There seems to be a bunch of these in here but here is my own.
I'm finally getting a chance to start my first campaign on Friday! The first thing I've noticed as the hardest? Scheduling. I've had to re-schedule things three times now for my first campaign night, mostly things beyond my control. But excited to start for sure!
Scheduling can be a huge pain. You pretty much have to align the stars to get 5 people to all show up at the same time.
I've found that with big groups like this, the best thing to do is to set a routine. We did Sunday nights for a while, and eventually switched to Saturday nights in my most recently finished campaign.
And definitely, this is going to sauce some bye weeks where someone might not be able to make it (like if they're out of town, for instance).
I wouldn't sweat it too much. I've had campaigns full range from 2 weeks long to 6 months long. There's no reason to rush, and I think that if you were to have a player skip a day (by having someone else take over their character temporarily) they'll feel like they missed something.
I'm going to ask the group about that as my wife has volunteered to step in if someone can't make it. She just didn't want to do it for launch for obvious reasons. She enjoys the mechanics of the game, but not the long drawn out campaign aspect of it. So she doesn't mind stepping for a mission or two. Now I have to go get sleeves tomorrow
I'm still playing my first campaign... I think we started sometime around January 2016
I've started and finished three others since then with a friend (and a bunch on my own) but that one's still going with a mission about once a quarter.
Scheduling can be a pain. One thing to be careful of, never let too much time pass between games. If you're meeting less than once a month, players will forget how to play the game.
7 hours ago, subtrendy2 said:Scheduling can be a huge pain. You pretty much have to align the stars to get 5 people to all show up at the same time.
I've found that with big groups like this, the best thing to do is to set a routine. We did Sunday nights for a while, and eventually switched to Saturday nights in my most recently finished campaign.
And definitely, this is going to sauce some bye weeks where someone might not be able to make it (like if they're out of town, for instance).
I wouldn't sweat it too much. I've had campaigns full range from 2 weeks long to 6 months long. There's no reason to rush, and I think that if you were to have a player skip a day (by having someone else take over their character temporarily) they'll feel like they missed something.
With my group of friends, even meeting a regular once a month is difficult. On average it takes us 14 months to finish a campaign.
We are the same, we are playing on average every other month. It took about 18 months to finish core and we are almost a year into Hoth.
Wow, I feel pretty privileged, then. It took us from late October last year to just last Friday night to finish Jabba's Realm. There were a lot of really long breaks though (due to the holidays), and the last five weeks in a row we ended up playing a mission.
We brought in a sixth person for my campaign so there is always an extra to take over a hero if someone can't make it or has to cancel. They pretty much make group decisions anyway when it comes to character actions and development, so no one feels like they are missing out on much if they can't make a game, or if they are sharing a hero. It's allowed us to get together every 2 weeks on average.
I'm super privileged: most of our campaigns take at most 2 months. when doing IA we can usually get in 3 missions on a weekend day every week.
1 minute ago, MadFuhrer said:I'm super privileged: most of our campaigns take at most 2 months. when doing IA we can usually get in 3 missions on a weekend day every week.
Oh man, that would never work for us.
When it was just my wife and I playing during our first campaign, we could finish almost any mission in under an hour.
Now, our group almost never finishes in under 3, sometimes taking as long as 5 hours. Three missions in a day would be brutal.
We've done two in a row before, and even that is an ordeal.
So it went very well. We played 3 missions last night. The rebels went 1-2. I have just the core set with a few villain and ally packs.
Rebels are Diala, Gaarkhan, Jyn and Mak. They've used them quite effectively as well. I'm using the military might class.
As expected in Aftermath they focused too much on clearing the enemy and didn't leave enough time to destroy all the terminal. They had 3 of the 4 gone, but realized during the last activation they couldn't actually roll enough damage to destroy the last terminal. (I used the option to increase the health of terminals since most of them were inside by the end of the round of the door opening)
The first side mission was Temptation, to get Diala her lightsaber. Again they came very close, they Vader down to one health but Diala was already wounded and very low on health so she ran and they protected her, however she didn't quite move far enough, Vader was able to get to her, she didn't die then, but when the round ended Diala was down to two tokens, so she lost one, passed her test to keep the other, but had the choice to lose or reclai a token, clearly she had to choose retain which allowed Vader to attack and finish her off.
