Since I have the most X-Wing stuff (and play-time under my belt) I have taken on the role of organiser for my group's first Heroes of the Aturi Cluster Campaign and just sent everything off to the printer. This is exciting!

We're scheduled to get together and start playing on the 21st December. I have several vinyl mats from Gale Force 9 (which I got at an absolute steal for £6, thank you Wayland Games) to add variety to the missions and give the sense that we are progressing to different regions.

I guess my main queries would be;

1) Is there anything I need to know/take special note of before I start running this?
2) Any common mistakes or anything that you got wrong the first time through that would help out a first-timer?
3) In your experience, is it better to leave out 'unique' upgrades entirely or just allow anyone to buy them? (Eg - multilple people buying R2-D2)
4) I have 2 ARC-170's and have seen score sheets made for them. Can anyone comment on how much they should cost to upgrade to? (I assume 'Alliance Overhaul' is included, like the titles for the other craft)

I want to make sure this goes as smoothly as possible; 2 of the 5 in the group wouldn't be the most enthused/frequent of X-Wing players so I don't want them to get turned off early; although I know the Campaign allows for drop-in/drop-out with its player scaling should worst come to worst. For this reason, I have stated to the group that I will manage the entirety of the AI side of things as well (you can tell how desperate I am to try this out )

Any recommendations/advice welcome!

1) Is there anything I need to know/take special note of before I start running this?

I found it helpful to having a bunch of Tie Fighters, Academy Pilot cards/tokens set aside just to speed up the setup time.

3) In your experience, is it better to leave out 'unique' upgrades entirely or just allow anyone to buy them? (Eg - multilple people buying R2-D2)

I personally liked having them. The main reason for limiting them is balance, but to a point balance goes out the window for HotAC since you're not playing against other people. The only reason I'd limit them is if you found the game was getting too easy. But if you have people who aren't diehard X-Wing players that's unlikely.

Any recommendations/advice welcome!

I highly recommend going for the fully cooperative variant. As you peruse the rules, you'll see that players score experience points for a variety things, one of the most easily noted being the destruction of an enemy ship. This can cause bad blood between players if one player is constantly weakening a ship and then gets the kill stolen by another player.

In the fully cooperative variant, you keep track of all experience as normal, but each player does not hold on to their own earned experience. Instead, all earned experience from a mission gets pooled together and then divided equally among the players. This significantly strengthens the cooperative aspect of the game.

As an example, my play group wanted everyone to level up evenly and fairly, so we got bogged down in trying to decide who should shoot first to ensure the person behind in points got the kill. That was stressful, frustrating, slowed the game down, and took us out of the immersion of the mission. By just pooling experience, we could keep the pace up and just focus on completing mission objectives, letting the experience get figured out at the end of the mission.

I'll second the TIE fighter prep. Having three groups of 3-4 numbered Academy Pilots ready at all times is a massive help (we had enough FOs and Gozanti TIEs to give each wing a different look). I would also consider a quick 8.5*11 damage tracker sheet (ours was crudely written in pencil, with spaces numbered 1-12 large enough for damage cards). This helps keep things sorted for your stock enemies, special foes can be tracked easily enough on their ship sheets.

I haven't tried full coop but after playing a solid 20+ missions on different campaigns I could see it being a good idea. The old system did lead to some hilarious XP-grabbing gambits, like diving in and blowing up the Capture Officer shuttle when we knew we'd fail the mission, but especially with new players evening things out would be good.

I would also suggest that, despite the urge to add custom stuff and cool new ships, you keep close to what the books and Armoredgear's posts lay out. I see a lot of people modifying things before even playing or after the intro mission, but one of the best things about the campaign is how balanced and challenging it is. It really feels more like a complete product than a fan 'mod', and there's a lot of cool aspects that only really come out a good ways into a campaign.

I have played through all the missions at least twice it's good fun you should enjoy it.

I would 2nd keeping to the intended ships and not adding new ones, at least for your first campaign.

Having a table set with selection of tie fighters, a couple interceptors, a lambda and making sure you have other ships close by is very handy, when you draw an elite you don't want to have to stop for a few mins to find the ship and set it up. Also a token box with shields, focus, pre paired target locks etc to the side of the table is good.

