Hey team. I've got a group of guys, some of which have already played a few App missions with me, that want to play the IA campaign in a few weeks. This is a legit shot for me to start up a regular thing with a new group of players. I've been away from the game for a while as my old dedicated group fell apart a bit as we blew through all of the content. So I am hankering to play some campaign again myself. We would be looking at approximately 6-7 hours of game night time. 1 completely new player, 1 played 1 mission player, 2 played 2-3 mission players and myself.

I'm just wondering how I should tackle this... we will have a minimum of 4, potentially 5. If we have 5 that rules out the App, unless I just wanted to play the enemies which I would be fine with.

However I would prefer to play the other side of it, the way the game was designed with my as the GM. I just have no idea where to even start.

Do I start them on a super fresh campaign? Do I advance them a few missions to give a better taste of how expandable characters are? Which campaign do I even pick? Do I just pick a few fun side missions with known iconic characters?

I've got everything, so content selection is not a problem.. it actually is the problem I guess because there is to much of it

Help me IA community, you are my only hope.

I would start at the beginning. Especially if you are hoping to add more content. I would still be the DM and keep 4 rebs. If u have 5...great everyone gets one....if you have 4 then give someone two rebs to play. I've found the game just works way better with 4 rebs rather than two or three. I have not played some of the later campaigns even though I own them...just not enough time to play :). But the original campaign is awesome and I've replayed it three times and it's still great each time.

Fair.. the best part about the original campaign is that mission one is specifically designed to teach the game to new players and exposes the punishment for delaying on your objectives in a shorter time frame.

Might even be able to get in three missions with that first one being so short..

I do just remember some missions being fun, but impossible. A New Threat and the Han Solo one.. but I guess can just severely dial it back.

Are you trying to guarantee that they will be “hooked” and want to actually play a campaign? Because I would argue aftermath doesn’t really do a great job of that. The description of your players seems to suggest that they have a decent amount of exposure to the rules, which is great.

If you are trying to really “draw them in” for engagement (in hopes that they will be interested in a campaign after), I would consider playing a one off side mission. One that involves a known familiar star wars character is never a bad idea. Greedos mission is good for that, I think Jabbas mission is also good. If you play those, maybe GM a bit and after round 2 toss the rebels Han as an Ally. Maybe add Boba or Jabba to your open groups just to have more fun uniques out there.

To do this, play at threat level 2, give each hero 1 XP to start and give them like 300 - 400 credits to spend on tier 1 items.

i did something similar for our group a few years back. I had 1 experienced player and three completely new players. We are going on our 4th campaign now!

I like that as well.. and then I could pick another side mission as a follow up. Side missions are generally a bit shorter to which is nice and ensures we can fit multiples into the gaming night.

I can also then pick two with completely different settings, like one around Jabba's realm and then one on Hoth, or Bespin or whatever to showcase the different tiles and iconic star wars locations.

Yeah - that would be pretty sweet. I think Landos side mission might be cool for that setting. Leia is on Hoth I believe - for some different options. Just seeing the familiar characters, on some cool tiles is a great way to get people engaged. Really helps to deliver that “Star Wars feel” that those of us who love this game understand how the missions can really deliver that.

I think with something like Aftermath, you get the feel of “small band of rebels, trying to pull something out against the odds”. But it lacks the familiar characters those who are new to the game are searching for. Nothing beats the look in new players faces when you say “rebels control Han as an ally”, or “ ho ho ho- Jabba is now on the board!”

Good luck in your efforts to find a gaming group! I found mine a few years ago, and we have had SO much fun campaigning!!

I would recommend either using one of the app campaigns or one of the mini-box campaigns (Tyrants, Etc) for new players. The main reason is that they are much shorter. I think that committing to a 10-12 mission campaign is a big ask for new players. 4-6 missions feels like a much more reasonable commitment, Heroes upgrade faster and it leaves people wanting more rather than wishing it would end!

This might not be what you're after given your focus on the campaign experience but I've had great success introducing four friends to a giant skirmish match - make up your own map and run four factions: imperials, rebels, bounty hunters and rogue monsters (sand people, banthas, rancor, nexu etc). It's a chaotic four-way fire-fight but a lot of good fun.

Admittedly not anything like the campaign experience but it's been a great intro for my crew.

On 2/29/2020 at 2:44 PM, FrogTrigger said:

Fair.. the best part about the original campaign is that mission one is specifically designed to teach the game to new players and exposes the punishment for delaying on your objectives in a shorter time frame.

