What we found we do different in the 2 rounds of CC so far:

If your ace killed a squadron and is on 1 health, retreat to the station (or gallant haven) to make him veteran instead of popping one more tie.

Flankers like Mk2 or arquitens more easily become veterans. Front shooters often fly into trouble and die, denying veteran status.

Engage slowly, so the big encounters are later than usual, to be able jump to hyper space in round 4. We lost many ships because they started taking damage in round 2.

If you use a small fighter cover it likely is fully destroyed and getting veterans is harder.

Veteran+ Liberty title gives 2 free squadron activations on 2 turns, add garm/asoka/comms net for more.

Veteran and weapon/defense liaisons dont work on the fly, get that token the turn before.

If you take only big ships it's hard for the enemy to get veterans. They also make the game swingy. Lose 2 isds, bad, have them survive on 1 hull each perfect! Not necessarily in the same fleet mind you.

What else did you find?

Once one side has won a few battles it's really hard to stop them. Snowball. Scrap a fleet if it's really not working.

Don't play like it is a tournament. Preserve your forces.

Leave on turn 4 if you aren't going to win.

1 hour ago, Halliday said:

Once one side has won a few battles it's really hard to stop them. Snowball. Scrap a fleet if it's really not working.

I go the other direction. It is almost never better to scrap a fleet than keep building.

If you realize you are hard countered 3 ways by the enemy, made some terrible synergy decisions, or just detest the fleet for some reason, sure reroll. But try to do it before Round 2.

If you get stomped and go out with a bunch of scarred ships round 2 and get stomped again under the pretense you can just reroll the fleet you are going to have a bad time playing CC.

Doesn't mean you have to throw games by circling the edge and retreating, but if you start conservative turn 1 and 2 everyone in the campaign should be roughly 500 pts by round 3. If you reroll, you would be 400pts at round 3 to everyone elses 500, practically guaranteeing you to get your teeth kicked in for 2-3 more rounds until you catch up. Most of the times the campaign is over by then.

We found that the most important thing is to balance the skill of players on each side properly and make sure everyone is running solid fleets. If you want to try some wierd experimental thing don't do it in a context where you are stuck with it round after round and your team is paying for your poor choice

BrobaFett, My Rebel partner is scrapping his fleet after 3 losses. We are going into the All Out Battle and he needs something better. He should have never gone with his choice in the first place...

28 minutes ago, Halliday said:

BrobaFett, My Rebel partner is scrapping his fleet after 3 losses. We are going into the All Out Battle and he needs something better. He should have never gone with his choice in the first place...

@BrobaFett I hope you're doing ok under that bus...

12 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

@BrobaFett I hope you're doing ok under that bus...

I've been under that bus all CC. 6 battles and I had the first Rebel win on #6. *Beep beep* Look out for the bus.

4 hours ago, Xeletor said:

What we found we do different in the 2 rounds of CC so far:

If your ace killed a squadron and is on 1 health, retreat to the station (or gallant haven) to make him veteran instead of popping one more tie.

Flankers like Mk2 or arquitens more easily become veterans. Front shooters often fly into trouble and die, denying veteran status.

Engage slowly, so the big encounters are later than usual, to be able jump to hyper space in round 4. We lost many ships because they started taking damage in round 2.

If you use a small fighter cover it likely is fully destroyed and getting veterans is harder.

Veteran+ Liberty title gives 2 free squadron activations on 2 turns, add garm/asoka/comms net for more.

Veteran and weapon/defense liaisons dont work on the fly, get that token the turn before.

If you take only big ships it's hard for the enemy to get veterans. They also make the game swingy. Lose 2 isds, bad, have them survive on 1 hull each perfect! Not necessarily in the same fleet mind you.

What else did you find?

The bolder portion I found the exact opposite, in fact in the currently six player cc I'm a part of, everything but the flankers seem to be getting veteran, hell my pelta has veteran while my AFmk2 still doesn't.

the reason for this is in my area, flankers are seen as threats to be targeted and taken out early, often denying them veteran. This is especially true for rebel flankers as the imperials see them and recognise just how dangerous they are in the side arcs of the imp star and the VSD, while for rebels we see imp flankers as the easiest to kill in order to gain victory and/or scar a ship before eliminating the larger target or, in quite a few cases, jump out turn 4 and be happy about scarring or destroying that one ship

also found in the first few rounds of cc turn four jump outs were quite common

Aggro squads have a heck of a time making ace. Shara, Tycho, Fel, Cienna, etc. in 7 rounds of CC I think Shara averaged 2.5 kills (solo) a match. Took until round 5 for her to love and become Vet.

One thing I learned was grab every unique escort anyone plans on using turn 1. Get them Veteran early during the small squad screens. They don't usually survive in the 167 point squad battles.

The CC veterans are also pretty priceless in CC. Gold, green, tempest, etc. are great deals over generics with the chance for veterancy tokens. All the new CC aces scale well in CC.

16 hours ago, Halliday said:

BrobaFett, My Rebel partner is scrapping his fleet after 3 losses. We are going into the All Out Battle and he needs something better. He should have never gone with his choice in the first place...

I am pretty sure that is what I said If you made a huge mistake, reroll, but earlier is better than later. If it takes you three rounds of getting pummeled to figure it out that is just unfortunate. Live and learn for next time!

Kallus loves the CC.

Fleet

Design a 500 point fleet, watch your 1/3 fighter total.

Named pilots are golden, include them in your initial 400 point fleet, you can always buy generics latter

Now pare that down to 400 points, again watch your fighter total, and only one upgrade per ship to start with, that includes titles. Now you have a plan to increase your fleet by.

Initial systems

Repair yards are worth their weight in gold.