For damage I just place the little explosion tokens next to ships on the board, 1 token for 1 damage. For imperial ships I also place shield tokens next to the ship if there are more than 1 of the same type. If you find that too cluttered then just put them next to the AI card for that ship. Not many imperial ships have shields so it easy to keep track.

I think it is a good idea for you to master the AI and control those to make it easy for the other players, you will get to grips with it quickly and the game will flow better. You should of course still be playing a rebel ship yourself, and just being the operator of the AI between player turns, not a gm.

Our group has completed eleven missions, plus a couple one-off, fan - made missions when major portions of the flight group were absent. We have only allowed one copy each of any unique upgrade (R2-D2), just for thematic reasons, and it doesn't seem to have hurt us. Pilot abilities as EPT's, and EPT's for that matter, have been fair game for doubling up, but I think when we start over again that we'll probably make all of them properly unique as well. Just for thematic purposes.

In our group, I am apparently the only one who wants to fly the ARC. What? I've been playtesting it, and I think it translates pretty well. I'd say it is roughly equivalent to the B-Wing in HotAC game-terms, so if you want to use it, do so with the same basic upgrade rules. Someone out there has built a custom mission that lets the players find an Imperial base and recover the ARC, opening it thematically for player use. Sorry, I can't seem to find the link now. But it looked good, and added that extra level of grit.

Oh, yeah. Everybody, but I mean EVERYBODY, takes Predator as their first EPT. And it's good. Really makes things easier at those lower levels. But when we restart, we've decided to make it an "unlockable" EPT, available only once a player had killed five or more enemy fighters. Again, for thematic purposes. It's not such a stretch to achieve that by level three, and it might also create a little more variation between pilots, ha ha.

TLT's are good....like really good

Our group didn't realize that all non-Tie Fighters get that bonus free action even if they are not elites (besides the intro mission for the interceptors anyway).

Averaging out the exp gain per mission is also really nice, but tracking who did what is nice for bragging rights

I'm the "GM" for a campaign at a local game store, and am having a blast. The campaign is going so well that other folks coming in to the store are asking if we can run a second campaign in parallel with the first so everybody gets to play! I've had people walk in, watch the game for a while, and go buy a ship. That - of course - is why game stores host gaming nights.

A couple of suggestions. If you're going to GM and not play, it gives the players a little more suspense if you don't tell them everything. Treat it like a mission briefing... tell them in advance what the mission objectives are, and any special parameters, but don't tell them if / when additional waves of TIE fighters are coming in. Or what special equipment they might have.

I found the colored bases an excellent addition as it helps track TIE fighters back to the squad that entered the board. I have eventually purchased all five of the different colors. Last night we had orange, red, green, and purple all on the board at the same time, with blue waiting in the wings.

There are "hit" tokens from some of the expansions that have a "1" on one side and a "2" on the other. Those work perfect for tracking damage on regular TIE Fighters, because at 3 they're dead. We use the token as a count-down. I have also read about people using dice for the same thing.

Oh, and somewhere here is a critical hit chart. Instead of drawing damage cards, you roll a D6 and assign damage based on the results. We use that for both Imperial and Rebel forces to be fair.

We have run the majority of our missions with personal experience point (XP) tracking. Last night was the first time we used pooled XP, and it worked well. Each player got 5XP at the end, with 3XP left over. The extra XP were awarded to the pilots that had the least XP up to that point. Some of the missions really seem to require players to sacrifice kills for other actions, so pooled XP ensures that those pilots that don't directly score from combat still benefit from a successful mission. I have read at least one place where the creator of HotAC is strongly considering making pooled XP the normal rule rather than an alternate rule.

I have posted mission debriefs for all of our missions on BGG. I have the same username there. (Not sure if it's considered spamming to link to another site, so I won't link them for now.)

Plan on adding 30 minutes at the beginning of the mission for setting everything up. We run from 6-9 at our store, and there have been two occasions where we went past 9:00. In one case we were only half-way through the mission! However, we regularly play with five of six players, so that puts a lot of ships on the board.