Might even be able to get in three missions with that first one being so short..

I do just remember some missions being fun, but impossible. A New Threat and the Han Solo one.. but I guess can just severely dial it back.

I'd give them the classic line up of Aftermath + a Character mission or ally mission + Under Siege. That gives you a tutorial, plus two other missions that can give you a wide range of variety to let them find their preferred playstyle, and gives you enough freedom to sculpt a bit of a story. Or if you think you can get through 3 missions, you might as well just pick a mini-campaign. You could probably convince them to do a 4th at a later date, even if they hate it.

I'd strongly recommend going in hard and making sure they lose at least one mission, perhaps even the first one. If you want them to play a campaign, especially the newbie, they need to understand that losing happens, and it's not something that is impossible to recover from.

Technically the missions are not won or lost. The missions just have certain end conditions. Then, either the rebels reached their objective and get certain rewards, or the rebels did not reach their objective and the imperial player gets rewards.

17 hours ago, a1bert said:

Technically the missions are not won or lost. The missions just have certain end conditions. Then, either the rebels reached their objective and get certain rewards, or the rebels did not reach their objective and the imperial player gets rewards.

What is your day job? Have you considered a career in law?

1 minute ago, Pollux85 said:

What is your day job? Have you considered a career in law?

No. And neither have I considered psychology. It is still interesting to see that we by nature associate the worse outcome with losing and the better outcome with winning.

If FFG have worded things deliberately this way, then they perhaps didn't go far enough. There are only a handful of missions without a binary outcome (like Generous Donations). Some of the later missions have "partial win" conditions, but it's surprisingly hard to come up with good partial win conditions.

I'd like to echo the idea of just running the base campaign, a side mission, and then the next story mission.

I would run a Session Zero, too. Since they're new players, here's how I tend to do that.

- I choose the core campaign for a few reasons. While mission design is not at its best, it's built for beginners as far as complexity goes. It also has a good variety of missions and locations- starting off in a campaign that's specific to Hoth, Bespin, Tatooine, or Lothal might seem odd for players who want more out of the Galaxy Far Far Away.

- When starting a new campaign, Rebels need to pick Heroes and potential allies/villains. If you have the space, have each hero mini on their card, along with their class deck. Have each ally next to their card. For allies that can be won together (such as BT-1 and 0-0-0), group them together. This way, the players can choose based either off of stats, or (since they're new) aesthetics. Don't knock the latter- it's all about fun, after all.

- On your end, have the Grey side missions already shuffled and have four picked out. Also, have your Imperial class and Agenda deck already sorted.

- Once the heroes have their characters and allies chosen, assemble the full side mission deck and then start Aftermath. Then, play a side mission. If you have time, run the next story mission.

- When revealing side missions, have the physical rewards available for them to look at.

- For the hook, have your players choose the next side mission at the end of your play time. This will hopefully get them hyped up as to what they can earn, and will also allow you to fully prep the mission before the next session.

So thanks everyone for the suggestions. The group ended up having a lot of fun. I had everything set up ahead of time with all the characters laid out and green mission options.

We played the opening mission, which they lost by the last die roll. Any game win or lose that comes down to the last roll is a good game in my books. Then we played the Geonosis Side Mission to gain a Spectre ally, which they won, again on the last die roll. They chose Sabine. I did game it a bit, I made the first mission easier on them as I saw them falling behind (never bothered to up the health of terminals or shut the door) but all and all they did good, and I gave them Sabine in the second mission even though I could only see that you are supposed to get an ally if it is a Lothal campaign?

Very experienced gamer group so they caught on fast, and a few of them had already played a co-op campaign with me as well.
There were multiple "man this game is fun" and "why don't we play this more?" comments through out the night so I would call it a success.

Thanks again for the suggestions, I enjoyed getting the game back on the table for the first time in almost a year.

I will say, I really hope that FFG has something else planned for this line. I know Descent 1.0 and 2.0 now seems to have run its course with that last card pack being deemed its final physical product. I know IA has been stated many times to have received its last physical product with app content for both games far and between these days. So I really hope they have a new game in mind, even if it isn't Star Wars based, just because I really do enjoy this dungeon crawl model and I've yet to play this game with anyone that didn't agree it is really well done. And with that I hope the answer isn't LOTR, because that game feels and plays very differently.