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.

1 hour ago, Zrob314 said:

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.

Exactly how I approach the campaign mode with my group of rebel players (friends). I had a bit more experience when we started and I was constantly helping them on their best options (some sort of Agent Kallus I would say ). It was not about who win and who loose. If we all had fun then everyone win in my opinion.

1 hour ago, Zrob314 said:

I'm also trying to make my open groups thematic.

Again, we're on the same page! I avoid snowtroopers on desert maps and ugnaughts on a star destroyer bridge! Also, speaking of thematic, during one mission on Tatooine, one of my friend had noted that it was somehow a bit weird that Tusken raiders were aligned with the Empire. I took note and during a mission on an icy planet, I deployed (free of threat) a Wampa at some point but with a house rule mechanic that had the Wampa activates first at the start of each round and it would randomly go after figures, no matter their allegiance.

1 hour ago, Zrob314 said:

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. 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.

You have cool ideas! Our group has followed the Twin Shadows mini-campaign and once we were done with it, we jumped into the Return to Hoth campaign. However, I decided to customize the campaign by taking missions from various campaign and try to link them thematically. The concept of earning allies/vilains via side missions is therefore not something that I use. Sometimes, I start a mission by letting them select whoever they want while I secretly adjust by including a vilain that will (thematically) show up. Other times, I impose them a character (I had a mission where Luke showed up even though he was not planed in the original mission. I personally thought it was thematic for him to appear during the mission). As a compensation, I gave myself a "battle damaged" AT-ST. It was the first time my players played Luke and faced an AT-ST. It was enjoyable!

Another example was when I created a cantina map that was to serve for the between mission upgrade stage (Tried to make it more similar to RPG. They could decide to visit various sellers in the cantina with each seller having their own stock, there was also a few bounty hunter for hire for their next mission as long as they would pay the credits). At some point, I told them that blaster shots were heard at the other side of the cantina. A Jedi (Davith who was not one of my rebel players heroes) showed up chased by Kayn Somos and stromtrooper squads as well as the Grand Inquisitor. They had to decide if they'd wanted to help him or just go their way leaving the Jedi to his own faith. The "reward" of saving Davith was ... (some light Heart of the Empire spoiler)

I do like to customize the missions/campaign and like to read about others to! Keep us posted on your custom campaign!

By "Upgraded characters persist through campaigns.", if you mean by that they ONLY retain their reward card from their side mission to avoid re-doing the same mission over to get Diala's lightsaber for isntance, I think it can work, but otherwise I would advice against leaving a hero full equipped (weapons with mods as well as xp cards) starts a new campaign. He'd be way too powerful for the opposition without counting that he would (presumably?) still upgrade after each mission.

I have tried a fixed character once (Darth Vader!) and he was brutal! I must say that I forced Vader in with a few rounds left in the mission (again because I thought it made sense to see Vader shows up in the mission *thematic*). It didn't prevent the rebels from winning the mission, and I did not intend to bring Vader to win the mission, but more to implant in their head a feeling of fear ... something like Vader is the ultimate bad guy and they should fear him if they ever encounter him in a boss fight. But yeah, Driven by Hatred was very powerful with the extra end of round attack!

As long as you and your friends are comfortable with house rules, there is no limit really! Heck you could even play the game like we used to play with our action figures as kids if you'd all agreed on such a house rule

6 minutes ago, IanSolo_FFG said:

By "Upgraded characters persist through campaigns.", if you mean by that they ONLY retain their reward card from their side mission to avoid re-doing the same mission over to get Diala's lightsaber for isntance, I think it can work, but otherwise I would advice against leaving a hero full equipped (weapons with mods as well as xp cards) starts a new campaign. He'd be way too powerful for the opposition without counting that he would (presumably?) still upgrade after each mission.

Updated for clarity. When I say upgraded I am only talking about the red-card mission reward.

So in the next campaign Diala starts with 0 xp, 0 credits a staff and her master's lightsaber.

I've seen you talk about the cantina thing before. That feels a little contrived for our group (we're not roleplaying much, though these guys could it's just not flowing that way). Also building the cantina board after every game is time consuming and we're eeking out the few hours we have in what often turns out to be once a month. I'm lucky to get them to stick around for an upgrade phase after we finish the mission.

But if your group likes it, then carry on.

For Hero (red side) missions, I simply sub in a different mission if someone takes a hero who has been played in a previous campaign.

For example Fenn Signis has been used a couple of times, so the second time I swapped his mission out for Gideon's (no-one in our group has any interest being Gideon).

Just needs a bit of text change (instead of "Gideon used to command Sabre Squad..." it was "Fenn used to be part of Sabre Squad..."), and if the heroes won the mission, they'd get Fenn's Reward instead of Gideon's. Easy as that.

