More and more lately, I've been feeling that many of the problems with X-wing, especially long-term, are the result of the only way to win being to destroy your opponent's ships.

Many (if not most/all) other miniatures games have win conditions other than this - for example, Warmachine, Hordes, and Malifaux all let a player win by accumulating more scenario points than their opponent. In fact, with Malifaux in particular, it's the only way to win (of course, if you wipe your opponent off the board, you're free to scoop up all kinds of scenario points easily because there's no one to stop you).

It seems to me that not only would scenarios (in competitive play) bring more diversity in builds to the table, but it makes thematic sense also - not every encounter is "kill all of them", even in the media (films, books, comics, etc.).

Thoughts?

On 12/14/2017 at 6:42 PM, Brunas said:

We proudly present to the X-wing community a new alternative format for the game we all love:

X-wing Objectives

They are a fix, and they work really well.

Well, there are scores of threads around here that espouse the very same cure. In fact, there is a fan-made scenario pack as well.

The thing that I find ironic with XWM is that it is the only FFG game that seems to not incorporate that idea: Legion does, Armada does, and Imperial Assault has a "campaign play" idea built into it even if tournaments are skirmish only.

At this point, anything that broadens the game from 100/6 kill-them-all (or save your MoV) can only help diversity of play, allow niche ships to play to their strengths, and force a deeper level of thought to list building than kill/heal.

Scenarios won't FIX the game but it will make for an interesting alternative to the 100/6 Death Match we have now.

24 minutes ago, player2072913 said:

They are a fix, and they work really well.

I'm going to bring these scenarios to our next X-wing night and try them out. They look great!

have to take players' word for it, because I can't imagine a scenario that'll make an X-wing worth taking over Fenn/Ghost

some ships are so wildly better than others, even at the role the other ships are supposed to excel at (jousting), that objectives can't really balance things out perfectly even if they provide much needed gameplay variety

in Warmachine, objectives made the game because they were one of 3 victory conditions that armies/units could excel at. Even if you were playing a piddly gunline against a walking brick of a list that completely outclasses you in the objective and attrition department, your opponent could expose his warcaster/warlock whenever he was forced to split his list to contest the objective markers/areas leaving you the opportunity to win by killing that single model

27 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

The thing that I find ironic with XWM is that it is the only FFG game that seems to not incorporate that idea: Legion does, Armada does, and Imperial Assault has a "campaign play" idea built into it even if tournaments are skirmish only.

True. In fact, to clarify, the skirmish mode of Imperial Assault centers around objectives.

5 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

have to take players' word for it, because I can't imagine a scenario that'll make an X-wing worth taking over Fenn/Ghost

some ships are so wildly better than others, even at the role the other ships are supposed to excel at (jousting), that objectives can't really balance things out perfectly even if they provide much needed gameplay variety

in Warmachine, objectives made the game because they were one of 3 victory conditions that armies/units could excel at. Even if you were playing a piddly gunline against a walking brick of a list that completely outclasses you in the objective and attrition department, your opponent could expose his warcaster/warlock whenever he was forced to split his list to contest the objective markers/areas leaving you the opportunity to win by killing that single model

Well, the "Bounty" condition could be a thing. . .

The nice thing about objectives/scenarios is that they hide game balance issues since they typically require a list that can do more than one thing and/or have strengths outside of just efficiency on offense/defense.

I'm sure that's an assassination victory condition is great idea when positioning has absolutely no effect on whether or not a turret can target your lynchpin ship...

that'd only further enforce the dominance of currently dominant ships, which can basically do everything better whether it be firing at key targets, jousting, or surviving

53 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

have to take players' word for it, because I can't imagine a scenario that'll make an X-wing worth taking over Fenn/Ghost

some ships are so wildly better than others, even at the role the other ships are supposed to excel at (jousting), that objectives can't really balance things out perfectly even if they provide much needed gameplay variety

in Warmachine, objectives made the game because they were one of 3 victory conditions that armies/units could excel at. Even if you were playing a piddly gunline against a walking brick of a list that completely outclasses you in the objective and attrition department, your opponent could expose his warcaster/warlock whenever he was forced to split his list to contest the objective markers/areas leaving you the opportunity to win by killing that single model

I can think of several. Just borrowing from Armada:

Most Wanted - Select a ship of yours and your opponents. When attacking that ship, roll an extra attack die. If that ship is destroyed, it counts double for MOV.
So you wouldn't want to play with a single expensive ship, because that's what I'm going to mark as your most wanted, and then when I pour my attack dice into it, I get extra attack dice (go go swarms now getting 3 dice!) and just murder it. This would be a super duper counter to Fenn/Ghost.

