No need to meet yet, and given the proximity of Thanksgiving, it would be unproductive to try to start right now anyway.

Starting our GCW campaign tomorrow! Six players, two of each faction. I'll let you know how it turned out.

BTW, I originally thought it would be a breeze to put a 300 squadron together. WRONG! With only one unique pilot and the rest generics, it was much more difficult than anticipated. It became a juggling act of ps vs quantity vs ordnance all vs reality.

And then you get battles where you do not have the exact ships or equipment you would like and have to make due, just like in real life.

As a side note, each team's Squadrons are intended to be kept secret. In the last iteration I ran, we actually had an "intel" thread where everyone posted who they faced and what they had so we could start building up a picture of what to expect from each enemy player. Hmmm, Bob has Howlrunner and brought a TIE swarm to every match so far. We can probably expect that again next turn; buy some Assault Missiles.

Smart. I think I've got a decent 300 Point list down, really confusing with the Squad-Fleet point conversions. And how do you pay for Unique pilots? Buy the base ship then add whatever pilot skill they are for points? So if Soontir was my leader, I'd buy an Alpha Squadron Pilot then add 9 for Soontir?

If you want feedback on your list (and to check it for errors), feel free to PM it to me.

The formula to calculate a unique pilot's cost is in the rules. You take the cost on his card and subtract the cost of an empty ship of that type. So Soontir would be:

Base cost (27) - empty TIE Interceptor (17) = pilot cost (10)

Incidentally, the cost of an empty ship is the cost on the card, minus the PS of the lowest PS pilot available for it.

Alpha Squadron Pilot (18) - Pilot Skill (1) = empty TIE Interceptor (17).

Smart. I think I've got a decent 300 Point list down, really confusing with the Squad-Fleet point conversions. And how do you pay for Unique pilots? Buy the base ship then add whatever pilot skill they are for points? So if Soontir was my leader, I'd buy an Alpha Squadron Pilot then add 9 for Soontir?

We were one short tonight. He went to see the Browns get beat by the Steelers. Actually the face to face was very productive. A couple of the guys were a little confused on the spending of fleet points anx squadron vs squad. Test flew a couple of squads, found them lacking and everyone headed back to the drawing board, including me. I think we all have a better grip on the situation now after this evening.

Thanks for posting. This is along the lines of something I had been thinking for a while. I even went back and reread the rules of Necromunda earlier this year to see how they handled abilities.

The one thing I wanted to do was cost out all the pilot special abilities to allow a mix and match of the skill on different ship types. As I had free time today, I decided to take an initial pass on the costs of pilot skills. Unfortunately, the bulk of them come out to one point based on the formula I was using. In some cases I needed to add to the formula to get a cost. This was especially true with the TIE Fighter and the TIE/FO. In other cases, there is clearly an incorrect costing on FFGs part (poor Major Rhymer specifically and the bomber in general).

I submit the link here for your consideration in terms of allowing XP expenditures to get a specific existing pilot skill. Obviously, this would necessitate using an alternate method to the ship card to track the ability. Also, I think many of the abilities may need some weighting to increase the XP cost needed to purchase them.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/0jj3y4sgoga1t2w/X-Wing%20Pilot%20Ability%20List.xlsx?dl=0

Hey, thanks for posting this. I actually updated the pilot table awhile ago, but you doing it is better. I do have one question though, shouldn't glave squadron pilots have the same restriction as Royal Guard Pilots?

Quite possibly, especially when I think about how strong triple Defenders were at Worlds. That restriction was added when Royal Guards were basically the only high PS generic in the game. That is no longer true; Scum especially has brought a bunch of them to the table. That restriction may need to be genericized to everything above PS4.

Segmentvs, we examined allowing pilot abilities from existing unique pilots and rejected it. Not only would it be a pain to tabulate the point cost* for all those abilities, but it would quickly get confusing (I have three "Biggs," how do we resolve this?) and extra broken (all of my Interceptors are now Fel!). There is already enough room for power combos, and I want the unique pilots to be just that, unique.

*And that would not even cover the "full" cost since FFG makes heavy use of restricted design space to restrict things that would otherwise be broken. Additionally you would have disparities where there were two waves of pilots for the same ship when the first wave was considered weak, and the second wave got stronger abilities for equivalent cost (or comparable ones for less).

I love the campaign idea, but have a question on the game balance. Each side starts with equal points to spend, but to gain future advantages requires gaining XP. I have found in running campaigns in the past, the side that wins first quickly gains advantage as they get more XP and retain higher skilled pilots. The side that loses, typically loses their higher skilled pilots and has to start all over again. So what prevents the snowball effect of the loser never being able to catch back up?

First is the fact that anyone shot down in battle has a chance of being killed, so just winning a battle is no guarantee that your super elite pilot will survive. Second is the fact that all ejected pilots are recovered by the faction that controls the play area at the end of the battle. Depending on the scenario, this may not be the victor, so anyone shot down is lost as a POW, at least until you can arrange a prisoner exchange or conduct a rescue.

