Epic "Hyperspace Mode"

By JimbonX, in X-Wing

Okay so on 11th September I'm gonna play epic, Rebels vs Imperial with a concept. This is how it's tought to play:

Played on 2 seperate tables with playmat.

8 players minimum: 4 Rebels and 4 Imperial players. 150p each player.

Each faction decides 2 teams - 30 minutes top. The faction with initive must start first, on choosing table.

You place out 6 asteroids with no restriction on sides, only top and bottom range 2. You place ships in range 1 or 2.

You play the game as normal with the goal: Wipe out you opponents ship. 2 tables plays at the same time. When the first table is finished, the winning team goes to hyperspace, and move all the ships that survived, to the next table - helping the other team. The team that lost can send half amout of ships that the winning team could. Example: Imperial wins with 3 ships at 90 points. Rebels can send ships worth 45 points (like 2 X-wings PS 2).

That's the concept.Got any more ideas? Please share.

Edited by JimbonX

Sounds fun at first blush but make sure you carefully consider the implications. If you are on table 2 and table 1 finishes early in a blowout, you could be looking at a very unfair match in a hurry. That might not feel great.

Also, I'm not sure if you plan to synchronize the turns between the two tables, but that could also be annoying.

If your players have the right mentality, go for it. The right mentality is that you setup these wacky scenarios to try to organically create cinematic moments, not to play a competitively balanced game.

I once played a campaign that used Armada and X-wing simultaneously with a similar dynamic. The fighters were engaged in a dogfight over some objective in a dense asteroid field that capital ships could not enter. The capital ships had to decide whether to reinforce the fighter battle or keep their squadrons for their own protection. That absolutely required turn-synchronization, which was a little bit tricky, but ultimately it worked.

Sounds fun at first blush but make sure you carefully consider the implications. If you are on table 2 and table 1 finishes early in a blowout, you could be looking at a very unfair match in a hurry. That might not feel great.

Also, I'm not sure if you plan to synchronize the turns between the two tables, but that could also be annoying.

Edited by JimbonX

Neat idea!

Why limit the hyperspace jump to the end of one match? Let hyperspace capable ships take the "jump to hyperspace" action (so you'd have to create rules that allow TIEs to re-dock with a Gozanti or Raider in order to make the jump). Any ship that jumps in from hyperspace is placed to the side of the mat, and is deployed at the start of the next round, before dials are set, in the teams' normal deployment zone.

This way, throughout the course of play, one table might see their allies floundering and send them reinforcements.

The game ends when one team no longer has any ships on one of the boards (i.e.: they have to defend both fronts simultaneously) (to prevent players from just abandoning one table to mob the other one.

This concept reminds me of "bughouse chess", a popular high school and club play mode, where pieces taken from one board help your partner playing the opposite color in his own game sitting next to you. Pieces can appear on any spot on the board making for some fascinating instant checkmate opportunities.

A chess clock is used so as to prevent analysis-paralysis.

Sounds like a cool way to try X-Wing though, again, as long as no one confuses this with anything too serious.

I like the idea of being able to hyperspace out on any turn, perhaps TIEs thematically could just leave the board edge, other ships could use the HotAC approach (roll two red dice + 1/hit/attempt, need three hits to jump).

This concept reminds me of "bughouse chess", a popular high school and club play mode, where pieces taken from one board help your partner playing the opposite color in his own game sitting next to you. Pieces can appear on any spot on the board making for some fascinating instant checkmate opportunities.

A chess clock is used so as to prevent analysis-paralysis.

Sounds like a cool way to try X-Wing though, again, as long as no one confuses this with anything too serious.

I like the idea of being able to hyperspace out on any turn, perhaps TIEs thematically could just leave the board edge, other ships could use the HotAC approach (roll two red dice + 1/hit/attempt, need three hits to jump).

That's exactly what I was thinking of when I suggested hyper spacing mid-game. :D

I wouldn't do the HotAC approach- relying on a RNG to escape is fine for a cooperative game, but in a competitive one it can be a real drag*. At worse I would make it so that taking a hyperspace action earns you a hyperspace token. At the end of the round, any ships with hyperspace tokens are removed from the mat and transferred to the other game. This was the opponent at least gets a chance to attack the escaping ships while they're calculating the jump to lightspeed.

*(Cue comment from FickleGreenDice)

It'd be cool if you let ships jump at any point as an action, but set up objectives on both tables so that if one side jumped everybody to one table then the other team got easy points. Otherwise it's just end up as a one table game.