Happy Festivus!

With the actual announcement of the Imperial Epic ship, the Raider, I am going to go full ahead into hosting an event at our FLGS for a giant Epic Play experience. Normally I stay away from the overly huge games of 'put everything you own on the table' and to be fair this event will not be quite that, but I do want to create that mythic battle feel. The goal is to get about ten players in a titanic battle of light capital ship action with fighter support on one extended table. To that end several other goals must be considered: Game Balance, Game Speed, Minimizing Downtime of Players, and of course Providing an Awesome Experience.

We have some info to work from thanks to the lore written into the announcement article to guide us thematically. Which as we discuss the event design we'll open the floor to suggestion of this battles location, when it happens in the story, what was the battle's importance, and so on. We know to start it was introduced to service around 6BBY, but lacking some knowledge of much of the EU I'll use a lot of all your help when molding the background story. Although I would like it to involve Dantooine in some way if that's not out of the question. Always liked that planet in Knights of the Old Republic games, and it's referenced in A New Hope to have had a Rebel base and lore says it has a Jedi Temple. But any suitable location would be great.

So here is the foundation I've put together over several months of the idea percolating in my head. If you have a formatting suggestion for this feel free to chime in. I would of course use the Mission Control program for this but I can not find in that program suitable tools for this particular event type.

Squad Build Instructions: Basically Team Epic build rules. 200 Points, 3 Epic Points. Added rule You must(?) use your Epic Points. There will be two teams of five players, who will nominate a Team Admiral to settle in team disputes if they arise. Unique rules apply to the whole team. This may need a resolution system like a in-team draft or some such. Five players will complicate this I'm beyond sure.

Event Date/Time: Players should arrive an appropriate time before the game. I'm thinking a Saturday, show up at Noon, Game starts promptly at One PM? The store is open till midnight, but a reasonable time limit, (possibly tied to a turn limit?) like say Six PM might be called for. Open to thoughts on the issue.

Setup: The Play area will be 15' x 3'. Each player will be assigned a deployment zone of one, three foot section of the board along the long sides. For a time I thought to keep the board from cluttering in clumps, of alternating the players around the board, which would also stagger out the direction of the frigates for a really cinematic look, but I currently think just having each team have their own side will make the event easier to manage for the players. And as long as there is a rule in place to keep players from all deploying together piles, we should be good. Something like your DZ is one range ruler out to either side from the middle point of your deployment section. Thirty obstacles total will be used, to keep it from getting ridiculous however, no 3'x3' section of the play are may have more than two more obstacles than any other 3'x3' section. This obstacle rule will need refined I imagine.

Objective: This will have to be worked on in concert with event background story to some extent, but because event balance is also to be considered I would like to use a point system to determine over all victory in a more casual way. I would really like a system that awards several different victory types so that almost every player will have the opportunity to claim some kind of 'win'. So a 'Strategic Victory' will be awarded to the overall winning team, but several 'Tactical Victories' can be awarded. And to be sure this portion is what will define the event, so should be considered carefully. I'm currently thinking of a system that says here's a list of the Tactical Victories you can achieve, each of those is worth a certain number of Strategic Points, the team at the end of the game with the most Strategic Points Wins.

So that's kinda the ground work of the thing. If you have thoughts/comments/criticisms to share please do! And Fly Casual!

Edits will be in this color!

Reserved for updated drafts of the event

Clash at Allderan Ruins!

In the waning days of the galactic conflict, the Rebel Alliance seeks refuge and rendezvous points for their growing fleets to use as rally points and supply bases. In hopes of maintaining their secrecy, the Alliance resorts to any place the Empire may not look for them. Recently the ruined debris field core of Old Alderan has been converted into a important strategic command post and Station for the Rebels as they fight on. With the thick debris of the field as a defense against entry of the massive Imperial Star Destroyers, as well as proof against their scans, the Alliance is able to launch daring hit and run tactic operations from this hidden asset. However, careful tracking by the Empire has followed them to their safe haven, and dispatched a force of fighters and Raider-class Corvettes and the Imperial Star Destroyer Verdict, to flush out the Rebels...

