this is just my personal observations but i think the CC may be a bit unbalanced when it comes to ship selection especially the Empire, it would seem to me that they don't have as many choices as the Rebels, the Gladiator and Interdictor are not recommended to start with so that leaves you with 4 choices, and the Gozanti is overcosted for simple activations where as the Transport at 18 is a steal to activate 2 squadrons a turn.

Not sure why a gladiator or IntSD wouldn't be good right away, I've done both to no ill effect. Also, imps got the relay 2 shuttle making the gr-75 vs gozanti equation a lot more even. Rebels have one more model available than imps, but the difference is...meh.

played 2 and a half CC so far and still like it as an imperial player.

If anything the campaign gives you the best possible reason to take an interdictor. Why would you not start with a gladiator?

Arquitens make the campaign balanced for the Empire. Problem is everybody is sold out of them.

Our Campaign opened up with a 3-0 imperial blow out.
It takes a lot of coordination and luck to blow up a Star Destroyer when you only get one upgrade.

Our campaign is 7-0 to the Imperials....with 2 more games to go in round 3. We (Rebels) just never recovered from the first round with lots of points going to unscar fleets. ISDs are potent as it's not easy to take one down....they can always speed 3 and get out of danger areas it seems.

Yea the Rebels had the advantage in one of our campaigns. Rieekan is very powerful and I don't recommend him being used most of the time. Though the campaign I am playing is quite balanced with our skill. One of the biggest factors in the campaign is skill. Remember to distribute it well. If all the good players want to play imperial, then you need to ensure that changes.

Yeah I've had no issues taking an Interdictor or Gladiator first round. In fact, I took both. And then I took an ISD. Just cause.

Granted, my Gladiator and ISD have died every round so far...and my Interdictor has only taken ram damage and is veteran and was 1 accuracy away from killing three ships in a single round.... So there are ups and downs.

But I've had a decent amount of success with it so far!

19 minutes ago, Card Knight said:

Yeah I've had no issues taking an Interdictor or Gladiator first round. In fact, I took both. And then I took an ISD. Just cause.

Granted, my Gladiator and ISD have died every round so far...and my Interdictor has only taken ram damage and is veteran and was 1 accuracy away from killing three ships in a single round.... So there are ups and downs.

But I've had a decent amount of success with it so far!

Aye, my Interdictors have been solid performers each battle. Even surrounded by two AFMKIIs and a MC80/MC30 tag team, my Interdictor managed to kill the MC30, and maim one of the AFs before going down to concentrated fire (and only just) in battle two of our first round of battles.

Our first campaign ended 4-0 for Imps. We swapped sides and it's currently 2-0 to Imps, so go figure!

Frankly I'm shocked that people would think the campaign is good for rebels, it very much has a "For Imperials, By Imperials" feel to me.

First, the CC favors beefy ships and forward firing arcs. Hyperspace Exit is fairly useless for things like CR90s which are prone to getting one-shotted. Also, interdictors can prevent HSE (which makes total sense) but the rebel ships don't have any free campaign bonus. Between Blockade Run, Minefields, and Hyperlane Raid, there are many times where flanking is **** near impossible. That's all great for imperial tactics.

Second, both of the special scenarios strongly favor imperials. Show of Force encourages rebels to sit in place and defend an area, which isn't great for them. Also, imperials can just ignore the fleet, blow up the the stations, and HSE out for a quick 80/40 resource grab. Killing stations is much easier than killing ships.

Hyperlane Raid forces rebels to charge headlong into imperial guns. No guerrilla tactics possible, just a head to head fight. If rebels manage to take out an objective ship, they only get 20 points for it. Taking out an ISD, VSD, or interdictor is many times harder than destroying an unarmed station, yet has half the reward. Also imperials can prevent a rebel resource grab by just sitting on their starting board edge. There is no such jank rebels can pull in Show of Force.

And lastly, why is there a "rebels aren't allowed to cheat" rule? Not "cheating will result in your side's forfeiture", but "rebels automatically lose if they cheat." What?!

I was excited for this campaign but honestly I thinks pretty terribly designed, awfully written, and very poorly play tested.

2 minutes ago, Sekac said:

Frankly I'm shocked that people would think the campaign is good for rebels, it very much has a "For Imperials, By Imperials" feel to me.

