Does anyone have rules for reinforcements/replacements during a game? I'd like to hear other people's solutions and thoughts on my ideas below.

I've only ever played a reinforcement rule in the Gozanti campaign and it was great. That rule was any Imperial ship destroyed that had PS4 or higher is replaced by a ship of the same type but with the lowest PS. So, for example, when destroyed a Black Squadron TIE is replaced with an Academy TIE. I've thought about implementing it in my Scarif scenario for both Rebels and Imperials but the thoughts of sending in "naked" Rookie X-Wings or Scimitar Bombers. So I've been designing replacement ships using what came with them in their expansions. For example

Rookie Pilot (22) - X-Wing
R5 Astromech (1)

Gold Squadron Pilot (24) - Y-Wing
Ion Cannon Turret (5), R2 Astromech (1)

Scimitar Squadron Pilot (23) - TIE Bomber
Assault Missiles (5), Seismic Charges (2)

Imperial Trainee (19) - TIE Striker
Adaptive Ailerons (0), Lightweight Frame (2)

I like the thought that as the battle progresses the pilot's coming in from other areas are already tired or lesser quality reserves and so not as good as the originals (lower PS). Regenerating the ship as it was seems unrealistic and once a unique is gone it is gone she/he won't magically reappear! I've tested it once and it seemed to work well. One weakness seemed to be Rebel generics bottom out at PS2 so had an advantage which, after the test, we considered a small chance (on the roll of a crit) that the Imperial player gets a PS3 Obsidian Fighter or Scarif Defender Striker instead of the PS1 Academy/Trainee. Any thoughts appreciated.

It's called Escalation.

Official rules from FFG here: https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/c7/6f/c76f220b-5efd-4afc-912b-e67dfcda034e/x-wing_escalationrules_v301.pdf

A friend and I tried out a reinforcement type scenario where we each made a 100 point squad and 2 50 point squads. Starting out with the 100 point squads, as soon as you no longer had any ships within range 5 of your side of the play area you could then bring in a 50 point squad. Basically this forced you and your opponent to charge out of the starting blocks and forced some early combat, and meant that a well timed ace coming in as a reinforcement wasn't just going to be focused down straightaway.

Escalation is my favourite format for the game but that gets played out over 4 separate rounds rather than just one start to finish seesawing match.

8 hours ago, jmswood said:

It's called Escalation.

Escalation is cool but as @DaveRob says it is played over four discrete games. I'm trying to prolong a single game by replacing destroyed ships with new ones at the start of each round.

7 hours ago, DaveRob said:

Starting out with the 100 point squads, as soon as you no longer had any ships within range 5 of your side of the play area you could then bring in a 50 point squad.

This has to me thinking that a way forward may be for the players to write there own reserve lists with certain restrictions e.g. pilots no greater than PS3. That way I'm not having to worry about ship builds.

I've often thought a cool thing for Imperials to get would be a title or modification that says 'when you are destroyed, a ship enters play touching your board edge. This ship is the lowest pilot skill generic version of your ship, and comes with all applicable upgrades. It does not count towards your squad points value for calculating victory or margin of victory, but it does count for final salvo.'

Essentially Endless Ranks: the upgrade.

1 minute ago, thespaceinvader said:

I've often thought a cool thing for Imperials to get would be a title or modification that says 'when you are destroyed, a ship enters play touching your board edge. This ship is the lowest pilot skill generic version of your ship, and comes with all applicable upgrades. It does not count towards your squad points value for calculating victory or margin of victory, but it does count for final salvo.'

That is the mechanic used by FFG is some of the campaign scenarios like Mission H1

Quote

Imperial Reinforcements: At the end of each End phase, the Imperial player may call for one reinforcement for each Imperial ship with a pilot skill value of "4" or higher that was destroyed that round, excluding ships that fled or were overlapped by the GR-75. For each reinforcement, he takes the lowest-cost Ship card that matches the destroyed ship's type and places it outside the play area. Then he places the matching ship within Range 1-2 of any corner chosen by the Rebel player. The Imperial player uses this ship as normal.

18 hours ago, Sasajak said:

I like the thought that as the battle progresses the pilot's coming in from other areas are already tired or lesser quality reserves and so not as good as the originals (lower PS).

Reinforcements is one of the nice mechanics in the scenarios and I think it'd be a good way to up the play of weaker generics by allowing them to 'respawn' to a limited extent; thus multiplying the advantage of numbers that they get over aces.

18 hours ago, Sasajak said:

Regenerating the ship as it was seems unrealistic and once a unique is gone it is gone she/he won't magically reappear!

Agreed. Unique pilots are just that: unique. He be dead, jim.

