Notes Button: Allows you to save notes about the scenario, private, private and delayed.

Player Area Button

The Player Area button opens the Player Area map window. The window contains locations to place hero sheets, class and items cards, and optionally supply cards into.

The Player Area also contains several decks:

Supply Deck - The supply card deck of the game. During mission setup you decide the contents. See the Deck Building for more details.
Supply Discard - When supply cards have been used, they can be returned to the Supply Discard (see the right-click menu on the supply cards). After the mission you can drag the cards from the supply discard back to the supply deck. You should not delete supply cards during a campaign unless you have made extra copies.
Item I, II and III Decks - You will draw cards available for purchase from these decks during the Rebel upgrade stage. See Deck Building on how to construct and modify these decks.
Items Sold - During the campaign the rebels can sell item cards for half their price. Also the starting item cards can be sold. The items do not go back to the item decks. The Items Sold deck makes keeping track of the sold items a little easier.

The bottom of the Player Area window can be used to hold the active missions.

Markers Button

The Markers button toggles the Markers / Conditions tab on and off from the left side of the chat window. You can resize it by moving the vertical dividing bar by mouse. The subwindow contains tabs: Markers and Conditions.

Markers: Contains tokens for Damage, Strain, Mission Objective Tokens, Terminals, Entrance, and Crates. You can also find the Round Counter and Threat Counters here with the Device and Recon tokens.

Round and Threat Counters - Numpad + and - to increase and decrease.
Damage and Strain Tokens - Have counters, so can be used for various things.
Entrance Token - For completeness.
Imperial Mission Tokens - Two-sided, ctrl-M to switch to rebel side. Also have damage and success counters.
Rebel Mission Tokens - Two-sided, ctrl-M to switch to imperial side. Gray one is a generic one - use shift-C to change color, ctrl-F to flip between rebel and imperial sides. Also have damage and success counters.
Neutral Mission Tokens - ctrl-M to mask and reveal the colored side. Gray one is a generic one - use shift-C to change color. Also have damage and success counters.
Terminals - ctrl-M to mask and reveal the colored side. Gray one is a generic one - use shift-C to change color and ctrl-M to mask/unmask. Also have damage and success counters.
Device and Recon Tokens - figures have their own markers for these.
Activation Token - Two-sided, just for completeness.
Terminal and token markers - markers that appear on top of everythig, so a figure in the same space as a token or terminal allows something about the token or terminal to show up. Only the center of the marker can be used to select it with Alt-click. Clicking outside of the center allows you to select the underlying token or terminal instead.
Text button - use Ctrl-L to add the text you want.

Conditions: Contains the condition tokens and their reference cards.

Note that each figure has a condition menu which can be used to set and clear conditions and other markers associated with the figure, so there is less use for the damage, strain, device, recon, mission and condition tokens now.

Tiles Button

The Tiles button opens a window containing the terrain tiles, sorted according to expansion: core set, Twin Shadows, Return to Hoth, and Besbin Gambit tiles. There some mission-specific tiles also (Loose Cannon, Gunrunner).

In the second tab you will find doors (now with two shapes) and deployment point markers. You can change the color of the doors and deployment points with Shift-C or from the right-click menu. The same command to change color is available for other objects that can change color, like the generic, rebel, and imperial mission tokens, and gray terminals.

You also see the text button, generic terminal, multifunction mission tokens and multiple terrain markers. You can make missions more readable by using the impassible, blocking and difficult terrain markers to mark the spaces specified by mission rules.

You can select tiles, coordinates and deployment points by shift-clicking them. Some maps in the save file have impassible, blocking and difficult terrain markers. When it is time in the mission to remove them, shift-click on each and delete using ctrl-D.

Tiles and deployment points can be made invisible and back to visible with Ctrl-I. When invisible only the imperial player / overlord sees them.

In the third tab you will find letters and numbers to use for coordinates or to add short texts. These will show below on the 'tile' layer, which is the lowest one. In the third tab you will fing letters and numbers that will appear on the top layer.

I could write a whole sections about building maps, but you can probably figure it out if you just know one thing: to add a tile, drag it tile from the Tiles window to the map. After that you can rotate and move the tile, but once unselected, you can't select a tile with a normal left-button click. You can select a tile using shift-click, and can then manipulate it again.