Ship inventory... I have 14 TIE fighters (regular and FO) in my collection, along with 4 Advanced, 6 Defenders, 4 Phantoms, 4 Bombers, and 2 Shuttles. You'll need a bunch of ships if you're going to have a lot of players. The FAQ suggests two TIE's per player, and 1 each of all of the others. You can certainly proxy additional ships if you need them. Or recycle TIE Fighters as they get removed from the board. One of the "busiest" missions is Secure Holonet Receiver. If you have six players, you could conceivably have 15 TIE Fighters on the board at one time. (Not likely, but the mission parameters allow for that many.) In addition to the TIEs you'll have at least one Shuttle and two Interceptors. That's a bunch of ships.

Predator is - as has already been mentioned - a very powerful upgrade to take early on. The TIE Fighters you're up against are all PS1, so you get an automatic reroll of up to two dice with Predator. TIE's tend to fly in formations, so cluster missiles and ion torpedoes are all useful armaments.

Last, I will echo some advice I read on the source web site: don't be in a huge hurry to upgrade your pilot skill. The standard Imperial force is going to be two (or more) squads of PS1 TIE Fighters. You start at PS2, so you're already ahead in the game. The difficulty of the mission ramps up based on two factors: the number of players, and your average pilot skill. If you run pilots with an average PS of 4, you trigger the first round of Imperial upgrades. That's where our first game is right now; we have a mix of PS3 to PS 6, and that extra ship (or upgraded ship) can really change the way a mission turns out.

Good luck! You're going to have a lot of fun. This is an amazing extension to X-Wing.

You start at pilot skill 2. The game is MUCH harder when the TIE Fighters are moving after you move on the first mission, like my group did.

A couple things I noticed after playing HOTAC:

1. After my wingman got bored of using the TLT Y-Wing, we decided to let him upgrade to an ARC-170. I think it fits in the campaign well but in my opinion it should cost 5 points more than the B-wing upgrade Since you add a rear arc, crew, astro mech, and a better dial. Meanwhile you are only losing a canon slot & system slot.

2. Holy crap! When you have invested a ton of time into this campaign and you manage to have your ship destroyed in hostile territory...prepare for the stressful eject roll to see if your pilot dies. That is some scary stuff. My wingman and I were lucky enough to have never died but man were we close.

3. As others mentioned. Predator is a dynamite investment.

4. Ditch the T-65 X-wing when you can. Anything else is a better choice except maybe a hawk lol

5. Personally I had a lot of fun with the A-wing: Prockets + Extra Munitions + PTL + Stealth Device + Predator + AutoThrusters + Crackshot + Wired = Lots of fast fun!

6. Use a pencil!

7. Create a mission tree page (1-1, 1-2, 1-3), (2-1, 2-2, 2-3), (3-1, 3-2) ect. and put a checkmark on missions you have completed and an x on missions you have failed. It makes it easier to navigate the mission trees and understand what you have completed and what missions you have never tried.

8. Props to the creator! Fantastic!

9. Hope. Rebellions are built on Hope! Save the rebellion! Save the Dream!

I've never seen any reason to limit unique cards. It's not like it's actually R2D2 taking time off from hanging out with Luke to fly with your nobody back-sector pilot. No more than Biggs hasn't died 35,000 more times since the advent of the X-Wing miniatures game. It's just a droid who can fix your shields. There are plenty of ways to modify the game's difficulty level (and it's decently hard to start) if you think it needs to be.

I wouldn't mess with the alternate fan-made ships in your first run-through. The E-Wing especially is significantly more powerful than anything else in the game based on its dial and upgrade selections. There have been quite a few threads discussing ways to balance them, but it's probably best for you to actually experience playing the game through the experience progression so you understand the concepts. Once you've seen what an upgraded X-Wing can do, you'll realize just how ludicrous an upgraded E-Wing can potentially be, lol. My last campaign, I had doubled up the next closest player in kills with a bog-standard X-Wing, and hadn't been shot down once right up to the point we went on X-Wing hiatus in that group. The game's AI isn't *that* good, lol. The 5 core ships are lateral moves; not significantly better than anything you start with; they just open up new styles of play (heck, the A-Wing is a downgrade in most respects, lol).