Rebel Mine Field:

During Setup, Each Rebel player places three "Mine" tokens into their sector, two of their choosing and one that is a 'sensor jammer' or 'dud' (This rule is still incomplete)

Imperial Turbolaser Fire Support:

At the start of the game each Imperial Player is granted a "Turbolaser Support Token". At the end of each turn, they may spend their token to place a Green turbo laser token in to their own sector, at least Range Two in from any Sector side. At the end of the next activation phase the Turbo laser token gets a chance to fire at each target at range two. It's firepower is three. (This rule still needs serious writing lol)

Tactical Victory List:

Cripple a Huge Ship Section - 1 Strategic Point

Destroy a Huge Ship - 1 Strategic Point (You still get 1 Strategic Point for each crippled section, so destroying a huge ship can be worth up to 3 Strategic points total.)

Destroy all of one opponents non-Huge ships - 2 strategic points.

Tactical Victories for damaged or destroyed ships are always awarded to the player directly across from the player who owned the destroyed ship(s). So if a shot from the player who started in Sector 2 kills the last enemy non-Huge ship in Sector 1, his team mate who started in Sector 1 is awarded the Tactical Victory, and their whole team is still awarded the 2 Strategic Points. The player who triggered the Tactical Victory still gets bragging rights for helping out. (I might decide that there should be an appropriate award for an assist like this.)

Team Work Note:

Players can only share dial information with their immediate neighbors in secret. If they want to share knowledge with Sector Commanders beyond that, they will have to do so in a manner that is in plain sight and sound range of all present, but that doesn't mean they have to announce it either. This is not meant to penalize players! It is to encourage players to instead stick to their own sectors, and occasionally support their own nearby allies. It is also to prevent one or two players from dictating to everybody on their team how to fly or take actions in certain ways. Only the Team Admiral may bend this rule to intervene when two neighboring Sector Commanders disagree such that the game is slowed unduly. In cases where the Sector commanders disagree with a neighboring Team Admiral, insubordination is permitted, but likely frowned on. The whole team may take up to two, five minute long, 'Time Out's to discuss overall strategy. They may ask the opposing team in such case to leave the room for privacy with the board. Teams, place your commanders wisely! But remember to Fly Casual, and this whole note should be useless anyway. These rules you may notice are a hybrid of the original Team Play and Epic Rules. So there shouldn't be much of a surprise.

I love the idea. I would participate in such an event without hesitation, but don't think I would try running one.

As long as you have some reliable method of allowing many players to act simultaneously in different parts of the board, it should be fun.

Take lots of pictures!

I was thinking of using a flip page kind of 'now serving' thing to keep at the head of the table that had all the in game pilot skills. So then as a table, there's a flow to it that is easier to track. From experience I know that even in normal Team Epic there will often be things going on in different portions of the board that won't affect other portions, and usually that gap is about a 3'x3' space. That in mind, it could be left mostly up to the players discretion of whether or not to go ahead with a game action if it's obvious it won't impact another play nearby.

The other option was to have the table broken into five 'sectors' that would activate in groups. Like each round Sector 2 and 4 would activate their ones in initiative order, then Sectors 1, 3, and 5 would do the same. but I am afraid that it wont go quickly enough that way.

There is also the question of team initiative, and whether or not to also use individual initiative for each 'Sector', if just to make the game more interactive. It would be kind of neat to have it such that one team ends up deploying two of their 'vettes first, then the other side winds up deploying some of theirs, then the rest of the first side comes in, then the remaining come in. I feel like it would be too disruptive to the balance if just team initiative forced one side to deploy all their huge guys first.

I updated the rules to now include a note on Team Communication Rules. Might not be needed honestly, but if the players want to keep them we will.

Added a blurb on the scenarios setting. Decided on something completely different from Dantooine but meh, whatever. This gives me some very cool things to do with special scenario rules. Probably won't line up with existing canon though. If anyone can proof that for me would greatly appreciate. Will polish up Minefield and Support Fire rules later.

An idea on obstacles: Perhaps, instead of adding asteroids, place a debris marker on the board every time a large base ship is destroyed. Could be as simple as a piece of paper with "devious field" written on it all the way to to custom made resin models, but a nice halfway point might be some irregularly shaped cardboard tokens with rendered debris images printed out and glued onto them.