Rebel Button

Almost all Rebel-specific items can be found from this window. (Restructured for version 1.4)

Heroes - Everything directly hero-specific can be found here. Select the hero from the list on the right and you'll see the hero sheet, token, the hero's side mission and its reward. The rest of the window shows the class cards of that hero. Note that you can create the hero token from the hero sheet with the Ctrl-F command, and you can create the reward card from the side mission with Ctrl-R. You can see these commands when you right-click on the component.

You can drag the correct hero sheets to the Player Area window when you set up a campaign, or just use this window as a reference. The hero sheets are two-sided. You can flip between the healthy and wounded sides with ctrl-w.

Each hero in the campaign claims all of their class cards that have no XP cost at the start of a campaign. Drag the class card from here to the hero's spot in the Player Area at the beginning and when a hero buys it with the earned XP.
Allies - Everything directly related to rebel allies are here. Select the ally from the list on the right and you'll see the deployment card and token for the figure. If there is both regular and elite, you'll see both. You'll also see the side mission(s) that grants the ally. Note that you can create the ally's deployment card from the side mission card using Ctrl-A. You can then create the figure from the deployment card using Ctrl-F.
Companions - Companion cards and tokens. This is mainly for reference, because you can create the companion card from the appropriate item or reward card and the token from the companion card.
Tokens - The module does not use actual figures. Each figure is represented by a token, just like some figures in the core set are represented by tokens. You can find tokens for the heroes and the rebel allies from here. However, you can now create the tokens with the Ctrl-F command from the hero sheets and deployment cards and companion cards. Hero tokens are two-sided, you can flip between the healthy and wounded sides with ctrl-f.
Deprecated Cards - The pre-errata or otherwise superceded cards can be found from here.
Side Missions - Hero-specific (red), generic (gray), ally (green), and threat (purplish orange, for Return to Hoth) missions are found here. At the start of the campaign you can build the side mission deck in the Deck Building window by dragging the selected side mission cards from here. (Do NOT use the send to deck command from the tab directly! You MUST drag each card to the Deckbuilding Window first!)

Each mission card can create the corresponding reward card with a Ctrl-R command. Notice that some missions have several rewards. Right-click on the card to see if that is the case.

The threat mission window also has the corresponding bane and boon cards.

Imperial Button

Almost all Imperial-specific items can be found from this window.

Tokens- The imperial and mercenary figure tokens are found here. Also imperial-specific Companions will be added here.
Deployment Cards - The imperial and mercenary deployment cards are listed here. The deployment cards has a nifty command: Ctrl-F can be used to create the corresponding figure token.
Class Cards - The available imperial classes are in this tab. At the beginning of a campaign the imperial player selects one deck to use throughout the campaign and claims the cards from the selected class that have no XP cost. A good place to keep the purchased class cards is the Imperial Hand window. However, the purchased class cards are public, and thus I tend to add copies of them to the map of the current mission. They can then be easily manipulated to show exhaust, deplete and be attached to deployment groups.
Agenda Sets - The Agenda sets are needed when building the agenda deck at the beginning of a campaign. After choosing which 8 sets to use, drag the cards from this window to the agenda deck in the Imperial Hand window. Refer to the agenda set creation rules of the campaign you're running. For example Twin Shadows uses slightly different rules (agenda side missions and forced missions are not included). (Do NOT use return to deck commands from the tab! You MUST drag the cards to the deck or the deckbuilding window first.)

The agenda sets also show the reward cards. The corresponding reward card can be created from each agenda card using ctrl-shift-R.
Story Missions - The story missions of each campaign are available from here. Note that the starting mission does not have a story mission card. You have to refer to the campaign guide to see with which mission to start.

Rewards / Item / Supply Button

This window contains the Reward, Item and Supply cards grouped by expansion. If you delete a card accidentally (and can't or don't want to undo), want to customize the supply or item decks, or need to update an old save file with new cards, you can get the cards from this window.

There are also other miscellaneous cards and tokens that are required to update save files.

Deck Building Button

The deck building window tries to make the setup of a campaign easier.