But mainly we have a "catch up" mechanic. To win the campaign, you have to destroy all enemy huge ships. Before you can attack them, you have to locate them with Intelligence Gathering missions. IG missions are resource-intensive for the attacker, and basically force them to throw away ships and pilots in an attempt to gather the intel needed to conduct anti-huge ship attacks (which are also resource intensive). IG and huge ship missions also have to be conducted in place of regular attacks, which mean that while you are doing those, the enemy has more of an opportunity to flip control of strategic targets and regain some income advantage. Essentially this structure forces the leading faction to spend some of their advantage to advance their campaign win condition.

Cool! Well thank you for posting this, I look forward to trying it out!

Forgive me if I am missing something, but I do not see a section for the overall objective of the campaign, and how to win overall? Is it just whoever defeats an epic ship? Or are there victory point opportunities each round? And how many 'turns' are there supposed to be in the campaign? I will go re-read to see if I am missing something

There are no victory points or turn limits. Most campaigns end before official victory conditions are met anyway. Each of the main factions gets one capital ship (CR90/Raider) and a number of support ships (GR75/Gozanti) based on the number of players they have. To win the campaign, the other team must destroy all of these. You get one chance at destroying an epic ship per successful Intelligence Gathering mission and have to attack all support ships before getting to the capital ship. If an epic ship survives an attack, it can repair to a degree, but it generally cannot get back to full health (unless it only took shield damage).

Quite possibly, especially when I think about how strong triple Defenders were at Worlds. That restriction was added when Royal Guards were basically the only high PS generic in the game. That is no longer true; Scum especially has brought a bunch of them to the table. That restriction may need to be genericized to everything above PS4.

Segmentvs, we examined allowing pilot abilities from existing unique pilots and rejected it. Not only would it be a pain to tabulate the point cost* for all those abilities, but it would quickly get confusing (I have three "Biggs," how do we resolve this?) and extra broken (all of my Interceptors are now Fel!). There is already enough room for power combos, and I want the unique pilots to be just that, unique.

*And that would not even cover the "full" cost since FFG makes heavy use of restricted design space to restrict things that would otherwise be broken. Additionally you would have disparities where there were two waves of pilots for the same ship when the first wave was considered weak, and the second wave got stronger abilities for equivalent cost (or comparable ones for less).

Your analysis makes sense. I don't always think about the abuse factor, just the fun factor.

Ok, we had four people express interest, which I would consider the minimum. Sound off if you are still interested (or want to join), and I will ping people by PM in case they do not see this post. Please post/verify your faction preference, and we will go with whichever one is most popular vs. 2nd place. If there is a tie, it will be Rebel/Scum vs. Empire.

I'm still interested, and I'm still in the Rebels camp, if that's OK. Looking forward to this! :-)

so much good fan made stuff turning up in the x-wing world ..... gotta love it

Still waiting on two confirmations, but at this point is it looks like Empire (Gerson and Echoblammo) vs. Rebel (Vladamex and Swick).

Long live Emperor Palpatine!!

This is my confirmation. Can't wait to bring the empire to destruction

Good luck with the campaign! I don't have the time to take part but I look forward to hearing how this goes.

Everyone can go ahead and put together their starting squadrons and send them to me for verification. It looks likely we will not actually get underway before the holidays, but we can at least get all the prep work completed and be ready to go immediately afterwards.

The Hype is real.

Glad to be on a team, you can never wipe out Rebel Scum (Or Scummy Scum) quick enough.

The campaign can't start soon enough FYI Swick and I are already building and honing our squadrons offline

While we're getting everything ready, here are a few questions for our GM Rekkon (here on the forums so everyone can see)

• Has the XLS for squadron tracking been created already, or we need to make one?
• Do we want to restrict Glaives the same way as RGPs, or perhaps introduce Rogue Squadron Pilots for Rebels?
• Does every player need to have a large-base ship (since some scenarios require the players to field them)?
• Can we transfer pilots/ships/upgrades/ammo between the players within the same faction? If so, what/how?
• If I want to fly Ghost + Phantom w/o making their pilots my squadron commanders, I need to wait for one my other pilots to get ship qualifications for the Phantom? And to repeat that every time my Phantom pilot dies?

*I have a spreadsheet template from last time we can use. Give me a bit to dig it up.

*Yes, I think we will. Assume that restriction applies to ALL pilots of PS5 or higher. I am less inclined to add the Rogue Squadron Pilot as we have a much better understanding of how underperforming the T-65 is these days.

*Every player does not need a large base ship, but it is a good idea for at least one of you to have some (also one or more ships with crew slots) for special missions. Having these ships is not required, but not having them obviously prevents you from participating in certain scenarios (auto win for the other team).

*Yes, players on the same team can freely transfer assets (except Squadron commanders). This happens in the Reinforcements phase.

*Correct on the Ghost/Phantom. If you want to fly the combo as generics, it may be better to not purchase any Attack Shuttles in your starting Squadron and instead wait until you have a couple pilots with enough XP to purchase the appropriate qualification.

For ease of communication, I suggest everyone PM me an e-mail address. Team members will want a way to coordinate privately, and CCing me in on that traffic will speed things along. I am already missing the private forum we had last time.

Thank god you've got a spreadsheet, I was about to go insane over trying to organize my fleet on paper.