It’s May the Fourth! Let’s review the epic miniatures in Star Wars Imperial Assault!
Star Wars Imperial Assault is a boardgame, set in the Star Wars universe during the Rebellion era, which is based in the same game mechanics as the very famous game “Descent”. Just as this one, Imperial Assault has a lot of elements in common with the legendary Heroquest: you control a group of heroes along a series of missions where to accomplish each objective you explore maps, combat against dangerous enemies and loot objects as a reward. The main difference here is that we are talking Star Wars so instead of elven warrios and mages we have Jedi Knights and Bounty Hunters, while orcs and goblins are replaced by the mighty Stormtroopers of the Galactic Empire.
Along with the setting, the main difference is that Imperial Assault offers a type of alternative game which is more common in classic wargames, in which two players prepare a band to fight against one another, and equip their heroes with objects and abilities that can help them beat their opponent. Because of that, we can say that Imperial Assault is in between the typical boxed boardgame set and the collectible miniatures skirmish wargame.
The main attraction of Imperial Assault for a painter is the miniatures. Finally we have a miniature game with 30mm miniatures set in the Star Wars universe and its characters (in the past there were others who tried but didn’t make it to the finish line) with miniatures that you can paint offering an acceptable quality for the amateur painter.
Let’s check the miniatures that come in the main box in detail.
The box comes with a large number of miniatures, 34 to be precise. We will have some of them repeated (Stormtroopers, Imperial officers…). The sculptures are quite good for a boardgame such as this one, but of course they are not the quality a miniature painter or collector would expect. The worst, the quality of the material, which is a very dull plastic commonly used
in products like this one (because of the cheap production cost for big quantities). This is the main problem we will run into when painting the miniatures, especially when we tackle the preparation of the miniature and the cleaning of mould lines or imperfections found in the copies.
One of the bounty hunters, there are many repeated, all exactly the same.
An Emperor Palace Guard, also repeated many times. This model, despite being quite simple, has some very easy wrinkles for painting that will look very good with little effort.
Stormtrooper, there’s also many of these. Would have been good to have some different poses.
The imperial probes are very fragile because the legs are very thin. The quality of the plastic doesn’t help either.
With Darth Vader we can appreciate that the quality of the sculpture is not as good as we would expect. The helmet is not very well sculpted and the pose is uninteresting. Even so, with a good paintjob it might improve quite a bit.
Imperial Soldier with heavy weapon.
Empire Officer (one of those that Darth Vader loved to choke from time to time).
Alien monster, probably the worst miniature of the game.
Let’s take a look at the rebels now, all especial characters in the game:
The miniatures are relatively basic, but as we say with a bit of skill they can improve a lot.
This is an example of a Stormtrooper, in which we also changed the base for a transparent one:
Also, the box comes with an epic AT-ST, which as you can see, is huge, and offers lots of possibilities for painting.
Here you have it, next to an officer to compare sizes.
CONCLUSIONS
As you can see the miniature range is quite big and continues growing as they add expansions to the game. It might be worth taking a look, because they can even work out well in dioramas. We would love to see you doing something like this!
PROS: The basic set comes with a large number of miniatures, for the price and the quality of the overall components, it’s a good purchase. And it’s Star Wars!
CONS: The quality of the sculpting as well as the material used in the miniatures, they could be much better and clearly not enough for a seasoned miniature painter.