Hyperspace Assault- When deploying ships, select one ship to place in hyperspace. After deploying all ships, place an objective token. At the start of any combat round, you may deploy your ship anywhere within Range 2 of the objective token and take a free action.
Now you get to perfectly place whatever ship you want and can pretty much one shot Fenn since he has no defense and you can put yourself in perfect position (Scum Fenn actually pops to mind).. So expensive fragile ships that rely on positioning to live may not be the best thing.

Advanced Gunnery - Select a ship of yours and your opponents. After these ships first attack each round, they may immediately make another attack. If they do, they may not attack again this round.
Yowzers this could hurt. But it could also be decent. You get to shoot twice, and you can either make the Ghost attack twice or Fenn attack twice. On the one hand, if you make it Fenn, he gets a lousy 2 dice attack. But if you make it the ghost, you shut down the TLT in the end phase. You could reword it somewhat if you want to affect the timing... Perhaps "at the end of the attack phase, if these ships have not made more than one attack, these ships may make a primary weapon attack. They cannot attack again this round."

Blockade Run - The game lasts 10 rounds. At the end of the 10th round, each player scores 10 MOV points for each ship within Range 2 of their opponents edge.
You wouldn't want to bring just 2 ships to this since you could only get a maximum of 20 points MOV. And likely you're going to forgo all of the objective MOV to try and kill your opponents ships that are trying to get to your area.

Opening Salvo - Add two extra dice to the first attack each ship makes.
Again, you really don't want to put all of your eggs in a single basket here, you'd want to spread out the extra dice against numerous ships.

Scrambler Beacons (Reworded from Targeting Beacons) - Each player takes turns adding 4 objective tokens to the playing field. When defending within Range 2 of a beacon, you may reroll up to 2 green dice.
Agility 0 doesn't like this. They're giving away a massive advantage to the enemy.

Fire Lanes - After playing obstacles, players alternate playing 4 objective tokens in play. At the end of each round, players count how many ships are within Range 2 of each token. The player with the most ships gets 5 point MOV for each token they control.
Sensing a theme here? You'll drastically lose out to the ship count, so your opponents will likely be getting 10-15 points of MOV each round. They could end up getting destroyed and still winning the game... That might have to be considered if we'd actually add objectives.

Jamming Barrier - Place obstacles as normal. Then the initiative player places two unique debris clouds. When the non-initiative player is attacking, if the LOS is traced through a debris cloud, reduce the attacking dice by half (rounded down). Do not treat the attack as obstructed (aka, don't add an additional green). When the initiative player is attacking, treat the attack as obstructed (but do not reduce dice).
Now the opponent can strategically hide behind these clouds, and TLTs roll only a single attack. Meanwhile, your opponent just gives you an extra die. Whoopty do.

Dangerous Territory - Use 12 obstacles. Initiative player sets up all 12, but cannot place them within Range 1 of any edge. In addition to the normal effects of the obstacle, when the non-initiative player hits an obstacle, he is dealt a face up damage card.
This is an interesting one that could potentially favor the Ghost. On the one hand, that many rocks will make flying a large ship difficult. But on the other hand, he has a lot of hull. On the third (hey, we're talking about a galaxy far away here) hand, the Ghost hates a ton of face up cards. And on the final hand, you could change the effect to be "discard an upgrade card" instead of "deal a face up damage card." Now it's absolutely brutal to these highly upgraded ships that need all of these synergies to get their Returns on Investment.

Solar Corona - The initiative player marks an edge to represent the Corona. When a ship is attacking, if its primary firing arc faces the corona, after rolling dice, he must discard a <hit> or <crit> result. Then he may modify the remaining dice.
Hey look, arcs matter now. It's a defensive buff that kinda shuts down Maul if you can't reliably hit with the TLT. And it doubly hurts TLT since it removes one positive result from each attack.

Superior Positions - Whenever the initiative player makes an attack on a ship that does not have primary arc on him, he gains 5 MOV.
Now you can't just run away since each shot taken on you will bleed 5 MOV. Plus if you're facing a ton of ships, you could lose a lot of MOV each turn if you're not jousting.