First, the CC favors beefy ships and forward firing arcs. Hyperspace Exit is fairly useless for things like CR90s which are prone to getting one-shotted. Also, interdictors can prevent HSE (which makes total sense) but the rebel ships don't have any free campaign bonus. Between Blockade Run, Minefields, and Hyperlane Raid, there are many times where flanking is **** near impossible. That's all great for imperial tactics.

Second, both of the special scenarios strongly favor imperials. Show of Force encourages rebels to sit in place and defend an area, which isn't great for them. Also, imperials can just ignore the fleet, blow up the the stations, and HSE out for a quick 80/40 resource grab. Killing stations is much easier than killing ships.

Hyperlane Raid forces rebels to charge headlong into imperial guns. No guerrilla tactics possible, just a head to head fight. If rebels manage to take out an objective ship, they only get 20 points for it. Taking out an ISD, VSD, or interdictor is many times harder than destroying an unarmed station, yet has half the reward. Also imperials can prevent a rebel resource grab by just sitting on their starting board edge. There is no such jank rebels can pull in Show of Force.

And lastly, why is there a "rebels aren't allowed to cheat" rule? Not "cheating will result in your side's forfeiture", but "rebels automatically lose if they cheat." What?!

I was excited for this campaign but honestly I thinks pretty terribly designed, awfully written, and very poorly play tested.

I totally agree if you come at the campaign from a tournament mindset. If you come at it from a thematic mindset, it makes total sense that things are harder for the rebellion at first, but things can swing their way quickly (because of the base/outpost advantage) if they get a few key wins. Honestly, I think as a Rebel player I would forgo a Hyperlane raid round 1. Most of the times I see the campaign get REALLY out of whack is when the rebels declare a hyperlane raid round 1 and then lose, scarring many ships and giving the empire 120 resources (since they declared a show of force and got 80 there, plus 40 for winning the hyperlane raid)

Send your best counter fleet to try and win the show of force, splitting resources assuming they kill both stations but you win the battle. Use your two assaults to pick up some unguarded planets and get some more resources generating from the map, then round 2 when you have built up try a show of force with your 1 assault if you did well turn 1 and have more campaign points. If you failed miserably turn 1, no worries, rinse and repeat until eventually you are out performing the Imperials.

The campaign is new, but you can't blame poor construction when the culprit is poor decision making on the part of the Grand Admiral. I think that is the masterstroke of CC, that it forces you to assume the mindset of your faction and play it like that.

Are there things that are horribly flawed about CC? Absolutely. But I don't think that the issues you are specifically hitting on are those.

The campaign results I've seen don't show much, if any, Imperial favoring. Reikkan doesn't count as a Rebel advantage outside of the normal game? I think it does. How about free outposts? Without having tons of data to analyze I don't see too much, if any, benefit for one side.

Interdictor is an absolute prick in the CC and Imperial ships are generally better naked than rebel ones, and its very difficult to stack upgrade cards to make the rebel ships a true threat. Possible, yes, but having more than 1 such ship is unlikely.

Also Gozantis are awesome because they can punch stuff unlike transports. CF for 2-3 blues on a target.

Asymmetrical balance is tough to measure though, so it can appear as imbalance if you are not using the full kit.

The Reeikan/Interdictor asymmetry is why I am starting to think maybe the intention is to allow his ships to escape unscarred. Even though GK will hate me for saying it. Not that I am convinced, but I am starting to see merit in the idea at least.

10 minutes ago, TallGiraffe said:

Also Gozantis are awesome because they can punch stuff unlike transports. CF for 2-3 blues on a target.

Sunday's tourney: had a goz do 5 dmg to an assault cruiser with guns alone, plus dmg from commanded squads. Then it popped. So sad. Heroes of the Empire all of the crew.

I used to complain about the cost of gonzontis then I used a shuttle with relay 2 then I used a gonzonti to punch the last bit of damage I needed to table my opponent and so they have grown on me.

We are currently running a 2v2 campaign. First round went 1-1 with both defenders winning. Second round Imps went 2-0. Mostly due to poor flying/decision making in game, but overall I think the games themselves are balanced. This third round will be a real test though with us Rebels basically just being able to repair our fleets and not really adding anything new (I think we'll both be flying around 450 points) and the Imps being able to add additional ships/squadrons (they should be at 500 or close to it).

