Hello everyone,
I would love to find a way to somehow incorporate space battles into my games of IA for a totally complete Star Wars experience. I have a pretty big collection of X-Wing minis and plan to collect all of the ships from Armada when it comes out as well.
Just wondering if anyone tossed around any ideas for making space missions that can be part of a campaign?
Yes, I had written up flow-chart for a mission where X-Wing, Armada, and IA were played in the 1v1 modes. The gist of it was that each game would impact the next and determine the flow, while not completely imbalancing subsequent games.
My General flow/idea:
Rebels are trying to destroy a Imperial production facility. I was thinking of this being similar to the RotJ attack on the DS2 where there were many ongoing pieces that achieved a common goal.
Game 1 - IA - Team has to knockout a security array to avoid setting off distress beacon. Success means resistance in next mission is diluted, failure means slightly heavier/ready resistance
Game 2 - X-Wing - Strike force has to take out the mine field around the station without taking too many casualties to clear the way for the fleet. Success means extra free fighter squad available in next mission, failure meant delayed/diluted rebel forces.
Game 3 - Armada - Fleet has to deplete/destroy as much of the defending Imperial fleet as possible in a time limit. more destroyed means easier time landing troops.
Game 4 - X-Wing - Escort a YT-1300 (likely an ORS) carrying a strike team to drop off point amidst imperial fighters. Success meant additional free troopers for squad in final mission. Failure meant slightly less points to spend on final squad (obviously no bonus unit)
Game 5 - IA - Have to place explosives in installation and escape amid Imperial resistance. Success means Rebel victory (Station destroyed), failure meant Imperial Victory (Station Defended).
That was just what I had come up with with a first stab. Obviously its pretty generic, but you get the idea. I think there are a lot of campaign type things you could do using a similar idea. Just create a goal and then try to think of all the possible obstacles that would try to impede that goal, and it kinda writes itself.
I had a very conceptualized idea that I posted several days ago:
The idea is to try and mimic the various heroes with X-Wing ships, around the 33pts value, but it of course untested. There were some other good ideas on incorporating single upgrade cards into a match for instance.
Another idea I had is letting the rebel players create their own squad list before each mission, with some basic parameters before the mission begins. Then, lets say with 3 heros, they could get a bonus if they split their 100pts evenly among the 3 players (say no ship is more than 3 points more than any other). In that case, each ship would get an extra 3 points free for an upgrade. That's one idea.
Texx I was thinking of something very similar... but rather than premaking each hero's ship, I was thinking of letting each player choose whatever ship they want to fly, and over the course of the campaign they may be able to spend the credits they earn towards upgrade cards for their ship.
Also thinking of making up some pilot abilities for each character, such as maybe the Bothan sniper character can turn a blank into a focus when attacking at range 3 or the soldier character always counts as having the Gunner crew card in his ship (even when crew slots aren't available).
I'm liking that idea as well. Although I'm not sure if you want the characters to spend rewards on X-Wing ships vs. their IA characters. You would also have to be spending your resources on the Imperial fighters, and that would start to get much harder to balance. Say the rebels decide to spend 1k credits on ships, then in the final mission they are mission some key teir 3 upgrade options and have a very hard time.
One way around that is after every X-Wing side mission, the next X-Wing side mission will raise the point cap of both squads to 3 points per rebel player. That way the points system is balanced in and of itself, but gives the Rebel players the illusion of upgrades if they are forced to stay with the same ship. Then just add a couple minor rules that allow them to take extra upgrade slots or something (maybe pay an extra point for a 2nd mode slot)?
Just a few ideas. I'm mainly trying to think of good incentives that the rebels will want to play, since without their consent the idea goes no-where.
Aside from the sequential combination of the game types you could run all three at the same time on the same scenario - provided you have enough space to use all of them at the same time.
e.g. for a generic scenario:
an in system fleet operation with Armada
low orbital or otherwise locally restricted dog fight with X-Wing
some Imperial Assault planetary action or even on one of the armada ships
all three work on the same global goal with each having sub-objectives - probably the easiest case to have one "main" game and the other providing some kind of support. For example on reaching certain objectives supplying/preventing reinforcements etc.
Since parallelism isn't really possible (except if you have more players per side) you could cycle through rounds of each game (or multiple each, some faster than other - as a bit of balancing)
You could create some epic scenarios that way - might also be totally boring/frustrating to switch between games