Supply and Item Decks - Select each (sub)deck you want to include and select "Send to Deck" to add the cards to the corresponding deck. In the core game save file the core supply and item cards have already been moved to their decks.

For Besbin Gambit you need to first drag and drop the item and supply cards from the Rewards / Item / Supply window to the deck building window, then select "return to deck" from the card. Do NOT try to send the cards to the decks directly from the Rewards / Item / Supply window!
Side Missions - You can build the side mission deck here. See the side mission creation rules from the rules reference guide and drag and drop the side missions from the Side Mission tab of the Rebel window to here. To use the deck you draw two side missions after the intro mission of a campaign, and draw one side mission to replace any played side mission. The drawn missions can be moved to the Player Area window to be easily viewed by the rebel players.
Threat Missions - A similar deck for the Threat Missions of Return to Hoth.

Imperial Hand Button

This button is only available if you're in the game as Imperial or Overlord.

The Imperial Hand window provides a private place for the imperial player to store the agenda deck and the purchased agenda cards, including those that are kept secret before use.

The Agenda deck is built at the beginning of a campaign. See Imperial upgrade stage for details on how to use it. Unpurchased cards are returned to the agenda deck, used agenda cards can usually be selected to be shuffled back into the agenda deck or to be discarded. There is a function to send an agenda card to the agenda discard.

Dice Button

This button opens the dice roll window, appropriated from the Imperial Assault Skirmish module, which adapted one from the X-Wing module.

Note that the full functions are only available on new game or new save files, but you can fairly easily update old save files to use the new dice roller as well. Open the dice window and the last tab of the Rewards & Misc. window that shows Dice. Then drag each die in the correct order to the empty slots at the left side of the dice roll window.

Campaign Maps Button

Here lie the campaign map windows. When you start a new game, each map is empty. You need the correct save file to get the maps, or build the maps yourself.

Each map window has some buttons at the top

Magnify Buttons: Let you zoom in and out of each map to get better details or see the overall game.
Thread: Click this button to draw a small line from corner to corner of squares to determine if you have line of sight (LoS) to a target. To get rid of this feature, quickly double-click anywhere on the map.
Take Screenshot: Allows you to save the map window to a PNG file. You may want to crop it and possibly convert to JPG before uploading it for PBF.
MOV: This button is a global "remove moved thread" from every token that draws a movement trail. You can toggle the moved indicators also from the tokens themselves, but this is a quick way to reset everything during the ready step of the status phase.
Right-button click on the map centers the view to the clicked location.
You can select objects with a left-button click or by drawing a region. You can select tiles and coordinates with shift-left-click.

Game Notes Explanation

The Game Notes button allows you to add notes about the scenario, public, private and delayed notes. Delayed notes are created by you and it's probably a way to add conditional orders if you're playing my email. Delayed messages can then be revealed at a later date when your conditions are met or for other reasons.

Tips & Tricks

In this section you can find some useful tricks.

Starting a New Campaign
Imperial Class Deck Choice

When you're playing as the Imperial player, you'll need to decide which class deck you want to use.

Combining Item/Supply Decks from multiple expansions

Sending cards back to their respective decks/discard piles

Decks are set to draw random cards each time.

All cards should have a return to deck command unless they are part of an old save file. When right-clicked and selected the return to deck option, the card will go back to the respective deck. Note that some cards have several options. For example the agenda cards can be sent back to the agenda deck (needed when not purchased or when shuffled back into the agenda deck after being used), sent to agenda discard (after being used), or you can simply delete them (if you have made a copy that you don't need anymore).

Quick Damage/Strain modifications

Figure and object tokens will have a red number to indicate the Damage they have suffered. This number can be modified by using the "+ -" buttons on your numberpad. To set a value directly, use Ctrl+V. The damage counter is only shown when it is non-zero.

Hero tokens will have a yellow-ish number in the upper-right corner to indicate the strain they have suffered. This number can be modified by using the "* /" buttons on your numberpad. To set the value directly, use '\'. The strain counter is only shown when it is non-zero.

Rebel figure tokens also have a green number at the bottom-right corner to indicate the number of device tokens Saska has given to them. The device token counter is only shown when it is non-zero.

