Love this new format and a another good point that you can have some fun with only a core set.

For a new player perspective you have a fun mode to test your ship and play quickly without needed to spend more (for now)

Of course it's sad to don't see any scenario just like the old core set but I fine with that to play quickly with friend or teach news players with this mode !

26 minutes ago, Arkanta974 said:

Of course it's sad to don't see any scenario just like the old core set but I fine with that to play quickly with friend or teach news players with this mode !

? Gutted if the cinematic play stuff is being set aside. I guess most of the old missions will work....although, to be fair, it's been a long time since they released a new mission.

18 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

? Gutted if the cinematic play stuff is being set aside. I guess most of the old missions will work....although, to be fair, it's been a long time since they released a new mission.

May be a campaign box a la The Corellian Conflict campaign is a possibility for the futur ?

The missions were really poorly balanced in a lot of cases. I'm hopeful that they bring back some more missions for organized play (and it sounds like they are doing that for gencon)

I think Alex Davy could have won, provided he would have remembered R2D2 on Luke, there were a few turns where, after maneuvering, it was clear he wouldn't have a shot, and could have regenerated a shield

Not including an objective system in to second edition, IMHO, is the one real failure. But I kinda understand why, I think. I don't believe it was for lack of trying on their part, I'd love to see what scraps and discarded ideas are on their design walls for such a system. But I think, after all the failed scenarios they put in the old game, and all the attempts of the fan base(including the few that saw limited success like Heros of the Arturi Cluster), a few of my own and some of my fellow locals, I am at the conclusion that the core system of the game is just contrary to the injection of that kind of mechanism after the fact. Most games that have an objective system are designed with and around it from the ground up. Since X-wing was designed as a fast action game without that kind of system it has a few extreme hurdles to using one. Pace of play, play space size, and even the maneuvering and arc system make it difficult each individually, and combined exponentially more so.

Games play fast, there's not alot of time to engage with an objective when you can lose a unit in a round, if not in an attack. This is a good thing for X-wing to me though. That deadly fight is made real by that severity of consequence. But this precludes the option for many tools that an objective system would use like "stay near object x for time duration y" That specific one would be made even harder by the must-move mechanic. And again even more by the limited angles most ships can shoot from, since it also dictates your facing many times, which will of course get you cornered and killed.

"Eliminate game object X" objectives also don't work since without adding a ton of mechanics there's not much you can do to stop someone from attacking something, nor should there be. I feel like this is pretty evident in X-wing thanks to the data we have on original Biggs. And again, since you have to face your target, if you decide it's going to be a token marker on the board itself, you telegraph and likely get killed in the process of trying to bead on to the target as obviously it's not going to move and at some point you have to turn onto it. Then there's the issue of combat mechanics involving the token, and that can also prove challenging to balance.

Not that they're aren't options. I just believe they require some seriously out of the box thinking. For instance upgrades that score points. "Sensor Relay, Action: you may discard all your target locks, gain 3 points for each discarded." This would be similar to the Armada Objective "Close range Intel Scan". Or if the goal is to vary the play experience only, you could have a kind of "Squad Tactic" in place of "Objective", and sort of hitch a ride on the theme your trying to accomplish. For instance "Lolth Wolf Pack, Tactic, for each ship that has the target you are attacking in their firing arc, you may rerolls an attack die."(Sorry, couldn't help myself) or "Focused Bombing Run, tactic, if a ship suffers damage from two bombs in one round, if it is not stressed, it receives one stress token. If it's a huge ship, it suffers an additional damage instead." Using something like this tactic system would give you a theme element, make it clear what a squads combat objective is, and still use the core game mechanics of kill-em-all.

As it stands though, I'm hoping the formatting option that TOs will have for their events through the app may stand in the peace of an objective system, by giving the player a building challenge and meta objective.

These hyperspace markers are so thematic it makes my heart skip a beat!

I'm excited... not only for this new Escalation format, but for special tournaments and what ever Epic* will become.

*I like the way FGG left the air-lock open for "big play" in the new Rulebook: "When playing on a 3’x3’ play area, play at a squad-point limit of 200"

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say "Koiogran turn" out loud before.

1 hour ago, ForceSensitive said:

Not that they're aren't options. I just believe they require some seriously out of the box thinking. For instance upgrades that score points. "Sensor Relay, Action: you may discard all your target locks, gain 3 points for each discarded." This would be similar to the Armada Objective "Close range Intel Scan". Or if the goal is to vary the play experience only, you could have a kind of "Squad Tactic" in place of "Objective", and sort of hitch a ride on the theme your trying to accomplish. For instance "Lolth Wolf Pack, Tactic, for each ship that has the target you are attacking in their firing arc, you may rerolls an attack die."(Sorry, couldn't help myself) or "Focused Bombing Run, tactic, if a ship suffers damage from two bombs in one round, if it is not stressed, it receives one stress token. If it's a huge ship, it suffers an additional damage instead." Using something like this tactic system would give you a theme element, make it clear what a squads combat objective is, and still use the core game mechanics of kill-em-all.

I definitely like the idea of "quests" that earn you points but as you said, it would be hard to construct them in a way that the points weren't just gimmes or unbalanced. I think you'd have to make them random draw and cap the value at a low level.