Me and a pal have been playing the CC since its release. Our first play-through we got to 4-0 Imps before we decided to retire that one and restart swapping sides. So far we're sitting at 2-1 Imps but interestingly after our last battle we reflected and both came to the realization that we've hit a wall. Why?

We've LOST the fun.

Pre-CC we regularly played casual battles and we'd laugh at our failures and successes - a good way to relax after a week's work. The campaign brought fresh ideas and introduced ways to keep some continuity between games. It brought interesting building and planning sessions. However - and we didn't really acknowledge this till yesterday - it brought consequences. It subconsciously upped the ante in terms of stress, competitiveness, and bad feeling, and consequently we both lost the spark. We play the campaign 2 players (4 fleets), and losing a battle (particularly consecutive battles) was demoralizing, usually irrevocable and flying scarred fleets was leading to boring cagey affairs and some low value nights. Errors were significantly more brutal, and where in the past we always used to allow re-dos, etc, now we were noticing we were both becoming less forgiving. And all because everything mattered more.

So, without wanting to drone on too much on the bad, we finally decided we need to bring back the fun, and we had to think back to the casual games to realise where this lay. For us it was in playing equally matched battles, in variety of fleet design, in winning and losing not being too big a deal. But we also liked the scoring, the variety of missions, and the theme of the campaign. We also wanted to reward risk (none of us have ever attempted a base assault for fear of being dealt a bad beating, or in fear of it being a technical KO to your opponent).

So here's what we're considering:

1. Retiring a fleet. When you retire a fleet you build a new 400 fleet with the standard rules, but after this you can include the new resources you would have earned. Typically this should see new fleets come in around the 440-480 mark.

2. Scarred uniques still get removed from fleets if they die in battle, but retiring a fleet doesn't see uniques disappear forever - we just can't use them in our next fleet design. We found that playing the same fleets each week can get boring and this should at the very least promote some variety as we won't be as afraid of flying scarred fleets and retiring them. It should also prevent the "winner keeps getting further ahead" feeling that has pervaded our two campaigns.

Appreciate any thoughts on our ideas. Those who want to defend the campaign rules as written, please go easy. You need to understand that this isn't us berating it, it's us just trying to share what we think might work for us mid-40 somethings who want the fun and the campaign.

I understand your point. But if you could play games without worrying about who wins or at least don't caring much about it you should be able to do the same with the campaign.

Think about the campaign as a Lego Film of star wars or just as a story with fun anecdotes. In our campaing I, as Vader, had to choke Konstantin for a big defeat.

Focus on what that matched means as a story and not what means to the fleet. Asume roles. You started as a proud admiral looking for glory and now you are trying to do lemonade. The more immersion the more fun.

Anyway, if what you said works for you, then perfect.

One thing that might be happening a lot is that if you stick with the normal Armada mindset of trying to score more points to win, the Empire crushes it.

I think after a rough start, the rebels get a feel for what they should be doing with their ships. Definitely not throwing them in to the middle of things willy-nilly. There are consequences this time!

Also, the campaign definitely is rewarding if you "role-play" it a little. Be the big bad Empire crushing the Rebellion. Be the rebels, using those smart tactics to gain smaller victories.

I think CC is the perfect spot to do a lot of house rules.

1 hour ago, CaribbeanNinja said:

One thing that might be happening a lot is that if you stick with the normal Armada mindset of trying to score more points to win, the Empire crushes it.

I think after a rough start, the rebels get a feel for what they should be doing with their ships. Definitely not throwing them in to the middle of things willy-nilly. There are consequences this time!

Also, the campaign definitely is rewarding if you "role-play" it a little. Be the big bad Empire crushing the Rebellion. Be the rebels, using those smart tactics to gain smaller victories.

I think CC is the perfect spot to do a lot of house rules.

As someone who mixed an Age of Rebellion Campaign with Armada, I can attest to the roleplay aspect. Having characters feel their losses and express what going on through interaction makes for an addictive campaign. Same goes for CC, if you're not in the right mindset CC can become more annoying than it is fun. That's one of the things I think FFG should have pushed harder when releasing a "campaign" mode. Get into the role a bit. Playing CC without playing into the role is like playing the single player missions on the new battlefront game. Dull. Repetitive. Painfully long.

I've noticed the more players the more balanced the game is. If you can't have more than two to a side, perhaps allow 2 fleets per person, then you effectively have a 4v4! The key then is to balance the player skill evenly.

House rule to your hearts content. It kinda feels like you want to take the sting out of a loss, which for me decreases the overall building excitement of successive games. If I can fly my whole fleet off the board, retire it and rebuild the exact same fleet without spending any resources to unscar it, funneling all of that into upgrades, it takes any meaning out of the choices I make.