Are these all balanced? Heck no. But do they get the point across that there are tons of ways for the game to implement objectives that would mean that going with the best efficiency you can find isn't the only thing that matters? Of course. Here I would think the non-initiative player would choose one of the initiative players objectives, so Fenn/Ghost being at 100pts would always be at the mercy of choosing the other persons objective, giving them an advantage (because you're going to choose your objective choices based off of your list structure).

all those objectives were designed for Armada, where the ships are far less maneuverable than x-wing ships because of the nature of speed being harder to change, ships simply not turning as much, speed being uniform regardless of base size, and the size of the bases involved

Armada is also a game where arcs matter so much that getting into a powerful ship's suboptimal hull zone can ruin that ship's potential, especially since maneuvering is much more limited and requires a lot more planning. There's also the issue of defense tokens crumbling to sustained fire as they are spent and discarded, rewarding the player who can better bring all his guns to bear, as opposed to dice crapping out at random regardless of how many shots are thrown.

all the objectives listed are far more easily avoided when the ghost is FAR more sprightly than even the Armada cr-90, and also far more powerful in the relative context of its game.

In x-wing, there simply aren't as many context-sensitive scenarios that can elevate or reduce a ship's effectiveness relative to other ships on a table. For example, an imperial star destroyer can plow through two cr-90s a turn if it catches them in its optimal hullzone and range. Meanwhile, Cr-90s in an imperial star destroyer's side or rear arcs are nigh invincible at long range, durable at medium range, but still in danger when in close. Meanwhile, a VCX is effective at nearly every range and can easily maneuver itself out of bad positions. It can even simply outpace smaller, supposedly more nimble ships due to how much further large bases move, making it very easy to prevent your opponent from getting into the very specific positions in which they can comfortably engage you. It's also far easier to run around obstacles because, again, you're not terribly concerned with arcs when you have turrets.

Armada ships are far more specialized in function and ability than x-wing super turrets, which can exceed in nearly every situation even in jousting against ships that are supposed to be specialized in that role.

13 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

all those objectives were designed for Armada, where the ships are far less maneuverable than x-wing ships because of the nature of speed being harder to change, ships simply not turning as much, speed being uniform regardless of base size, and the size of the bases involved

Armada is also a game where arcs matter so much that getting into a powerful ship's suboptimal hull zone can ruin that ship's potential, especially since maneuvering is much more limited and requires a lot more planning. There's also the issue of defense tokens crumbling to sustained fire as they are spent and discarded, rewarding the player who can better bring all his guns to bear, as opposed to dice crapping out at random regardless of how many shots are thrown.

all the objectives listed are far more easily avoided when the ghost is FAR more sprightly than even the Armada cr-90, and also far more powerful in the relative context of its game.

In x-wing, there simply aren't as many context-sensitive scenarios that can elevate or reduce a ship's effectiveness relative to other ships on a table. For example, an imperial star destroyer can plow through two cr-90s a turn if it catches them in its optimal hullzone and range. Meanwhile, Cr-90s in an imperial star destroyer's side or rear arcs are nigh invincible at long range, durable at medium range, but still in danger when in close. Meanwhile, a VCX is effective at nearly every range and can easily maneuver itself out of bad positions. It can even simply outpace smaller, supposedly more nimble ships due to how much further large bases move, making it very easy to prevent your opponent from getting into the very specific positions in which they can comfortably engage you. It's also far easier to run around obstacles because, again, you're not terribly concerned with arcs when you have turrets.

Armada ships are far more specialized in function and ability than x-wing super turrets, which can exceed in nearly every situation even in jousting against ships that are supposed to be specialized in that role.

So basically... Armada is a different game, and therefore objectives won't work for X wing.

FGD, I expect a better response than that from you. Perhaps you just read the title of the Armada objective, and not how I proposed implementing it into X Wing? Yes, I'll go with that. And if you noticed, I didn't really include numerous position based objectives because they don't correlate very well to X Wing because the ships are that much more nimble.

