Here's an attack/defend mission. Let me know what you'd change to make this mission run smoother.

PDF download: http://outworld-studio.com/xwing/pdf/Mission-Surgical-Strike.pdf

Interesting concept. Having adapted the existing scenarios and created new ones for my campaign rules, I notice a number of things you might want to address:

*I assume the mission target counts as a ship for purposes of collisions? So I could so something like crash Arvel into the weak spot, plot a slow maneuver each turn and remain in place blasting away?

*How do bombs and splash damage affect the mission target? Does the "blast" from a Seismic Charge, Proton Bomb or Assault Missiles have to hit the weak face or anywhere? Does anything happen if I drop Proximity Mines onto the mission target?

*You might want to explicitly state an agility value for the mission target, even if it is 0.

*What happens if the mission target suffers a critical hit? Most of the cards will do nothing, but some of them deal additional damage. If the mission target cannot take actions, it could potentially suffer a Console Fire that it cannot put out, meaning a 3/8 chance of an additional damage per turn.

*Do the asteroids have to be a certain range away from the mission target?

*Is it required for the mission target to be deployed on the defender's side of the board?

*To track time/turns, I suggest starting the mission target with 8 tracking tokens and removing one during every End Phase.

*May be useful to explicitly state what you mean by ordnance (presumably missiles, torpedoes and bombs). If they are "free" for the attacker, how would that affect Chardaan Refit's -2 cost?

*You might consider simplifying the "weak spot" definition by saying that attackers have to be inside the mission target's front arc to shoot it.

*Can the mission target be target locked? Presumably yes so you can fire missiles/torpedoes at it.

*Does the mission target count as a friendly ships for pilot ability and card effects (i.e. could something like Draw Their Fire be used to pull crits away from it)?

*I note that, properly deployed, no ship can possibly be in position to shoot the mission target until Turn 3, and that is something like an A-wing taking 5 straights and boosting. Something like an X-wing would not be until Turn 4, and a Y-wing/HWK Turn 5. Presumably this is intentional, but it really skews the attacker towards fast, high attack ships.

Were I defending this mission, I would plaster the front arc of the mission target with proximity mines or jam up the area with ion cannon turrets. The attackers have to enter a rather small area, and that area is uncomfortably close to the edge of the board.

All of the above and then some.

I think "free" ordnance is a mistake. Since the mission is designed for either faction to be attacking, lets look at the worst case scenario. Empire attacks, 100pts to each side. Empire runs 6 bombers, 4 scimitars 2 gammas. If bombs are free as well as missiles and torps each bomber could run 2 assault missiles, 2 advanced proton torps and a proton bomb. Now it's 262pts vs 100pts. Without the bombs it's still 232 vs 100. I think a better solution is to give the attacker a slight point advantage, like 120 vs 100, then they can choose to spend those extra points on ordnance or other upgrades or extra ships as they choose.

Which brings me to my second point. When designing a scenario like this, one particular strategy will present itself as the optimum choice, but you do not want to bias the scenario conditions too much to favor that strategy above all others. As Rekkon already said, with optimum defensive placement most attacking ships will need 3-5 turns (aka over half the scenario time limit) just to maneuver in to begin their attack run on the "sweet spot." We want to encourage and give incentive to the attacking player to attempt the challenge of getting his forces behind the defender's picket line and making their attack run. It has a nice Episode IV feel to it, but I don't think it should be the only way to win.

2 examples.

First: The diplomatic escort mission from the core set. When scaled up to 100pts per side, both sides have tons of options. The rebels can focus on numbers, giving the shuttle as many evade tokens as possible to withstand imperial fire, or they can focus on offense to cut down imperial attack power. While the protect action and imperial reinforcement rule would suggest that shuttle defense is favored, my x wing is still gonna target lock your interceptor, cause even if it gets replaced by an academy pilot, i will have reduced your overall attack power aimed at my shuttle. On the Imp side, I could go all in at your shuttle with bombers and homing missiles to drop it ASAP, or I can focus down your escorts with a howlrunner swarm then clean up the shuttle at the end.

Second: the new scenario in imperial aces, 'Cutting the Cord.' The goal for the rebels is to destroy the prototype ship. I could go for a risky but potential blowout by making an early rush at the prototype before it gets all it's upgrades online, or I can take a slower more systematic approach of crippling the support facilities and escort ships then focusing the prototype down once I have board control.

Both scenarios have an incentive to go all in at a single target, yet are designed to give other strategies some merit. To do the same with your surgical strike mission, I would allow the attackers to attack the facility from any angle, but have the facility have good defense outside it's own arc. Using Cutting the Cord as an example, I'd say the facility has AG4 out of arc and AG1 or AG0 within it's arc. You can try to play it safe and pummel it from the outside, but it will average around 2 evades/attack, or get brave and make that "trench run" if you wanna see it go BOOM!!

