Just like the tile said, I just finished my first campaign as the Imperial Player (I'veplayed both campaign as rebel and Skirmish). It took about 10 months (busy adults are busy) but we made it through. Everyone had fun and we're starting campaign #2 on 10.01.18
The particulars:
1) I decided to run this as -slightly- more cooperative. I'm not overly cruel. I don't play subversive tactics. I will give advice to the players about their best course of action, if I see it. In return they trust me and they have noted when I forgot an activation or missed something else. We're all friends and I want to take the adversarial nature of the game down a notch to increase the fun. So far that has worked. This will serve us down the road because I'm going to make sure that snowballs don't happen in older campaigns where those were more of a possibility. I'm also trying to keep my open groups thematic.
2) We started with HOTE and went 4-4 (Imperial Victory) Rebels only got 2 Bonus*, I only got 1. I played Armored Onslaught (it was super effective) and the Rebels played Diala, Drokatta, Verena and Murne. Last mission was Realm of the Dark Side. They almost made it but I just had them overwhelmed in the last half. I also had been saving an agenda card, ISB Training. Throwing out an Elite Stormtrooper Unit that can double fire was pretty brutal. I'm also trying to make my open groups thematic. I didn't bring any mercs to the Jedi Temple.
3) So I have a full IA set and I don't want to see the same side missions come up every game. That's boring. I also note that if a red mission comes up when drawn it's always going to get picked and no one wants to get outvoted on their special mission. So I've instituted the following changes:
a) allies and adversaries earned persist through campaigns. Going into campaign two the Rebels have Ashoka and Regular Saboteurs available. The Empire has the Grand inquisitor.
b) When side missions are drawn, the deck is made up of grey and green cards. They do one of those as normal. Then they do a red mission. However on the red mission they can only earn the special character reward. No one gets any XP, influence or money and there's no upgrade phase.
c) Upgraded characters persist through campaigns (by upgraded I mean only that they get to keep their red card personal mission reward, they still reset to 0 XP and no credit or XP purchased equipment). This is to keep from running the same side missions over and over again. And I because this is less adversarial I don't anticipate that they will continually run the same characters, especially when they have 21 to choose from. Diala, Drokatta and Verena all got upgraded last campaign (I instituted the red mission rule in the latter half of the campaign). Last night they chose Diala, Vinto, Onar and Jarrod for the new campaign. Yeah, they're starting with a lightsaber, but I can tweak my response to that as needed. We'll see how it all works out. With the group dynamic at play here, I'm optimistic.
d) Gideon and MHD are not permitted to be in the same group.
e) This one hasn't come up yet, but I want to try it and see how it goes. So for Allies and Adversaries that have received "fix" cards I want to incorporate those. The caveat is that they can only be used when the character in question is deployed as an open group. So, if the mission says I'm bringing Vader, and I've earned him then I can't throw Controlled by Hatred on him. But if I earn him and bring him on my own then I can.
So, for act two I'm making a custom campaign. I'm calling it the Tatooine Tangle. It starts with @Tvboy 's Edge of Oblivion. There's a side mission after Deadly Transmission and two more after the Act 1 (EoO) Finale. If they lost EoO I might also throw in the Captured forced mission before they proceed.
I know there's a fair amount of house ruling, but I'm really trying to run this as close as I can to an interactive story rather than a strictly adversarial board game. If I wanted to do that my friends and I have whole shelves of options to play that way.
Edited by Zrob314