So last week my buddy and I played mission 2 of the Will of the Empire campaign from the Raider; "Mission R2: Ion Tempest"

He played Empire and I played Rebels; he won on round 3. (Actually I think technically he would have won on round 4; but I had a 2nd ionized ship at range 1, and there was nothing I could do about it, so he would have won by the end of the activation phase of round 4, so I conceded at the end of turn 3.)

Now, making allowances for one's favorite gaming company to flubb something up once in a while, let me just tell you this mission is a total fubar design.

Here is what the rebels are looking at:

1. Massively Outgunned. You get 130 pts. against somewhere in the neighborhood of 170-180 Imperial Pts. In my case, my opponent had won the first mission, so had the free upgrade, plus the Raider's title, came to 176 196 points. So I was out-pointed by 46 66 points. I don't think I need to point out what a huge discrepancy that is.

2. Unfavorable Special Rules. The Ion Storm special rules have an equal chance of affecting each faction, however, having ionized small ships is by far worse than an ionized huge ship, which merely yields one fewer energy in the subsequent round. Plus, the special rules play directly into the Imperial Victory condition.

3. Unfavorable Deployment. The rebels have to field all their small ships after the Raider is placed, but before the Imperial small ships are placed. Since the location of where the raider will go is hardly a surprise, the deployment rules favor the imperials.

4. Unfavorable Victory Conditions. Given that the rebel victory condition is 'destruction' based,and you are out-squad-pointed by almost 30%, and given that the Imperial victory condition has special rules that help it to be achieved, the Imperials are at an advantage when it comes to getting their victory conditions met here.

5. Unfavorable Initiative. A minor point, but just for a kick in the nuts, the designers also saw fit to give the Imperials the choice of who gets initiative. Thanks.

I can't explain why, but this mission just really chaffed my ass something fierce.

So, here's a friendly scorched-earth tip to any rebel players about to do this mission. Since you will lose, instead of letting that happen, force a draw by only taking 1 ship. Pick a nice fat Corran Horn build and pump him up with every possible upgrade. Since the imperial victory condition requires 2 captured ships, he cannot win (unless you flee the battlefield...do not do that).

Giggle maniacally as you go immediately to mission 4, where you at least stand a chance of winning.

Disagreement incoming!

I'll go down your points here, but I disagree with your assessment of the mission pretty thoroughly. I haven't played this one, so you should take this response with a grain of salt, but on the other hand I've spent a lot of time thinking about and setting up balanced missions and I think I have a pretty good track record of doing just that on Mission Control. The design of this mission, in my opinion, is pretty much dead-on in terms of setting up a fair 'destruction-based' mission.

1: Massively Outgunned : It is definitely true that the Rebels are outgunned, but I suspect this is for a very specific and important reason - balance. In a destruction-based mission such as this, it is important to weigh the the resilience of the target and the firepower of its defenders against the firepower of the attackers. Crippling one section of a huge ship is not difficult for 130 points of ships. That's enough points to field four Dagger SQDN pilots with HLCs and 3x FCS, which can burn down a fore section in two turns fairly easily even if it has a reinforce token. Because it is easy for the rebels to achieve their mission objective, there needs to be more Imperial ships on the table to be able to thwart them.

2:Unfavorable Special Rules: The Ion storm does not have an equal chance of affecting each side. Imperials are affected on a hit or crit, rebels are affected on a focus result; so imperials get ioned 50% of the time and rebels get ioned 25% of the time. This special rule also has a good chance of interrupting imperial interception/pursuit of your attacking ships. Also, any rebel ship that is ready to be captured is already permanently ionized and would not be affected by an additional ion token.

3:Unfavorable Deployment: The rebel small ships deploy before Imperial small ships, but after their target has deployed. They have a very good deployment zone for their mission objective, in that the rebels can easily set up a pincer attack on the raider (which makes defensive maneuvering significantly more difficult) by deploying his ships in opposite corners of the table.

