I have ordered my second core set, and when I get it I want to try a modified Shuttle escort mission. My idea is that you use both shuttles from the two sets, and to distinguish them put a number token on each.

One of these shuttles is the senator's shuttle as in the original scenario, but one is a decoy, piloted by droids. Before game play begins, the Rebel must choose which shuttle is the decoy and write down its marker number on a piece of paper. The Imperial player does not get to see this.

The scenario plays as usual, but with perhaps either 2 X-wings and 4 Ties, or with 100 point squads.

I'm not sure if you would need to add shields to the shuttles for gameplay balance. Another idea would be that the Rebel can choose to put one Shuttle in range 2 from the Rebel's edge, and one Shuttle in Range 1. They can secretly decide during setup whether to place the Senator's shuttle or the decoy in the further starting position.

Rebel victory conditions: the Senator's shuttle escapes the field as in the original scenario. Neither the escort fighters nor the decoy shuttle need to survive.

Imperial victory condition: Destroy the Senator's shuttle, as in the original scenario. If one of the shuttles is destroyed, the Rebel player then reveals the number of the senator's shuttle. If the destroyed shuttle was the Senator's, then Imperials win. If it was the decoy, then the game continues as before.

Any thoughts on this modification?

I like it, though I would suggest a further modification to make it a bit more interesting. Also, I'm not sure adding shields would be the best idea as the TIEs would conceivably need a shot at killing both shuttles. As for my suggestion…

Rigged to Blow: The dummy shuttle has been rigged with explosives throughout and set to trigger if sufficient damage is sustained (down to 1 hull or fatal damage). Any fighter, enemy or friendly, within Range 1 suffers an attack with 3 dice, no defense rolls. Ships within 2 suffer an attack with one die. I think this would be fun, and make for some interesting gamesmanship in the fact that the Rebel player will not want to get his own ships caught in the explosion, but will not want to maneuver in such a way as to give away that he's avoiding a particular shuttle. Or perhaps he can bait the Imps in this way.

Just my thoughts.

I think a decoy shuttle is a brilliant idea! . . . But I haven't even played the original scenario yet.

We just did this in an epic 400 point vs 400 point battle. We used 6 shuttles and assigned point values to each. The rebel goal was to get X points worth of shuttles across the board. Before the game start, the rebel players secretly assigned the designated point values to each shuttle. Point values were 5,3,2,2,2 and 1. The rebels needed 6 points of shuttles to get across. We also had the 1 point shuttle piloted by droids and carrying ammunition cargo. If it was destroyed it would explode and damage nearby ships. We were pretty harsh with our explosion and said it delivered 4 hits if you were at range 1, 3 hits if you were at range 2, and 2 hits if you were at range 3. Ships hit by the explosion would roll agility against the hits normally. The hidden shuttle point values really added to the Mission and I'd highly recommend adding similar varieties to the standard mission. I would say that you'll want to make the shuttles weaker the more you add in, otherwise it just makes the imperial side that much harder to win.

400 vs. 400 !?! Totally epic! How long did that take?

400 vs. 400? Holy cow. I'm jealous. Sounds like fun. I like the addition of varying point values a lot.

A throwback to the PC game might involve an inspection phase of the mission, where both shuttles need to be inspected. Placing the shuttle/s with the imperials you might play a scenario where X-Wing has to fly within a certain range of the shuttle/s to ID them. When the correct shuttle is located a reinforcement Y-Wing could enter the play area with a mission to disable the shuttle via ion cannon.

Destroy the escort and capture the shuttle?

I'm sure there are loads of missions that could be borrowed from XW/TF games…

KarmikazeKidd said:

That's a cool idea! I think we will try that too.

Fothers said:

Exactly what I thought reading this thread! The TIEs should have to buzz the shuttles to ascertain which was the decoy and which was the target.

That gets way more interesting if they have to get within range 1 to the shuttles and then try not to collide…

I finally tried this tonight twice. First time, my two boys controlled 2 Academy Pilots each, while I had two Red Squadron pilots with no upgrades for anyone.

I easily made it across with both shuttles and no damage to my ships, due to poor maneuvering on my sons' part. (They are young.)

Next game was more interesting. We switched sides, and I played all the Imps versus my oldest son playing the Rebel side.

The way we played, one shuttle (either one) was in range one of the edge for the initial setup, one shuttle was in range 2, and both X-wings were in range 2. All the TIEs were also in range 2 from the edge as in the published scenario.

We used the Rigged To Blow scenario suggested above, with some modifications. Both shuttles only had 6 hull points. Once the decoy shuttle reached hull 2 or less, it automatically exploded. Damage was assigned by rolling red dice with no chance to defend. All ships in range, whether Rebel or Imp had to roll. We rolled 3 dice in Range 1, 2 in Range 2, and 1 at Range 3. My son had placed his shuttles at range 3 from each other, so even the senator's shuttle had to roll. It was pretty cool. One TIE was destroyed, one more damaged, and his X-wing lost both shields.

After that, I was obviously able to bring the power of 4 TIES (with reinforcements) to bear on the real shuttle. He did manage to get within one or two moves of the edge however. With better maneuvering he might have made it. On the last 2 or three turns he was unable to attack effectively due to running into my TIEs.

It was fun though. I recommend trying this out if you liked the original shuttle mission.

I might give the shutles one or two shields however even with the small number of points here. Once the decoy blows then the last few turns will be facing a lot of TIES due to the reinforcement rules. It's hard to say given the way things played out here. Definitely if you use more than the 46-48 point levels in squad building then you should add shields to both shuttles.

Let me know if anyone tries this or another variation.