So we played our Twin Shadows finale, Fire in the Sky, and it was a complete disaster. I was totally sleep deprived, and I've never played so poorly. Despite that, I was dominating. They rushed the objectives and ignored most of the enemy models, so 5 rounds in, all they had to do was leave, but I had wounded all heroes except Diala, and had the exit point and all adjacent squares covered in Imperials.

In fact, on the last round that mattered, I had around 8 models left to activate and only had to deal about 5 more damage to a strained-out Diala to win. So what went wrong?

It was getting late, and the other players were so resigned to their inevitable defeat that they started rushing through their turns. This (and their body language that it wasn't fun anymore) then made me feel rushed and since I was also feeling confident of success I started playing quickly as well, which led to a ton of order-of-activation failures such as blocking LOS or not first moving a model to clear up LOS, and not positioning correctly for free rerolls on stormtroopers. I also kept forgetting to use my newly purchased class card that lets me prevent a figure from getting killed for 2 Threat EVERY SINGLE TIME it would have mattered, and generally missed opportunities left and right to seal the deal.

At the end of the turn, I left Diala 2 damage away from wounded, and all they had to do was move Gideon once at the beginning of the next turn to win.

Then I did the most bone-headed, sleep-deprived thing of all, and spent all my remainung threat bringing out an E-Web for no good reason at all. I ended the turn, and as Gideon moved to the Entrance token for the win I looked down at my Hidden Detonators class card, and the lone stormtrooper adjacent to all the heroes, and smacked myself in the forehead. For those who don't know the card, for 1 threat I could have destroyed that stromtrooper to deal 2 damage to all adjacent figures, winning both the mission and the campaign.

There are two terrible things that came from this:

1. This was the least enjoyable mission we've played, both because we were all exhausted and because it went from a very lopsided hopeless state to a turn full of massive tactical errors where their win didn't feel earned at all
2. I am positive they all think I threw the game, which I swear I did not. I have been kicking myself for the last two days about all the errors I made, and I absolutely think that a Stormtrooper shouting, "For the Empire!" and pulling all the pins on his belt grenades would have been an awesome way to end the campaign.

So we are taking a break for a while, but may play again many months from now, once the bad taste of this horrible night leaves our mouths. For my part, earlier that day I had considered moving the game because I was so tired, but I was too excited to play. Next time I'll know better.

There were definitely smart tactical choices I made early in the game. I focused fire on characters who had exhausted all of their defensive tech and hit Diala when she was strained out and couldn't use Foresight. I blocked LOS to the bridge terminal and that elite Officer really drove them crazy with his defensive rolls. I used Tech Support to have my droids undo the damage they were dealing whenever possible. It's just, it got late, and I got tired and stupid.

Ugh.

This mission is extremely tight but I think it's solid and challenging for a late game rebel team. My play through of it was a similar experience, with Diala being the only one alive. With some defensive rerolls and dodging, she was able to art of movement all the way to the start and it was an exciting win for the rebels

I've seen this mission played on PBF and it was close there too but the Imperials pulled it out

It's been a while since I played this mission; do the Rebels win if just one healthy hero escapes, or do they all have to get out?

All heroes must be on or adjacent to the entrance to depart, which makes both keeping stunning the hero who ventures to the terminal or incapacitating any hero furthest away from the entrance a good strategy.

I've been running this campaign with my group lately. Our experience has been kind of reversed to yours. I (imperial player) have won the first 3 missions despite almost acting like a 5th rebel player sometimes. In fact, my rebel group have lost all 3 missions because of the round timer. They tend to try to clean up the room before moving. But we had house ruled that if they can complete the mission beyond the timer, they would still get their reward. So here we are, about to play the last mission (which will be Infiltrated). They should in theory be a bit too strong since the mission was probably built for less upgraded heroes but that's just fine with us. We are more playing campaign for the narrative and fun aspect of it. If I want to play competitive, I will play skirmish, but that is just me. Again, I will try to make sure they understand they just can't kill every trooper I send at them. They are on a Star Destroyer, surrounded by thousands of troops! They will have to fulfill their mission, kill a few baddies on the way and run to the docks to steel the shuttle.

