This is spun off from the power creep thread. Objective-based play has been suggested as a way to step away from strictly harder-hitting and harder-to-hit squads, and to encourage more diversity in squad-building. Also, it could be fun.

So I want us to cook up some objective-based missions suitable for high level X-Wing play. What that means to me is that any missions we come up with should be designed for 100-point squads using 3 obstacles each on a 3x3 foot playing area, just like standard tournament matches, with no ban list or other unusual squad-building restrictions. The typical 75 minute time limit is negotiable.

The main objective of the mission should be something other than the complete destruction of the enemy, but in order to do that I think the objective needs to be something that can be completed in less time than it normally takes to wipe out an enemy squad.

Let's get things started with a mission idea. I threw this together pretty quickly, so if you find room for improvement or ways players can break the format, please say so.

"SATELLITE SMASHERS" v1.3

"Commander, the scouts have discovered the source of the interference with our comms array. Some idiots set up a string of transmitters too close to our own. Could be Alliance, Imperials, maybe smugglers. Whoever they are, they won't answer our hails and there's a squad of starfighters in the area that seem to be moving to strike our satellites. I request permission to order our scout team to engage."

Squadbuilding: 100 points, 3 obstacles, as usual. You must also provide 3 satellite tokens (found in the core sets).

Setup: After placing obstacles, players continue taking turns placing their 3 satellite tokens within their own deployment zones, each at least Range 1 from any other satellite token, at least a 1-straight template's distance from any edge, and not overlapping any ships.

Special Rules: Satellite tokens can be target locked, attacked, and suffer damage from bombs as if they were ships. Satellites have 3 agility, and 1 hull. Satellites cannot be attacked beyond Range 2. Do not deal Damage cards to satellites; simply remove them from the play area when destroyed. Satellites cannot be assigned tokens other than red target locks and tractor beam tokens (which have the sole effect of reducing agility by 1). Satellites are not obstacles and do not obstruct fire. If a ship or its movement template overlaps a satellite, destroy the satellite, deal 1 faceup Damage card to the overlapping ship, and the ship must skip its "Perform Action" step this round. If a bomb token is placed overlapping a satellite, the satellite is immediately destroyed.

Scoring: If a satellite located in a player's starting zone is destroyed, the opposing player scores 30 points. If either player has a score of 100 or more at the end of a round, the player with the highest score wins; in case of a tie, proceed to Final Salvo. When calculating Margin of Victory, treat any score above 100 as 100.

There are some fan-made objective-based tournament-style missions out there.

Here's a forum thread that touches on the topic: Collected Tournament Formats

It's got some objective based missions for tournaments:

Missions by J Rhea:

• Bombing Run
• Squad Leader
• Minefield
• Divide and Conquer
• Escort Duty
• Recon Patrol
• Asteroid Belt
• Bombing Run
• Bounty Hunt
• Debris Field
• Divide and Conquer
• Escort Duty
• Minefield
• Recon Patrol
• Reinforcements
• Squad Leader

Missions by Babaganoosh:

• Satellite Control
• The Jump Point
• Dogfight
• Junkyard
• Fleet Engagement
• Vendetta

17 minutes ago, DagobahDave said:

"SATELLITE SMASHERS" v1

Setup: After placing obstacles, players continue taking turns placing 3 satellite tokens within their own deployment zones, each at least Range 1 from any other satellite token, and at least a 1-straight template's distance from any edge, and not overlapping any ships.

Special Rules: Satellite tokens can be target locked, attacked, and suffer damage from bombs as if they were ships. Satellites do not obstruct fire. If a ship or its movement template overlaps a satellite token, destroy the satellite and deal 1 faceup damage card to the overlapping ship. Satellites cannot be assigned tokens other than red target locks and tractor beam tokens (which have the sole effect of reducing agility by 1). Satellite tokens have 3 agility (for their small size) and 1 hull. Do not deal damage cards to satellite tokens; simply remove them from the play area when destroyed.

Scoring: If a satellite located in your deployment zone is destroyed, it counts as 30 points scored for your opponent. If either player has a score of 100 or more at the end of a round, the player with the highest score wins; in case of a tie, proceed to final salvos. To calculate MoV, treat any score above 100 as 100.

