So back in February, I was in charge of a Legion side of a campaign that my local group had started to run. We weren't able to continue due to... extenuating circumstances, and TTS wasn't an option for the majority of us either. We had planned on picking it back up or starting over once the pandemic died down, but unfortunately, too many people have left (myself included) for that to be possible. Rather then just dump everything though, I thought I'd share some of the ideas here. In particular, I haven't seen many alternate game or list formats talked about besides standard and skirmish. So here's some of the list building formats that the campaign used. Of course, these work best when both players are using the same format, but otherwise these can be used for both standard point and skirmish games. One final note; this campaign was made with rebels vs imperials in mind, as clones and droids weren't yet released enough to play at the time.

Standard Issue X

1-2 Commanders 0-2 Operatives

3-6 Corps 0-3 Special Forces

0-3 Support 0-2 Heavies

This one follows the standard format with one important exception: your army cannot contain more than a combined total of X (do agree on this with your opponent before hand, somewhere between 0 and 2) upgrades from the heavy weapon, armament, and hard point categories. They weren't available at the time, but ordinance upgrades would also be counted against your total. A few games with these lists do give you a new appreciation for your units basic abilities (or lack there of).

One of a Kind

1-2 Commanders 0-2 Operatives

2+ Corps 0-3 Special Forces

0-3 Support 0-2 Heavies

I found this one to be more fun than it sounds. For these lists, each unit and upgrade card is treated as being unique. Bright side: no more X unit spam. Downside: same applies to you. Campaign-wise, this was used when one side was attacking somewhere that was left undefended on the map but really shouldn't be; for example a base or headquarters, and represented that side pulling whatever it could together for a last ditch defense.

Nameless Battlefield

1-2 Commanders 0-2 Operatives

3-6 Corps 0-3 Special Forces

0-3 Support 0-2 Heavies

Adding this one here for sake of completeness. Its rule is pretty simple and the exact opposite of the last format: no unique or named characters/upgrades allowed. It was a default rule for most lists during the campaign though, since characters were on the map, and could only take part in battles at the same location. Before anyone asks, the operative limits were there because the campaign had non unique operatives for the rebel and imperial factions.

Well those were the most common list building rules we used. There were others that were scenario specific, but if someone is looking to try something just a little different or for some inspirations for their own campaign, I hope this helps.

I always liked the campaign styles that included certain missions and a simple map.

So if Luke and Leia are over on Tython battling it out with Bossk and Veers, they can't be on Tatooine or Ryloth fighting in those battles at the same time.

So limit the number of named units or how many times you can use a certain unit, or make the battles thematic (no tauntauns in the desert) to make each battle unique.

Armada had a similar campaign system but it also limited your resources. If you lost a certain number of units in the previous battle and were fighting with that army, you weren't able to replenish all the casualties so you had to fight handicapped.

1 hour ago, buckero0 said:

I always liked the campaign styles that included certain missions and a simple map.

So if Luke and Leia are over on Tython battling it out with Bossk and Veers, they can't be on Tatooine or Ryloth fighting in those battles at the same time.

So limit the number of named units or how many times you can use a certain unit, or make the battles thematic (no tauntauns in the desert) to make each battle unique.

Armada had a similar campaign system but it also limited your resources. If you lost a certain number of units in the previous battle and were fighting with that army, you weren't able to replenish all the casualties so you had to fight handicapped.

ive been trying to home brew a campaign that can be played with Legion and Armada, basically Empire at War but on a tabletop. I've never been happy with any of the methods ive seen anyone else come up with. basically if a character is at a place then it can fight in either the ground or space battles but not at another location. i even had a plan for garrison armies/fleets and the recruitment of more but i kinda put it on hold until the new Armada clone wars stuff is out.

I would love for atomic to come out with an offical campaign but im not too hopeful.

Yes to all of this.

I'm a big fan of attacker vs defender where the defender may have less forces but has the battlefield and/or some other items as assets. There could be stronger objective/deployment/condition card control too, where the defender can pick one from their deck to be picked automatically.

Only issue there is activation count. In a game where you go with your whole army as opposed to back and forth it may be less of an issue but a 7 activation 600 point army against a 10/11/12 activation 800 point army is a tough ask.

3 minutes ago, Crawfskeezen said:

Yes to all of this.