House Rule Suggestions:

If a player misses a session, bump them up to the lowest player's XP total when they come back. Average Pilot Skill can significantly skew the difficulty level of the game. The Elites are designed to be one PS higher than the players. A newbie pilot can potentially drag them down to even PS with the players, or even lower with a wide enough gap. That basically neuters the Elites and makes the scenarios they are included in significantly easier. Keep running tallies of "Total XP" and who has flown which missions, and every session, anyone who has missed one or more previous sessions gets an XP boost to match them with the lowest total. This keeps it fair for the people who have played in every game, but also prevents the "bugs" the game's difficulty level experiences when player skill levels get too far apart.

By that same token, I know there was one player who participated in some of the threads who had talked about intentionally not advancing their PS level. This shouldn't be allowed either, lol. For the same reasons above, that it will artificially lower the Average PS of the players, and the later scenarios (Missions 3 or 4 in most storylines) are typically written assuming the players are advancing their characters. If for some odd reason you have that guy who doesn't want to level up, don't factor his pilot into the group's average PS, because it's just cheating the group out of the game's intended challenge levels.

Plenty of situations will come up where the rules won't explicitly cover what the AI ship will do. If you can't quite figure out what movement arc the ship is in, or there's some other discrepancy affecting the AI's movement, target, or action selection, always choose what would be beneficial (or make the most sense) to the AI. Gaming the system to get an advantage on a cardboard sheet and some plastic dice is silly.

Don't let AI ships fly off the board unless they have been forced to by a player action (ion cannons, for example). Like the previous suggestion, you're playing against a piece of cardboard and a random number generator, lol. None of the AI moves are predictive, they are entirely reactive. The AI has no idea where board edges are and won't choose its maneuvers in advance to avoid them like human players can. If an AI ship cannot possibly stay on the board, just place them on the edge, with a facing as close as possible to their original one that will allow them to move away from the edge on their next movement. Again, it comes back to the idea of "Are you trying to win the scenario, or are you trying to be a better game player than a piece of cardboard?

XP Pools are a matter of personal taste. I think it's a bit more flavorful to have individual totals. In any given group of pilots, some will just be better than others. XP pooling in an RPG-style game where there are very clear individual rewards seems fairly out of character. However, in my groups, we don't have any TFGs who would fly around intentionally stealing kills or hogging XP. In fact, our best players tend to help the other players score kills and tend to work to save players in trouble. If your group has TFGs, I would imagine that XP pooling is more attractive.

That said, remember it's about having fun. If everyone remembers that, HotAC can be one of the best ways to enjoy X-Wing.

When we played our group did fine with individual xp pools. It was a large 7 person squad and we discussed most kills. we used damage tokens on the board to track enemy HP. I suggest you ignore crits besides cards that give tokens or damage.

By that same token, I know there was one player who participated in some of the threads who had talked about intentionally not advancing their PS level. This shouldn't be allowed either, lol. For the same reasons above, that it will artificially lower the Average PS of the players, and the later scenarios (Missions 3 or 4 in most storylines) are typically written assuming the players are advancing their characters. If for some odd reason you have that guy who doesn't want to level up, don't factor his pilot into the group's average PS, because it's just cheating the group out of the game's intended challenge levels.

IT's not that we avoid advancing, it's just not a race. Once you get to PS4, you might want to spend some XP on getting more upgrades and equipment. Eventually you're going to want a higher pilot skill so you can afford and equip some of the cool pilot abilities...

XP Pools are a matter of personal taste. I think it's a bit more flavorful to have individual totals. In any given group of pilots, some will just be better than others. XP pooling in an RPG-style game where there are very clear individual rewards seems fairly out of character. However, in my groups, we don't have any TFGs who would fly around intentionally stealing kills or hogging XP. In fact, our best players tend to help the other players score kills and tend to work to save players in trouble. If your group has TFGs, I would imagine that XP pooling is more attractive.

In some missions, it seems like they're really designed to force co-op mode, simply because you won't complete the mission unless you dedicate some folks to non-combat things. That's frustrating for those pilots, unless they know they're going to benefit from pooled XP. If you're running as a group, decide ahead of time which way you want to go. There's nothing that says you can't swap back and forth between missions.