4:Unfavorable Victory Conditions: The Rebel victory conditions are relatively easy and straightforward, possibly too much so. They need to burn down one section of the Raider in order to win, and that is all. With 130 points of ships to accomplish this objective, the Imperials will probably be hard-pressed to defend the raider effectively, even with a significant point advantage. On the other hand, the Imperials have a victory objective that requires investment in Ion weapons, and multiple turns in which the Raider sacrifices an action to achieve the objective.

5: Unfavorable Initiative: From my point of view, the Imperials are easily entitled to an advantage as small as this.

I won't call the mission perfectly balanced, but after carefully reading through the rules and working from a solid year of continuously writing, testing, and playing missions, I think it falls well within the bounds of a good-faith effort at being balanced. I actually think it was quite well-written, and that is not praise that I often give to FFG's missions.

I'd be interested in hearing what you brought for your squad. In this kind of mission, I would absolutely emphasize damage output over maneuverability. Mid-high agility ships would be most effective in evading raider attacks, so a large group of X-wings would probably perform well, as might a large number of A-wings equipped with proton rockets. Expensive single ships such as super dash or Fat Hand would be relatively ineffective.

1 - I'd like to replay this match again using your intended squad (4x B's with HLC and FCS). I still don't think it would perform as you imagine.

2 - Read again. The Rebels are affected on blanks or focus results.

3 - It would seem that way, except here is what is likely to happen:

a. The raider can split the difference, deploying as pictured. This gives him maxium reactiveness to how the Rebel player deploys. Assuming the rebel does the pincher attack, and splits his force somewhat equally, then the Raider simply turns into one of the 2 forces, and sends his escort small ship squadron to intercept the rebel force that would be flanking. The rebel flanking force then has a choice; deal with the escorts (which will delay him substantially), or go right for the raider, in which case he opens himself up to getting seriously crippled by the escort team. If he takes B wings, as you suggest, it's going to take him a while to get to the raider.

b. The raider can deply in such a way as to commit to one rebel corner or the other. This allows the rebel player to put everything in a "flanking" response posture, however, the raider will still have enough time, moving swiftly, to turn about and bring all it's guns to bare on the rebel force.

4- It is not my intention to sound condescending here, but have you played a lot with the raider? It is not at all easy to burn down the 14/12 hit points of the raider when they are smartly reinforcing/recovering. That's assuming you can always get your guns on the same hull section...and it's likely that you won't be able to, as you need to keep a lookout for huge ships swatting your small ships

5-It's not a huge advantage, but it's just a kick in the nuts on top of everything else.

This is the only mission which I would agree that the imperials have an advantage, but it's still a winnable game for the rebels no problem. You disregard the ionisation of the raider but fail to mention it takes 3 energy to capture a ship. Given you don't start with energy in the mission those lost energy for ion tokens can really effect your ability to generate sufficient energy to capture a ship, this becomes even more apparent if you want any kind of combat efficiency with the raider as firing those guns will eat what little energy you do have. The imperial player doesn't exactly have tons of additional ships to dramatically increase his firepower either. The energy situation becomes even more dire when you consider trying to keep shields up as the loss of one section means your toast so survival is paramount. When you consider the imperial player is trying to target 4cm long based ships and the rebels are shooting one which is a foot long I think it's safe to say the ion rules massively hamper the imperials, arguably more so than the rebels.

I lost this mission comprehensively to three z's with ion missiles and a couple of b's with ion cannons. Missing a 3 dice target locked attack is unlikely to happen vs a 0 agility ship, so for three turns in a row those z's unleaded their missiles one at a time whilst the others and the b's piled on the pain, with b's also topic up the ion where needed. I generated 0-1 energy most turns and had no chance of saving enough energy to collect his ships.

On a side note id say mission 1 is the one to complain about. All the rebels have to do is weather a few turns of shooting and destroy a tie advanced. 2 x firesprays and a z-95. Hang the z back k turning on your table edge, bomb the sprays forward laughing at the raider trying to kill you and explode an advanced before the z turns off the board next turn. 4 times I've played this mission as the imperials and twice as scum. Every time has been a rebel victory. It's just far too easy for them. Honestly I think rebels should deploy in the middle of the board on this one to help the balance. We didn't even play this mission the last time we ran the campaign as it was deemed a waste of valuable gaming time

Rau:

Incidentially, I just learned that for Epic missions, the Huge Ships don't start out with full energy. I guess that might change things, as the first 2 missions I've played in this campaign, we started with full energy for the Raider and all its upgrades.

