This isn't really a rules question, but just sharing an alternate mode of play...

Are you tired of seeing the same scenarios presented all the time? Want to try out those weird ones, but don't have the guts to commit them to your fleet build? My small group devised a simple system for mixing up scenarios. First Player is selected as normal, but second player gets to pick the scenario. HOWEVER, they don't pick from the first players selection, or from their own for that matter. Neither fleet picks scenarios at the start. After First Player is determined, three regular eight sided dice are rolled by the second player, one red, one yellow, one blue. The scenarios are clearly labeled 1-8 (assuming you have the Correlian Conflict pack) for each color (you'll have to do that yourself), and the resulting dice rolls determine which scenarios the second player can choose from. This style of scenario selection encourages flexible builds, and really challenges players to deal with unexpected goals using what they have available and already committed to. Thoughts?

Imo first player is too high of an advantage not to give some sort of benefit to going second.

I think I would prefer house ruling objectives that seem underpowered or under used to you with your opponents and make them something usable until you start to get a relatively decent distribution. That way you don't make going second amy more of a liability.

That said I have seen campaigns structed as you are proposing for objective selection, but that is was in a situation where the campaign was deciding who was first or second player and not bids.

38 minutes ago, BrobaFett said:

Imo first player is too high of an advantage not to give some sort of benefit to going second.

I think I would prefer house ruling objectives that seem underpowered or under used to you with your opponents and make them something usable until you start to get a relatively decent distribution. That way you don't make going second amy more of a liability.

That said I have seen campaigns structed as you are proposing for objective selection, but that is was in a situation where the campaign was deciding who was first or second player and not bids.

The benefit to the second player is that they get to select the scenario being played. The down-side to that however is that their choice must be selected from 3 random scenarios (neither player picks, the dice do).

In practice, this seems to heavily favor the second player, since at least ONE of the randomly selected scenarios is quite helpful, AND since the second player is picking himself from the randomly generated choices, he can freely pick the one that best matches his fleet build. Many times already I've seen players opt out of first player just to get the chance to pick from random scenarios. It's really made for some interesting games, giving up an obvious advantage (first activation) for a chance to pick a random scenario, and not one that the second player pre-selected.

I've used this system with newish players when building fleets on the spot from my collection. Since they don't own the game and aren't familiar with the objectives yet, picking from three is a lot less intimidating than reading through a dozen (or two dozen, when I eventually get CC). I've considered allowing one redraw in case they're all terrible, but so far it hasn't been necessary.

I like the original method and have nothing against it, but I also think this is a fun way to just try stuff out in laid back casual games every now and then. If you're training for a tournament or something, obviously not.

1st player shoot first = a fact

2nd player's objective suits his fleet = a chance

It encourages flexible fleets to the second player. The first player can just keep a hard bid an play his game. Let's say DeMSU fleet.

A take on Legion's system -

Draw some number of objective per color at random (Legion draws 3 of 4, so 6 of 8?), then players alternate eliminating one card, until one of each color remains. Then second player picks one of the three.