Map Rotation 7/21/2023: New Hunting Grounds

It’s July, which means time for another IACP tournament map rotation. Just as Tarkin Labs rotated in and Devaron Garrison rotated out back in March, this month Uscru Entertainment District will once again be rotating out of competitive play and replaced by the skirmish map included in the Bossk figure pack, Wasskah Hunting Ground. We continue our pattern of alternating previously used tournament maps with existing maps that have never seen tournament rotation. This map has never been used for Imperial Assault tournament skirmish play before, but its simple mission objectives, novel design and unique layout make it a great map for competitive and casual skirmish play.

On this map, your eyes may play tricks on you, and where there seems to be walls, there may actually be an open path hidden in the water. Wasskah Hunting Ground’s unique gimmick is how it tells you to ignore any walls that are between two squares of difficult terrain, effectively ignoring those walls. While map images shown here omit this text because it shows the map as it should look with the rule applied, the mission cards explain that “Walls between spaces containing difficult terrain (indicated by blue lines on the map diagram), do not block movement, adjacency, line of sight, or counting spaces.”

Above is what the map tiles will look like when you set it up on the table, with the missing walls represented by the blue lines. When playing on the tabletop with map tiles, I highly recommend using Strain tokens or the blue Debris tokens from the Heart of the Empire expansion to cover up the walls where the difficult terrain overlaps to help with visual clarity during tabletop gameplay.

On Vassal, Tabletop Simulator and printed maps, the walls are automatically hidden from view to make things easier. Below is a closer look at the map with all of the objectives, deployment zones, terminals and doors indicated, as well as the two mission objectives.

The most notable aspect of this map is how much difficult terrain there is and how much it blocks off the center of the map. In fact it’s impossible to get from one deployment zone to the other without crossing over difficult terrain, meaning abilities that grant extra movement or immunity to terrain will be especially valuable on this map.

Three “Hunter’s caches” dot the areas of the map between the deployment zones, left, right and center. Each deployment zone has different levels of access to each of these caches depending on which doors players decide to open. On each mission, the caches are worth 4 VPs each to the player that controls them at the end of the round, meaning there are 12 VPs up for grabs each round.

Mission A, Scavengers, is extremely simple, with the only rules being the removed walls and Hunter’s Caches being worth 4 VPs at the end of each round for controlling them. Your main priority will be figuring out if, when and which of your two doors to open and how to navigate the large swathes of difficult terrain sprawled across the map’s center.

Mission B, Watch Your Step, mixes things up a little bit by changing how difficult terrain works. Instead of slowing figures down, difficult terrain on this map now deals damage to non-Mobile figures in the form of Strain the first time a non-Mobile figure enters a difficult terrain space each round. This can be a huge boon to slow but tankey figures that need to barrel through the muck to close the distance to their opponent. Otherwise, everything else about the mission is exactly the same as Mission A, including the missing walls and Hunter’s Caches being worth 4 VPs each.

You can find printable 300 DPI map files for this map over at https://boardwars.eu/ia-maps/ and at https://github.com/nickv2002/Imperial-Assault-Skirmish-Map-Project to print out for tabletop use. The next IACP map rotation will be announced in November 2023. Check out the Official IACP Changes and FAQ document for the full current map rotation list.