Star Wars: Imperial Assault (board game)

[TheRedSon]

Bronco, the medic is probably my second favorite.

The quarantine specialist can be more or less effective depending on the cards. I've had a game with two or three cities in Europe or North America being infected at the start where the quarantine specialist could keep all three safe from one central location.

Both of those characters work really well with the dispatcher in the game also.

My favorite is the operations specialist though. The ability to throw down research centers so easily and his extra travel ability from those research centers makes him pretty valuable by himself, and all the other characters better off as well.

The contingency planner is the one I don't like. In fact, my wife flat refuses to play him, so he frequently finds himself left in the box when it's time to "randomly" assign characters. That one and the quarantine specialist were originally both designed for an expansion and just included in this release version of Pandemic as a bonus. They both feel a bit different from the other characters to me.

 

[cornichon]

By the way, if there are Pandemic characters you don't like, there's no reason whatsoever to do the random assignments. I know those are the rules, but it's a game; it's more fun to play with characters you actually enjoy. If you get to the point where you're always winning, sure, increase the difficulty by doing the random assignments. That's just a silly rule to me, and we've house ruled that one out every time I've ever played it.

 

[TheRedSon]

Right. I mean, you paid the $35-45... Play how you want.

If you're going to pick there are some combinations of characters that are pretty powerful together...

I think Operations Expert is a boss all by himself. I'm not sure he has any extra synergy with anyone specifically... Maybe the dispatcher. The extra research centers do make it easier for the dispatcher (man or woman... I have no idea from the art) to move everyone else around the board.

Dispatcher/Medic, Dispatcher/Quarantine, Dispatcher/Researcher - So these three are the ones you'll want to keep hopping the most during the game probably. The Scientist is great to move around and trouble shoot areas too, but has no extra abilities that being more mobile really takes advantage of. The Dispatcher can help the Medic eradicate cured diseases though just by moving him around, and also help him get to trouble areas faster with diseases that haven't been cured yet. Similar with the quarantine specialist. You can put her where you're most concerned of outbreaks both on her turn and the dispatcher's turn this way. With the researcher she will be spending a lot of actions sharing knowledge, so many sometimes it's hard for her to keep up (especially when she's chasing the scientist around). The Dispatcher can move her where she needs to be feeing up her four actions to throw knowledge off on others.

Researcher/Scientist - "Easy to share knowledge" meets "needs less knowledge to cure diseases." As my wife likes to constantly remind me "curing diseases is how we win though."

Dispatcher/Researcher/Scientist - you get it already. Throw in the medic or operations expert in a 4 player game (which is what I usually play) and you're set.

Basically any way you can limit the amount of actions spent moving around instead of treating (defense), sharing knowledge, building research centers and curing the better off you will be.