Hey guys! So, it's been a while, but I've been working away like a well-enslaved Wookie to get the Boneyard Campaign Rule Set up and running. We just had our first playtest Sunday, and had a very productive round. We had seven players turnout, and I got a lot of great feedback that's gone into refining the rules.

So, without further ado, check out the Boneyard Campaign Rule Set v. 0.2! Please leave helpful feedback in the comments below.

Hi, I played the Imperial Scout team at GKF the other day. I'm going to offer some criticism based entirely on what's listed in the document and as opposed to my game experience.

A few things:

Scouts

Your Rebel Scout Corvette group must start with 3 CR90Bs to fit in the point limit. No red dice except for those X-Wings. Please add this to the document or change point levels.

3 Raider-1s with TIE Fighters and 3 CR90Bs with X-Wings both come to exactly 156 points. Due to the presence of Brace and additional Black Dice, the Imperials will win almost every engagement. The fighters will not significantly contribute in either case due to ship speed and anti-fighter capabilities.

The Rebel MC30 Scout Frigate + CR90A pay 15 more points than a Glad-1 + Raider-1 with he minimum fighter component.

General notes

Black Marketeer is VASTLY superior to all other first rank bonuses. Mathematically, it is one of only 3 traits worth taking over the course of the campaign: Black Marketeer, Carrier Commander, and Vicious Tactics. Players with these traits will see benefits without the need for other preparation aside from Dial choice for Carriers. Anything that requires a token is automatically a bad deal.

XP gain is going to swing wildly. Scout groups will gain slowest while Battle Groups will gain fastest. This is due entirely to the way experience is awarded for damage.

Losing all ships or surviving with all ships in defeat is the same outcome, with major penalties for one over the other in future games. Players should retreat as soon as a ship appears to be in significant danger of loss if they aren't decisively winning. Players who do not are likely penalizing their teammate(s) by subjecting them to loss while ALSO forcing them to team up with heavily damaged ships in the future.

CR90s and Raiders cannot repair themselves of damage during games without spending tokens. A player with a CR90 with 2 hull damage must spend 4 turns doing nothing but repairing unless they have the ability to get free tokens. Find an XP price for full fleet repair or expect all scout groups to basically quit as soon as a ship is destroyed.

Surely " Players should retreat as soon as a ship appears to be in significant danger of loss if they aren't decisively winning. Players who do not are likely penalizing their teammate(s) by subjecting them to loss while ALSO forcing them to team up with heavily damaged ships in the future." is entirely the idea?

It adds a bit more realism to proceedings, in that ships are not really going to willingly sacrifice themselves just because some idiot admiral says "You, go and die rather than retreat".

Makes sense to me.

Your Rebel Scout Corvette group must start with 3 CR90Bs to fit in the point limit. No red dice except for those X-Wings. Please add this to the document or change point levels.

Very good point. This will be changed.

3 Raider-1s with TIE Fighters and 3 CR90Bs with X-Wings both come to exactly 156 points. Due to the presence of Brace and additional Black Dice, the Imperials will win almost every engagement. The fighters will not significantly contribute in either case due to ship speed and anti-fighter capabilities.

Also, one would believe that a couple of CR90's and a Nebulon would not go toe-to-toe with a Demolisher Gladiator and another Gladiator, but that did happen. There is little I can do about the balancing issue of the small-size ships being outclassed by the other side's ships, unless I start changing Fantasy Flight's point costs.

I do not believe this will be an issue. By and large, fleets will begin splitting up their groups more the further we go, as objectives become more complex. Especially now that we have 2v2 on both tables, the odds of the two scout groups going head to head in a 1v1 is highly unlikely.

If you have a suggestion for how to fix issues like these, please include them in your comments.

The Rebel MC30 Scout Frigate + CR90A pay 15 more points than a Glad-1 + Raider-1 with he minimum fighter component.

Again, not much I can do with the points cost and keep with the spirit of what we're doing here. The other optional build I could have done would have been a Nebulon and a CR90, but that leaves that scout group even more underpowered. Again, please leave feedback for suggested fixes.

Black Marketeer is VASTLY superior to all other first rank bonuses. Mathematically, it is one of only 3 traits worth taking over the course of the campaign: Black Marketeer, Carrier Commander, and Vicious Tactics. Players with these traits will see benefits without the need for other preparation aside from Dial choice for Carriers. Anything that requires a token is automatically a bad deal.

I'm considering adjusting Saboteur to beginning with 2 objectives it can sabotage, increasing to three and then four afterwards. I believe that would make it a bit more dangerous and worth taking.

I'm surprised I didn't see Tactical Expert as one of your ones worth taking. It doesn't require a token and is very effective for someone with the tactical foresight to apply its ability.

We'll see how the balancing plays out in a few more games and in longer term setting. I've already adjusted Black Marketeer somewhat, but if it proves to be overpowered, then we can revisit it after we've tried out its current strength.

XP gain is going to swing wildly. Scout groups will gain slowest while Battle Groups will gain fastest. This is due entirely to the way experience is awarded for damage.

If a player with a large ship manages to gain the "Outmaneuver" EXP bonus, then yes, I would agree. However, I don't see ships in the Battle Group often getting the Outmaneuver EXP bonus, which small ships in the scout group should be able to get rather easily by comparison. Scout ships are also more likely to claim objectives than ships from the Battle group. Again, we'll play around with this new system and see how it goes for the next round, and make adjustments afterwards. We will not be doing another full EXP wipe, since this EXP wipe was only due to the dissolving of the ship EXP and the total revamp of the EXP system. From now on, it should only be minor changes.