Under these house rules it feels like you and your buddy should just split the entire map between yourselves, roll 2 fully upgraded 500 point fleets, and play the All Out Battle, because essentially that is where your extremely forgiving house rules will lead regardless of whether you win, lose, or draw.

I mean, great part of house rules is that if it works for you then have a blast. That's all that matters. But in my opinion you have watered down the campaign so far your actions both positive and negative have no effect at all. That takes a bit of the fun out of it for me.

38 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

House rule to your hearts content. It kinda feels like you want to take the sting out of a loss, which for me decreases the overall building excitement of successive games. If I can fly my whole fleet off the board, retire it and rebuild the exact same fleet without spending any resources to unscar it, funneling all of that into upgrades, it takes any meaning out of the choices I make.

Under these house rules it feels like you and your buddy should just split the entire map between yourselves, roll 2 fully upgraded 500 point fleets, and play the All Out Battle, because essentially that is where your extremely forgiving house rules will lead regardless of whether you win, lose, or draw.

I mean, great part of house rules is that if it works for you then have a blast. That's all that matters. But in my opinion you have watered down the campaign so far your actions both positive and negative have no effect at all. That takes a bit of the fun out of it for me.

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head.

We mostly game for fun and the social aspect.

We get to play every second weekend and want to make the most of the time we have without someone feeling they're getting constantly battered.

There's only the two of us, and I think the campaign is definitely more suited to 6 players where you're more likely to get a split. 2 battles per round and 2 players makes the likelihood of a 2-0 very condemning to the losing player.

We may opt for something even farther removed from the base rules to get rid of the bookkeeping - I'm just sharing these with you for interest sake as I don't expect many of you to be overly enamored :

I find it more fun when playing that if you lose a unique it is gone for the entire campaign. Does not make it less fun, makes it so you have to think, should i bring a unique, should i play a generic. Which is the best time to play. Plus you get to mess around with new builds that you would not do for a standard game or tourn.

Sink your Demo in game 2, better learn to play without it, there are so many different builds out there.

Yeah, I am glad you found a way to play the campaign and have fun, but your version actually removes any reason for me to play it over a standard game. I guess that's the beautiful thing about campaign! I wouldn't want to play in your campaign, you wouldn't want to play in mine, but we can both find a way to enjoy it using the framework provided.

Do you try to build a fleet for each faction? This way you would play with one good fleet built by you and another funny built by your opponent.

Just anothet silly option to help you.

3 hours ago, Gadgetron said:

I've noticed the more players the more balanced the game is. If you can't have more than two to a side, perhaps allow 2 fleets per person, then you effectively have a 4v4! The key then is to balance the player skill evenly.

This has helped in our area. We've got a 12 man (6v6) campaign rolling right now and so far it has helped balance things immensely. Unfortunately it will lead to a few battles where newbies fight veterans and get rolled, but on average it's helped.

13 minutes ago, IronNerd said:

We've got a 12 man (6v6) campaign rolling right now

Lord Vader demands pictures of that All Out Assault.

Do not fail me, Admiral...

I'm curious how you are running a 6v6 campaign? Are all fleets engaged in battles? What would you do for the endgame, 3000 pts / side? That would be rather... epic.

I've thought about a 4v4 in which one fleet on either side gets to "sit-out" a round. This will help one scarred fleet from getting beaten really hard - although should also prevent much build up as there are less points going around.

We're pretty much just doubling everything except for unique upgrades, using two maps. I think we've settled on going to 18 points for the win condition. Honestly not sure if we've decided on the All Out Assault yet, but I'm partial to the approach of running two AOAs and everything that's still alive get's pushed in to another single, gigantic battle. I would love to try a singular 6v6 battle, but our first AOA took over 7 hours for a 3v3...

Added bonus of making building fleets a lot more interesting. We more or less gave our team's newbs priority on everything and us vets picked from the scraps.

Campaigns ALWAYS walk that fine line of making the battles count, but not too much. If the results of the battles don't count, then why are you playing a campaign? If they count too much, then whoever establishes an early lead will inevitably go on to secure the overall win.

I think CC does a great job of balancing the two demands of a campaign, which are that the battles have meaningful outcomes but that the overall campaign can be anyone's game right up until the final battle.

Of course everyone has different tastes. Some people love to be able to use different fleet builds every week and basically 'start fresh' with every battle. Some people prefer to play with the same fleet over and over and build a narrative for their ships and characters and loathe the idea of constantly cycling through the new-shiny upgrades. At the end of the day, not everyone actually LIKES playing in a campaign, even if they thought they would. Sometimes the idea doesn't match the reality. And that's fine, it's all part of our learning experience as gamers, figuring out what we like and what we don't.

