Turn 12, Post Combat

Wings beat the Ovnin Clan even though they came in at a 20 point disadvantage.

Kuat Guard finally had their luck run out. They took a total loss in one game and two other modified losses.

The importance of the modified loss is shown in that the Kuat Guard still has plenty of squadrons to defend their territory. Kintan Striders and The Phantom Hunters are going to have to hold their alliance together to keep the pressure on. This will be tricky because the Ovnin Clan is pushing into KS territory.

Turn 13

6 fights came up this time around, so it might take a while to get them all in. Probably be done with this round at the middle of next week.

13 - Wings 80 vs Ovnin Clan 120 (2 supporting units)

80 - Wings 80 vs Ovnin Clan 100 (1 supporting unit)

24 - Kuat Guard 80 vs The Inquisitor's Order 100 (1 supporting unit)

Interesting rules intersection here. IO won the blockade run, but failed the piloting check. That means that Kuat Guard can fight in IO territory, but they have to pass a piloting check as well. They failed the first, but their squadron rule is they get to re-roll piloting checks and they passed the second to move across the asteroid belt.

100 - Kintan Striders 90 (1 supporting unit) vs Kuat Guard 80 (extra asteroids)

31 - Phantom Hunters 120 (2 supporting units) vs Kuat Guard 100 (fortified because this is his home base)

Fortified units get a 20 point bonus and get to place anywhere on the battlefield outside of their opponents deployment area.

10 - Phantom Hunters 100 (1 supporting unit) vs Kuat Guard 100 (1 supporting unit)

There was a second interesting situation that came up: Ovnin Clan and Kuat Guard are in alliance with each other. They cannot take each other's territory and can support each other in their fights. However, they also cannot move two units into the same territory. Both attempted to move into sector 16. If they were not in alliance, this would have been a fight, but instead they both end up holding in their original places.

Turn 13 - Post Combat

Nothing too exciting here. The close games went to time and the games with big differences were blowouts.

The Kuat Guard has lost its Base of Operations in Sector 31. They have three turns to regain it or be out of the game.

New orders are coming in today.

Turn 14

Four fights are lined up for this round.

Sector 80

Ovnin Clan at 140 pts v Wings at 100 pts

Sector 85

Ovnin Clan at 80 pts v The Inquisitor's Order at 80 pts

Sector 91

Kuat Guard at 80 v The Inquisitor's Order at 120

In this fight, IO can place their ships anywhere on the battlefield

Sector 11

Kuat Guard at 140 v The Phantom Hunters at 120

Turn 14 - Post Combat

Nothing too excitiing here. No surprise that the Ovnin Clan beat down the Wings, and the other fights were very straightforward.

Orders are coming in for turn 15.

Turn 15

No fights as the Kuat Guard saw the writing on the wall and resigned a turn early.

The Phantom Hunters and the Kintan Striders have chosen to end their alliance at this time, prior to making moves for 16.

Turn 16 - Pre Combat

Only one fight, and it will be over soon, so the results will be up in a few minutes.

Turn 16 Post Combat

Things are racing to a head at this point. The Ovnin Clan and The Phantom Hunters are in an alliance, likely aimed at the Kintan Striders.

Orders are coming in for Turn 17.

End of Turn 17/pre-combat

Sector 4

Kintan Striders 110pts vs The Phantom Hunters 100pts

This fight is very important as The Kintan Striders are very close to winning.

Sector 30

Ovnin Clan 140pts vs Wings 80 pts.

This will be on the comet storm map.

The Ovnin Clan is taking a huge fleet in against the Wings. It is known that the OC and the Phantom Hunters are in alliance, and the larger strategy seems to be take care of the little guys so they can both focus on the Kintan Striders. The only drawback may be that they started too late. OC made a mistake and let KS get a special section, but KS made a mistake by grabbing three and getting all the focus put on him. The 1st campaign was won when a player with two sections set himself up to grab the last two at the same time, removing the chance for the others to gang up on him.

Turn 17 post combat

The Kintan Striders beat The Phantom Hunters sending them back to their base.

Shocking outcome on the other fight. The Wings beat the Ovnin Clan despite starting the battle at a huge disadvantage. It was only a modified win, but still a huge surprise.

Orders coming in for turn 18.

Turn 18

Two fights are up.

Sector 9

This is a big battle with The Kintan Striders bring 130pts against the Ovnin Clan's 140pts.

Sector 17

Ovnin Clan at 140pts is fighting The Inquisitor's Order at 80pts.

Turn 18 post combat

No surprise, the Inquisitor's Order was defeated by the Ovnin Clan.

