Hey everyone,

So a friend and I have been throwing around an idea for an Imperial Assault campaign that ties in with the exciting space battles of X-Wing.

I’m glad to say we are on the right track. Our first major hurdle was plotting out the campaign. I took the liberty of mapping out all the available FFG campaigns to see how they size up, with out counting side missions. What I learned was how it is a much simpler flow chart than I anticipated.

You can find that flow chart here: Imperial Assault Flowchart

So with that in mind we set off and tried to make a compelling 3 Act journey for 5 rebels to partake in

We came up with this

A better view of Our campaign flowchart

The Campaign starts with the rebels stealing a Gozanti, this will be their flag ship through out the campaign. My original Idea was giving them a Ghost as it was smaller and have all the rebels fight in different positions 2/3 on turrets on controlling the Ghost itself and on in the Phantom.

While playing with this idea a friend from my local gaming store mentioned the Gozanti might be a better idea. I was initially opposed to it, but the more I thought about it the better it got. Giving the rebels a means to buy their own ships and deploy them from a huge ship seemed like such a cool concept.

Players upgrade every two missions, instead of one. And there are no side missions, though it is possible to obtain side mission rewards by completing mission throughout the campaign. One of the finales, if the rebels win, they get all their red side mission rewards.

From there it was a matter of figuring out the bones of the story and this is what we currently have:

Act 1: The Small Rebel Cell (up to 5 players) find out that the imperials are working on an assault craft the size of a CR90, and seek to tell the Alliance to Restore the Republic about it. The Imperials see the threat these rebels pose and deem them a minor threat. With no clue how to contact the Alliance, the rebels seek to obtain the information from the Imperials, as well as any more details about the Raider. The finale is a space mission where the rebels find the whereabouts of a Rebel Cell in contact with the High Command and send them a brief message about the Raider. They are given a rendezvous point and told to meet there.

Act 2: The rendezvous is on a remote system in Hutt controlled space. On their way to the point the are assaulted by Bounty Hunters. The rebels are caught between a rock and indiscriminate blaster fire, and they soon find themselves in front of Jabba the Hutt. Jabba makes them an offer, either meet his contact in the Hoth system, where the Black Suns have begun to plot against the Hutt, or meet his contact in Cloud City and raid Bespin’s supply of Tibanna Gas. The Hutt explains that your bounty is quite high, but he will take care of it so long as you do him this favor. As you finish up one of the missions, you receive a distress call from the contacts you just helped. As you begin to shift your engines, you get a second distress call from the team you didn’t help. After you make your choice you all return to Jabba to see if he will hold up his end of the bargain. He does, but he holds up his end of his bargain with the Empire. You fight your way out of the palace and make your way to the rendezvous.

Act 3: While at the rendezvous with the Tantive IV, it is made clear you now have the full attention of the Empire and are ambushed by some of their best pilots. You do your best to fight them off, but in the process, lose the Tantive IV. All who were aboard are in escape pods drifting in various directions through space. The rebels do their best to make sure everyone is saved, including C3PO and Princess Leia. The rebels find them selves searching for Leia and come across the Imperials most feared champions. Once Leia is recovered she tells of the things she learned, while imprisoned by the Empire and deems the time to strike is now. In the finale, you fight against the Emperor himself.

We had to re work a good amount of the X-Wing rules to better fit with an Imperial Assault campaign, while we are in a good place with them, its not perfect. We ran a proof-of-concept mission and it went well, though we didn’t use all the ins-and-outs of X-Wing, we feel it does work. I have been looking at Heroes of The Aturi Cluster for Ideas. Some work some don’t.

We also have a few ideas we are working on to make the X-Wing portion feel more along the lines of Imperial Assault.

We decided that each Rebel Hero will get their own pilot card. Since they can buy their own ships there wont be a specific ship, and their upgrade bar will be blank. The Pilot cards will have unique abilities, and wont count as pilot abilities, so the can buy one later on.

Another thing we decided is to make class decks for X-Wing, in the same fashion of Imperial Assault.

The classes we have are:

Pilot: Focus on better maneuverability

Gunner: Cannons and Turrets

Engineer: Shields and stealth

Bomber: Bombs, Torpedoes, Missiles

Captain: stays and upgrades the Gozanti

The Imperial player will receive a deck twice the size of regular decks.We do have rules in place for when a rebel player loses a ship: the go from normal, to damaged (flip the card), to wrecked. While wrecked the draw a card from a new damage deck, that is a semi-permanent detriment. They will have to pay to get rid of it and it may affect their ship, or their figure, i.e. being exposed to the vacuum of space could lower your overall health.

We began hammering out the details of introduction of Act 1. We have all Event Summery down pact, the objectives, the win conditions, the rewards, the major villain (Kayn Somos). So we started to move on ward to the next mission, which is a space mission. We fell flat on our face.

We decided our rule changes to X-Wing were not where they should be. So, we have been trying to figure out a way that changes them to suit our need, while still upholding the core mechanics of X-Wing. Part of our issue not knowing how upgrading the space ships was going to work.

We tried eliminating the need for pilot skills and, in turn moving in the same manor as Imperial assault does; rebel than imperial than rebel than imperial, etc. etc. etc.