Cloning, Deleting, Masking

Many objects can be copied, deleted or masked. The keyboard shortcuts of these operations are Ctrl+C to copy, Ctrl+D to delete, and Ctrl+M to mask. Some objects can be flipped by Ctrl+F instead of masked. Some can change color by Shift+C. See the right-click menu for the available commands of each object.

Objects on the Same Layer

Vassal objects that are on the same layer can be put in any order, the top one will obscure the lower ones. You can send an object to the bottom by the left cursor key and to the top with the right cursor key. If the figure has different graphics for facing left or right, that happens first. After sending to top or bottom further presses of the cursor key scrolls the window left or right, respectively.

Index of Terms:

RRG: Rules Reference Guide
LoS: Line of Sight
TS: Twin Shadows
RtH: Return to Hoth
BG: Besbin Gambit
BGG: Board Game Geek
PBF: Play by Forum
FFG: Fantasy Flight Games
IA: Imperial Assault

Changes

20150914 POj - a1bert

Fixed masking of neutral mission tokens (colored versions now smaller enough than the grey one), so that the color is not visible when masked.
Redid Twins Shadows character tokens, but kept the naming for the save file to work. (Closer to what the Twin Shadows Rulebook uses.)
Removed most unused Descentv36 stuff. 80M -> 35M
Added Guerilla and Engineer and hero sheets, class cards are not yet there...
Added agenda sets under the Imperial window
Added side missions under the hero window
The Item and Supply cards from Twin Shadows are available under Rewards&Misc, so you can add them to the existing decks even when working with save files.

Player Area needs cleanup.

How to build item and supply decks after loading the save file:
Open Deckbuilding, press ctrl-X on top of the decks to send them to Player Area. If you play with Twin Shadows, go to Rewards&Misc, and Drag the cards to the appropriate decks in the Player Area.

Tricks:

You can select Tiles by shift-clicking them, and then you can move them around.
The hero sheets have the wounded side as the mask layer, so you can switch between healthy and wounded by flipping the sheet.
No tile 34 in Twin Shadows. Added TS 8-11 although they are duplicates of various base game tiles.
Redid all of the tiles from my own scans. They should be 100% compatible with old save files.
Made numbers and letters (coordinates) transparent.

20151107

Added green counter for device tokens for heroes and allies. Removed strain counter from allies. (I.e. made a separate Prototype definition for allies.)
Added counters to blue (used primarily for "locked to imperials"), red (generic locked), and yellow doors (special). I use white for normal (not locked) doors. When you rotate doors while building maps, inc/dec the counter to reposition the damage display correctly.
Put conditions to the figure layer so you can decide whether they go below or on top of figures...
Added wounded tokens for heroes - ctrl F to flip between healthy and wounded.

20151111-14

Added round and threat counters to Markers/Tokens
Some more cleaning up of the tiles -- with variable success.
Replaced the remaining Descent2e graphics (hero slots)
Added carried token - CTRL R (for retrieve)
Made Imperial Hand private. You can only open it if you're "Overlord" or "Imperial".

20160101

All Return to Hoth stuff, including tiles and figure expansions have been added.
Added SHIFT-R for assignment of recon token to a figure.
Fixed naming of AT-ST and General Weiss tokens - if you have General Weiss in your save file, it may now look like an AT-ST instead.
New (hopefully better) rotation for large figures.

20160115

Added condition icons (1 for focus, 4-6 for stun,bleed,weakened) to figures in addition to Recon (shift R - recon) and Carried (ctrl R - retrieve) icons. Also added a red activated icon (0) if you prefer it to the Moved indicator. (Or use both.)
Limited strain counter to 0..9.
Limited device token counter to 0..8 (Saska has only 8 tokens total.)
Snap to grid in Player Area (with new savefiles only)
Print-Screen key triggers screen capture (works with new savefiles only)
Imperial Assault green and red activation icons to Player Area.

20160120

Small fixes, version bumped to A1.1.2
The grey terminals can now change colors.
Save file for all maps.
The maps include doors, crates, terminals, entrance(s) and rebel initial figures. The doors are somewhat color-coded: white for closed (need interact only), yellow for locked with special door rule, red locked and rebels (and sometimes imperials) can attack door, blue for locked and imperials can attack door (or special rule). Imperial initial groups will be added later.