Hopefully we can pull some underdog victories this week and even things out again, but after playing the campaign for a little bit, it definitely seems balanced.

And we've got one guy who is running 3 ISDs under Motti.... talk about boring games...

1 hour ago, Sekac said:

Frankly I'm shocked that people would think the campaign is good for rebels, it very much has a "For Imperials, By Imperials" feel to me.

First, the CC favors beefy ships and forward firing arcs. Hyperspace Exit is fairly useless for things like CR90s which are prone to getting one-shotted. Also, interdictors can prevent HSE (which makes total sense) but the rebel ships don't have any free campaign bonus. Between Blockade Run, Minefields, and Hyperlane Raid, there are many times where flanking is **** near impossible. That's all great for imperial tactics.

Second, both of the special scenarios strongly favor imperials. Show of Force encourages rebels to sit in place and defend an area, which isn't great for them. Also, imperials can just ignore the fleet, blow up the the stations, and HSE out for a quick 80/40 resource grab. Killing stations is much easier than killing ships.

Hyperlane Raid forces rebels to charge headlong into imperial guns. No guerrilla tactics possible, just a head to head fight. If rebels manage to take out an objective ship, they only get 20 points for it. Taking out an ISD, VSD, or interdictor is many times harder than destroying an unarmed station, yet has half the reward. Also imperials can prevent a rebel resource grab by just sitting on their starting board edge. There is no such jank rebels can pull in Show of Force.

And lastly, why is there a "rebels aren't allowed to cheat" rule? Not "cheating will result in your side's forfeiture", but "rebels automatically lose if they cheat." What?!

I was excited for this campaign but honestly I thinks pretty terribly designed, awfully written, and very poorly play tested.

I agree whole-heartedily with all of this, and I'm genuinely surprised how few people tend to see these sorts of issues. Rebels typically hate to play Contested Outpost, because it go against all of their strengths, yet Show of Force forces them into such scenarios. Our current campaign is 8-2 Imperials. In two earlier threads about CC balance (e.g. Point of No Return?), anecdotal evidence suggested Imps had an advantage in all the groups that weighed in and were experiencing a blowout except one, where Rebels had a blowout lead.

Show of Force is too easy for the Imps, Hypersace Raid is far too hard for the Rebels. Spynets are fantastic for large battleships like an ISD that can function well on any approach, but not very useful for Rebels who might only get to move a small ship or won't want to break their Ackbar gunline or move their carrier away from their Rebel bombers. Base Defense: Ion Cannon is brutal, but its worst against Rebels in my opion. A VSD or an ISD will get wrecked by a planetary ion cannon, but it will take all six rounds of shooting and some effort from the enemy (and that VSD/ISD could always just hyperspace exit when needed). On the other hand, smaller craft (aka Rebel Craft) can get really wrecked by the ion cannon, especially a Nebulon which has that weak weak side the cannon can always target. Round 1 (only one upgrade per ship) favors big heavy Imp ships with Gunnery Teams, so coupled with the ease of Imp money in Show of Force and Hyperspace Raid, means Imps should have a big Round 1 advantage as long as they are careful to not get any ISDs killed (which is really really hard for a 400pt fleet with only one upgrade per ship in six rounds). After that, Imps can possibly start Round 2 with a HUGE lead (like 500pt fleets vs 420pt fleets, and they can ride that advantage for several rounds to bully the Rebels and destroy some bases). It's a hard, if not impossible task, for a team on the ropes to come back and rally in a CC campaign.

1 hour ago, BrobaFett said:

I totally agree if you come at the campaign from a tournament mindset. If you come at it from a thematic mindset, it makes total sense that things are harder for the rebellion at first, but things can swing their way quickly (because of the base/outpost advantage) if they get a few key wins. Honestly, I think as a Rebel player I would forgo a Hyperlane raid round 1. Most of the times I see the campaign get REALLY out of whack is when the rebels declare a hyperlane raid round 1 and then lose, scarring many ships and giving the empire 120 resources (since they declared a show of force and got 80 there, plus 40 for winning the hyperlane raid)

Send your best counter fleet to try and win the show of force, splitting resources assuming they kill both stations but you win the battle. Use your two assaults to pick up some unguarded planets and get some more resources generating from the map, then round 2 when you have built up try a show of force with your 1 assault if you did well turn 1 and have more campaign points. If you failed miserably turn 1, no worries, rinse and repeat until eventually you are out performing the Imperials.

