I'm trying to get some friends into the game, but they're super casual board game players and I think they might find one on one standard death matches hard work. I played a game with them over the weekend where we had three players (with a ship each) vs two players (one with one ship, one with a small block of cheap TIES), and to make it more interesting we had an objective - something that the two of us who were experienced players very quickly came up with on the fly.

I think the newbies really enjoyed it, particularly the co-operative play side of things and the fact that everyone focusing on the objective kept all of us in the game, rather than a death match wiping someone out early doors.

Problem was that the objective we devised sucked. The Imperials (the team of two) had to protect a shuttle moving 1 forward each turn from their corner of the board to the opposite corner, that couldn't attack or perform actions. Despite making an absolute hash of most of their maneuvers, bumping, missing shots, gunning for Rexler out the gate instead of just focusing on the shuttle, Rebels still managed to kill the shuttle when it was only just past the halfway point with no losses. So obviously we misjudged the balance of shuttle health vs fair number of turns until it escaped.

Rather than try and fix it myself and get it wrong the other way this time, for next time I can convince them to play I was hoping for a similar scenario that (in theory) has been playtested and is a bit more balanced.

I had a look at the mission that comes with the 1e Lambda, and actually it looks pretty much perfect for what I'm after.

I'm just curious if anyone has played any of these missions in the 2e environment and found they still hold up without being too broken.

I'd probably be looking to keep it to Rebels and Imperials, and focus on movie ships if it helps. While the X-Wing has obviously been significantly buffed, and many things are cheaper, I don't see anything that's obviously going to break the points balancing other than maybe the TIE Bomber. But I can always just ban barrage rockets.

If they don't work for whatever reason, has anyone attempted to rebalance some of them with positive results?

Hello there!

I believe most missions can be played withouts any modification. 1e missioned often had problems with powercreep (thinks exploding too fast or inposible to kill ships). In 2e my guess is that should not be a problem.

However! If you like a cooperative x wing i can't recommend enough Heroes of the Aturi Cluster (HotAC). Is an amazing cooperative campaing where you play your own pilot, gain experience and improve your ship. There is a Facebook group where a convertion to 2e is being made. But a 1e version could work pretty well

Hi. I've done the Senators Shuttle mission from the old starter set and it worked fine. I think a lot of the missions will still be valid. It especially works with both sides getting new stuff.

I would like to hear if someone has a mission that doesn't work.

Have you heard of Heroes of the Aturi Cluster? It was developed by a professional game designer as a co-operative Xwing campaign. It's one of the best ways to play Xwing. The designer was hired by Wiz Kids to make a similar campaign for one of their games, so he hasn't updated it for 2.0, but there are a lot of fans who are working on doing it. I think its gotten pretty far. So... there are non-official updates for the non-official xwing campaign. I really cant stress how good it is.

There are a number of other campaigns that fans of HotAC have written that expand the idea of campaign. I know there is a Facebook page for it.

My fellow podcaster, @babaganoosh has written a campaign we ran at GenCon. It has a number of missions for a number of rounds that ends in a big final mission. I know he was looking at what it would take to update it, but don't know. I would give the link, but am at the dentist.

Oh, you can also make up anything, too. Our local store has a bunch of 40k terrain and we used a lot to make a Beggars Canyon type map. We put a package in the middle and made it an action to pick it up. Four teams start in each corner with a standard squad. You have to pick up the package and make it off within R3 of one of the corners. It was pretty fun and pretty close. If you don't have 40k terrain, you can probably just drop 20 asteroids/debris on the table and do the same thing.

7 minutes ago, DerRitter said:

However! If you like a cooperative x wing i can't recommend enough Heroes of the Aturi Cluster (HotAC).

6 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

Have you heard of Heroes of the Aturi Cluster?

I have indeed played (a very small amount of) HotAC. I played with the other experienced X-Wing player who was part of our group of five this weekend. And yeah, it's brilliant.

I don't want to rush the new guys into something with that sort of setup time and persistence yet, though. This is really about teaching them the mechanics on the most basic level, and I don't want to muddy that with the AI system. While it's really good fun, HotAC does play differently from standard games.

What I'm looking for, for now, is something that we can keep to a one off and get set up relatively quickly. Having a simple objective helps delay players being forced out of the game when their ship dies, but I don't want to add a bunch of extraneous rules - the mission that comes with Imperial Aces, for example, is super complicated.

So far I'm really liking the look of the Lambda and Millennium Falcon missions as they're balanced primarily around the basic points system.

The Firespray mission would be cool, but the points doubling thing could cause issues. Also, it seems anti-thematic - I would really want the Falcon to be the bounty ship, but doubling its points cost would make it really difficult to field other ships alongside it in 2e.

The Imperial Veterans mission looks awesome, but the requirement for Rebels to get a free TIE Defender doesn't really work in 2e with the Defenders massively buffed statline and corresponding points increase - they end up getting way more in their free ship than the Imps with their loaded up Gamma Vet Bomber.

17 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

Hi. I've done the Senators Shuttle mission from the old starter set and it worked fine.

Yeah, we definitely should have looked at that one before coming up with our own - it's basically a faction inverted version of what we trying to do with the shuttle.

As the Lambda is a large base, I feel like dropping the 2 speed maneuver to a 1 speed but still allowing 1 banks and maybe even the stop maneuver would work. Given the change to the evade token and the addition of the reinforce action, I'm wondering if maybe instead of the friendly ships being able to give the shuttle an evade, you could instead co-ordinate a reinforce. That actually sounds better balanced, to me, than the stack of evades you could get as written.