This format looks interesting. At first blush I think that the reward for the objectives might be too high for the effort needed to kill them; players might end up concentrating on them too much at the start of a match and then trying to get above 100 to end the match (or trying to pick up 10 or more points on their way to kill the sats). 3 agi and one hull will not last long, especially given that they won't have focus or evade tokens.

I generally like a cost-benefit ratio in the objectives that is comparable to that of dogfighting, so that players need to make a judgement call based on the situation whether or not to go for the objectives or try to take out their opponent ship-to-ship (or a mix of both). A lot of X-wing's fun is wrapped up in the dogfight; we should always make sure that there is some dogfighting in a mission - which is something you do here by requiring 100 points to end the game and only putting 90 points in the objectives. That's a good move.

But I think the satellites are significantly easier to kill and pick up points with. Maybe make them tougher to kill, or give the defenders defensive options such as passing tokens or suffering damage in lieu of the satellites. Just something to make the calculation of whether or not to go for the satellites more of a question.

Unfortunately, those links are all broken. FFG and Asmodee, seamlessly integrating. Technolojeezus.

Just now, DagobahDave said:

Unfortunately, those links are all broken. FFG and Asmodee, seamlessly integrating. Technolojeezus.

blerrg! I really hope they get that under control, because I've got a ton of content on Mission Control...

I actually like the card based system that they are implementing into Rune Wars. Player with initiative chooses One of three cards that determines the objective OR one of three determines the battlefield (type), then the opponent selects from the one the other player did not.

You could have asymmetrical deployments, or extra obstacles, or different types of obstacles (like the ion clouds from aturi cluster.

For objectives you could head hunt a ship of your opponents for bonus points, or try to preserve your own. You could have objectives that need claiming, or nodes that activating.

Just some random ideas.

Just posting to follow along since I'm planning to do a small casual objective based tournament shortly. I'm a few missions short...

2 hours ago, ID X T said:

one of three determines the battlefield (type)

You mean like in Space, in Space, or in Space?

You could go for open space (no asteroids), convoy (with 1-3 huge ships as obstacles), asteroids, or...atmospheric. Each battlefield would have its own conditions, so you'd need a list of those.

7 minutes ago, Verlaine said:

You could go for open space (no asteroids), convoy (with 1-3 huge ships as obstacles), asteroids, or...atmospheric. Each battlefield would have its own conditions, so you'd need a list of those.

I'm actually doing one that's no asteroids... it really changes your approach! I had not thought of the idea ID X T had regarding the HotAC ion clouds though, I think that's a brilliant wrinkle to a standard 100 point dogfight.

I'm using a few of the FFG missions where possible, just tested out "Mission 4 - Den of Thieves" with lists not designed specifically for it... My opponent had Ryad x7, Fel and the Inquisitor and myself with Bodhi Rook alpha list with a prototype and two Gold Sqdns with Proton torpedoes. We each went with a victory and it was close both times.

I think I need to push back my planned run date though to better play test things...

I've made and played a lot of missions that didn't include obstacles. Overall, I think taking the obstacles off the table takes away more from the game than it adds. I'm all for creative use of obstacles and the occasional lack of obstacles, but generally speaking, it's better to have obstacles on the board than to not have them. In my considered opinion, anyway.

If you're putting together a mission based tournament, one thing to consider is how much information you want people to have about scenarios beforehand. One one hand, you don't want people to see the missions for the first time on the day of the event unless they are exceedingly simple. You don't want 20-40 people learning a new set of rules every round; it's a recipe for an extremely overworked TO and a lot of cranky players with rules questions and disputes.

On the other hand, you don't want people to know everything beforehand either. People will try to break missions, and if you tell them exactly what missions they're going to play and give them all the rules, you will almost certainly have some smart bastard that breaks your mission. Which might be fun for him but is very not-fun for his opponent. As mission designers, we should try to make our missions 'unbreakable', but we should expect that someone will be able to break them at some point.

So, I've just said that giving people information is bad, and not giving them information is bad. What's a tournament runner to do?

My personal solution is to give people full information on what scenarios are going to be available, but only play about half of the available scenarios. So for example in a 3-round tournament, I would have a portfolio of 6 missions prepared, and randomly pick the three that are actually played from that portfolio. Assuming that players only have one squad list to use for the tournament, they can try to build their list to break missions if they want, but chances are 50/50 that they'll see any particular mission. It encourages people to build more generalist lists, rather than bet on certain missions coming up. It's also more work for the design team, though. But if we still had mission control up, you'd have like 15 missions to pick from.