The Kintan Striders had a tough fight against the Ovnin Clan, but squeaked out a victory. The Kintan Striders player is using the squadron rule that allows him to use mixed factions. Starting with this fight, he has self imposed that each build has to contain at least one ship from each faction and he cannot reuse any ship in a faction until he has used all the ships in his collection.

This round he flew 3 bug zappers and 3 juke/comm relay tie/fo. Those flew the whole game in formation with a swarm leader a-wing.

Turn 19

We are starting to have some larger battles, and the players now need to decide which units to support in each fight.

For example, The Phantom Hunter squadron in sector 44 can either support the squadron in sector 42 or 46. Similarly, the Kintan Striders squadron in 27 has to choose to support in either 42 or 46. To handle this type of decision, the players have to write down all their support units and reveal where they are supporting at the same time. With that in mind, the fights are:

Sector 46

Phantom Hunters 100pts (supported by 44) vs. Kintan Striders 110pts (supported by 3 and 4).

Sector 42

Phantom Hunters 120pts (supported by 7 and 43) vs. Kintan Striders 90pts (supported by 27)

Sector 82

Ovnin Clan 100pts (supported by 81) vs Wings 100pts (supported by 30)

Turn 19 Post Combat

Ovnin Clan beats the Wings in Sector 82. It was a total victory, destroying the squadron.

The Kintan Striders beat The Phantom Hunters in both of their fights, both as total victories.

For those keeping track of the Kintan Striders self imposed rule (one ship from each faction, and no repeats in a faction until he uses all that he has in his collection), the first battle was TLT/Bombs/Sabine Miranda, Doom Shuttle, and his last z95. The second battle was Rainbow Dash, Deathfire, and a Scum TLT Y-Wing.

Turn 20

For this round, all three players that are fighting had multiple supports opportunities. All support actions were submitted in secret so no one had any information about their opponents lineup, possibly leading to some unbalanced games.

In sector 9 and sector 78, the Kintan Striders played it safe and split their supports so both were at 90 points, instead of loading one sector to 110 points and fighting the other at 70 points. The Ovnin Clan also split their supports.

In 42 and 44, both players could either split their support, or overload one side and play with the minimum in the other side. Both players elected to overload, but both sent everything into sector 42.

The fights are:

Sector 9

Kintan Striders 90pts v Ovnin Clan 120pts

Sector 42

Kintan Striders 110pts v Phantom Hunters 120pts. This is an extra asteroids sector.

Sector 44

Kintan Striders 70pts v Phantom Hunters 80pts. This is an extra asteroids sector.

Sector 78

Kintan Striders 90pts v Ovnin Clan 100pts. On this sector, we will be testing using the ion clouds from Heroes of the Aturi Cluster. Based on these tests, this might become the rule for all dust cloud territories.

Turn 20 post combat

Kintan Striders won all their fights except in sector 42. All losses where total, driving the units back to their base if operations.

The rules for ion clouds as presented in HotAC where good, but in the entire game, no ships where ionized. In our next attempt, we are modifying to add that if a ship interacts with a cloud in two consecutive turns, it is ionized.

EOT 21 - Pre Combat

Three fights on tap, but only one that is important.

Sector 26

Kintan Striders 90pts vs Phantom Hunters 120pts. This battle is in a special sector and will be fought under the plasma ribbon rules. If the Kintan Striders win, they will control 4 special sectors and be declared the winner of the campaign.

Sector 44

Kintan Striders 90pts vs Phantom Hunters 120pts. This is an extra asteroids sector.

Sector 82

Wings 100pts vs Ovnin Clan 120pts.

For those keeping track at home, the Kintan Striders ran the following during the last 4 fights:

3 TLT Y-wings (one Rebel and two Scum) and a PS1 Tie Interceptor

A T-70, Tie Striker and Dengar

A T-65, Tie Interceptor and a Bug Zapper Z-95

and

T-65, Tie Defender and another Z-95

He has now exhausted his collection and will start the process over, but we won't keep publishing the lists.

The campaign is over.

Kintan Striders won their match to secure their fourth special sector.

21 turns is about the average for the game, and playing regularly at work has taken us just over 3 months to finish.

I hope you have found this campaign log informative, and I would love to hear from anyone who has looked over the rules or tried their own version.

I have watched your topic with great interest. I've downloaded the materials, and am proposing that we consider this for our next non-deathmatch activity at our local game store once we finish Heroes of the Aturi Cluster. Thanks for writing this up!

I know you said you use GIMP (and other tools) to maintain the map. Do you have the base hex grid available to post? When you start a new campaign, do you use the same configuration, or is the grid mixed up (different features move to different sectors)?

On 5/16/2017 at 0:32 PM, Jdling said:

The campaign is over.

Kintan Striders won their match to secure their fourth special sector.