I wasn't referencing anyone in this thread; didn't mean for you to feel singled out. It was a player who had said in a previous HotAC thread in the long-long ago who had intentionally never gone past PS3 in his store's campaign (it apparently had prizes or something). I worked out the math for others showing how by PS6 he'd already begun to fundamentally impact the number of Imperial ships in each mission and the PS level of the Elites.

Intentionally never leveling a pilot is gaming the system. A player being slightly behind or ahead of others because they've focused on buying upgrades instead of Pilot Skill isn't a big deal. A group of 4 players with PS 5, 6, 6, and 7 isn't seeing a significant impact; it's still average PS of 6. A group of 4 players seeing a PS 3, 6, 6, and 7 gap is an average PS of 5, and thus its Elites and the enemy Squadron sizes is running off the PS4 rows/columns and flying against easier elites, and fewer total enemy ships.

I happen to think that pooling the XP is the best thing you can do, especially if some of those guys aren't as into X-wing as much. It creates a much more group oriented effort than a couple of glory hogs. I can't suggest this one enough.

I did get some of those little glass beads that I first saw years ago for Pente. I got them at the dollar store. We use them for XP. It's easy to just toss one over to whomever got the XP like it's a Scooby Snack. It makes it easier and more fun.

Having the Tie Fighters ready is a good thing. I forget that not everyone has them already on the bases in their Plano case with the number tags. Yes, just pop them out and use them.

When I started at my store, there were no regular groups, so we let anyone take anything and not worry about doubles. I have no idea which is better as I haven't done a closed group. It would make everyone take someone different then everyone taking R2-D2, which is what happens when let doubles.

I have heard some people change Predator to only change 1 die per attack to adjust the strength of Predator. It's a nice idea if you want variety.

1. After my wingman got bored of using the TLT Y-Wing, we decided to let him upgrade to an ARC-170. I think it fits in the campaign well but in my opinion it should cost 5 points more than the B-wing upgrade Since you add a rear arc, crew, astro mech, and a better dial. Meanwhile you are only losing a canon slot & system slot.

4. Ditch the T-65 X-wing when you can. Anything else is a better choice except maybe a hawk lol

1) I think the ARC-170 are closer than this suggests. For one, the dials are just different. I wouldn't really say one is better than the other. It all depends on what it is you want to do. The B-wing can do much closer turns and that 2 K-turn, which is great. Also, it can do a white 3 hard turn. If you only want to coast ahead, then the ARC-170 is better, but if you need to turn around or turn hard, it's better with the B-wing.

When you compare slots, you are forgetting a few things. For one, the B-wing can gain a Crew slot for very little, so that's even. The B-wing also has 2 Torpedo slots, not just one. When you get a fully loaded out B-wing, you see the HLC and 4 Proton Torpedoes (with Extra Munition) What I see is:

ARC-170

• Astromech
• rear arc
• 1 more hit

B-wing

• System Slot
• 2 more Torpedoes (extra munitions)
• Cannon slot

The B-wing is pretty fierce when you compare it to the ARC-170.

4) Why would you ever say ditch the T-65 X-wing? It's a great ship for HotAC. When you have missions that involve all the crazy things you need to do, the X-wing is one of the best ships there are. It's got a great dial. It can get to about anywhere you need it to. It's not as fast as an A-wing, but it's a lot faster than all other options. While it might not have the dial the A-wing does, it's got the firepower that the A-wing misses. The 3 red dice is nice. Also, the 2 green dice can save you from destruction when facing off against Tie Fighters. With Integrated Astromech, you have the same resilience of a B-wing. You can load up on Torpedoes and Extra Munitions. It's got an Astromech. This is the best all-rounder ship in HotAC. You want to give it repositioning? You can eventually get both Engine Upgrade and Vectored Thrusters. There are times when you need to move around to different parts of the board and accomplish things...and also have some firepower....then you use an X-wing.

Definitely want to second the idea that the X-Wing sucking is silly. Of the four core ships, it's easily the most adaptable, survivable and well-balanced. 3 primary attack, second best dial. The TLT Y-Wing is a good beginner ship with a fairly flat difficulty curve, but it's an experience aggregator, not really a ship-killer. The X-Wing's EPT combos can be awesome. Think I ran my last one with Predator, Sabine and Outmaneuver, mated to R2 and Engine Upgrade. Free actions! Boosts and barrel rolls ahead of K-Turns! Everything 1 and 2 is green! It's like being a steroidal A-Wing.

