As we continue our coverage through the Imperial Assault game and its expansions, we now visit another location from the Empire Strikes Back, Bespin’s Cloud City. As time has gone on, I continually find the Cloud City location more of a fascinating place. The planet itself is generic, but the idea of a floating city is an exciting idea. Seeing this location in multiple EU sources is always a treat. My first vivid image of the city, post watching the movie, is the Trouble on Cloud City novel.
With Imperial Assault, it was a joy to find that this location was coming to the game. This expansion did not disappoint! In this expansion, you will find 6 new adventure missions for the campaign and 2 new skirmish battles with locations and landing platforms. This expansion is a smaller expansion, comparable to Twin Shadows rather than Return to Hoth. This does give the player some more replay value as a Bespin only campaign is much quicker to complete (say a night or two) rather than a full-blown campaign. What is nice is that use the Bespin missions as side missions to a large campaign or stick to a pure Bespin story.
The locations will excite fans of Episode V. You get the carbon freezing chamber and the shaft where Darth Vader reveals Luke Skywalker’s true parentage. It is fun to play in locations more people are familiar with. Playing in the carbon freezing chamber felt like I was playing an Epic Duels 2.0
The theme surrounding this expansion is and underground war between Rebel and Imperial operatives in Cloud City. An agent connected to Lando Calrissian infiltrates the Imperial Security Bureau and gains possession of Imperial secrets. However, all the operatives have mysteriously disappeared. Alliance forces are trying to figure out what happened to their people. The Imperials on the other hand are seeking to recover this information that was stolen from them.
To start talking about content, this box gives you 2 new heroes to play as, Force user Davith Elso and Ithorian Murne Rin. This gives us another lightsaber hero to play as with some cool features. Davith is mostly a stealth like character. Murne is more of a support character as well so if your play style is aggressive, these heroes might not be first pick in your campaigns.
Figures that go with this set are some I was excited about. They include Lando Calrissian, Bossk, ISB Inflitrators and Blaise the Imperial Agent. Lando is a blast to have as an ally. He has quite a few abilities (gambling like) that allow him to mess with the dice. That can be useful in saving the skin of quite a few.
I have always loved Bossk. I do not know why; I just think he is cool. In Imperial Assault, he is a monster. He can wreck the Rebel team if in the hands of the right player. Having Bossk can make having a full bounty hunter team in Skirmish a nightmare and can also be brutal if he and another bounty hunter are on the board in a campaign.
Agent Blaise is genuinely boring. The ISB pack adds more squads to the Imperial side which, let’s be honest, has way too many squads of characters already.
This expansion does introduce a new rule. This is the use of companions. When triggered in the game by certain effects, companions join a neutral character (like an ugnaught) and activate on the turn of that character. Companions can use a main character’s surges to perform actions. They can also be affected by certain points during a mission. They can add some cool ideas and scenarios for adventures.
There is another new rule that relates to Davith Elso. His “hidden” condition in combat allows him to gain an automatic surge on a future turn as he becomes “unhidden” by performing a sneak attack.
Ultimately, this is another great expansion for this game. If you own the core set, this expansion should be a no-brainer purchase.