The campaign is new, but you can't blame poor construction when the culprit is poor decision making on the part of the Grand Admiral. I think that is the masterstroke of CC, that it forces you to assume the mindset of your faction and play it like that.

Are there things that are horribly flawed about CC? Absolutely. But I don't think that the issues you are specifically hitting on are those.

We're having the opposite problem. The imperial grand admiral bought the campaign a while back and studied it very closely as well as researched heavily other people's insights. He then took a very hands-on approach to list writing make sure the imperials had very specialized and optimized fleets.

We, rebels, wrote lists based on what we like running. We didn't see the rules for Hyperlane Raid, Show of Force, or any of the base defense missions until after we had submitted lists, chose bases, and declared first round assaults (we didn't declare a Hyperlane raid in the first round).

The imperials won show of force and another battle for repair yards in round one, and I lost my whole fleet so it's heavily scarred.

Round 2 we attacked Corellia and failed (barely), and lost another repair yard. I haven't even fought my round 2 battle yet, which is Hyperlane raid, but it already feels like campaign is over regardless of the outcome.

All the imperial fleets will be at 500 after this round and essentially immune to scarring with dominance over repair yards. We might have one 500 point fleet, and there's a decent chance I'll have to scrap mine, which seems like it'll then pretty much be auto-lose from there on out.

The one house rule we've adopted is preventing the Rieekan zombie HSE (because that honestly is pretty nonsensical)

Basically, it seems like CC forces a tournament mind set because some lists are suitable for it, and those that aren't are at a huge disadvantage. You're pushed towards optimization to overcome narrative disadvantages. If you choose not to do that, or under-estimate the consequences of not optimizing, you're in for a long, tedious campaign.

This is just shocking to me.

My campaign went 6-0 for the rebels to start out. I'm playing Imperial and I finally had to retire my fleet. WWas finally able to get my hands on a crap ton of Arquitens and finally won a match... but for starters it's just crazy imbalanced in favor of the rebels IMO.

First off, Rebels are just purely insane. 1st match I'm going up against Ackbar in Home One, with a couple of AFMk2's each with gunnery team. So my ISD's are taking about 7-8 damage WITH an accuracy multiple times every turn.... just got completely eviscerated. Between Ackbar and Home One, the rebels don't even NEED any upgrades on their ships to be effective... but between stuff like the AFmk2 having Gunnery Team, or being able to bring out a swarm of CR-90s each with TRC.... I mean the rebels THRIVE with only a single upgrade.

An ISD needs way too much to be effective IMO. I went with XI7s for my fleet, but I really should have chosen ECMs. Either way I've killed nothing the entire campaign until I finally retired everything and brought a swarm of Arquitens. If Arquitens were available when we started our campaign then maybe we'd be doing better.

Just my opinion.

1 hour ago, Sekac said:

We're having the opposite problem. The imperial grand admiral bought the campaign a while back and studied it very closely as well as researched heavily other people's insights. He then took a very hands-on approach to list writing make sure the imperials had very specialized and optimized fleets.

Did you guys know you were going up against Thrawn or was it a big surprise?

2 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

It's a hard, if not impossible task, for a team on the ropes to come back and rally in a CC campaign.

This is the point I disagree with most. We pretty much established in that last threat that it is in fact relatively easy for a team on the ropes to come back in CC. You just decided that it just makes for a not fun game, and thus you threw out the pathway laid out for you in the structure of the campaign to launch a comeback. Just because coming back means licking your wounds for a round and rebuilding instead of blindly throwing your battered fleet full force into a superior defender and getting tabled time after time doesn't mean it's impossible.

A few weeks ago, me and the other imperial players got beat really badly swinging the score decently ahead on the rebel side, and we lost corellia on top of mostly scarred fleets. Needless to say, we were apprehensive of the next rounds results, going in with weakened fleets against bolstered rebel forces. But the next week we gave it our best and pulled solidly back into the lead, with some hard fought victories. As it stands now the rebels are back in the lead but it's been a close fight so far(I think the score is 7-5 rebels now). There are so many options and counter-solutions for taking control back in the conflict it's hard to say the mechanics are anywhere near unbalanced.