I think this is a great idea. Objective based missions (if designed well) could help with a lot of the 'meta' issues we see.

I'd like to see an "Objective Tournament" in a similar manner to the "Hangar Bay". Keep the 100/6 as standard (At least for now) and test the waters in side tournaments.

Question:

How do you determine your list?

A list per mission / All rounder?

All rounder sounds preferable but sticks point costs per side to the same for each mission. Some of the more fun FFG missions play with the allowed points.

I would go with an all-rounder list, one for the whole tourney (or two lists, where you choose before seeing your enemy list). Otherwise ew go back to square one with highly-optimized list instead of a balanced approach.

53 minutes ago, Babaganoosh said:

My personal solution is to give people full information on what scenarios are going to be available, but only play about half of the available scenarios. So for example in a 3-round tournament, I would have a portfolio of 6 missions prepared, and randomly pick the three that are actually played from that portfolio. Assuming that players only have one squad list to use for the tournament, they can try to build their list to break missions if they want, but chances are 50/50 that they'll see any particular mission. It encourages people to build more generalist lists, rather than bet on certain missions coming up. It's also more work for the design team, though. But if we still had mission control up, you'd have like 15 missions to pick from.

My solution to this particular point was to have envelopes with the scenario rules in envelopes provided at the time of the mission, so that while there are more missions than being played, the one being played is unknown until it's opened. It is more prep time, and I'm aware of that point.

You raised good points about learning new missions prior to every round. A very good point. I may have to rethink some things on a fundamental level.

1 hour ago, Babaganoosh said:

I've made and played a lot of missions that didn't include obstacles. Overall, I think taking the obstacles off the table takes away more from the game than it adds. I'm all for creative use of obstacles and the occasional lack of obstacles, but generally speaking, it's better to have obstacles on the board than to not have them. In my considered opinion, anyway.

If you're putting together a mission based tournament, one thing to consider is how much information you want people to have about scenarios beforehand. One one hand, you don't want people to see the missions for the first time on the day of the event unless they are exceedingly simple. You don't want 20-40 people learning a new set of rules every round; it's a recipe for an extremely overworked TO and a lot of cranky players with rules questions and disputes.

On the other hand, you don't want people to know everything beforehand either. People will try to break missions, and if you tell them exactly what missions they're going to play and give them all the rules, you will almost certainly have some smart bastard that breaks your mission. Which might be fun for him but is very not-fun for his opponent. As mission designers, we should try to make our missions 'unbreakable', but we should expect that someone will be able to break them at some point.

So, I've just said that giving people information is bad, and not giving them information is bad. What's a tournament runner to do?

My personal solution is to give people full information on what scenarios are going to be available, but only play about half of the available scenarios. So for example in a 3-round tournament, I would have a portfolio of 6 missions prepared, and randomly pick the three that are actually played from that portfolio. Assuming that players only have one squad list to use for the tournament, they can try to build their list to break missions if they want, but chances are 50/50 that they'll see any particular mission. It encourages people to build more generalist lists, rather than bet on certain missions coming up. It's also more work for the design team, though. But if we still had mission control up, you'd have like 15 missions to pick from.

I agree completely. Every quarter we could then just release a new set of 6 (or whatever number) missions for Mission Tourneys Store Championships in that time frame. I'll be coming back with more ideas for high level tourney missions.

Cool; hopefully mission control comes back up soon and you can mine those missions for ideas.

I tend to print out selected missions and keep them together. We can pass them around and everyone agree. Hopefully mission control will be up soon and I can add these to my list.

I know you're going to say you've already heard this from me before but....................................

You know what would be nice. When publishing missions, be sure to include pre-built squads for players just wanting to play a quick pick up game. I know this may soon get harder for me since I don't have Wave X but at least it would be a start. I was recently reading a post from a new X-Wing player about balance. And the next several threads warned him of the complexity, how hard it is to know the synergies as a new player, even things that look good often aren't, how hard the game is to balance squads, etc...

Missions are a great way to attract players into a Star Wars theme. Adding starting builds make getting introduced to the game even easier. Besides we can always use our own squads if we chose to.

