I'm supporting our glorious Empire in my first Corellian Conflict Thursday and was wondering about how to approach the large-scale elements of the campaign. What planets have you found to be most useful? Is it best to take straightforward, high value targets like Corfai, Duro or Nubia early? Go for Spynet or Repair Yards? Declare a turn one show of force? Advice, insight or anecdotes are all much appreciated!

Show of force up to 500 is usually the best play and is usually the target of house rules(the best I've seen being you can only call one if you are behind on points or only on non-consecutive turns) . The campaign is kind of unbalanced, but fun. Don't go into it with a 400pt tourney mindset, remember that sometimes the wining move is not to play(speed 0 first turn then jump out immediately turn 3) and save your fleet. Diplomats are hilariously useless...

Repair Yards are widely considered to be hands down the best resource. Personally, I contend that they're only the best early-game, when everyone is points-starved, and lose out to spynet and skilled spacers late game.

And yes, definitely give preference to high-value planets. There is very little subtlety to picking planets in that respect in my experience, apart from the Rebels picking outposts and bases. Just pick the best ones with preference to the ones supporting your resource needs. I think the only real pitfall I've seen that may not be immediately obvious is not taking at least one Repair Yard early.

Also, give some thought to how your team's fleets will stack up against opposing archetypes. Remember that this is not a tournament, and question as many of your list building assumptions as you can. A lot of the operational game comes down to playing the metagame, anticipating and countering what your opponents are likely to have brought. If you expect an opponent to go heavy into bombers, it might be wise for one of your team to bring a full-on fighter list. If you have an opponent that's well known for going squadronless, 134 points of Rogues will punish that (happened to me in my first CC cause my opponents were smart and I was not).

Remember that you have some degree of control over your matchups (less applicable in the 2v2 you're in, but still worth bearing in mind), so you can at least minimize your exposure to hard counters even if an opponent brings it.

You also have a lot more freedom in your objective choices. Many of the objectives that don't see tourney play because of the possibility that you'll run into that one fleet that will punish you for it. Skilled Spacers can patch that over for you. Bring Fleet Ambush if you want--just make sure the same fleet that will take advantage of that won't also benefit from your other two objectives, so you can pick up a Skilled Spacers to swap it out if you're going to face Demolisher or Yavaris B-wings or whatever.

For similar reasons, a bad deployment curve can be patched by building your fleet with the assumption that your team is going to pick up a spynet for you. Just make sure your team is on board with the idea of your five VSD Konnie list that needs spynet to work.

At the tactical level, many people will bring up that sometimes you want to run and conserve points, even if it means taking a loss. And they're right to focus mostly on that because it's probably the most counterintuitive element to tournament players who are all about trading to get the win. However, also consider that there are times when it's advantageous to take an overall points disadvantage if it means getting that kill on a scarred Yavaris, Admonition, Avenger, Howlrunner, or whatever has been a thorn in your side. If your opponent is weakened for a round, it might make sense to make a suicide assassination run on Gallant Haven just to get it out of the game for good.

Good luck. I hope you guys are able to rectify Sean's weird B-wing fixation.

3 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

And yes, definitely give preference to high-value planets. There is very little subtlety to picking planets in that respect in my experience, apart from the Rebels picking outposts and bases. Just pick the best ones with preference to the ones supporting your resource needs. I think the only real pitfall I've seen that may not be immediately obvious is not taking at least one Repair Yard early.

Also, give some thought to how your team's fleets will stack up against opposing archetypes. Remember that this is not a tournament, and question as many of your list building assumptions as you can. A lot of the operational game comes down to playing the metagame, anticipating and countering what your opponents are likely to have brought. If you expect an opponent to go heavy into bombers, it might be wise for one of your team to bring a full-on fighter list. If you have an opponent that's well known for going squadronless, 134 points of Rogues will punish that (happened to me in my first CC cause my opponents were smart and I was not).