Personally, the only thing I think needs a tweak in CC is the hyperlane assault scenario (or whatever it's called, the one where the Rebels hit the Imperial supply flotilla) and only then because I don't think the designers ever envisaged Imperial players castling in the corner for an auto-win. The rest of the campaign I really like, and I'd LOVE to see more of them. Like, a couple per year.

7 minutes ago, Chucknuckle said:

Campaigns ALWAYS walk that fine line of making the battles count, but not too much. If the results of the battles don't count, then why are you playing a campaign? If they count too much, then whoever establishes an early lead will inevitably go on to secure the overall win.

I think CC does a great job of balancing the two demands of a campaign, which are that the battles have meaningful outcomes but that the overall campaign can be anyone's game right up until the final battle.

Of course everyone has different tastes. Some people love to be able to use different fleet builds every week and basically 'start fresh' with every battle. Some people prefer to play with the same fleet over and over and build a narrative for their ships and characters and loathe the idea of constantly cycling through the new-shiny upgrades. At the end of the day, not everyone actually LIKES playing in a campaign, even if they thought they would. Sometimes the idea doesn't match the reality. And that's fine, it's all part of our learning experience as gamers, figuring out what we like and what we don't.

Personally, the only thing I think needs a tweak in CC is the hyperlane assault scenario (or whatever it's called, the one where the Rebels hit the Imperial supply flotilla) and only then because I don't think the designers ever envisaged Imperial players castling in the corner for an auto-win. The rest of the campaign I really like, and I'd LOVE to see more of them. Like, a couple per year.

Well said! I agree.

You know what I'm looking forward to more than anything else ? A really good 2-player campaign.

I think the CC was a great start and in many ways seems like FFG were testing the water with the whole campaign idea. Hopefully it's proved successful and given them the impetous to develop the campaign element further. CC appears to work best for 6 players and my experience 2 players with 2 fleets has been mixed. A good 2-player campaign would arguably be more marketable than a 6 player one anyway.

10 hours ago, Chucknuckle said:

Campaigns ALWAYS walk that fine line of making the battles count, but not too much. If the results of the battles don't count, then why are you playing a campaign? If they count too much, then whoever establishes an early lead will inevitably go on to secure the overall win.

I think CC does a great job of balancing the two demands of a campaign, which are that the battles have meaningful outcomes but that the overall campaign can be anyone's game right up until the final battle.

Of course everyone has different tastes. Some people love to be able to use different fleet builds every week and basically 'start fresh' with every battle. Some people prefer to play with the same fleet over and over and build a narrative for their ships and characters and loathe the idea of constantly cycling through the new-shiny upgrades. At the end of the day, not everyone actually LIKES playing in a campaign, even if they thought they would. Sometimes the idea doesn't match the reality. And that's fine, it's all part of our learning experience as gamers, figuring out what we like and what we don't.

Personally, the only thing I think needs a tweak in CC is the hyperlane assault scenario (or whatever it's called, the one where the Rebels hit the Imperial supply flotilla) and only then because I don't think the designers ever envisaged Imperial players castling in the corner for an auto-win. The rest of the campaign I really like, and I'd LOVE to see more of them. Like, a couple per year.

I wonder. Has anyone here retired a fleet and then managed to have success bringing their new 400 fleet into the fray? I'm guessing this might be more possible with 6 players since you might have more likelihood of facing off to someone in a similar position.

4 hours ago, Jambo75 said:

I wonder. Has anyone here retired a fleet and then managed to have success bringing their new 400 fleet into the fray? I'm guessing this might be more possible with 6 players since you might have more likelihood of facing off to someone in a similar position.

Hold that thought as I am tempted to do this with one of my fleets. We are about to start round 3 of our campaign and with 5 fleets around 450-470, I have one fleet at 340. Unfortunately, it is also the fleet with my Rhymerball. Losing an Interdictor to a fleet of CR90s that enjoyed ramming wasn't the plan. Outstanding game though, as it was a Hyperlane Raid. They did get away with 80 points, but now have a fleet in which everything is scarred.

I would totally retire it and build a counter fleet to what is out there already. I think this is a valid strategy. You're already down 60 points. Take the Campaign point loss, and come back swinging with a counter fleet!

I think the problem is there's just the two of you so you guys are missing one of the biggest pieces, which is your team's outcome is not entirely dependant on you. The six player experience just can't be recreated with two.

have 3 fleets each , like you have 6 players and play 3 battles per round of CC play, you will end up with the fleets fighting different fleets most of the time. you will most likely not get board with it this way.

Has anyone experimented with 'buying' resource points in exchange for campaign points? I am in a similar 1v1 campaign and really thrashed one of my friends fleets in round one. He has suggested to buy 50 resource points for 1 campaign point, instead of retiring the fleet. What do y'all think?

I think the problem is it's just not as good 2 players as it can be 6 players. I think we're firmly in the camp of we had fun, but will now adjust it to make it more friendly for 2.