21 turns is about the average for the game, and playing regularly at work has taken us just over 3 months to finish.

I hope you have found this campaign log informative, and I would love to hear from anyone who has looked over the rules or tried their own version.

What are your reflections on this campaign system?

3 hours ago, Babaganoosh said:

What are your reflections on this campaign system?

Having run three all the way to completion, I have a few thoughts.

To sum it up and save you some reading: It works and was fun enough that we will do it again.

That being said, I was the winner of two of the three campaigns, so I might be biased.

It definitely made me a better player. I got in more matches than anyone, so I got a lot of practice flying and have seen improvement in my pilot skills in regular games. You play a ton of games in this format, more then you probably get in regular casual play, and that kind of seat time is valuable.

Pros:

It seems to hit that sweet spot of competitive and casual. We are all spikes and come to every match with something to prove, but the asymmetrical matches and the inability to netdeck the builds made it feel pretty casual. You get to see ships/pilots that aren't usually flown and get to try out upgrades that don't make the cut at tournaments.

Non-standard battlefields. Most of these fights were just extra asteroids or ion clouds, but the occasional special battles really shine. It gives the feel of objective based games (something I oppose in general for competition) but still makes you meet the other guy head to head.

Cons:

Map Management: It took three games before I really learned how to manage the map digitally. Now I am confident enough to run multiple games at once, but it took a while. You would need a dedicated person to keep up with the map and it would have to either be an outside person or someone you can trust not to cheat and change their orders.

Drop Outs: The first two campaigns weren't a problem, but the third actually had a run of guys dropping out. They had not been part of the first two so we didn't know what we were getting into, and we will be more judicious about who gets in next time. The hard part is replacing them. You can't just let them disappear as that unbalances the board, and since they usually drop when times are tough you can't find replacements that want to take over a losing side.

Again, a great format for my group and it will be played again. The rulebook is still a living document, so be aware of changes in the future, and if anyone gives it a try, let me know your results or questions.

4 hours ago, Jdling said:

Map Management: It took three games before I really learned how to manage the map digitally.

I've built my starting map using layers in Paint Shop (sort of a cheap clone of PhotoShop). I have the hexes on the bottom layer, asteroids on a layer, asteroid belts on a layer, and dust clouds on a layer. I have started the hex numbers on a separate layer too because I anticipate running more than one campaign, so the gravity lanes might change and I will have to renumber.

I've been anticipating a layer for the squad icons.

I figure I would color the base layer as territories expanded, and ultimately post it online on a web site that I manage.

Does that sound about like what you've done? Any tips? So far the reception has been luke-warm but we're just about to finish Heroes of the Aturi Cluster and I'm looking for something else to do. One guy described it as, "Risk, but in space, and with X-Wing. *nods* Cool idea."

4 hours ago, drathbun said:

I've built my starting map using layers in Paint Shop (sort of a cheap clone of PhotoShop). I have the hexes on the bottom layer, asteroids on a layer, asteroid belts on a layer, and dust clouds on a layer. I have started the hex numbers on a separate layer too because I anticipate running more than one campaign, so the gravity lanes might change and I will have to renumber.

I've been anticipating a layer for the squad icons.

I figure I would color the base layer as territories expanded, and ultimately post it online on a web site that I manage.

Does that sound about like what you've done? Any tips? So far the reception has been luke-warm but we're just about to finish Heroes of the Aturi Cluster and I'm looking for something else to do. One guy described it as, "Risk, but in space, and with X-Wing. *nods* Cool idea."

I did a similar thing in GIMP. There were layers for the map, the bases, the squadron markers, the colors showing ownership, and the sector numbers. I just post each image to a shared Google drive and group message the players to let them know it's time to post new orders.

We play a lot of Diplomacy, so it was easy to talk them into the game since the map works almost the same way.

After a long hiatus from this concept (finished our 3rd Heroes campaign) we're getting ready to start this. I re-read the entire topic. You said you don't keep track of unique (named) pilots. I'm thinking we might use the ejection rules from Heroes to add some spice. If you're shot down, make an eject roll at the end of the combat. The winner will determine if the territory is friendly or hostile based on the side who won. Any named pilot that ejects in hostile territory can be considered captured and lost for the rest of the game. There would be no limit to the number of non-unique pilots.

It might add a little bit of extra strategy. Do you use Whisper this battle, and run the risk of losing her? Or save her for another time?

I thought about holding a draft for the unique pilots, so that there's only one Whisper (for example) for the entire campaign, but that seemed like it would take too long.

Do you have any banned pilots or crew? Given the theme, I hardly thing that Emperor Palpatine would be hanging around.

I'm looking forward to trying out your creation. Really love the concept, and hope it goes well for our crew.