Remember that you have some degree of control over your matchups (less applicable in the 2v2 you're in, but still worth bearing in mind), so you can at least minimize your exposure to hard counters even if an opponent brings it.

You also have a lot more freedom in your objective choices. Many of the objectives that don't see tourney play because of the possibility that you'll run into that one fleet that will punish you for it. Skilled Spacers can patch that over for you. Bring Fleet Ambush if you want--just make sure the same fleet that will take advantage of that won't also benefit from your other two objectives, so you can pick up a Skilled Spacers to swap it out if you're going to face Demolisher or Yavaris B-wings or whatever.

For similar reasons, a bad deployment curve can be patched by building your fleet with the assumption that your team is going to pick up a spynet for you. Just make sure your team is on board with the idea of your five VSD Konnie list that needs spynet to work.

At the tactical level, many people will bring up that sometimes you want to run and conserve points, even if it means taking a loss. And they're right to focus mostly on that because it's probably the most counterintuitive element to tournament players who are all about trading to get the win. However, also consider that there are times when it's advantageous to take an overall points disadvantage if it means getting that kill on a scarred Yavaris, Admonition, Avenger, Howlrunner, or whatever has been a thorn in your side. If your opponent is weakened for a round, it might make sense to make a suicide assassination run on Gallant Haven just to get it out of the game for good.

Good luck. I hope you guys are able to rectify Sean's weird B-wing fixation.

B-wing fixations are perfectly healthy things to have.

7 minutes ago, geek19 said:

B-wing fixations are perfectly healthy things to have.

The graves of thousands of Imperial officers and men, and the hulks of Star Destroyers too numerous to count beg to differ.

11 minutes ago, GiledPallaeon said:

The graves of thousands of Imperial officers and men, and the hulks of Star Destroyers too numerous to count beg to differ.

Don't forget the resources spent on the TIEs Ten Numb exploded!

The empire can lock down alot of repair yards and that's the best Strategy. Play ruthless and cripple the enemy fleet while repairing your own. Then Snowball and go with big 500p lists vs barely 400p rebell ones. Worked in our campaign and rebels gave up round 3.

I did not have fun but they had a great tactic

2 minutes ago, jocke01 said:

I did not have fun but they had a great tactic

seems

16 minutes ago, jocke01 said:

The empire can lock down alot of repair yards and that's the best Strategy. Play ruthless and cripple the enemy fleet while repairing your own. Then Snowball and go with big 500p lists vs barely 400p rebell ones. Worked in our campaign and rebels gave up round 3.

I did not have fun but they had a great tactic

Sounds like our campaigns, but rebels won. I dislike snow anyway. Balls or not.

If a team starts with 4 repair yards, it's already a huge advantage. We had one start with 5 I think. They should put a suggested start setup in the booklet.

Suggest one! We also start a campaign this month.

http://www.steelstrategy.com/search/label/Corellian Conflict?m=1

There was one in an old thread, using the faq rules for picking planets. Basically go for repair yards first, that ends up with both teams having 3. Then for high ressource planets and mayve one spynet (low ressource) or one skilled spacer if you need (e..g. you have superior positions against 3 bomber fleets). No diplomats.

Work out a set up based on that, I dont have the bookket now.

This keeps beginners from losing out on repair yards. You can still win big without repair yards, it's mostly player experience that makes the difference.

If I played again I would change the scarred mechanic so that a scarred ship that is destroyed is not out. Rather make it double scarred, loses a second defense token and has to deploy first and spynets cant be used on it. Something punishing but still keep it in the game. Or minus one to squadron engineering and plus one command value?

Double scarred squadrons deploy last and lose 1 veteran reroll and only get it back when repaired.

Repair is 7t% cost for double scarred or 50% as before, maybe.

I think this would keep people playing.

Also round 1 if someone doesnt get a veteran by normal rules, make the highest damage dealer veteran.

Mind you this is not tested, just some ideas to keep people motivated instead of quitting in round 2.