Diplomats are key in blocking system attacks

Spacers are so so

Spynet are good as they allow you to reposition key ships before battle

Tactics

Hyperlane raids and show of force are great for points.

If your going to lose the battle hyperspace out, or fly off the edge. It is better to flee with your fleet then have to repair a lot of pieces.

If you are Rebel, and ever have to "take a round" to rebuild (with permission of your team, and possibly your opponent):

Declare a Hyperspace Assault.

Deploy at Speed 1 on your board edge.

Nav down to Speed 0

Hyperspace out Turn 4.

An Interdictor moving as fast as possible can't stop you. And none of the enemies can reach you to hurt you - a Full-Speed raider might throw a blue at you.

3 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

If you are Rebel, and ever have to "take a round" to rebuild (with permission of your team, and possibly your opponent):

Declare a Hyperspace Assault.

Deploy at Speed 1 on your board edge.

Nav down to Speed 0

Hyperspace out Turn 4.

An Interdictor moving as fast as possible can't stop you. And none of the enemies can reach you to hurt you - a Full-Speed raider might throw a blue at you.

So you're just throwing the round so you don't take any losses and you get a round to pick up some extra base refit points?

Bingo.

I used it when I had to bring in a brand new 400pt fleet vs the enemy tricked out 500.

It let me basically jump from 400 to 470 and get all of those ships with more than one upgrade on them at a time, so at the very least, I'd be *competitive* the next round, if still an underdog.

Playing a losing battle to enable a wining campaign is a feature of CC, not a bug.

The whole point is that there is a bigger picture and you need to fight every round with that big picture in mind - rather than treat every battle as a death match (tourney style).

19 minutes ago, Sirdrasco said:

Fleet

Design a 500 point fleet, watch your 1/3 fighter total.

Named pilots are golden, include them in your initial 400 point fleet, you can always buy generics latter

Now pare that down to 400 points, again watch your fighter total, and only one upgrade per ship to start with, that includes titles. Now you have a plan to increase your fleet by.

Initial systems

Repair yards are worth their weight in gold.

Diplomats are key in blocking system attacks

Spacers are so so

Spynet are good as they allow you to reposition key ships before battle

Tactics

Hyperlane raids and show of force are great for points.

If your going to lose the battle hyperspace out, or fly off the edge. It is better to flee with your fleet then have to repair a lot of pieces.

Diplomats are rubbish. Utter shite.

Spaces are worth very little; most battles will be special assaults or base attacks. Not worthless, but not worth having more than 1 of.

This is our first time through, but we have found that everyone is rushing to get the repair yards.

Also play test your fleet or at least have some of the more experienced players help you build it before you start. Starting with a bad fleet is the hardest thing to overcome. Sure you can scrap them and rebuild, but that comes with some pretty heavy penalties.

Build bases soon, get those resource points as soon as you can. And bases are harder to take.

I agree with the advice given above, but I'll add one suggestion that happens before the battles begin:

Balance your teams.

This goes the longest way to ensuring a fun time is had by all. It doesn't guarantee one team won't roll the other, but it will feel like that was determined by the fate of the dice gods (or the Force?) rather than having one team stacked against the other right from the start (which can cause the campaign to implode if one side wins all their opening games). Even if it means splitting up friends, playing a different faction than normal or playing with total strangers, team composition is critical.

As a follow-up, make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to fleet-building. Whether you're going for tournament-level, experimental or thematic fleets, ask everyone to do the same. Similar to a roleplaying game, a campaign is a social experience in ways one-off games are not. It's a good idea to clearly lay out the "social contract" of what's expected/allowed for your campaign. This way no one shows up dressed in shorts and flip-flops to a black tie affair.

For team tactics, it's a good idea to have one fleet that wants to go second, one that wants to go first and one that can swing either way (or one that wants second player/base defense, and two that want first player/offense if you plan on letting the other team pull ahead on campaign points). Therefore, regardless of initiative you will be able to set the pairings in your favor.

I would absolutely second the player skill part. We just finished our CC and it was the most even I've heard of going into All Out Assault. 9-8 Rebels, no fleets below 470, and nobody with crippling scarred units going in to AOA. A big part was everyone is around the same skillset

I don't have my CC rules with me (which leads me to another point, why aren't those available as pdf like the rest are?), but is hyperspacing out the same as just running your ships off the board? If so, couldn't I just start my fleet pointing backwards so their first move takes them out of the play area? And if that's possible, then can't I just concede the battle before going through the motions?

2 hours ago, thestag said:

I don't have my CC rules with me (which leads me to another point, why aren't those available as pdf like the rest are?), but is hyperspacing out the same as just running your ships off the board? If so, couldn't I just start my fleet pointing backwards so their first move takes them out of the play area? And if that's possible, then can't I just concede the battle before going through the motions?

Wouldn't it be easier to just not play Armada?

3 hours ago, thestag said:

I don't have my CC rules with me (which leads me to another point, why aren't those available as pdf like the rest are?), but is hyperspacing out the same as just running your ships off the board? If so, couldn't I just start my fleet pointing backwards so their first move takes them out of the play area? And if that's possible, then can't I just concede the battle before going through the motions?

No.

because Flying off the Board counts as destroyed. In all respects.

Hyperspacing out counts as destroyed for the purposes of scoring, but not for Scarring.

Hyperspace out = Destroyed, Not Scarred.

Fly off Board = Destroyed, Scarred.

Consequently, if you're already Scarred: "Destroyed, Scarred" = Destroyed For Good. No Takesys-backseys.

13 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

Consequently, if you're already Scarred: "Destroyed, Scarred" = Destroyed For Good. No Takesys-backseys.

Except for your commander, if he goes down on a scarred ship, he is saved in a escape pod.