As soon as I can meet up with a friend to play, we'll test this scenario out at 120pts attacker, 100pts defender, Facility AG4/AG1 and I'll give you our notes here in this thread.

Good point on the free ordnance. With things like that you need to consider the most extreme way people will abuse it, and the TIE Bomber has a rediculous upgrade bar. I would slap a Homing Missile, Assault Missiles, 2x APT and Proton Bomb on every one.

Some other ideas:

Instead of using agility dice for the facility defense, say it is heavily armored and reduces the damage of every incoming attack by 1. This would provide a mission environment that favored things with more attack dice, so either the attacker spends his extra points to bring more ships with 3+ attack or they spend it on ordnance.

For my campaign, I crafted some abstract capital ships rules where they can only be damaged by missiles, torpedoes and bombs. You could do something similar for the mission target and give the attacker a points advantage.

Deploy the mission target in a more central location, but give each separate face its own shield value. Now, for maximum effect the attacker will want to concnetrate fire on one side to drop the shields and deliver structure damage.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll put together an updated PDF one of these days to tighten things up.

To clear up the "Ordnance" issue -- I (mistakenly?) thought that was the name of the class of upgrades that includes Proton Torpedoes and Adv. Proton Torpedoes. Maybe they're just called "Torpedoes". I'm probably going to make the Mission Target immune to anything but Proton Torpedoes.

The time limit seems fine to me, especially looking at it from the Defenders' perspective, but it's a simple matter to extend this if players want to allow some slow-rolling. I'll be adding some variant rules to the next PDF update which will allow more juggling of the challenge levels.

I'm consciously trying to make this a "Death Star Trench Run lite" mission, and it is intentionally asymmetrical. In a mission like this, I think it's exciting if the attackers know the odds are against them and they somehow succeed anyway.

I got 2 test games in this weekend using the format I posted above. Attackers 120pts, Defenders 100pts, attacker has initiative. Facility had AG4 out of arc, AG1 inside. 10hp, 8 rounds to evac. Imperial aces comes with damage tokens for its scenario so we used those instead of cards, so no worrying about the odd crit effect. We decided to try out having any crits that got though on the facility do 2 damage.

Both games I played as the empire on defense. My friend is more comfortable with rebels and he wanted to be on the attack to play around with those extra points.

My list Game 1

Howlrunner w/ shield upgrade

3x Obsidian Squadron TIEs

Omicron Lambda w/ advanced sensors, engine upgrade, HLC & 2 merc copilots.

His List Game 1

Luke w/ determination & R5

Dagger Squadron Bwing

Grey Squadron Ywing w/ ion turret

Green Squadron Awing

Rookie Xwing

and a 1 point upgrade in there somewhere, astromech or elite talent.

Facility slightly left of center, arc straight back at me. Miniswarm rushes up the narrow side to meet rookie, grey & green while Luke & dagger try to come down my right side with the shuttle on my extreme right. Round 1 has shuttle and dagger exchanging range 3 shots through asteroids with everyone else out of range, shuttle and dagger strip some shield off each other. Round 2 miniswarm banks right to engage rookie and grey while shuttle banks to point his HLC across the middle, bringing rookie just into range. Awing blows past the swarm, and Luke drops right in front of the shuttle. I ignore him and focus my fire on grey and rookie, killing rookie after he slips a damage in on the facility & stripping the shields off the grey, losing the remaining shields off the shuttle & howl losing hers and getting an ion token. Round 3 has my shuttle stall to block dagger and my swarm box in the grey to finish him off. Luke and Green struggle to get around to the sweet spot the next couple rounds but the miniswarm hunts Luke down. The Awing gets some damage on the facility, then dies to horrible AG rolls. With only a damaged dagger vs all my ships it ends shortly, with me only losing a damaged Obsidian.

My list Game 2

2x Royal Guard w/ push the limit & targeting computer

2x Scimitar bombers w/ concussion missiles & proximity mines

His list

Wedge

Tycho w/ markmanship

Arvel Cyrnyd

2 Green Squadron Awings, 1 w/ veteran instincts

I place Facility close to left side, angled to form a box w/ the map edges, and place my asteroids to make approaching the sweet spot tricky. Bombers set up just to left of facility, Royal guards to the extreme right to rush behind and chase, but he forces me to change plans when he puts wedge directly across from them. Round 1 goes almost as planned, bombers move up and clog the attack lane w/ prox mines, his Awings spread in a wide line all rocket 5 forward. I anticipate Wedge going at the royals, so I have them hard 3 left w/ boost and Broll to rush the center w/ asteroids between them and Wedge. Then the dice gave him the love he needed last game. Tycho rolls hit hit at range 3, I wiff and take 2, then vetted green rolled double crit at the other bomber, I wiff again and get munitions failure & thrust control fire, getting stressed and losing my missile. Round 2 has my forces converge on the center, only to have Arvel block one of my royals. Wedge turns in but is range 3 through an asteroid. I focus fire down his non vetted green, but wedge puts a damage on non blocked royal, Arvel puts 2 on blocked royal, and non vet rolls double hit at blocked royal before the bombers could finish him making for a tense AG roll, but I got the 2 evades to stay alive. Meanwhile Tycho blows past the action, target locks the base, setting up for his attack run. Round 3 has the bombers chasing Arvel, the royals killing vet green, and wedge hammering the facility from the outside, slipping a crit through. Tycho turns in but is just out of weapons range. The next two rounds of wedge outside and Tycho inside adds up, and despite my best efforts (royal on its last leg just barely clipped an asteroid coming around to attack Tycho & critted itself to death) the facility fell in round 6, w/ Tycho braving ramming a prox mine to get in his last shot before he had to veer off.