18 hours ago, Sasajak said:

One weakness seemed to be Rebel generics bottom out at PS2 so had an advantage which, after the test, we considered a small chance (on the roll of a crit) that the Imperial player gets a PS3 Obsidian Fighter or Scarif Defender Striker instead of the PS1 Academy/Trainee. Any thoughts appreciated.

As long as you're getting equivalent values of reinforcements, is that really an issue?

6 hours ago, Sasajak said:

This has to me thinking that a way forward may be for the players to write there own reserve lists with certain restrictions e.g. pilots no greater than PS3. That way I'm not having to worry about ship builds.

I'm planning on running a game night with the three Force Awakens scenarios, and I'm doing just that; each player defines what their 'reinforcement' will be - must be non-unique, small ship, and less than [x] squad points - I'm not convinced PS should be an issue; after all, yes I could theoretically pick an Adaptability-equipped Saber as a pilot rather than a Rookie X-wing, but that's the point; said ships cost the same for a reason.

58 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

I've often thought a cool thing for Imperials to get would be a title or modification that says 'when you are destroyed, a ship enters play touching your board edge. This ship is the lowest pilot skill generic version of your ship, and comes with all applicable upgrades. It does not count towards your squad points value for calculating victory or margin of victory, but it does count for final salvo.'

Essentially Endless Ranks: the upgrade.

It needn't even necessarily be Imperial Only. My first thought is TIE swarms (because it's a way to get swarms of more than 8 without ever needing to have 9 TIEs on the board at once), but there's no specific reason a Rebel Z-95 or even generic X-wing squad couldn't use it if costed appropriately.

If making this a card for generic TIE swarms, I'd say the following:

• 8 Academy Pilots leaves 4 points - so that gives us a point cost to work with
• 4 Rookie Pilots with Targeting astromechs and Integrated Astromech, or 4 Y-wings with Ion Cannon Turrets, leaves 8 points (respawning Twin Laser Turrets is not something I wish to consider!)
• Academy Pilots respawning academy pilots seems fine. Black Squadrons respawning Black Squadrons does not. Obsidians....eh, why not. It's not like anyone uses them normally. If we want to pick out the ships that don't normally 'make the grade', disallowing elite pilots makes sense - after all, elite pilots aren't expendable!
• We really don't want respawning ordnance!
• You need a mechanic to attach it to your squad, but also need the means to survive "that one ship" being destroyed.
• The Force Awakens scenario has a nicely balanced mechanic for picking where the ship comes back in; it shouldn't be 'touching your board edge' as that has the potential to be miles from the battlefield (harsh but okay) or reappearing such that you have an instant block/range 1 shot next turn (probably not okay)
• Defining 'the enemy player' in X-wing rules language is actually not easy; no upgrade card or pilot references "your opponent" - may need to stick with your board edge simply because you can't easily write a definition of 'the other player' outside of cinematic play!

Rulewise, I'd go with the suggestion above:

The first time you would be destroyed, instead cancel any remaining damage, discard all Damage cards, tokens and conditions, recover all shields and discard this upgrade card.

Remove the ship from the play area, then place the ship within range 1 of a board edge, beyond range 3 of any enemy ship. You may not become the active ship again this turn.

Restriction wise it's easy if we just restrict it to TIE fighters, because "TITLE. TIE Fighter Only. You may not equip other upgrades. You may not equip this to a unique pilot" covers most of the restrictions, but is using up a lot of rules text space on an already wordy card!

Alternatively.....approaching this the other way, we could always have " • Reinforcements" as a title or elite upgrade. That way you would go with "do not deploy this ship during the Place Forces step. The first time a friendly ship is destroyed, you must place this ship within range 1 of a board edge, beyond range 3 of any enemy ship. You may not become the active ship this turn."

And give the card a hefty negative cost. Or an even higher negative cost if " when you have only one remaining friendly ship in play, you must. .." is the trigger (I think that's probably too strict).

This way you can have a unique pilot turn up to save you - so (taking a Movie inspiration) ; you can fit a squad of:

• Biggs Darklighter, R4-D6, Integrated Astromech
• Luke Skywalker, Lone Wolf, R2-D2, Integrated Astromech
• Han Solo, Millenium Falcon, Reinforcements, Chewbacca, Engine Upgrade

That's a purely narrative idea; but you get the concept - Biggs goes down, Luke is on his own and at the last minute there's a "wahooo!" over the communications and one of your wingmen explodes....

15 hours ago, DaveRob said:

Escalation is my favourite format for the game but that gets played out over 4 separate rounds rather than just one start to finish seesawing match.

I totally misread the Escalation Rules. I always thought the ships left on the table at time limit remained in play for the next round.