I'm a big fan of attacker vs defender where the defender may have less forces but has the battlefield and/or some other items as assets. There could be stronger objective/deployment/condition card control too, where the defender can pick one from their deck to be picked automatically.

Only issue there is activation count. In a game where you go with your whole army as opposed to back and forth it may be less of an issue but a 7 activation 600 point army against a 10/11/12 activation 800 point army is a tough ask.

You can always give the defender the additional "advantage" of having "Activations" that are passes, or some kind of automated defenses that contribute an activation, but can only Aim and Attack.

12 hours ago, Empyrium said:

Well those were the most common list building rules we used. There were others that were scenario specific, but if someone is looking to try something just a little different or for some inspirations for their own campaign, I hope this helps.

Love those! I find that the standard 800 point format can get a little stale (esp. when your collection is far from complete) and forcing different list creation can also open up new metas for the tourney format.

3 hours ago, 5particus said:

I would love for atomic to come out with an offical campaign but im not too hopeful.

While such a thing doesn't exist yet (I'm holding out hope too), there are some resources for mini-campaigns of the escalation style from 2018: https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/star-wars-legion/#/support-section and click on "Operations" (you may have to click on "Support" on the top first). I'm halfway through one of these and it's quite fun.

In a similar vein, I've created a spreadsheet and rule-set for playing Armada & Legion during battles for Rebellion. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yjTH9_ilVFtLmn1S5F92rCV_s6lS4iZL-vMx2z0-fvU/edit?usp=sharing Check out the tabs on the bottom for all the different info. I've played a couple of battles that originated in Rebellion, but haven't played a game using these battles as replacements (It would probably take a while). Needless to say this is still a WIP and if anyone is interested in it please feel free to copy it and make any changes you want (or provide me with suggestions).

3 minutes ago, Caimheul1313 said:

9 minutes ago, Crawfskeezen said:

Yes to all of this.

I'm a big fan of attacker vs defender where the defender may have less forces but has the battlefield and/or some other items as assets. There could be stronger objective/deployment/condition card control too, where the defender can pick one from their deck to be picked automatically.

Only issue there is activation count. In a game where you go with your whole army as opposed to back and forth it may be less of an issue but a 7 activation 600 point army against a 10/11/12 activation 800 point army is a tough ask.

You can always give the defender the additional "advantage" of having "Activations" that are passes, or some kind of automated defenses that contribute an activation, but can only Aim and Attack.

I've considered lopsided battles where the defender gets some kind of base with guard towers, defensive positions and plenty of options for cover . The attacker gets little to no cover as they advance upon the base but gets to utilize the cover as they advance. With a good defensive setup, a 600 point army could go toe to toe with an 800 (or higher) point army.

1 minute ago, thestag said:

I've considered lopsided battles where the defender gets some kind of base with guard towers, defensive positions and plenty of options for cover . The attacker gets little to no cover as they advance upon the base but gets to utilize the cover as they advance. With a good defensive setup, a 600 point army could go toe to toe with an 800 (or higher) point army.

I've played that sort of a game twice (once as each side with different scenarios) in Bolt Action.
We actually went a bit further, and gave the attacker double the points of the defender(s), with a simple objective such as "hold these two points behind the defender's lines at the end of the game." They were a lot of fun.

Really glad to see that there are others out there working on campaigns and other ways to play.

14 hours ago, 5particus said:

ive been trying to home brew a campaign that can be played with Legion and Armada, basically Empire at War but on a tabletop. I've never been happy with any of the methods ive seen anyone else come up with. basically if a character is at a place then it can fight in either the ground or space battles but not at another location. i even had a plan for garrison armies/fleets and the recruitment of more but i kinda put it on hold until the new Armada clone wars stuff is out.

So to be clear, I was in charge of the Legion side of this campaign, but there was also a (larger) Armada side to it. I'm not familiar with all the rules they had, but most of it was based on a Rebellion in the Rim campaign. The biggest difference was that this was a semi-narrative campaign where the whole thing took place on and above a single planet. Aside from needing a custom map, it did allow some interplay between the two campaigns; controlling the Planetary Ion Cannon sector on land gave friendly forces the "Ion Cannon" base defense effect in the campaign's corresponding space sector for example. Or controlling access to the hyperspace lanes would affect what units were readily available for legion. I'll be the first to admit that what we had wasn't perfect and probably erred more towards the "dangerously unbalanced" side, but I feel it did a much better job of making the two games feel linked then just adding Legion games on top of a normal Armada campaign would.

