Ever the meglomaniac as I am I was thinking after reading reviews of Rebellion. Could a player incorporate some of the Star Wars miniature games when conficts occur in the Rebellion game such as fleet actions using Armada?
What do you think?
Intergrate Rebellion with Armada?
I would recommend using Micro Machines, myself. Far more cost effective.
This is what I said in a similar topic on the armada board
Using the map and pieces as components for a campaign that uses a different ruleset is totally possible. You would just need to create a campaign ruleset with that in mind.
Using Armada to fight out the space battles in a game of rebellion, that is a bit trickier, but there are some things going for it that using other games doesnt have.
For one, rebellion is only 2 players (we'll ignore the bolted on team thing for now). So if the two of you break to fight a 2 hour long amada battle in the middle of a round, you aren't leaving 4 other people twiddling their thumbs like you would if you were trying this with twilight imperium.
The combats in rebellion appear to be totally self contained. Sometimes in other big games like this you fight a round of combat, then go do more stuff in the campaign, then next campaign turn you come back to the combat and right another round. Such systems don't work to break away and resolve the fight with a different game. From what we know of rebellion, though, the fights are entirely self contained, when a combat happens the rest of the rebellion game stops until that combat is fully resolved. Essentially, combat in this game is its own little mini-game with its own super simplified rules. That means you can substitute a completely different set of rules (like Armada) for their simplified mini game rules and the only thing that changes is the time needed.
Note, this is why resolving armada squadron engagements with x-wing games doesn't work, unless you willing to have the armada game and a separate x-wing game for each engagement cluster all set up simultaneously and cycle through playing a round of each.
If I were to do this, I would want to find a 6mm mass battle game to use for the ground combat in rebellion, and then use imperial assault to resolve the various missions that leaders are sent on. Play an IA game using a force consisting of Han and some generic troopers deployment cards when I send my Han Solo leader on a sabotage mission in Rebellion, for example.
The original thread is here, you might want to give a read through as there was some really interesting discussion about the role of Imperial Assault and how to represent ground battles from rebellion.
Later on in the thread, I also said this about using armada specifically
If you and a friend were both willing to really commit to it, I don't see a reason it couldn't be done. Like has been mentioned, it would take an extraordinarily long time (difficult to say how long since we don't really know the rules for rebellion yet, my guess would be several months, at least). You would have to keep the rebellion game set up for all that time.
If you were willing to do all that, you would need to come up with some sort of conversion system to translate the rebellion pieces into armada fleets. You could just assign some number of armada points to each type of rebellion unit, or you could make it as complex as you wanted, all the way up to creating a partial armada list for each rebellion unit produced and keeping track of it from round to round (this Star Destroyer board game piece represents 2 Vic 2's with these upgrades, while this Star Destroyer board game piece represents an ISD and 2 raiders, and so on).
The hardest part might be figuring out how to handle damaged armada units once the fight is over. The simplest solution would be that all units are fully healed after each battle, but I'm not sure whether that would negatively impact how the players approach each battle. It might discourage an outmatched player from fighting at all, or it might encourage suicide runs.
Of course, armada doesn't have any rules for SSDs or Death Stars. For the SSDs you might be able to get away with just making them very large armada fleets and ignoring the fact that there us supposed to be an SSD present, but I don't think that would work for the DSs.
Rebel squadrons with no capital ship support would need some house rules.
A scenario for armada that involved transports trying to land troops through a blockade would be nice, but probably not necessary.
You would probably want to set some point where a battle would be so lopsided that it is better to just resolve it with normal rebellion rules instead of an armada game. 3 ISDs vs a lone cr90, for example, may not be worth playing out.
All of this is, of course, theoretical until we actually get a chance to read the rules and PLAY rebellion a couple times. There may be factors we don't yet know that would screw up the whole concept.
I certainly want to do it, but it will take a lot of tooling and a community of players that you can bring along with you - not always an easy task.
The biggest problem I see in this is the tactics cards not translating over to Armada. It means each leader is effectively the same as any other leader. You're sacrificing an entire mechanic of the game to play Armada instead. But if it's fun for you, go for it.
Yeah, you would need to figure out a way to take the rebellion cards (or at least the leader's tactics values) into account in the sub games, but I wouldn't think that would be too difficult.
I wonder if we need to make it a forum project, rather than an individual one.
I have had some ideas rolling around in my head, but have (obviously) been waiting for the game's release. But the ideas are not complete, and I wonder if some of you could provide more ideas.
I am totally coming up with a Campaign in integrate armada.
What you really need to do is go full crazy.
Rebellion is the base game.
Space battles in rebellion are handled in Armada.
Fighter battles in Armada are handled in X-wing.
Ground battles are handled with Star Wars Miniature game.
Missions are handled with Imperial assault.
Some missions could even be handled with the RPGs! Have character sheets for each leader, and then do opposing skill checks based on the mission using the RPG dice instead!
