In sight of the future release of Cyphers and Mask I was a bit curious about your adventures with spies, saboteurs, intelligence and counterintelligence and suggestions about GMing the matter at hand as a new Master on Age of Rebellion (even ifI already made a small campaign of Edge of the Empire of 6 or 7 sessions).

Although I've already made many campaign in AoR as a player, I was curious about in the future try a new one as a Master this time: how do you structure (or would do structure) your campaign in order to achieve the spy theme, with double-crossings, information-gathering, infiltration in an enemy base, and so on?

Now that the big question is asked, time to light up the mood! What were your moments (as a GM, but even as players) that you thought that everything was doomed for the party (or only a single character) and then the cards are reversed and the enemy or obstacle that the party is facing is going down?

The first case it comes to my mind is only for a character of mine, a bothan spy infiltrator with two vibroknives bound to my boots and a force pike that I left away for my encounter.

We were a rebel special commando team with a lot of experience behind our backs, for our standards. Our actual mission was to penetrate into the enemy base/TIE hangar in order to help the other rebel forces to free the planet for the grip of the Empire.

Needless to say that our plan didn't resist the contact with the enemy and the left arm of my bothan had been broken by an imperial officer in close combat. Obviously we triumphed and the imperial base was under rebel control.

Then I saw him. A rebel soldier, or I should say an imperial spy in disguise, that was erasing all the data of the base from a node.

I was alone, armed only with one of my trusted knives, but so was he: during that encounter I had something like 7 wounds (and 6-7 strains) and I would have gone down.

I used all the useful combat talents of the Infiltrator in order to win, both the defensive ones and the offensive ones.

At the end I was left with 2 wounds and only 1 strain. That bothan never felt so alive than in that moment.

(PS: For those who were wondering, the imperial spy did managed to erase everything from that terminal)

Most infiltration scenarios I run tend to peak in a "they on to us" moment, usually with a Big Bad taking the stage, upstaging the characters, and chasing them out. There were also some space mass combats like that, where you have to defend one side while the other is breached...