9 hours ago, Crawfskeezen said:

I'm a big fan of attacker vs defender where the defender may have less forces but has the battlefield and/or some other items as assets. There could be stronger objective/deployment/condition card control too, where the defender can pick one from their deck to be picked automatically.

So there were siege type battles planned in our campaign, but we didn't get to any of the larger ones. The attackers in the campaign got to choose which condition cards were in effect (from a limited pile, I can touch on how that worked if you want), while the defender got to choose the deployment card and counted as blue player for setting everything up. What might interest you more though was I decoupled the objectives; that is each player chose their own objective based on what they were trying to accomplish that fight. If both players chose the same objective it was played out as normal, but if they had different objectives, they were altered so that each objective offered a maximum of 4 victory points. Vital assets wasn't available yet, so this was relatively easy. Key point was that you could interact with the other player's objectives, so you could pick up supply crates, contest key positions, or repair moisture evaporators, but you only scored victory points for your own.

Each objective had its own victory effects. Key Positions was the simplest, the victor takes their opponents territory. Sabotage rendered a region uninhabitable and uncrossable for a number of campaign turns. The other three though gave the loser some less than desirable conditions. The loser of a Supplies match had to build armies using the Standard Issue rules from my first post until he got rid of it. Losing a Breakthrough let enemies waylay reinforcements, spread propaganda, and make a general mess of themselves behind your lines. This was represented by that player losing his army-wide special rule until he dealt with it (my whole group was sure that the clone and droid army wide rules were a sign of things to come, so I had made Rebel and Imperial placeholder rules for the campaign until official ones came out). Losing an Intercept Transmissions battle meant your army was compromised, your opponent could either request your army list and objective choice before making their own, or had to play and reveal their command cards in game before your opponent chose theirs. The most common way of getting rid of these conditions was by fulfilling a secondary mission in a battle, which meant less time spent focusing on the main objective and thus more vulnerable to losing it.

I like very much what you laid out so far. I understood that you and your group didn‘t have much time to try things out. But did you make any plans against snowballing?

Most campaigns start with equal forces at both sides, but then give the winner of a battle some access to additional troops, choices, or whatever. In effect winning the first battle makes it easier to win the next and so on. What can lead to a very onesided game experience.

Your design seems to have a lot of narrative elements and don’t focus so much about counting VPs? Maybe you can give more insight in your rules and plans?

Thank you for sharing!

4 hours ago, Triangular said:

I like very much what you laid out so far. I understood that you and your group didn‘t have much time to try things out. But did you make any plans against snowballing?

Most campaigns start with equal forces at both sides, but then give the winner of a battle some access to additional troops, choices, or whatever. In effect winning the first battle makes it easier to win the next and so on. What can lead to a very onesided game experience.

Your design seems to have a lot of narrative elements and don’t focus so much about counting VPs? Maybe you can give more insight in your rules and plans?

Thank you for sharing!

The way i figured that out in my plan was that each army had to be transported between planets by a fleet and you could only transport maybe 1000 points of army at a time, anything that you lost was dead (full squads, if there was a guy left then the whole squad came back.) units were created as a squad with upgrades and could only be deployed as such (if it is a naked squad then it is always a naked squad, if it has an upgrade then it always has that upgrade) it means that the armies couldnt be hot swapped depending on the situation so you could take an Anti-Armour army to a planet and win a battle against tanks but then when they come back with a trooper army they have the advantage again. you have a little bit of wiggle room with the extra points allowed to be transported to account for losses between battles

to stop a planet from being taken because there was no army there i figured every planet should have a garrison, say a generic commander 4 corps and maybe a support (about 400-500 points worth) and any troops that were left over from a previous battle could join in till you get to 800. then they defend a map that favours the defenders terrain wise. I firgured that there could also be a garrison in space as well, maybe a medium and 2 small bases with 4 squadrons up to 200 points worth. no uniques in a garrison unless transported there.

I figured that if there was an army there defending then the ground battle is done in 2 parts, first is a normal battle with standard objectives and then the second is the garrison defense with any survivors if the defenders lose the first battle. The garrison battle should be unlimited turns to the death/concede

this way there is always a chance at victory for both sides and the attacker is losing units to the free garrison defenders to prevent/ slow down the snowball.