That way, there's no issue about how to place them, and the game will evolve over time as careful manoeuvring becomes more important as more and more debris fields stack up. That sort of thing is always good, keeps the experience fresh even as the game starts to wear on a bit. Works thematically too!

Yeah cross sector swarming would be an issue unless you made it entirely too costly to do or cannot do it until certain conditions were met. If i missed this already being explained, my apologies.

Excellent idea, though!

Also prizes, trinkets, memorabilia etc is a must! "I defended The Ruins of Alderaan" or some nonesense would help ensure players would return for your next event

Could give Tactical Victory points for each 3x3 section your team controls? Something like "If you have twice the numbers of an opposing player(s) in a 3x3 Quadrant, you gain one Tactical VP." Small ship = 1, large ship = 2, capital = 4. This would allow people to move about at will, but if they decide to swarm one or two sections, they will be giving up VP's. It could also be a turn by turn point system. Say for every End Phase that your team meets this requirement, you gain the VP(s). I don't think people would swarm to quick or leave their own quadrant when they are essentially giving up free VP's.

@MacchuWA: Conveniently, it looks like the Raider actually comes with a few Epic Scale obstacle tokens. But I'm not certain yet. If it does we will have to find a way to incorporate them for sure. We did in one Epic game try the debris-on-destruction rule for ships using the tokens available in the Decimator and the Outrider once already. And yeah it was fun to an extent to see the board blowing up with all this scrap metal flying around. But the quirk we found was that if you shot down a ship, you more often than not had to fly through it's debris to stay on task, picking up a stress and a chance to suffer damage along the way. And honestly it became a little annoying. Thematic and cinematic to be sure, good laughs all around. I just don't know if I want to do it again. If you were to restrict it to just the huge ships yeah maybe, best of both worlds. There might be a balanced way to do it with the small ships too that wouldn't be as penalizing. I'll most def give it a bit of thought. Though asteroids are so important to the game I probably wouldn't cut them entirely.

@Tilaso: I certainly should check to see if any of the local trophy shops could make up a couple little buttons or medals for this. When I go to tournaments I'm there mostly to try and win the cool little medals they give out. Keeping the players desire to just swamp one or two sectors is currently one of my highest concerns, and I do want that to be a very well thought out incentive based rule. And it's going to be tricky to do without making the players feel restricted, or feel like they are just playing five side by side games simultaneously. Mostly because flying across the entire battlefield and strafing huge ships and providing backup to fellow fighters feels like something that should be encouraged more than not. It feels like a Epic battle thing to do. So some way of tacking an extra incentive to your own sector is the thought. Part of me was thinking just add extra Tactical Victories to the sector, but another part of me was thinking more of a mechanical bonus that worked only while in your sector. Some kind of buff to encourage your ships to 'follow the plan'. Like, as long as all your ships are in your assigned sector, they may each re-roll a die on their turn or some such (hopefully less powerful) global benefit. If you come up with some other incentives I'd be all ears.

@CaptHalbarad: That's not a bad idea. But in it's current incarnation it would favor whoever brought the most ships, likely Empire. Could evolve it into something like, "If you are the only player with Fighter ships in your sector, you claim Space Superiority in your sector and get [benefit]". Would be a good start point for some thematic mission rule

What about resource based one time strafing runs? The team Admiral would keep track of tactical points earned and could spend them to call in a single strafing run using players extra ships or something fun.

Or tactical points could manifest in shield recovery, reinforcements, etc

Well, there is a premise for Reinforcement Rules already. Could it be as simple as if a small ship you own is destroyed by enemy action while in it's own sector, you may get a reinforcement? That way there is a decent strategic value to jump to another sector, but it will cost you resources to do so? A trade of resources for tactical victories? There might still be problems with that, but I kind of like the idea of more ships coming in all the time. And it gives the players decisions to make.

You could have a few regular games before this event and based on the outcomes it would add a few things to the epic battle

You could have a few regular games before this event and based on the outcomes it would add a few things to the epic battle

This guy is preachin'!