Now you turned a 3 hour, $100 game into a 5 year, $2500 campaign!
Look, honestly, if you want to do this, and you find it fun, more power to you. These types of things have way too many flaws to be fun though.
I understand the initial draw of these sorts of thoughts, but they are just unrealistic. Even if you can handle the time, space requirements, and financial obligation, the idea typically causes massive balance issues.
The units in Rebellion are not 1 to 1 depictions of units, they represent unit groups, so determining the draft value of stuff is problematic.
The effectiveness of units are different also. An X-wing in this game does not have the same effectiveness as a squad of X-wings in rebellion, nor do either accurately represent the effectiveness of an X-wing in the X-wing game. So you can end up with situations where it actually benefits one side greatly to take the conflict to a new scale as it makes their units more effective, thus granting them a bonus to combat and thus throwing off the balance of the base game.
Beyond that, it would mess with the scale element of the game. X-wing depicts a small scale squad scale combat system. Armada depicts a small scale naval engagement, but honestly we are talking pretty small naval engagement here. A couple ships, a few groups of fighters.
Rebellion is on a much greater scale. That single stormtrooper likely represents something like a regiment or brigade of soldiers. That AT-AT is probably actually 4 AT-ATs, a dozen AT-STs, and a regiment of troopers. That Mon-Cal cruiser is likely a Mon-Cal or two, a couple Neb Bs, and a couple corvettes with a small compliment of X or Y wings.
Having a Rebellion Mon-Cal represented by an Armada Mon-Cal would make the entire scale of Rebellion seem odd. The Imps start with 3 star destroyers...that's not that impressive in Armada terms.
Then you have to look at all the elements you end up throwing out to make them fit into the new uber-game and how those can affect the balance.
I've actually been involved in other efforts to combine multiple levels of game universes together and it's been endless hours of planning just to start playing a game that has so many flaws that it's basically more of a chore than entertainment.
If any of you crazy uber-fans actually go through with it, please document the hell out of it for prosperity though. Pictures, videos, play session reports. As much as I'd hate to actually be involved, I'd love to actually love to read about it.
I wonder if we need to make it a forum project, rather than an individual one.
I have had some ideas rolling around in my head, but have (obviously) been waiting for the game's release. But the ideas are not complete, and I wonder if some of you could provide more ideas.
I've been meaning to start a discussion, once the game is in everyone's hands and we've had a chance to play it a few times (my copy gets here Monday), about making some special scenarios for the sub-games for each of the missions in the game, and how those scenario can have the balance adjusted based on the rebellion stats of the leaders involved.
Look, honestly, if you want to do this, and you find it fun, more power to you. These types of things have way too many flaws to be fun though.
I understand the initial draw of these sorts of thoughts, but they are just unrealistic. Even if you can handle the time, space requirements, and financial obligation, the idea typically causes massive balance issues.
You're right that there are significant problems to overcome, the more so the more you want to simulate things - at scale - accurately.
The big problem is to keep all the levels of play fun and challenging for all, while at the same time not creating an endless stalemate. A part of that is to identify what people find fun about it, which depends on the people involved. Some people find great fun in the competitiveness of these games, others (like myself) enjoy the lore and the creative challenge more.So, in some way, creating the inter-game structure is part of the fun. Also, there's the collaborative aspect.
Regarding the cost, I think you may be exaggerating. Also, it's a question of sunk costs, really. I already have Rebellion, X-Wing and Armada. So, the bulk has already been spent.
@Kmanwiess, there are much simpler ways of doing things then going super crazy. I did not like X-wing or IA but people could implement the same way, I'm going to do with Armada.
I was not going to play Rebellion and simply add in Armada, at first anyway.
What I was planning is something similar to what Flames of War did. I would use the Rebellion map and pieces to make up my own game. In fact I would probably by a 2nd copy and magnetize it.
You could fight 400 point Armada battle any where on the board, but Rebellion units would represent extras units or points in that battle to represent the advantage on the Rebellion board.
Ships, squads, and Heroes on the Rebellion board would represent points or cards, or something in Armada. If Leia is on a planet on the board the player gets that Leia card for free in an Armada battle.
Maybe a Y-wing is a free squadron in an Armada battle. I'm not really sure yet.
Maybe even if you implemented the Rebellion game, sabotage missions could cause ships in Armada to start with less shields or a player to start with less squads.
Maybe you can only have Armada battles where leaders that are in Armada show up in Rebellion. So if all 5 Imperial commanders show up in Rebellion, there is your 5 Imperial fleets. That fleet must then be commanded by that leader.
I guess I am more looking to supplement Armada then I am for Rebellion. I think you are right it may be way to complicated to have the other games supplement Rebellion. I just want a campaign to play for Armada.
But i'm sure some crazy talented person will come up with something for a full on FFG Star Wars campaign.