A-Wings are just Hard Mode for expert players, or people who just insist on be A-Wings. Their damage output is miserable outside of Procket Alphas you can do potentially twice. Everything you do with A-Wings in the head to head game isn't nearly as valuable, or significantly more dangerous, in HotAC. And, by the core rules, you pay a ridiculous tax on them too, since you Pay 5 points, then you lose any points spent on Torpedoes, Engine Upgrades, or Astromechs. It can literally cost 17 points for the privilege of being a 2 Hull, 2 Attack mosquito, lol. Poor A-Wing, being Wave 2 and thus not having the System or Tech upgrades it should be allowed. Also poor A-Wing being font-limited to 4 actions, and thus not getting the Barrel Roll that it should have.

I mean, I play A-Wings because they amuse me (I've gotten through 9 turns before even getting fired upon, let alone hit). But they're absolutely inferior to X-Wings in HotAC since so much of HotAC is reliant on damage output as opposed to just survival or blocking.

Definitely want to second the idea that the X-Wing sucking is silly. Of the four core ships, it's easily the most adaptable, survivable and well-balanced. 3 primary attack, second best dial. The TLT Y-Wing is a good beginner ship with a fairly flat difficulty curve, but it's an experience aggregator, not really a ship-killer. The X-Wing's EPT combos can be awesome. Think I ran my last one with Predator, Sabine and Outmaneuver, mated to R2 and Engine Upgrade. Free actions! Boosts and barrel rolls ahead of K-Turns! Everything 1 and 2 is green! It's like being a steroidal A-Wing.

A-Wings are just Hard Mode for expert players, or people who just insist on be A-Wings. Their damage output is miserable outside of Procket Alphas you can do potentially twice. Everything you do with A-Wings in the head to head game isn't nearly as valuable, or significantly more dangerous, in HotAC. And, by the core rules, you pay a ridiculous tax on them too, since you Pay 5 points, then you lose any points spent on Torpedoes, Engine Upgrades, or Astromechs. It can literally cost 17 points for the privilege of being a 2 Hull, 2 Attack mosquito, lol. Poor A-Wing, being Wave 2 and thus not having the System or Tech upgrades it should be allowed. Also poor A-Wing being font-limited to 4 actions, and thus not getting the Barrel Roll that it should have.

I mean, I play A-Wings because they amuse me (I've gotten through 9 turns before even getting fired upon, let alone hit). But they're absolutely inferior to X-Wings in HotAC since so much of HotAC is reliant on damage output as opposed to just survival or blocking.

My apologies. I'm probably wrong. I'm just speaking from my experience. I had a horrible time with the xwing. Kept dying and not getting much xp. Meanwhile my TLT buddy was dominating. But once I upgraded to an A wing with prockets things magically turned around. I think the fact that you only have one ship in the match arc dodging and good dials are more important than jousting with the xwing. Just my 2 cents

I wasn't referencing anyone in this thread; didn't mean for you to feel singled out. It was a player who had said in a previous HotAC thread in the long-long ago who had intentionally never gone past PS3 in his store's campaign (it apparently had prizes or something). I worked out the math for others showing how by PS6 he'd already begun to fundamentally impact the number of Imperial ships in each mission and the PS level of the Elites.

No worries, I was happy to be able to provide a clarification on my position in case I was being misunderstood.

My apologies. I'm probably wrong. I'm just speaking from my experience. I had a horrible time with the xwing. Kept dying and not getting much xp. Meanwhile my TLT buddy was dominating. But once I upgraded to an A wing with prockets things magically turned around. I think the fact that you only have one ship in the match arc dodging and good dials are more important than jousting with the xwing. Just my 2 cents

No need to apologize. We all have our experiences. My advice for the X-Wing is to fly it like an A-Wing, as in, assume it is fragile and easily destroyed, because it still is.

It also helps to always be looking at the board and figuring out what you want to do in 2 turns, or 3 turns. Then you'll have a coherent plan. I wish I had done round by round assessments on my Aturi Cluster reports on my blog. Then people could see how I flew it. I enjoy giving my buddy a hard time for flying his X-Wing too aggressively and always getting blown up.