I suppose that would make a huge difference and also would make the Ion Storm more detrimental as it's trying to build up energy before the Rebels start nuking it.

Last night I played a self game on this mission:

Rebels:

3x Daggers with HLC and FCS

1x Blue with HLC and FCS

Imperials:

Raider kitted as required with instigator title

Tie Advanced with X1 and ATC

2 Academy Ties

2 Obsidian Ties

That being said, I did make the mistake of starting the raider with full energy.

I deployed 2 B's at each corner of the Rebels' deployment zone. The raider was pointed kitty corner, and the 5 escort ships lined up one side. On the first round, Raider turned into 2 Bs and the Escorts engaged the other 2 B's.

It was a much closer and better game, though in the end, Imperials won and the raider was never in any real danger of being destroyed. On the 3rd turn, the 3 B's that were left managed to bring it down to 0 shields on the rear. After that, the 2nd B Wing died and it was really just a matter of carefully destroying/ionizing the B wings at the right time so that they wouldn't drift off the board with ionization. Blocking them up with my vanilla Ties became the biggest challenge at that point.

Regarding the first game, it was actually much closer for me and my buddy. He deployed in such a way that it allowed him to quickly disengage with his 2 tie advanced much easier and made me fight his raider. i was not expecting that at all. he (imperials) ended up winning. I think you're crazy to just skip that match, as it is very winnable for the imperials if he chooses to flee with the Tie Advanced.

Interesting discussion. I'm very keen to try the second mission. I played the first mission and it was a decisive Imperial victory, but only because the TIE advanced ran like cowards.

I just played as rebels and took two daggers with fcs, etahn with lone wolf, sensor jammer and r5-p4 and ten numb with mangler and fcs. I ignored the imperial fleet (howl, backstabber, dark curse) and just flew straight at the front of the raider.

I killed it on turn three.

My opponent doesn't have a lot of experience with the raider and didn't roll great with the other ships but I did fairly smash the front in on the raider. Lots of crits really ended it fast. When I won, Ten Numb was disabled but was in danger of being crushed before he could be captured. One of the daggers was also on 2 hull.

I just played as rebels and took two daggers with fcs, etahn with lone wolf, sensor jammer and r5-p4 and ten numb with mangler and fcs. I ignored the imperial fleet (howl, backstabber, dark curse) and just flew straight at the front of the raider.

I killed it on turn three.

My opponent doesn't have a lot of experience with the raider and didn't roll great with the other ships but I did fairly smash the front in on the raider. Lots of crits really ended it fast. When I won, Ten Numb was disabled but was in danger of being crushed before he could be captured. One of the daggers was also on 2 hull.

So, Howlrunner, Backstabber and Dark Curse, plus the free Tie Advanced he gets, plus the shooting from the raider weren't enough to take down even one of your ships before you crippled the raider? (despite you ignoring them?) That seems odd to me. Did the raider start out with full energy?

Did you deploy all on one side or did you split your forces up? Incidentally, I think I would have had more luck by splitting up my 2 groups as they sowed in the illustration.

Incidentally, I also lost mission 3b, of the campaign, thus losing the campaign.

I literally flew directly at it in a tight formation. I figured etahn would be last to be targeted because he has sensor jammer, shield regen and extra defence dice. The plan was, at that point, I get access to lone wolf and he's even tougher.

Anyway, I basically flew straight at the front of the raider in a kamikaze dash. If it had been a normal game, I'd have been crushed in a fell swoop and that would probably have happened anyway because I was directly in front at r1 at the end of the game. I figured, either I win or we all die and I get a draw.

Fire control couple with etahn as well as ten's auto hits gets a huge amount of damage across very fast.

I don't think she did a great job in her approach and did have a couple dice whiffs but it was a pretty significant defeat.

I just won the final tantive mission too but later realised I have myself and extra 30 points, oops! The previous mission I got 130 points and I got mixed up.

Raider did not start with full energy