In Under Siege they won, although again it was close, but only because they sacrificed tokens, and because I made some poor choices. I blew up the wrong door on round 3, and deployed the AT-ST to wrong spot. If I had made different decisions on those ones it could have gone very differently.
They've chosen to do Means of Production as the next Side Mission rather then let me have the "Imperial Industry" reward for free.
Either way we had a lot of fun and everyone enjoyed it
Edited by LoosieOn 15/03/2018 at 11:54 AM, subtrendy2 said:Now, our group almost never finishes in under 3, sometimes taking as long as 5 hours. Three missions in a day would be brutal
This is us! The better we've gotten at the game, the longer each turn takes. ?
On 3/17/2018 at 9:45 AM, TeethAlmighty said:This is us! The better we've gotten at the game, the longer each turn takes. ?
Yeah, I do think there's a lot of overthinking going on, though.
Sometimes, I think it's better to go with your gut instinct. No joke, sometimes it takes my heroes 10-15 minutes just to deploy at the start of the mission.
21 minutes ago, subtrendy2 said:No joke, sometimes it takes my heroes 10-15 minutes just to deploy at the start of the mission.
Aaaaaaaand that's how you ruin game night... Seriously, you guys need a timer. I feel for you, man.
Edited by angelman21 minute ago, angelman2 said:Aaaaaaaand that's how you ruin game night... Seriously, you guys need a timer. I feel for you, man.
Yeah, I try not to be too much of a rush for them, but the AP is getting pretty bad.
And I don't want to complain too much, because I love that they're this invested in the game, but I think it would be really interesting to compare the time I spend per action vs them, especially considering that I generally have significantly more actions.
We started a D&D campaign between Jabba's Realm and HotE, and I've read that one thing that's important in D&D is to always think about what you're going to do next. I think that's a skill we need to work on with IA, because it seems like those thoughts don't even start until it's the heroes' turn. And I get board state can change significantly in a single activation, but I'd say it's better to keep a fluid and flexible plan than to have no plan at all.
And again, not meaning to complain about my players, but this is pretty important stuff to consider for a brand new campaign group, @Loosie
We've agreed to meet Monday nights (when we can) one of the guys works a night shift so he needs to leave by 11:00, Gives us an internal timer. I figure we'll likely play one mission a night.
These guys are all experienced gamers and most of them think a few moves ahead so there is very little waiting after a round. They just sit there wondering what bad stuff I'm going to throw at them.
Our group meets up when we can, which for five adults with families is not as often as any of us would like... maybe every 1-3 months, with each session getting us through 2-4 missions, usually 3. We smashed through the whole of Bespin in one (long) night, but Jabba's Realm took best part of a year. Looks like HotE will be two sessions, maybe three.
15 minutes just to decide Hero deployment is ludicrous. Between missions, I'll usually set up the board while the guys take a break, then I explain the mission and go for a quick comfort break of my own; the guys will come up with a plan and deploy while I'm out of the room and are ready to start by the time I get back. 5 minutes tops. It does occasionally get to the point where they're taking ages discussing what they're going to do next, especially at critical moments in a mission, that's the nature of the beast - but a gentle "guys, I'm going to have to ask you to make a decision" reminder is all that's needed. It's not about rushing the players, it's about keeping the game flowing - it's more fun for everyone when things are happening than when everyone's staring at an unchanging board for twenty minutes at a time.
2 hours ago, Bitterman said:Our group meets up when we can, which for five adults with families is not as often as any of us would like... maybe every 1-3 months, with each session getting us through 2-4 missions, usually 3. We smashed through the whole of Bespin in one (long) night, but Jabba's Realm took best part of a year. Looks like HotE will be two sessions, maybe three.