20160202

Some new doors with IA graphics added.
Made a single rebel/imperial mission token combo - change colors with shift-C, flip with ctrl-F, damage counter gets added when you numpad-+ for the first time.
Imperial Player can toggle tiles between invisible and visible (ctrl-I, use shift-click to select the appriate tiles first)

20160209

Added 'Overlord' back to player selection, maybe it helps people with problems seeing 'Imperial'.
Figure tokens cleaned up / redone.
Added 1x1 and 1x2 and 2x1 elite rings as separate layers so only one graphics is needed for regular / elite figures.

20160211

I cut the overhangs of the tiles a bit smaller so it is easier to manipulate with smaller overlaps.
Added dynamic counters - they become visible when they have non-zero values. This allows to add counters to various tokens without them becoming distracting. (And there's no longer need to have so many different ones.)
Combined doors to color-changing ones. (SHIFT-C)

20160220

Tiles changed to be able to manipulate them more easily in the future. (I.e. to be able to select also the small tiles even when they are surrounded by other tiles.) Unfortunately the centers of some/a lot of Twin Shadows and Return to Hoth tiles were changed, so the saved maps need updating. Do not switch to the new version mid-campaign! (unless you edit the maps yourself, it's not that big a deal really.)

20160301

New dice roller, copied from Trevor Payton's skirmish module. You only get the new roller from a game or a new save file. You can update your own save file by dragging the dice from the Rewards&Misc tab to the dice window.
Added better 'facing' for the left-right-oriented large figures. Added a facing property so that facing persists even when rotating large figures. Facing is completely for visual purposes only.
Fixed Generous Donations map in the save file.
Added Wave 4 (except the mission cards and maps for the save, those are for tomorrow).

20160305

Started adding Besbin Gambit figure tokens, cards and maps from the FFG news/preview articles.

20160315

Leia Organa, Hired Gun, Failsafe errata.
There are now two different characters and numbers. The first ones are Coordinates that will be obscured by tokens, objects, figures and cards. The Text versions are shown on top of everything. Both can not be selected by normal clicks, but can be selected by shift-clicking like the tiles.

20160315

Figure tokens are now non-rectangular so that it would be easier to select objects (mission tokens and terminals) that are below a figure.
Added markers for mission tokens (circles) and terminals (terminal shape) that appear on top of figures and tokens, so there would be some way to visualize tokens and objects that figures are standing on. Once on the board you can ALT-click on a small invisible circle at the center of the markers to select them and then manipulate them. Note that you can't select any object below the marker when the pointer is on that circle.
The entrance token is now a 'tile'. You can select it by SHIFT-click.

20160527-20160610

Received Besbin Gambit and its figure expansions. A lot of scanning and editing later the content is now in the module.
There are also some tokens and cards from the upcoming reinforcement wave (wave 7).
Changed the Reward/Item/Supply card hierarchies.
Remember that Imperial Player can toggle tiles between invisible and visible (ctrl-I, use shift-click to select the appriate tiles first). If you want to take a screenshot without the invisible parts, Resign to observer, then make the screenshot and Resign again and return as the Imperial player.
Added deployment point tokens (Tiles->Doors) if you want to build your own missions or maybe mark deployment points the rebels know for certain. Note: deployment point markers can be made invisible as well, so only the imperial player (or overlord) sees them.
Restructured Rebel and Imperial windows. Combined all hero stuff into one: Hero Sheet, Red Side Mission, token, and class cards.
Added Create Figure (ctrl-F) command to the imperial and mercenary deployment cards similar to the skirmish module. Added the same to rebel ally cards and hero sheets. For heroes I needed to change the Flip between wounded and healthy side to ctrl-W.
Added Create Reward Card (ctrl-R) command to the Red and Grey side mission cards. (Changed return to side mission deck command to ctrl-S.)
Updated almost all maps! The coordinates are now below everything else. Also prettied up things a lot. Remember that you can select these and other tile-level things by shift-clicking. The mission, crate, and terminal markers can be selected by alt-clicking their centers.