TLT Y-Wings are definitely the easiest ship to fly, but its always going to do the same thing. An X-Wing, on the other hand, has a much higher ceiling, but is less forgiving. An experienced player in an X-wing can wreck shop in HotAC. It's definitely less forgiving for less-experienced players. The only reason I call the A-Wing "Hard Mode" is that it has no regen, and it can't do a lot of damage, with damage being the primary means for gaining XP. It's definitely easy to fly around and never get shot at, though, lol. As far as making a consistent contribution to the scenario, PS7 is what I have suggested as the "minimum level" for switching to one. That 4th EPT finally unlocks the A-Wing's potential (I would run Predator, Outmaneuver, Jake Farrell and PTL, but now Sabine can be swapped for Jake as desired). Before that 4th EPT, you're always compromising somewhere. 2 attack is a big handicap in a game where like 80% of the enemies have 3AGI, and you pretty much always have to assume you can't survive being shot so sacrificing the PTL/Jake/Sabine action economy is an "At Your Own Risk" type of venture. Also, of course, is the fact that while you can easily spaz around the board not getting shot at, a lot of scenarios need you to be contributing damage in order for the team to succeed. That's most of the reason I advise against low-level A-Wings. It's too hard to pull your own weight.

Since I have the most X-Wing stuff (and play-time under my belt) I have taken on the role of organiser for my group's first Heroes of the Aturi Cluster Campaign and just sent everything off to the printer. This is exciting!

I guess my main queries would be;

1) Is there anything I need to know/take special note of before I start running this?

2) Any common mistakes or anything that you got wrong the first time through that would help out a first-timer?

3) In your experience, is it better to leave out 'unique' upgrades entirely or just allow anyone to buy them? (Eg - multilple people buying R2-D2)

4) I have 2 ARC-170's and have seen score sheets made for them. Can anyone comment on how much they should cost to upgrade to? (I assume 'Alliance Overhaul' is included, like the titles for the other craft)

I want to make sure this goes as smoothly as possible; 2 of the 5 in the group wouldn't be the most enthused/frequent of X-Wing players so I don't want them to get turned off early; although I know the Campaign allows for drop-in/drop-out with its player scaling should worst come to worst. For this reason, I have stated to the group that I will manage the entirety of the AI side of things as well (you can tell how desperate I am to try this out )

Any recommendations/advice welcome!

Welcome to the Aturi Cluster!

To answer you questions... based on having run 3 campaigns of HotAC so far, I'd say...

1. I fully agree with what pretty much everyone else has said about preparing for games. Anything you can do to prepare the game: lay out the terrain, player cards, play aids, etc... will help.

2. Know your players- several of the responses here have given me chills. HOTAC os not for the hyper-competitive player who is out for personal glory and self advancement to the expense of other players. It is a "cooperative" campaign, not just a vehicle for self-aggrandizement. None of the campaigns I have been part of used shared experience points. Why? Because a) people in the "real" universe learn, grow and advance at different rates... why not here?; b) The self centered, immature glory hounds that some have described are not team players and not the kind of people I game with... they suck the joy out of games, not enhance it. If you have that kind of player and are O-k with it, I recommend coming to a consensus as to how the game will be played and what changes will made to the rules as published.

Another thing I would strongly recommend is that the EPS "Predator"be nerfed to only allow 1 re-roll as nearly every non-elite you meet is going to be level 1 - what was written with standard play in mind is not fair or fun in HOTAC. This will also encourage unique, creative builds instead of optimized, standardized killing machines- leave that to tournament play and Imperial forces.

3. In all of our campaigns, we have allowed "unique" upgrades but only allowed one of those in play at a time. This keeps them... unique, rather than standard issue.

4. In one of our HOTAC campaigns, we experimented with non-standard starting ships. We wanted to have an early Rebellion flavor and progress with ships as the timeline advanced. Our starting ships were as follows: 1x A-wing, 1x Z-95 Headhunter, 1x Y-wing and 1x ARC-170. Our call-sign was "Relic" squadron. Each player was given 26 points to purchase and outfit a ship; any leftover unused points could be banked for later use. With only 2 points to spend on initial upgrades, the ARC is definitely NOT over powered. The A-wing and Z-95 had a lot of points to spend and thus had a lot of initial upgrades but were limited by the fact that the ships are just not that powerful or as customizable and soon peaked in efficiency.