15 minutes just to decide Hero deployment is ludicrous. Between missions, I'll usually set up the board while the guys take a break, then I explain the mission and go for a quick comfort break of my own; the guys will come up with a plan and deploy while I'm out of the room and are ready to start by the time I get back. 5 minutes tops. It does occasionally get to the point where they're taking ages discussing what they're going to do next, especially at critical moments in a mission, that's the nature of the beast - but a gentle "guys, I'm going to have to ask you to make a decision" reminder is all that's needed. It's not about rushing the players, it's about keeping the game flowing - it's more fun for everyone when things are happening than when everyone's staring at an unchanging board for twenty minutes at a time.
Yeah, I used to set up the board between missions, but now it's become impractical to hold a session that includes multiple missions.
I like the idea of leaving (and making a drink for myself?) while the heroes discuss their strategy. Maybe if they could air everything out in the open, they could more quickly formulate a plan.
On 3/19/2018 at 11:33 AM, subtrendy2 said:No joke, sometimes it takes my heroes 10-15 minutes just to deploy at the start of the mission.
Say to them that the threat counter increases by 1 for every block of 5 minutes elapsed during a hero activation
54 minutes ago, IanSolo_FFG said:Say to them that the threat counter increases by 1 for every block of 5 minutes elapsed during a hero activation
That might work.
Though they might go on some diatribe of risk v reward, too, and make this whole plan backfire
57 minutes ago, subtrendy2 said:That might work.
Though they might go on some diatribe of risk v reward, too, and make this whole plan backfire
Say it is the will of the Force. They can't argue against that
So the campaign is going well, and fast. We've decided to meet on Mondays and have had two more sessions since our opening session, playing two maps each.
They have stopped both my agenda missions (Means of Production and Infection). They've caught on with the you have 'X' rounds to do 'Y' you can't sit around and clear the board.
They also successfully earned Chewbacca. I also realized I was playing slightly wrong, in that I was not return deployment cards to my hand when they were defeated....oops. The group does work very well together in determining who should go first and where to attack/move. We are also a very streaky rolling group. There have been many epic 'massive damage roll!' 'white die rolls a cancel' moments.
We are taking a bit of a break as a combination of us aren't available for the next few weeks, but we are probably 2-3 weeks from finishing the campaign at the rate we are going.
On 4/4/2018 at 5:07 PM, Loosie said:So the campaign is going well, and fast. We've decided to meet on Mondays and have had two more sessions since our opening session, playing two maps each.
They have stopped both my agenda missions (Means of Production and Infection). They've caught on with the you have 'X' rounds to do 'Y' you can't sit around and clear the board.
They also successfully earned Chewbacca. I also realized I was playing slightly wrong, in that I was not return deployment cards to my hand when they were defeated....oops. The group does work very well together in determining who should go first and where to attack/move. We are also a very streaky rolling group. There have been many epic 'massive damage roll!' 'white die rolls a cancel' moments.
We are taking a bit of a break as a combination of us aren't available for the next few weeks, but we are probably 2-3 weeks from finishing the campaign at the rate we are going.
That's excellent to hear that it's going well! We're planning on starting our second campaign real soon, hopefully in the next two weeks, and we're really excited to jump back into it! As has been stated by many others, I think scheduling is the single-most limiting factor to the campaign portion for Imperial Assault, but I think that is also true for any game that takes multiple play sessions.
Don't sweat too much about making mistakes during the campaign. I think mistakes are part and parcel with this particular game, as there are so many different rules and variations to keep track of. During our first campaign, I made the boneheaded oversight in not having all my units in a deployment move during an activation (I thought that Rebel/Imperial alternate between figures). It was only until half-way through the campaign I had realized that I had made a grievous error, and that point it was too late to change anything about it (the Rebels were also so far ahead that I never got back to parity with them). Long story short, as long as you recognize the mistakes and own up to them, the lesson is learned and play should just proceed forward (your mileage, of course, will vary on the group that you are playing with).
That's awesome that your campaign is going so well! When we started ours it took us almost a year, due to competing commitments and schedules. I hope your experience entices you to play more campaigns and explore the game further; there is so much depth to this game that you could potentially play it forever and never get too bored.