22 hours ago, Triangular said:

I like very much what you laid out so far. I understood that you and your group didn‘t have much time to try things out. But did you make any plans against snowballing?

Most campaigns start with equal forces at both sides, but then give the winner of a battle some access to additional troops, choices, or whatever. In effect winning the first battle makes it easier to win the next and so on. What can lead to a very onesided game experience.

Your design seems to have a lot of narrative elements and don’t focus so much about counting VPs? Maybe you can give more insight in your rules and plans?

Thank you for sharing!

Sure, it might make more sense if I just lay most of it out. I'll even apologize right now for the wall of text about to follow. It does have a narrative focus as you said, but what restricts most of it was how closely tied it was to the Armada side of the campaign, and I don't have any of the rules changes they made for that. To quickly answer some of your questions though, there were no set army lists, veteran type upgrades, or experience to track. The points a player had to pick an army with was the same every time, but what units he could bring and in what numbers might be restricted due to army condition or territory control. If there was snowballing, it was because the army rules for the campaign weren't properly balanced, and honestly they probably weren't. I just never got enough data to tell how much so.

The campaign took place shortly after the Battle of Yavin, on an abused mining world. The story goes that Palpatine chose this world, despite its Rebel sympathies, to host a conference publicly berating his commanders for their failure with the Death Star. The Rebels, flush with recruits after their victory and hoping to prove they can fight the Empire head on, invade attempting to capture the Emperor himself. Of course, this is all going according to Ol' Sheev's plan... (SPOILER ALERT: He brings a Super Star Destroyer Prototype in Armada's second pivitol battle. That's what the story was really centered around. Really wish I could take credit for the idea, because it sounds just so much like him). The game was roughly divided into thirds with pivitol battles occurring at the same time as the Armada campaign's were, so the Armada campaign set the pace, but the legion campaign had a separate scoring system to determine who "won". I'll get to that later, but the first mission or two of each "third" as well as the pivitol battles were all narrative, most of the other battles were standard using the scenarios listed above.

For the campaign play, every unique character (or their look alikes, for those canonically dead at this point) was located on the map, and if an army was on the same territory, they could be included in lists that army made. As for armies, there were two on the map for each player (these belonged to the faction, NOT an individual player). Each army had an activation value (started at 16 for Empire armies and 21 for Rebels). This was a rough way of showing that armies available man power. After a battle, every unit that was wiped subtracted one from that armies activation value. An army that had less then 8 (Empire) or 12 (Rebels) for its activation value couldn't attack, but could defend normally. An army that was attacked with zero activations, well, now you know where the One of a Kind lists came from. Armies that weren't involved in combat that campaign turn recovered 2 (Empire) or 3 (Rebels) activations if the battles that turn used skirmish point totals, or 4 and 6 if they used standard point totals.

A campaign turn would start with the team that has initiative choosing an army to attack an enemy army with. The attacking army was allowed to move up to one territory prior to attacking, and could attack an enemy army either in the territory its in or the territory its faction controls immediately adjacent to it (effectively its zone of control). The attackers would select a player to lead the attack, and then the defenders would select a player to face him. The other team then had a turn to choose where to attack, but couldn't attack an already committed army. This continues until all players have a battle for that campaign turn. That was actually where we would stop for the session, as everyone would have their assigned opponent. They would then have time to make a list within the rules and restrictions imposed, and chose an objective (see my second post). This was similar how the Armada side was doing it, and by not tethering a player to an individual army, they didn't have to face the same opponent over and over again. Unless mentioned otherwise, all battles were standard 800 points. Some quick other notes: the conditions I mentioned in my second post for losing followed a player, not an army. This made it easier to keep track of. Also, players could only have one condition; if they lost a battle and gained a new one, that new one overwrote the old one. Finally, if a defender chose a Key positions objective and won, they took the attackers territory. The advantage to attacking wasn't that you were absolved from the risks, but you got to determine what the stakes were. We did play long enough that I saw someone use this to lure a defending army out of position, so I decided to keep it in as is.