Have fun.

tlt y-wing with title, predator, extra munition, bombs and you can harvest xp

Wow, thanks for all this guys! You've all been really helpful and it has made an interesting read

Regarding the XP pooling.. I'm in two minds right now. There is at least 1 person in the group who I can tell will probably 'lone wolf' a lot, maybe 2. I will probably keep track of XP separately then decide after the introductory mission what would suit better - once I have a feel for the dynamic of the team. I can see the merits of both, but if I were to guess with my group based on our D&D adventures, the XP share will probably win out given the wide skill range and mentalities.

I'll hold off on the ARC-170 to make sure we are doing everything correctly, then maybe add it in once we have a campaign under out belt.

In regards to TIE Fighters, I have 5 and 1 TIE s/f (which could just use any standard green imperial token as a proxy). Then my friend has a FA core set, with 2 Tie/fo's which could be proxied the same way. If we're running 5 players I may need to pick up a few more or use other models as proxies.

I also have:

- 3 Interceptors
- 2 Defenders
- 1 Bomber
- 2 Tie Advanced
-1 Raider (though I don't think it's used from what I've seen)
- 1 Decimator
- 1 Lambda Shuttle
- 1 Phantom
I think I'm well covered for the special TIE variants, but I'll need to look at the rest of the missions to confirm that.

I shall set every ship up in advance to reduce setup time - that's a good idea because the worst part about setting up ships for me is finding that darn base token for each pilot. I have yet to find a good solution for sorting those

I have yet to find a good solution for sorting those

What I use is a coin collector page and a 3 ring binder. BCW Pro 20-Pocket Pages Each pocket gets a base and you can sort them by type and faction.

Then when you need one you can just flip through the pages. Since they're transparent you can see both sides of each base.

A lot of great advice and I will echo some and maybe add a bit.

POOL your XP. Even if you get a hyper-competitive player, pooling will make it less rewarding for them. Speaking of competitive players, we have one and as the DM I usually make sure someone else is Squad leader so he can call the firing sequence, this way one person is not getting all the kills. I fly a TLT Y-Wing and I am happy to shoot first, strip tokens do 2 damage and have someone else mop up.

We moded someone else house rule for Predator, and it is my favorite house rule I have seen. The original is not to allow Predator to be taken, but once you earn Ace against a ship, it is built in vs that ship. Ace requires 5 kills, so kill 5 TIEs and you get a free Predator against them, but not other ships you have not earned the Ace title against. My group wanted it to be a total points, 10, and to count against all ships. I didn't like that, but the other 4 voted for it; my fault for giving them a vote.

Someone posted a sheet with the ship bases including the arcs for targeting, I printed this out on sticker paper and attached them to the bases directly (I have about a million bases I don't use) and this is great as I ran out of Academy TIEs. I have also bought a ton of used TIEs and Interceptors for cheap from people online, most missing dials and cards, but these work great for this. I am up to 18 TIEs, 9 Intercptors, but am probably short on the rest, only 3 Phantoms, 2 Bombers, 4 Advances, 3 Defenders. Luckily my group has people with large collections so we always have enough ships.

Print out upgrade cards so you don't have to use your collection. Some members here have created upgrade cards for pilots, updated EPT cost and they are awesome.

You will screw up, don't sweat, fix it and move on. One mission we did, I misread that the beacons had 2 Shield and 2 hull; they have 2 hull only. The mission took forever and we had a little trouble completing it. After the game I discovered my mistake, I doubled the XP for the mission and this worked out well.

Don't be afraid to use someone else house rule as the rule of the land starting out. I wish I would have done that with Predator, but I was being diplomatic.

Make sure you join the facebook group, it is approaching 900 members!

We moded someone else house rule for Predator, and it is my favorite house rule I have seen. The original is not to allow Predator to be taken, but once you earn Ace against a ship, it is built in vs that ship. Ace requires 5 kills, so kill 5 TIEs and you get a free Predator against them, but not other ships you have not earned the Ace title against.

I like this. A lot. I keep forgetting to bring it up to our group.