In the 3 v3 CC's I have played in each side's designated "attacker," fleet ends up matched up against the enemies designated "defender," fleet almost every round. As a result the same people kept playing each other every round, or at least every other round.

Turns out that who every wins that initial engagement can typically continue to beat that same fleet over and over again... results in a very predictable and demoralizing cycle.

In response to this, we expanded the CC to a 4 v 4 game and added in the appropriate bases for each side. We found that this was a lot better since each team had typically 2 attack and 2 defense fleets. The match ups were much more varied and Grand Admirals could actually substitute out defender fleets to keep players from getting pummeled by the same opponent round after round.

But thats easy to solve ... simply make the fleet announcement a.k.a. who is attacking where secretly!

The problem with CC is that there's almost only 1 issue all the game is centered around. It's Fleet/Repair Points.
The players, that win the first round will get more points, what makes it easier to win next round and get more points, what makes it easier to win the round after that, what ...

If you want to play a campaign that won't snowball very soon, you either need very balanced teams or you should think about some adjusted mechanisms. I would suggest:

- First round no attacks against occupied systems. You are only allowed to declare attacks against neutral systems.

- A team is only allowed to declare a special attack, when the total of fleet points is at least 50 pts. lower than the total of the other team.

- You are allowed to trade 1 Campaign Point for 100 Fleet Points, but only if your team's total of fleet points is at least 100 pts. less than the total of the other team.

- Allow to trade units between the fleets (but only when points are even) to make a fleet work.

- Allow to retire a Commander without retiring the whole fleet.

The idea should be to win through gaining campaign points, but not through frustrating the opponing team.

1 minute ago, Triangular said:

The problem with CC is that there's almost only 1 issue all the game is centered around. It's Fleet/Repair Points.
The players, that win the first round will get more points, what makes it easier to win next round and get more points, what makes it easier to win the round after that, what ...

I disagree with that.

I think that that can certainly be the result of an imbalanced 1st round, but I imagine that that imbalanced 1st round is due to what tends to really be the issue. The bigger issue is the imbalance of player quality and the inability of the struggling team to correct for that with strategic matchup choices.

The grand admirals need to figure out who on their teams are the strongest and weakest players, in comparison to those of the other team. Then they need to us that information to use the matchup rules to give the middle player the best matchup, and not waste their strongest player on the opposing team's weakest player. (This assumes a 3v3.)

I think you only really get snowballs if there is a big imbalance of player quality, of which the points snowball is an indicator; not a cause.

1 minute ago, Mikael Hasselstein said:

I disagree with that.

I think that that can certainly be the result of an imbalanced 1st round, but I imagine that that imbalanced 1st round is due to what tends to really be the issue. The bigger issue is the imbalance of player quality and the inability of the struggling team to correct for that with strategic matchup choices.

The grand admirals need to figure out who on their teams are the strongest and weakest players, in comparison to those of the other team. Then they need to us that information to use the matchup rules to give the middle player the best matchup, and not waste their strongest player on the opposing team's weakest player. (This assumes a 3v3.)

I think you only really get snowballs if there is a big imbalance of player quality, of which the points snowball is an indicator; not a cause.

And I disagree with that.

I played and won a first CC (2nd round) and thought: "Yes, that was so fast because my team was performing so well!"

Than the winning team played a second CC, which I lost (2nd round) and I thought: "That was only due to imbalanced game mechanic."

So truth depends on which side of the table you've been! And it's really frustrating to see the game mechanic working against you!

You could consider playing through a prologue...

CC is a great start for a campaign system. But it's a first draft.

Problem is that they are trying to thread the needle between having it be dynamic and interesting while also being simple enough that everyone can play it.

Complexity is the price to pay for a campaign that avoids snowballing, compensates for player disparity, and still gives meaning to victory in battle.

The biggest issue I've seen is folks playing far too recklessly early and falling way behind. The game won't be decided in the first round typically, so dont throw ships into dangerous situations where the payoff might be small. It's a battle of attrition.