For the battle setup, the condition cards (remember there were only 5 at the time) were shuffled, and one was drawn for each combat, plus an additional one. From this, the first attacker picked one of the conditions for his/her battlefield, and then handed the remainder to the second attacker, who did the same, until each attacker picked a condition card. The defenders repeated this process with the deployment cards. The defender is blue player for all intents and purposes during setup. If the attacker and defender picked different objectives, the objectives were modified to allow a maximum of 4 victory points in the game. Most of them were simple to change, placing one less supply box for example. Intercept transmissions was a little different, instead of VPs for each tower controlled, you scored 1/1/2 VPs if you controlled more towers than your opponent. Again from my second post, you could interact with your opponents objectives, but not score VPs from them. If a player had a condition from a previous loss, their opponent would put in play a secondary objective relating to that condition for them. If a player completed their secondary objective, they git rid of their negative condition, regardless of whether they won or lost. Also, draws were possible.

After the battles were all done, any consequences were worked out, i.e. conditions assigned or territory flipped, losses were subtracted from the armies' activation scores and the player who won added a tally to their factions victory tracker. After a pivitol battle, the winning side would add all the tallies from their victory tracker to their campaign score, and both sides would reset their victory tracker to 0. At the end of the campaign, who ever had the higher campaign score won, so there was a victory condition even if this was a narrative side show to an Armada campaign. If one side won more battles than the other that turn, that side gained initiative for next turn, otherwise initiative switched sides. The teams also took turns moving any armies that didn't fight that round as well as a single unique character. The character could move to any friendly territory. For armies, they could cross as much friendly territory as they wanted provided it was connected, and could move into a piece of enemy controlled territory connected to a friendly territory provided the enemy territory didn't contain or was adjacent to an enemy army. If they did this, that army would stop its movement for the rest of the turn and take control of the territory.

Last thing I think I need to touch on was the army wide special rules; these were designed to be somewhat OP since most battles were fought with generic commanders. For the Rebels, their units had virtually no synergy or theme or shared rules or whatever you want to call it with each other. The rebel units that did well had well above average action economy, and I also liked how someone once described Danger Sense as experimenting with suppression as a positive. So I combined them; Rebel troopers all get

Army of Heroes - Whenever a rebel trooper unit removes a suppression token (for any reason), that unit immediately gains an aim or a dodge token.

The Empire had almost the exact opposite problem; they have a strong theme and synergy centered around long range, heavy armor, and aim tokens. So much so that Empire units are either gunlined or sidelined. You still hear today: Eweb needs range 4! Dewback melee attack needs range 4! I'm not disagreeing that those changes would be effective, but I didn't like how passive a good Empire army list is compared to how super aggressive they are shown to be in the movies. So what I came up with for Empire was

Imperial Reinforcements - Increase the points cost of Stormtrooper and Snowtrooper units to 13 pts/mdl (52 base)

Increase the points cost of Shoretrooper units to 15 pts/mdl (60 base)

Increase the points cost of Emperor Palpatine and Director Krennic by 20 points (230 and 110 points respectively)

Yeah, its good enough I had to increase their prices. At the beginning of the 3rd and 5th rounds, add the rank tokens of every destroyed Storm/Snow/Shore trooper unit back into your order pool. When you draw an order token for one of these units, and have no more units of that rank to activate, you may add a reinforcement unit of the same type (Storm/Snow/Shore) as the destroyed unit to the battlefield. These units can either deploy using any battle deployment rules in the scenario (i.e. rapid reinforcements) or may move onto the battlefield from anywhere on the Imperial player's board edge. Reinforcement units inherit the personnel upgrade cards from their destroyed counterpart, but all other upgrades are lost. Furthermore, Reinforcement units cannot capture, contest, claim, or interact with objectives and count as non-scoring units for all intents and purposes.

So yeah, now you can treat your troopers like the disposable mooks they are supposed to be, as a unit could potentially come back twice. The initial reaction from the other players to these rules was mostly good. But it definitely needed more play testing then, and that was before the latest RRG change. And yeah, see the price changes for Palaptine and Krennic up there? Thats because there was one more bit to Imperial Reinforcements: So long as a commander with the Entourage ability is alive, Imperial Reinforcements also applies to a single Entrouraged unit. Turns out Palpy is quite willing to send endless waves of Royal Guard at the enemy while laughing maniacally.

Well, I think that was all the non narrative rules from my campaign. Feel free to lift any and all wholesale for your own campaign, or at the very least hope that helped.