Quote

In x-wing, there simply aren't as many context-sensitive scenarios that can elevate or reduce a ship's effectiveness relative to other ships on a table. For example, an imperial star destroyer can plow through two cr-90s a turn if it catches them in its optimal hullzone and range. Meanwhile, Cr-90s in an imperial star destroyer's side or rear arcs are nigh invincible at long range, durable at medium range, but still in danger when in close. Meanwhile, a VCX is effective at nearly every range and can easily maneuver itself out of bad positions. It can even simply outpace smaller, supposedly more nimble ships due to how much further large bases move, making it very easy to prevent your opponent from getting into the very specific positions in which they can comfortably engage you. It's also far easier to run around obstacles because, again, you're not terribly concerned with arcs when you have turrets.

If only some of the objectives I listed would affect these things... such as doubling the obstacles, making it very difficult for the Ghost to boost (even at PS11) out of poor positions. Or Hyperspace Assault that dropping you in at the Start of Combat, where you can blindside him if you so chose. Or solar Corona that means his arc DOES matter even if he has a turret. And as a player of the Ghost for years, I can assure you that when you're up against those Auto Thrusting, boost and barrel rolling Imperial Aces, you have very little chance of out maneuvering them such that they're in your perfect sweet space - range 2 in arc.

8 minutes ago, Khyros said:

So basically... Armada is a different game, and therefore objectives won't work for X wing.

missing the point entirely

X-wing has ships that are simply better in every conceivable way than most other ships, therefore objectives won't work

being a different game isn't a problem as you can design objectives around each individual game. Designing around ships that are strictly better than everyone else in just about every respect...well that's quite a bit more difficult

If the game were just swarmy TIEs against swift but stiff x7s or the excellent-at-lower-speed Vipers with their extra maneuverable barrel-rolls etc. the ability objectives have to force you into different strategies and tactics would matter more. Removing the importance of arcs sharply cuts down on the importance of positioning, which makes it more difficult for objectives to matter as anything other than a probable buff to turrets which already care far less about positioning than arc-locked ships

1 minute ago, ficklegreendice said:

missing the point entirely

X-wing has ships that are simply better in every conceivable way than most other ships, therefore objectives won't work

being a different game isn't a problem as you can design objectives around each individual game. Designing around ships that are strictly better than everyone else in just about every respect...well that's quite a bit more difficult

I did miss that point from your reply. But then I would point out though that several of the objectives are designed around having numerous ships. When you have 73+points tied up in a single ship, you can't benefit as much from "all ships benefit" style objectives. Those type of objectives highly favor having numerous ships, and if written correctly, can take a ship that's otherwise noncompetitive, and make them dominate. Take Opening Salvo for example.

Let's say that the Initiative player has Howl w/ Determination & Hull Upgrade, Black w/ DTF x2, and 4 Academy Pilots. Let's say he wins the toss and takes initiative, and because none of them are good, you hope to weather through Opening Salvo (or perhaps its because you don't get to choose objectives, and it is what it is). Now the good news is that you get to shoot your primary with 6 dice at HR. Let's just say that you have TL+F (even though Maulza won't be as effective). Your 6 dice result in 5.625 positive results - we'll round down to 5 since Maulza isn't as good as TL+F. But DTF will pull away a crit (assuming you used Ezra), so you'll only get 4 positive results, and the evade token will result in at most 3 damage. Howl should *barely* live through all except the perfect scenario opening salvo attack.

Now the Ghost has to survive 6 4 dice attacks with F+1reroll. Each attack is going to average 3.5 positive results, and when compared to your 1 agility, will do 3.1 damage, lets round down to 3. 6 of those are 18 damage, less one from your evade token. The ghost gets killed on the opening salvo. And that's not counting Howls attack, which adds 1.6 damage as well. Even if you manage to kill Howl, the 6 remaining TIEs will do 2.6 damage each, which means with Howl's attack, they're doing 17.2 total damage (less evade = 16.2)... Still dead.

The ghost is a great ship, that's why I've been flying it for going on 2 years now. But it is a huge point sink, and certain objectives can be created to exploit that fact. Obviously a Ghost player (if you got to choose) would never choose Opening Salvo against a swarm because it's just an awful trade off. But if the other objectives to choose from are Firing Lanes and Superior Positions, there may not be a good answer (though I still think either of those two would be preferable to Opening Salvo), since you'll be giving away MOV every turn.

I tried the scenario format in earnest exactly one time on vassal. The opponent flew quad jumpmasters with trick shot... I did not have fun.