9 hours ago, Babaganoosh said:

My personal solution is to give people full information on what scenarios are going to be available, but only play about half of the available scenarios. So for example in a 3-round tournament, I would have a portfolio of 6 missions prepared, and randomly pick the three that are actually played from that portfolio. Assuming that players only have one squad list to use for the tournament, they can try to build their list to break missions if they want, but chances are 50/50 that they'll see any particular mission. It encourages people to build more generalist lists, rather than bet on certain missions coming up. It's also more work for the design team, though. But if we still had mission control up, you'd have like 15 missions to pick from.

I'll probably set up a three-round event for my store group. The first two rounds will be objective-based missions, and the final round will be a standard dogfight. I don't want players to get irritated or fatigued by the mission play, so getting back into familiar territory on the final round seems like a good idea to me.

The rules for the objective-based missions will be published ahead of time. I've considered randomly determining which missions are played on the day, but I think a too-wide range of contingencies will leave some players without a sense of direction for their squad builds.

"SPACE RUGBY" v1.1

Setup: Before placing obstacles, place 1 container token (from the Millennium Falcon expansion) squarely in the center of the play area, with its guides facing the players' starting zones. In addition to the usual obstacle placement rules, no obstacle can be placed within Range 1 of the container.

Special Rules: The container has all the qualities of both an asteroid and a debris clouds(roll just one attack die, suffering any [damage] and [critical damage] result). If your ship is at Range 1 of the container, you may spend 1 action to suffer 1 damage and place the container on your ship card.

When you reveal your maneuver dial, your ship may drop its container as if it were a bomb (but may not drop an actual bomb during this same opportunity). Any abilities that affect the dropping of bombs (such as Andrasta and Bombardier) can also apply to dropping the container. The container cannot be dropped if any part of the token would be outside of the play area.

If a ship carrying the container is destroyed, before removing the destroyed ship, place the container behind it using a 1-speed maneuver template as if dropping a bomb, even if it has already dropped a bomb this round.

Scoring: At the end of the End phase, if one of your ships possesses the container, you score 10 points. If a player's ship is destroyed and any part of the container would be dropped outside of the play area, their opponent scores 100 points. If either player has a score of 100 or more at the end of a round, the player with the highest score wins; in case of a tie, proceed to final salvos. To calculate MoV, treat any score above 100 as 100.

13 hours ago, Babaganoosh said:

I've made and played a lot of missions that didn't include obstacles. Overall, I think taking the obstacles off the table takes away more from the game than it adds. I'm all for creative use of obstacles and the occasional lack of obstacles, but generally speaking, it's better to have obstacles on the board than to not have them. In my considered opinion, anyway.

Agreed. For whatever reason, I rarely used obstacles when I started playing (space is empty, right?), and every battle just started with a full-on, Braveheart-style charge. We finally tossed down a couple of asteroids and were wowed that the level of interest jumped exponentially.

1 hour ago, DagobahDave said:

"SPACE RUGBY" v1

Setup: Before placing obstacles, place 1 container token . . .

I totally thought that you were going to need to use tractor beams to toss it into a "goal".

"Prisoner Exchange"

Setup: As normal, save each player's list must contain a ship with an available crew slot. Also, each player much bring a crew upgrade which is not part of their list (the prisoner). The opponent designates a ship with an available crew slot as the prison transport.

Special Rules: Prisoner transfer is accomplished as follows: if your ship (with an available crew slot) is able to overlap you opponent's designated prison transport while that ship has an ion token, the prisoner is automatically transferred to the overlapping ship and enters play.

Scoring*: At the end of the game, a rescued prisoner still on the table is worth double points for MoV. An unrescued prisoner still on the table is subtracted from MOV. Any prisoner eliminated from play (unrescued but killed, or rescued then killed) does not affect MoV (better dead than in the hands of the enemy, I say).

*Since I don't play tournaments, I only have loose understanding of MoV.

Here's something I've created based on the approach Armada uses:

Objectives in Play . Each player selects three objective cards to be part of his or her squad list. When play begins, the player with initiative is the first player, and selects an objective from the list of the player without initiative (the second player). That objective becomes the objective for the game and its conditions apply. Points scored as a result of objective play are added to the points scored by destroying opposing ships (and in tournament play are applied toward Margin of Victory just as in standard 100-point dogfight tournaments).