I'm also tempted to say the shuttle can shoot from both its arcs (without the bonus) at range 1, just to discourage things like APTs (which turned out to be way overpowered in our game).

If you are looking for simple objective, those are nice : https://imgur.com/a/Ox7T9

As a casual player myself, I can attest that playing nothing but 200-point deathmatches week after week does get old quickly, even when you're trying to shake things up and play different lists all the time.

So good for you trying to keep things interesting! I'd be interested to hear which scenarios you find work well in 2.0!

3 hours ago, heychadwick said:

My fellow podcaster, @babaganoosh has written a campaign we ran at GenCon. It has a number of missions for a number of rounds that ends in a big final mission. I know he was looking at what it would take to update it, but don't know. I would give the link, but am at the dentist.

I've played a few of @Babaganoosh put together; very fun! And @heychadwick , hope your visit was drill free and you got a new brush. Haven't been by your LGS in ages, ned to come by again and check it out.

1 hour ago, JJ48 said:

As a casual player myself, I'd be interested to hear which scenarios you find work well in 2.0!

Agreed, a thread on Epic and its transition into 2.0 or it's best fit to stay in a modified 1.0 would be a great thread to keep alive or bumped up to the opening page. Epic is the best way, really, to play a Star Wars game that really fits the movie pull....

I would say that most missions are playable with the basic doubling of points, but good balance could be hard to find.

senator's shuttle I think is OK, but could probably benefit from a house rule or two. The reinforcements rule, and the ability to block the shuttle are my two biggest problems with that scenario.

I would definitely second Chadwick's suggestion to check out heroes of the aturi cluster, and also to look up 'flight group alpha'. You should be able to find links for those on Facebook, either through the shuttle tydirium podcast page, or through the HOTAC custom rules page. (Sorry for the lack of link here).

22 hours ago, GuacCousteau said:

Yeah, we definitely should have looked at that one before coming up with our own - it's basically a faction inverted version of what we trying to do with the shuttle.

As the Lambda is a large base, I feel like dropping the 2 speed maneuver to a 1 speed but still allowing 1 banks and maybe even the stop maneuver would work. Given the change to the evade token and the addition of the reinforce action, I'm wondering if maybe instead of the friendly ships being able to give the shuttle an evade, you could instead co-ordinate a reinforce. That actually sounds better balanced, to me, than the stack of evades you could get as written.

I'm also tempted to say the shuttle can shoot from both its arcs (without the bonus) at range 1, just to discourage things like APTs (which turned out to be way overpowered in our game).

Even with just speed 1, the large based Lambda will move faster than the little shuttle token. That's pretty important as you only get about 6-7 turns before it's off the board.

I also don't like the lambda shooting as it should just be a target.

The Evade tokens it gets from other ships is much better than it was in the 1.0 rules. They only change a failure into a success instead of auto success. It starts to add in some interesting choices for attacker and defender. If the defender takes a lot of ships and uses their actions to support the Shuttle each turn, it usually means they are pretty cheap and easy to destroy. They also don't have actions to defend themselves. Things that hit more than one opponent, such as Cluster Missiles and Bombs would make short work of the escort and then leave the Shuttle as easy prey. There are other things such as Tractor Beams and Ion weapons that can have the escort fall behind.

The large based ship that can just block the shuttle can be a problem, but if it happens once, you can probably see it coming in future games. Make sure it doesn't happen again is important. Use one of your escort ships to block the blocker while you go at an angle or just focus firepower on the big ship.

Overall, though, I think most missions will stay as balanced as they were to begin with when using 2.0 rules. I'd love to hear feedback on any and all missions you try.

If you want to mix it up completely, you could play a game of soccer.

basically just use all small base ships, no cardboard. The player/team that wins the toss moves ships first, until that team scores then it switches. Basically whoever was scored on gets to start the next round.

Create a goal box. I’d recommend range 0-1 on the edge and 2 wide. But that may need tweaking. The “ball” starts on the side of who won the toss/was just scored on.

all ships move with their normal dials. Stress is added and removed as normal.

you can pick up the free “ball” at range 0-1, including overlap.

once the “ball” (escape pod or bomb token, whichever you feel is best.) is yours it is dragged behind by 1 distance.

the other team can knock the ball from you by hitting you with laser fire, or take it by overlapping the “ball” with their ship.

now the complex balancing comes in with the shots being fired from both sides. So let’s say you’re the Rebellion. Y-wing has the ball, an X-wing and A-wing are on your team. The empire has ties. You fire and hit a tie, that stage the tie uses one less attack die, so if two of your ships hit it, no shots. It also works the other way, but if the Y-wing gets hit, hopefully one of the other support ships is there to pick up the “ball” for the next round.

what do you think?

this is a new idea I had, and I haven’t had much chance to play test it. So hopefully it works/is fun.

Could be fun, but I think you mean football... 🙂

Sure, For 2nd edition integration maybe instead of points just use threat. Most of the listbuilding in campaigns involve an already prebuilt ship and some additional points. So for campaigns if you are worried about power creep then use threat as your listbuilding variable should take care of that problem and make set up easier.

2 hours ago, Just Paulos said:

Could be fun, but I think you mean football... 🙂

True, with collision that’d be more accurate