Now, to scare the hell out of them and also to add a feeling of hurry (and to make things funnier for me ), I have decided to add a little DM aspect to the mission. Probably at the end of round 3, I will have each hero pass a tech test. Regardless if they pass it or not, they will intercept a transmission on their comlink (if they pass the test, they will learn more about it). They will learn that another team infiltrated the Star Destroyer with another objective, but have since been uncovered by none other than Darth Vader! (makes sense that Vader himself is on the ship since the imperials are about to leave for Sullust where Luke is located). The second team will consist of the elite Rebel troopers, elite smuggler and original saboteurs (before the nerf). They will be stuck in the reversed C-shaped hall (right end side hall on the map, which is where the Heroes' entrance is located at the start of the mission). I'll put 2 locked doors at each end of the hall that no one can open until either Vader (in your dream! ) or the second team is defeated. I'm going to give Vader his " Lord of the Sith " command card and " Deflection " command card. Vader should be able to perform "Brutality" on first activation at least and make use of Force Choke each round. Deflection should ensure the second rebel team gets closer than they would like to Vader if they want to hit him because of the -2 precision and the + 2 free damages Vader will inflict them if the attack misses. But the locked-hall area will not prevent hiding for too long! No one will have to pay threat cost (anyway Vader's 18 is equal to the sum of elite rebel trooper (9), elite alliance smuggler (4) and saboteurs (5) )

My idea is to have Vader be like in Rogue One final scene, but without actually being a real decision factor for the mission outcome (except for increasing the "hurry up" feeling to my Rebel group). I have ran a few sample tests and plan to do more before we play the mission, but so far, Vader usually gets rid of the second rebel team in 3 to 4 rounds suffering minor damage. The timer being 8 rounds (I think) if I trigger the comlink event at the end of round 3, Vader could open the door as early as round 7, but would still have to run to the docking bay. So I don't think it will throw off balance at all, since Vader may not have the chance to interact with the heroes at all, but it will be fun to see the face of my rebel group when 1) the event is triggered and they realize Darth Vader himself is on the ship and 2) Vader slices through the second rebel team like a knife in butter!!!!

3 hours ago, player1690582 said:

...My idea is to have Vader be like in Rogue One final scene...

If you have Bespin Gambit, one of the final missions plays exactly like this, with a Vader who cannot be damaged chasing the heroes as they try to escape. It may be a good inspiration.

Be careful though, if your players have been losing the other missions, they'll likely have a tough time on this one, even if you did give them extra rewards.

I should mention, the two agenda cards I used this mission (both 1 pointers) were the one that gives you an extra 5 threat and the one that lets you move 3 Imperial figures at the end of a turn. On this mission those were brutal.

Just played this yesterday as Finale for TS and the rebels stomped

fully geared T3 weapons on Fenn/Mak/Gaarkhan and Gideon doing his thing. Won in like 7 rounds

On 3/28/2017 at 4:10 PM, LegoMech said:

If you have Bespin Gambit, one of the final missions plays exactly like this, with a Vader who cannot be damaged chasing the heroes as they try to escape. It may be a good inspiration.

Be careful though, if your players have been losing the other missions, they'll likely have a tough time on this one, even if you did give them extra rewards.

I should mention, the two agenda cards I used this mission (both 1 pointers) were the one that gives you an extra 5 threat and the one that lets you move 3 Imperial figures at the end of a turn. On this mission those were brutal.

Yes I do have the Bespin Gambit and saw that mission, but I haven't tried it yet. It does make Vader looks like how he should be : You see him, you run!

We are not going to play Fire in the Sky, but Infiltrated, which is the same board (or tiles) setup. Fire in the Sky looks tough. Infiltrated is I think a bit easier for the rebels. If the rebels lost the canyon mission, they go to Infiltrated.

7 hours ago, player1690582 said:

We are not going to play Fire in the Sky, but Infiltrated, which is the same board (or tiles) setup. Fire in the Sky looks tough. Infiltrated is I think a bit easier for the rebels. If the rebels lost the canyon mission, they go to Infiltrated.

I'd love to hear how it goes. Infiltrated looked tougher on paper, but Boba Fett was pretty badass in Fire in the Sky so not having him may be a big difference.

On 4/1/2017 at 0:08 AM, LegoMech said:

I'd love to hear how it goes. Infiltrated looked tougher on paper, but Boba Fett was pretty badass in Fire in the Sky so not having him may be a big difference.

Sure, I'll let you know. My group should get together to play the mission in less than 2 weeks. Interesting, I thought Fire in the Sky was the tougher mission on paper. Maybe the guaranteed presence of Boba Fett (withouth paying threat cost) and Kayn Somos brought me to think this way. The hard part of Infiltrated might have to do with the departure-of-the-heroes requirement

On 4/1/2017 at 0:08 AM, LegoMech said:

I'd love to hear how it goes. Infiltrated looked tougher on paper, but Boba Fett was pretty badass in Fire in the Sky so not having him may be a big difference.

We've finally played Infiltrated. The rebels (Gaarkhan, Fenn, Biv, Gideon and Leia as allied. I allowed them to pick an ally of their choosing if they'd like to) won the mission on round 7 (out of 8). I had managed to wound 2 out of the 4 heroes and was close to bring another one down. I thematically played mostly stormtroopers for this mission (regular, elite version, Heavy Stormtroopers, Kayne Somos, etc. ... that is mostly what one would expect to find on a Star Destroyer). I also included Royal Guards as a hint of Vader's presence on the command ship.