That was mess. So it was back to the drawing board.

For me, currency was the issue. I couldn’t figure out how to balance buying a ship, when upgrades were so cheap, you could outfit a ship in no time. That’s where Heroes of the Aturi Cluster rang in my head, and pilot scores were back in, it’s a good way to allow the players to spend money in another avenue. Then the issues was “what about the guy in the Gozanti” we talked for a while and played with the idea of giving him a large ship to play with, but that did get very far. We do now have an acceptable way for the Captain to spend money, I talk about that more when were talking about ship upgrades. So that’s were we are looking right now.

We designed the Rebel “X-Wing Class Cards” now, I’ll post them below.

Now our next steps are as follows:

Imperial X-Wing Class Deck

Rebel Hero Pilot Cards

Ship Hero Sheet and Wrecked Cards

Space Game Upgrade Options (we have a very good idea of this now)

Proof of Concept of New Style of X-Wing Campaign

Continue with Missions

Finish Campaign

Make Everything Pretty

As promised, here is our X-Wing Rebel Class Cards (one per player)

Pilot Class Deck

· 0 xp: You gain free use of the Veteran Instincts Elite Pilot Card, and gain the slam action

· 1 xp: while defending, you may turn blank results to focus results

· 1 xp: You may stress all enemies at range one, if you have a higher pilot skill

· 2 xp: When making 1 turn, 2 turn, or 3 turn you may Red Talon Roll Maneuver

· 2 xp: Remove 2 stress when preforming a Green Maneuver

· 3 xp: You do not gain a weapon disable token from using your slam action

· 3 xp: Gain Barrel Roll, when preforming a barrel roll you may use a straight 1, 2 or 3

· 4 xp: All White Maneuvers on your dial are now Green Maneuvers

· 4 xp: All Red Maneuvers on your dial are now White Maneuvers

Gunner Class Deck

· 0 xp: Your upgrade bar gains a cannon and turret icon.

· 1 xp: when attacking, if the attack misses you gain a focus.

· 1 xp: For every enemy at range 1 you may re roll one attack die.

· 2 xp: When using a focus, you may additionally change one focus icon to a critical hit.

· 2 xp: when attacking, if your attack hits, you may change one critical hit to two hits.

· 3 xp: when using a cannon, if the attack misses you may make a primary weapon attack

· 3 xp: during combat phase, if your first attack is with a turret, you may perform an additional attack

· 4 xp: When using a cannon, gain 2 stress, you may add dice to your attack up to your primary weapon stat.

· 4 xp: When using a turret, it gains attack range of 1-3

Engineer Class Deck

· 0 xp: Gain the illegal cloaking device modification for free

· 1 xp: May attack while cloaked, drop primary weapon value by 1 to a minimum of 1, you immediately decloak without moving, do not roll for cloaking device breaking

· 1 xp: You may spend an action to repair a broken or spent upgrade

· 2 xp: when defending, if the attacker misses, gain one shield token

· 2 xp: when you perform a green manuver, gain one shield token back to your maximum shield value

· 3 xp: while cloaked, you may attack an enemy ship if you are outside the defenders firing arc and have no enemy ships at range 1 or 2, you may remain cloaked.

· 3 xp: as an action, gain 2 stress, gain shields up to your evade value

· 4 xp: when attacking, all your attacks are considered range one

· 4 xp: while you still have shield tokens, you reduce incoming damage by 1 to a minimum of 1

Bomber Class Deck

· 0 xp: your upgrade bar gains a bomb, missile, and torpedo.

· 1 xp: you may use a 2 straight, 2 turn left or 2 turn right to drop a bomb, in place of a 1 straight.

· 1 xp: you may acquire a target lock out side of range 3

· 2 xp: Bombs ignore friendly targets, all bombs gain 2 ordinance tokens

· 2 xp: when using missiles or torpedoes, you do 1 damage to all ships at range 1 of the target

· 3 xp: If your bomb or mine is at range 2 of an enemy, you may attach it to that ship, it then explodes

· 3 xp: when using missiles or torpedoes, you may attack outside your primary firing arc

· 4 xp: You may interrupt enemy maneuver to cause one bomb or mine to explode, bombs no longer explode on their own.

· 4 xp: Lose primary weapon, do not flip missiles or torpedoes when used. Gain the Deadeye EPT

Captain Class Deck

· 0 xp: Gain the Coordinate action, it is not restricted to range 1-2

· 1 xp: when you gain energy, gain 1 additional energy

· 1 xp: Gain 1 Hardpoint to upgrade bar

· 2 xp: Gain suppressive fire condition card

· 2 xp: when you ram a ship that is small or large, you do not roll attack die

· 3 xp: gain 3 hull upgrades

· 3 xp: gain 1 shield upgrade, hitting obstacles damages shields before damaging hull

· 4 xp: coordinate now allows a player to perform a second maneuver and action

· 4 xp: action: spend 2 energy, all friendly ships gain a focus and evade tokens

There is still a ton a work, rework and balance that will have to playtest, but we wanted to see how it’s was received so far. We are really excited about it.

I’ll be updating this as he and I go.

Have a good one!!