I prefer using AG rolls instead of "armor" because there are pilot abilities and upgrade cards that interact with AG dice (Wedge, Ten Nunb, autoblaster). We will probably test this again this weekend. If we do, we'll try out 12hp on facility and 10 rounds to evac.

Here's an updated version:

Mission: Surgical Strike

http://outworld-studio.com/xwing/pdf/Mission-Surgical-Strike.pdf

I think this is a much simpler, more intuitive way of dealing with the Mission Target. It's basically an immobile ship in your squad, with just a couple of exceptions that should be easy to remember.

There are a few more changes I plan to make:

• The wording for the special abilities option 6 needs to be cleaned up a bit.

• I should note that the Mission Target counts as the same faction as the Defenders squad (Imperials or Rebels).

• The random special ability that grants the Turret upgrade might need Focus added to its action bar, and generally I should check for that sort of thing (secondary weapons/upgrades requiring the use of an action like Focus or Target Lock).

• I might change the roll for random special abilities from 1d6 to 2d6, so I can add 5 more scenario setup options: no asteroids during setup, the MT moves slowly like a shuttle (1 forward straight, or 1 bank to left or right, all maneuvers are green), a Cannon upgrade slot, reinforcements/reserves, and whatever else I come up with (suggestions welcome!).

First let me say I like this direction you're going. As I've already said I like options in missions to avoid replay boredom. I think we can streamline it a bit while also adding options and flavor.

Lets start by creating baseline stats for the mission target that can then be easily modified by what role the target will play.

PS 0 / Energy 0 / Attack 0 / Agility 1 / Hull 8 / Shield 4 / Action Bar - Blank / Upgrade Bar - Blank / Maneuvers - None

We can use your d6 mechanic to create 4 or 5 "target types" with any unused spots being defender's choice.

1 - Hardened Supply Depot / 2 - Comms Array / 3 - Crippled Vessel / 4 - Weapons Platform / 5&6 - defender's choice

Hardened Supply Depot - Use base stats with following rule: Depot adds +3AG dice when defending any attack from outside it's own firing arc. (this recreates the version of the scenario I tested with a slight tweek)

Comms Relay - PS 3/Eng 3/Atk 0/Ag 1/ Hull 8/Shd 4/Act - recover, coordinate & jam/Upg - 2xCargo/Mnv - none

Acts like an immobile GR-75 running support for CAP fighters, defender can spend squad points to use upgrades like Slicer Tools or Comms Booster. (playtesting recommended for optimum energy value, shield value & recover option)

Crippled Ship - PS 0/Eng 0/Atk 2/Ag 1/Hull 8/Shd 4/Act - TL, Focus/Upg - 2xCrew + choice of turret,cannon or missile/

Mnv - bank 1 green, straight 2 green : a senator's shuttle with some teeth, but less defense. (Playtest with and without allied ships gaining Protect action recommended, as 120pts for attacker can make for some nasty alpha strikes)

Weapons Platform - PS 4/Eng 2/Atk 3/Ag 1/Hull 8/Shd 4/Act - TL, reinforce /Upg - Crew, Hardpoint, Cargo/Mnv - none

like the relay only more fire less support . Not sure whether to go Falcon base 360 primary or Firespray w/ hardpoint covering prime weapon blindspot. Something to think about.

No limits on squad points spent to upgrade mission targets, since this puts the choice in the player's hand. Spend 4 points to give crippled ship engine upgrade to try and run from attackers, or use those points to boost rookie xwing up to Biggs. I wish FFG would just preview how the energy rules work in detail, they add so much potential for scenarios. Til they do these idea are kinda floating mid air like a Michael Jordan dunk! Wish they'd start spoiling "Team" cards too, those would be nice for "space station" type objectives.

Another update -- probably as far as I'm going to take this idea.

PDF: http://outworld-studio.com/xwing/pdf/Mission-Surgical-Strike.pdf

I really like the ideas for more detailed targets, and might do more with that later. For now, this scenario is quickly becoming a favorite. I think it works fine with even point totals. We've been playing 65 point battles with a Small target, lots of fun.