As I expected, they were carefully moving from one room to the other despite me telling them they had to hurry (it's a Star Destroyer filled with countless of troops!) such that at the beginning of round 4 they had yet to hack the hyperdrive. That is when I triggered my "Rogue one final" mini-scenario I mentioned a few posts above. It was Darth Vader with Deflection and Sith Lord command card upgrades VS Elite Rebel Troopers, Elite Saboteurs (before the nerf), Loku (Skirmish deployment card) and Mak (Skirmish deployment card). I also house ruled that Vader couldn't suffer any condition and he was recovering 1 damage each time a rebel figure was defeated during his own activation (I mean he's just a Sith Lord after all ... *cough*). Bringing Darth Vader on the board definitely had the impact I was expecting on their pace lol! With these 4 upgrades, Vader was a beast, even inflicting damage out of his activation thanks to Deflection. It really felt like the Rogue One Vader. When the rebels won, Vader was still engaged with a single damaged Saboteur, so as I had originally planned he never was intended to be a threat to the rebel heroes. I really just included him for the DM portion, for my own personal pleasure, for the show ... but man what a show!

As we are more attracted about having fun than being highly competitive, I must say I really enjoyed involving some DM elements during the mission and I will definitely do that for our future campaign.

It is an old thread, but I didn't want to start a new one just for this:

I have just played this mission, and I also did some DMing as I was about to stomp the players, after they let me open with a 4* Royal Guard attacks (with field general and lead by exemple) which allowed me to wound Diala on the first turn.

After it was clear they would not be able to complete the mission, we decided that they could mitigate the loss by activating the weapon room and saving whoever they could, so they managed to barely pull it of with incapacited Diala and Fenn exiting the destroyer while Gideon and Biv Bodrick sacrificed themselves to sabotage the weapon control room.

It worked quite well in maintaining some tension, and it was fun having the players decide who should stay behind.

So we finished the TS mini campaign yesterday evening.

We wanted to get the full TS experience so we agreed to play everything new so my rebel playmates had to pick the new content (Biv and Saska) and I had to pick the new class. So there we was with me playing Inspiring Leadership (Field Officer, Supervisory Agent, Press On, Strategic Planning, Noble Sacrifice & Field General) and I never didn't get it to work for me. Granted it is a hard class to play but I thought I would get some value out of it at least. I believe that most people agree that most other classes are far superior to Inspiring Leadership so I didn't expect a whole lot from it tbh.

I won the first mission but lost the following two and was had pretty much resigned to the idea that this would be a walk in the park for the rebels and I would just play it to give them a fair fight.

The rebels were Mak, Gaarkhan, Biv and Saska.

Much to my surprise I had incapacitated all but Mak by the end of round 6 and I think we were all kinda dumbfounded. We played through the core campaign a few months back and was impressed with how well balanced every mission is and how this mission felt like the Imperials just steam rolled the rebels. They were geared to their teeth and didn't really make and poor choices. Mak had a two unlucky dice rolls which didn't take out the terminal to the weapons console in one round but other than that we were all playing to the best of our ability which is usually very high and analytical. But in the end I basically swarmed them and had superior amount of activations and got lucky with opportunities to use Strategic Planning. The surviving trooper in my elite squad stood firm for a good while as a meat shield on the entrance and got used to activate my elite heavies a few times instead. Also having the opportunity to use multiple Executive orders (due to Field general) per round was highly beneficial.

I saw that the poll on BGG states that roughly 54% of the games ends in the rebels favor so my question is: What should the rebels have done differently?

Open Groups
eStormtrooper , rRoyal Guards, rHeavy Stormtrooper, rE-Web Engineer

Rough rundown of events turn by turn

Round 1:
+ 10 threat - optional deploy. (rE-Web Engineer - 6p) upper right yellow deploy
Mak kills rImperial Officer
Gaarkhan kills rE-Web
Some splash damage from Gaarkhan to eHeavy Troopers
rImperial Droid shoots Saska?
Biv kills rProbe Droid
eHeavy Stormtrooper softened up Gaarkhan?

End of round + 5 threat ( 9p )
Deploy rHeavy Stormtrooper -6p
Total threat 3p

Round 2:
Saska activaties terminal thus opening doors

eImperial Officer deploys to red point
eBoba Fett deploys to yellow point
Threat +5p
Optional deploy: eWeb Engineer (-6p)

Mak moves towards eBoba Fett and door to weapons console, kills eWeb Engineer
Saska wounded by eHeavy Stormtrooper + rHeavy Stormtrooper
Biv kills 1 rHeavy Stormtrooper
eBoba Fett flighs into bridge and shoots at Mak
Gaarkhan heals and charges eBoba Fett on the bridge via the the north side door???