We also had a small house rule of trying to swap up opponents each match as much as possible. Just to keep it fresh.

3 hours ago, Triangular said:

And I disagree with that.

I played and won a first CC (2nd round) and thought: "Yes, that was so fast because my team was performing so well!"

Than the winning team played a second CC, which I lost (2nd round) and I thought: "That was only due to imbalanced game mechanic."

So truth depends on which side of the table you've been! And it's really frustrating to see the game mechanic working against you!

It sounds like you're going this route:

But I'm not going to embrace the relativist ravings of a desert terrorist who lures impressionable young farm boys into attacking Imperial installations. I've also been on both the losing and winning side, but my analysis remains the same.

Of course it's harder to do battle when you're low on points. But there's an antecedent reason why teams are low on points. However, low on resource/refit points tends to correlate with being low on campaign points. Being low on campaign points means that you have an advantage in determining the matchups.

The Corellian Conflict (rightly) puts the center of gravity for strategy/tactics on the individual games of Armada, but there are still some strategically-relevant decisions that get made at the operational level.

How can a campaign end round two? Barring surrender, you’d have to kill a base every single battle to hit twelve points, right? Did everyone retire their fleets?

5 minutes ago, The Jabbawookie said:

How can a campaign end round two? Barring surrender, you’d have to kill a base every single battle to hit twelve points, right?

Sounds a lot like a surrender to me. Which, if you have one side so thoroughly trashing the other on round one, sounds very much like they ignored the very first piece of advice that's always given to people organizing a CC:

14 hours ago, Ardaedhel said:

And yes, definitely give preference to high-value planets. There is very little subtlety to picking planets in that respect in my experience, apart from the Rebels picking outposts and bases. Just pick the best ones with preference to the ones supporting your resource needs. I think the only real pitfall I've seen that may not be immediately obvious is not taking at least one Repair Yard early.

Also, give some thought to how your team's fleets will stack up against opposing archetypes. Remember that this is not a tournament, and question as many of your list building assumptions as you can. A lot of the operational game comes down to playing the metagame, anticipating and countering what your opponents are likely to have brought. If you expect an opponent to go heavy into bombers, it might be wise for one of your team to bring a full-on fighter list. If you have an opponent that's well known for going squadronless, 134 points of Rogues will punish that (happened to me in my first CC cause my opponents were smart and I was not).

Remember that you have some degree of control over your matchups (less applicable in the 2v2 you're in, but still worth bearing in mind), so you can at least minimize your exposure to hard counters even if an opponent brings it.

You also have a lot more freedom in your objective choices. Many of the objectives that don't see tourney play because of the possibility that you'll run into that one fleet that will punish you for it. Skilled Spacers can patch that over for you. Bring Fleet Ambush if you want--just make sure the same fleet that will take advantage of that won't also benefit from your other two objectives, so you can pick up a Skilled Spacers to swap it out if you're going to face Demolisher or Yavaris B-wings or whatever.

For similar reasons, a bad deployment curve can be patched by building your fleet with the assumption that your team is going to pick up a spynet for you. Just make sure your team is on board with the idea of your five VSD Konnie list that needs spynet to work.

At the tactical level, many people will bring up that sometimes you want to run and conserve points, even if it means taking a loss. And they're right to focus mostly on that because it's probably the most counterintuitive element to tournament players who are all about trading to get the win. However, also consider that there are times when it's advantageous to take an overall points disadvantage if it means getting that kill on a scarred Yavaris, Admonition, Avenger, Howlrunner, or whatever has been a thorn in your side. If your opponent is weakened for a round, it might make sense to make a suicide assassination run on Gallant Haven just to get it out of the game for good.

Good luck. I hope you guys are able to rectify Sean's weird B-wing fixation.

To B-wing or not to B-wing, that is the question. I haven’t actually decided on my list yet, so we’ll all find out tomorrow.