Design of new campaign rules that keep fleet matched fleet combat at the core of the system, but add a bit more depth to the strategic layer by borrowing the concept of missions and ground combat from Star Wars Rebellion.

Current Draft of Rules (very early)

https://drive.google.com/open?id=12lBVKEY_stBOBGvB4SGrUYFm9sMyCcQL

Imperial Mission Cards

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jCMomnt-6HMjOuACny9esMBP1sHIZ8Ag

Rebel Mission Cards

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1tdIs0_zDuy5j425QEh094Q3N140pA0Fh

Imperial Battle cards

https://drive.google.com/open?id=17GWmQU532pf-t8jxJgMlVprq4ei67QWN

Rebel Battle cards

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1trRIorVa6a_R4zjz7CvxAFQPAVkXHhVc

Imperial Generals

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1SeIEUIqyizAzNvASo9GwAskWVdhrfjMS

Rebel Generals

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1-4vKTQ2UutwsGzECfKy3QWI5QHeZe9tD

Excel Manager

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1wt9vIQR_fd6r-m9wU9enxqTf9TkEFCsP

I have been inspired by the many excellent sets of campaign rules being developed by the community here. My experience mirrors that of others, in so much as the campaign system was fun, but it felt a bit hollow, lacked an overall compelling narrative and was vulnerable to snowballing.

Whilst ideally players can be matched by skill prior to a campaign, this is not always possible depending on who owns which ships and which sides player prefer. I have tried to mitigate that somewhat by getting at least two copies of each ship, and one or two more of the smaller ships - such as Raiders or CR90s. However, even then there is no guarantee of evenly matched players...

Moreover, the whole star wars story was focussed on the asymmetric contest between the plucky rebels against the endless might of the Imperial Empire. Whilst the Rebellion game captures this beautifully, X-Wing and Armada are essentially tournament games that are equal contests - whilst builds differ, the asymmetry is gone. There is no battle of Scarif where the Rebels are using surprise and a narrow window of time to ****** the Death Star plans and flee before the Empire arrive in overwhelming force and crush them.

The Corellian conflict did try and introduce some element of this with the mechanism of hidden bases, but essentially it was 1200 points of Empire vs 1200 points of Rebels split between six fleets facing off against one another.

The design challenge...

How to maintain the core of the Corellian conflict being driven by fleet vs fleet combat built around the Armada game engine of equally matched fleets and the objective mechanism?

How can I encourage more 'cannon' like builds, given that anything less than tournament option fleet construction is asking for successive defeats...?

How can I introduce ground combat - so that planets must be conquered and subdued as per Hoth. Could Corellia really be taken because a fleet won by a magin of 7 VP?

What about some of the characteristics of each side? How to bring in some of that flavour we've all seen in the movies...?

I want to share my endeavour here because I keep hitting design brick walls and because there are many far more creative minds here than my own! So I share my work in the hope of suggestions and feedback to help me reach my goal.

6 October 2018.

This is all very early stages and reflects only the first week of work on this... I've tried a few practice games of the strat level, using dice to determine fleet battles. I'm still frustrated that it's not quite right, and am thinking about starting over and not being linked the current map... perhaps looking at other games for inspiration for a simplistic strat level. I quite like looking at American Civil War games, not because I want to compare either side to the CSA or Empire or whatnot, but because the naval war in some ways reflects Star Wars... the Rebels having blockade runners and the Union having to blockade. GMT did a good game called "Rebel Raiders of the High Seas" that may be my starting point... but as always, there is no point in generating one-sided fleet engagements as no one is going to want to play the 100 point side cornered by the 500 point battle fleet. So whilst the strategic layer should matter and give context to what is going on, ultimately, the side that wins the fleet battles should win the campaign. So my thinking is that the Empire is stretched dealing with separatists and other threats and so the Rebel Fleet having "massed at Sullust" is able to challenge the Empire in Corellia on equal terms. Equivalent to a turn in Rebellion where the Rebel player is able to surprise the Empire by dropping a combined fleet somewhere at gaining local superiority... as always, tweaking required!

Anyway... I offer my work for opinion.

New Concepts

These are all borrowed and inspired by looking at the fantastic ideas here and on other forums.

1. Planets Imperial Loyalty Rating

All planets have a loyalty between 0 and 10. 7+ is Empire, 3- is Rebel and anything between is Neutral. Planets contribute manpower points which is how players acquire resources for ground units. Players can raise ground forces on Loyal worlds, and in the strategic layer target them as per Rebellion.

2. Strategic Missions

I borrowed from Rebellion. I think only 1 or 2 missions per side at the start of each turn, but these give an opportunity to shift loyalty, destroy ground units and seize resource points for fleet building. I've attached the first draft of my mission cards. Players would shuffle the deck, deal three - take one card - and repeat until they have a hand of three mission cards. The player behind on CP declares first, then the team ahead, then the player behind. This was the team behind has a chance to off-set lost resources from previous battles and get a slight helping hand. By dealing 3 and selecting one mission, you can always have the card you want - but you may not always be able to get both cards you want and adds a bit of guess work to the other side. Still undecided on how best to have this... want it to have impact, but not too much impact!

3. Ground Combat

This is taken from the cinematic combat rules from the Rise of the Empire expansion. I've suggested 9 cards each side... again, these should mirror one another, but have some flavour... Rebels can inspire an uprising, the Empire can conduct an orbital bombardment. As with the mission cards, prior to the battle each side would deal three, select one and repeat to build a hand of three. I figure the air superiority applies when the assaulter wins a fleet battle and has remaining squadrons, or is defending on a world with a Fighter Wing base defence card. Base defence cards are built with manpower points, and you may have three per world... all three will feature in a fleet defence mission (more on that later!).

Each player also has two generals... they are allowed an allowance of 3 leadership points. So a pair of '2' rated generals, or a '3' and a '1' general. As per Rebellion, the leadership rating determines the number of dice that they would re-roll... these may be too high and I want to think about how to limit their mobility so that Veers is not always leading the Imperial invasion.

4. Light Fleets

This was more a feature of the fact we were playing with four of us always at the same venue and wanted the other two players to be able to do a game on a 3x3 map (my table is 10 feet, so can't do two full size fleet battles). Therefore the solution was for each player to have a light fleet of around 200 points - still tweaking the value - but maybe starts at 180 and can reach a limit of 300 (the original Armada fleet size). Light fleets can raid, meaning they steal resources from a planet or run transport runs... although I've still not sorted in my own mind how to move combat troops. Current thinking is that they have to be loaded at the start of the fleet phase and carried as part of an invasion force. But I'll likely want to simplify that... looking at WW1 as an inspiration for light fleets, my thinking is that these would be commerce raiders and what not... again, didn't want it to too heavily change the course of the campaign, but it gives another set of ships to spend resource points on, which should slow the rush to everyone having optimal 500 point fleets - and with six fleets per side, perhaps force some less frequently used squadrons / upgrades / admirals to feature.... we shall see.