Objective Cards

Bounty Hunter . Each player designates a ship on his squad to be the Bounty and informs the opponent, marking the ship with an objective token; the opposing player scores +10 points for destroying that ship.

Minefield . All obstacles work as proximity mines -- if a ship overlaps the obstacle, the opposing player rolls three dice and the ship takes any damage indicated. The obstacle is then removed from play.

Graveyard . When a ship is destroyed, a debris field is placed in its last location.

Death Star Plans . Once obstacles are placed, the second player places an objective token face down on each obstacle, marking one as the location of the Death Star plans. Whenever the first player flies a ship which overlaps an obstacle, the objective token is flipped face up. When the Death Star plans are discovered, they are assigned to the discovering ship for the remainder of the game. Discovering the Death Star plans gains +5 points; retaining them on a ship which survives to the end of the game nets another +5 points. If the game concludes and the first player has not located the Death Star plans, the second player gains +10 points. If the game concludes and the ship carrying the Death Star plans has been destroyed, the second player gains +5 points.

Recon Mission . Once obstacles are placed, place an objective token on each obstacle to simulate a reconnaissance objective. Whenever a ship flies within range 1 of an obstacle and can fire on the obstacle, it may attack the objective, which has Agility 3, Hull 1. If the objective is destroyed, the player collects the corresponding token. At the end of the game, each objective token collected gains the player +2 points.

Station Defense . The second player selects one obstacle to represent a space station and places an objective token on it. The station has Agility 2, Hull 10. If the first player destroys the station, that player gains +12 points; if the station is not destroyed by the end of the game, the second player gains +12 points.

Hidden Jedi . Each player selects a ship on his or her squad to carry a hidden Jedi pilot, and secretly marks which ship it is. The opposing player gains +5 points if that ship is destroyed.

Capture the Flag . Each player selects a ship on his or her squad to be the flagship, and identifies it with an objective marker. The opposing player gains +20 points if the flagship exits the play area (simulating capture).

Bombing Run . All damage inflicted by bombs or mines during the game is doubled.

Torpedo Run . Missiles and torpedoes fired by either squad are not expended after firing.

Spice Run . Place two objective markers on each obstacle, one for each player. Each player selects one ship in his or her squad to be the spice runner. When the spice runner overlaps an obstacle, the player collects the allocated token from that obstacle. The spice runner does not suffer damage effects the first time it overlaps each obstacle. At the end of the game, each player receives +2 points for each objective token collected by the spice runner.

Rescue Mission . The first player selects a ship on his or her squad to be a prisoner transport. The second player's goal is to make contact with (via bumping or overlapping) the prisoner transport, rescuing the prisoners, for which the second player receives 5 points. If the prisoner transport is destroyed before the prisoners are rescued, the second player instead receives -5 points. If the game ends without the prisoners being rescued, the first player receives 5 points.

Escort Mission . The second player places a small base (or the shuttle token from the core set) flush with the edge of his or her side of the board. The shuttle has Agility 2, Hull 6. Each turn, the shuttle moves 1 straight or 1 bank (left or right) at Pilot Skill Zero. If the first player destroys the shuttle, he or she gains +10 points; if the shuttle exits from the opposing player's side of the board before the game ends, the second player gains +10 points.

Homing Beacon . Each player's goal is to place a homing beacon on each of the opposing ships. To place a homing beacon, the player must make a range 1 attack that results in at least 1 hit on the opponent's ship; cancel all hits to apply a homing beacon to that ship. Each ship marked with a homing beacon nets the opposing player +3 points.

Hyperspace Assault . After obstacles have been placed, the second player places three objective tokens in the play area no closer than range 2 to any edge; these are hyperspace assault points. The second player then selects one or more ships (totaling fewer than 50 points in value) to serve as the hyperspace assault force. On any turn after the first, the second player may introduce the hyperspace assault force by placing all ships within range 1 of a single assault point, placing them during the planning phase and moving them as normal during the activation phase. If all of the second player's ships on the board are destroyed before the hyperspace assault force is deployed, the first player wins and gains the value of the hyperspace assault force as if it had been destroyed.

"Field Promotion"

Setup: As normal, but each pilot in a player's list must have a different PS.

Special Rules: In play, when an enemy ship is killed, the killing ship gains that ship's PS for the rest of the game.

Scoring: Each level of gained PS is worth +3 MoV.