More generally I avoid repeating any mission on a similar basis, but that's because I own all of them, and that'll keep us going for quite a while.

7 minutes ago, Bitterman said:

For Hero (red side) missions, I simply sub in a different mission if someone takes a hero who has been played in a previous campaign.

I've considered doing that but I don't want to paint myself into a corner. Like what if someday someone changes their mind and wants to play Gideon. Now you've got to swap in a different mission.

Point E should be fine, if not finnicky. I'm sure you're already aware of the fact that messing with balance of Starting or reserved groups is much more harmful than open groups, so that's a good call.

3 hours ago, Zrob314 said:

I've seen you talk about the cantina thing before.

Yeah I tend to repeat myself on this board about my customization of the game... geez I hope it's not a sign that I'm getting old

4 hours ago, IanSolo_FFG said:

Yeah I tend to repeat myself on this board about my customization of the game... geez I hope it's not a sign that I'm getting old

Nah. You're good.

Isn't there some thread where you posted a link that outlined your whole custom campaign? Was it just OoE or was it everything custom you do?

Thanks for the shout out. Your house rules look fun for a group that is used to RPGs.

When I’m the one hosting a campaign (which I usually am), if there’s a side mission I don’t want to see played, I’ll just remove it from the stack before I give it to the Rebel players. If the stack starts to get too small, I know it’s been a long enough and time to reintroduce some of those cards back into the supply. I do the same thing with the supply cards, I yanked out the Twin Shadow supply cards right away, and I think I’m probably going to pull out 1 copy of some of the duplicate Core supply cards like the grenades, since it seems that people are pretty unexcited to draw them and often don’t even use them, especially the Frag.

19 hours ago, Pollux85 said:

Nah. You're good.

Isn't there some thread where you posted a link that outlined your whole custom campaign? Was it just OoE or was it everything custom you do?

No I did not create a thread just for that. It is scattered across several threads. Mostly what I did back then is use FFG's actual missions then I try to link them with narratives. My campaign (still in progress) started with the Battle of Hoth followed by White Noise for which the narrative was changed to be a follow up mission of Battle of Hoth (White Noise was about the heroes protecting the Ion cannon control room while the transports were evacuating). Then I had a custom X-wing/IA mission that depicted the heroes transport being intercepted by a star destroyer. Heroes had to mess with the SD's laser cannons (on an IA map set up on an X-wing mat) while their x-wing escorts were trying to free their transport by destroying the tractor beam device. Next they stopped on Bespin to free Lando who gathered information on a secret imperial weapon (branching to Core/Weiss) while searching the crime lord that placed a bounty on Han and see if he could get from Cloud City nav computers the next destination of Fett's slave I ship (Branching to a chase-Boba-Fett-to-rescue-Han type of campaign. Final mission would have been a custom mission based on the Gall spaceport level from the Shadows of the Empire video game from the mid 90s). The cantina mini-mission discussed above was to open up a third branching leading the heroes into the Heart of the Empire. We are now at a point where my rebel heroes will have to decide what they'll do next (Go after Weiss, Fett or on Coruscant).

Then, sometimes I was customizing the existing mission. For example, during the Bespin's mission, when the heroes freed Lando, the Wing Guards, defected the Empire's side to fight along with Lando, for the good old time.

One thing I've instituted on side mission draws is on the final side mission of the campaign the Rebels can choose any side mission they want that was drawn in the initial set up. Also if they already have an ally and 2 ally side missions are in play they can draw an additional card.

1 hour ago, Destro911 said:

One thing I've instituted on side mission draws is on the final side mission of the campaign the Rebels can choose any side mission they want that was drawn in the initial set up. Also if they already have an ally and 2 ally side missions are in play they can draw an additional card.

I like that rule quite a bit.

Another thing I do is I remove grey side missions that a group has played before shuffling the rest in. At this point, I still have plenty to continue doing this, as my group tends to prefer red and green ones anyway.

8 minutes ago, subtrendy2 said:

I like that rule quite a bit.

Another thing I do is I remove grey side missions that a group has played before shuffling the rest in. At this point, I still have plenty to continue doing this, as my group tends to prefer red and green ones anyway.

For my group it's always a big disappointment when the card drawn isn't red. When a Diala player drew the lightsaber as their first side mission I've never seen someone so pumped for a mission. I felt very bad winning that mission as dealing 4 damage with starting weapons was difficult for them.

In 3 campaigns where Quickdraw Holster has come up I've never played it because every Rebel reads it and initially says this is awesome! Then I explain it's deplete and not exhaust and all of a sudden they want nothing to do with it.