Supervisory Agent depleted, spawn 1 rImperial Officer w/ Field general on lower right yellow deployment point orders something to get shot

End of round 2 + 5 threat ( 7p )
Deploy Nothing
+5 Threat from agenda card
Total threat 12p

Round 3:
Biv kills 1 rHeavy Stormtrooper
eBoba Fett bites the dust by Mak
rImperial Officer bites the dust

End of round 3 + 5 threat ( 17p )
Deploy eStormtrooper to lower left yellow deploy point
Total threat 8p

Round 4:
Terminal is destroyed
Saska is incapacitated
Biv wounded

End of round 4 + 5 threat ( 13p )
Deploy
rHeavy Stormtrooper /w agenda that gives 2 attacks per round + rImperial Officer w/ Field Officer ( 8p ) top left yellow deploy point
1 x eStormtrooper 3p reinforced to top right deploy point
Total threat 2p

Round 5:
Biv is incapacitated
Mak interacts with weapons console and moves towards exit
Kayn Somos + rStormtrooper is deployed

Gaarkhan double moves towards exit

End of round 5 + 5 threat
Possibly deploy rE-Web Engineer ( 6p )
Total threat 1p

Round 6:
Gaarkhan is incapacitated
End of round 5 + 5 threat
Possibly deploy ???
Total threat

Game over

It's hard to tell whether this applies in your specific case, but generally speaking I find the most common mistake that people make in the campaign finales is to try to rush to the objective. It's a strategy that often works in some of the shorter missions, but not so much here.

Fire in the Sky has a high round limit - from memory I want to say it's 9 rounds? That's more than enough time to accomplish your goals, and I'd be surprised if there are many groups out there losing this mission because they run out of time. That's not to say it's an easy mission, however, as the rebels have to face down a lot of threat (which from the sounds of it was made worse by your agenda card). It's very easy for them to get overwhelmed.

Because of this they've got to shift their priorities a little bit compared to your standard mission. Rather than constantly moving towards the next objective (which is probably how they're used to playing) in these long missions I find its important to concentrate a bit more on taking the imperial figures off the board as much as possible. Not only that, but resting (or even double-resting) becomes a much more attractive option when you're not under a time crunch.

Thanks for the feedback ManateeX. Really appreciate it.

It was pretty much how I felt it as Imperial as well. I was simply put given to many options (and activations) to use Inspiring Leadership which took it form mediocre to really really powerful. After round 4 it was just an avalanche of activations which I suppose was what turned the tide in my favour. Had for example the rebels focused on eradicating the elite heavies early in round 2 and resting up rather then opening the doors maybe it had been a whole different scenario?

42 minutes ago, gabbon said:

Thanks for the feedback ManateeX. Really appreciate it.

It was pretty much how I felt it as Imperial as well. I was simply put given to many options (and activations) to use Inspiring Leadership which took it form mediocre to really really powerful. After round 4 it was just an avalanche of activations which I suppose was what turned the tide in my favour. Had for example the rebels focused on eradicating the elite heavies early in round 2 and resting up rather then opening the doors maybe it had been a whole different scenario?

Yeah, Inspiring Leadership can be really deadly - but only when you've got enough units on the board to use it.

I actually lost this mission the last time I played it as the rebels (as a side mission in Jabba's realm) despite the fact that I won almost every other mission in that campaign. I kept the board pretty much clear of figures the whole time, and when Somos and friends spawned they were the only imps on the map and I had only one hero wounded (the other three had taken almost no damage). All I had to do was to move my heroes over to the exit - mission's as good as done, right?

Nope. As soon as I let my foot off the pedal for just a second my heroes got focused down one by one. My last hero to escape, Shyla, ended up two spaces away from the objective when she was gunned down. I don't remember the round number anymore, but I know I still had some time left. It taught me a helpful lesson, but that didn't stop me from kicking myself over it

Our Fire in the Sky finale was super-close. In fact I thought I (as the Imperial player) had won - three of the heroes were in position to escape but the fourth couldn't get there, then I'd have a Star Destroyer worth of Stormtroopers to do just one wound to that last hero and I'd win.

Just as the hero players were giving up (pretty sickened to lose the campaign) and I was wondering how much to celebrate without looking like I was rubbing it in, one of them said to another something like: "wait... if you use that skill then this skill, it allows me to use that skill to move that enemy so you can move here and use that skill to kill that enemy, then move here , here and we win."

It took about ten minutes of reading through the class cards to confirm that this would work, but it did. Never been so flabbergasted to lose a mission (and thus campaign) in my life. I'm not mad though - it was amazing.

Sounds like this mission is close for other groups too.