Losing all ships or surviving with all ships in defeat is the same outcome, with major penalties for one over the other in future games. Players should retreat as soon as a ship appears to be in significant danger of loss if they aren't decisively winning. Players who do not are likely penalizing their teammate(s) by subjecting them to loss while ALSO forcing them to team up with heavily damaged ships in the future.

I believe this situation will change drastically depending on the mission. Players will have to weigh the risks or gains of being able to capture that mission. The Retreat rule is more to be used as a tool to allow players to save their ships from obtaining more damage after there is little or no possibility of success in the mission, to prevent damage to their ships for future rounds.

As Extropia also noted, it does add a bit of realism to the proceedings, which is the major point of playing in a Campaign.

CR90s and Raiders cannot repair themselves of damage during games without spending tokens. A player with a CR90 with 2 hull damage must spend 4 turns doing nothing but repairing unless they have the ability to get free tokens. Find an XP price for full fleet repair or expect all scout groups to basically quit as soon as a ship is destroyed.

This is definitely a good point that I'll have to consider. Perhaps we can adjust the rules so small ships ignore the 100% damage taken in previous turn round rule for persistent damage, thereby meaning a small ship can only start with a maximum of 1 damage card in the next round.

Going the alternative route and allowing EXP repairs, what price would you suggest for EXP repair? I do not think it should be full group-wide, but should be paid ship-by-ship. Considering that, the cost should be relatively low. The problem here is the balancing issue; how do you prevent this from making one side plateau while the other snowballs? I think that my previous suggestion above will be more helpful and balanced in the long run.

Again, suggestions on how to fix things are very welcome.

Again, the retreat rule sounds great on paper but there's no strong incentive to stick in a tough fight where ships are being destroyed to gain the objective. Ships that do have to go into future fights with lots of damage. Players have no incentive to go for the objective. Nothing is on the line for players aside from winning a given game. There's no clear objective for what the end scenario is. The end scenario in a real conflict would be utter enemy destruction or retreat. By that definition, your Rebel players decisively won on Sunday. In this rule set, several would have either extra ships or ships with weapons and defenses on par with ships in the next size class. Defeated ships would barely have anything AND be heavily damaged.

A full fleet destruction must cost 1xp at maximum to fully repair and the reason is simple: any fleet that meets this end is going to have their teammate immediately retreat, earning only 1xp for both players. Even if you don't do that, a player with all ships destroyed potentially will earn no other XP than the defeat prize depending on when and how it happened, especially if they started with damage on the more fragile ships such as the Corvettes, AF2, Gladiator or Nebulon. To you it might sound cheap, to me and others it sounds like the winning ships are going to be significantly more powerful in the next round. This is again an issue of "instant retreat, game over, have fun" play. Not only does it prevent a second complete wipe, it ALSO prevents the enemy from gaining additional XP.

XP is a great motivator for sticking around a close game but it otherwise does nothing to help a losing player. Ship was destroyed? Well then who cares if you bring in an extra Gladiator or Corvette or MC30 when everything else is going to die immediately in the next round?

Regarding Tactical Expert: Just like Isaard, it doesn't work. Looking at the top command dial of every ship? Unless my opponent has made a grave navigational error I can pretty much tell at a glance what my opponents plan to do regardless of which dials they planned for two turns ago (which will simply be tokened for future turns). It then becomes an issue of die rolls, like it did in Sundays game.

Commander Types Suggestions:

Black Marketeer:

Rank 1: May add one Officer, Weapons Team, or Support Team Upgrade Slot to all ships in your group.

Rank 2: May add one Offensive Retrofit or Defensive Retrofit Upgrade Slot to all ships in your group.

Rank 3: May add one free upgrade of any type to your ships that is listed on the official ship card (except the Commander upgrade). Unique upgrades must follow the normal Unique Upgrade rules for your fleet.

Tactical Expert:

Rank 1: At the beginning of each round, assign a command token of your choice to any one ship in your group.

Rank 2: When you reveal a command dial, assign a command token of the same type to that ship.

Rank 3: Your ships may have duplicate command tokens up to your maximum command value.

Expert Navigator:

Rank 1: At the start of each round, gain a Navigation command token on each ship in your group

Rank 2: Navigation Command Tokens may be used to increase your yaw value by 1

Rank 3: All ships in your group are treated as having the Engine Techs upgrade even if they would normally be unable to take it. If a ship already has the engine techs upgrade, it gains an additional Support Team upgrade slot instead.

Master Engineer:

Rank 1: At the start of each round, gain an Engineering token for each ship in your group

Rank 2: Add 1 to your engineering value on all ships.

Rank 3: All ships in your group are treated as having the Redundant Shields upgrade even if they could not take it normally. If a ship already has the Redundant Shields upgrade, it gains an additional Defensive Retrofit slot instead.

Saboteur:

Rank 1: On your first attack with each ship in your group, add a Blue Die set to the Accuracy icon to your attack results after all other modifications but before the enemy uses their defense tokens.

Rank 2: You may change one Blue or Red die to a face with an Accuracy icon once per activation. You may only attack one ship during the activation you do this.

Rank 3: During setup, select two obstacles that are not a Space Station. Place a token within distance 1 of that obstacle. Enemy ships that end a maneuver within Short Range of the token are immediately hit by one black die on their nearest facing (if two or more facings could be chosen choose the facing closest to the front hull zone)