So I have been a person that likes to take a base game rule set, create my own little story, and run with it. For X-Wing, I have taken the base X-Wing rule set and expanded it to make sure that a player actually cares about their pilots instead of sending them forward as a meat shield like Biggs is commonly used as right now. The system that I have thought up in the last few hours relies heavily on a controlling player to make tactical retreats, committing forces only when necessary, and incorporating a RPG type atmosphere where the outcome and success/fauilures of missions drives the story line. The GM, instead of being one of the interested parties, is the Imperial player and gets to set forth rules, challenges, missions, and whatnot to throw at the Rebels to make the Rebel player(s) think long term instead of the short term.

Destroy that communications array but lose a pilot in the process? You don't get a replacement pilot.

Loose an x-wing, but the pilot ejects and is picked up by the Rebel player? Well, you don't get a replacement X-Wing, your pilot is injured, and the rest of the pilots need to pick up the slack for the next game.

I am going to post the rules that I have written and I would like your input on what should be changed, added, or deleted. Most of the rules are self explanitory, and anyone that has played X-Wing for more than a few games will find that it gives a very unique feel to the game because you have to make sure that your pilots can't just do pitched battles forever and expect to win the war. The combat is more prevelant in a single rebel vs imperial type game, but as soon as you have one person playing one pilot with three other people also controlling the pilots, things get more into the RPG style I think.

Anyways, let me know if you think things should be changed or added. Also, if you use the rules, please give me credit if you reproduce them or change them.

X-Wing

The Battle of Skri’La

Custom Campaign Rules

to be used with the

Star Wars X-Wing Miniature Game

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Background

The Rebellion is in full swing! The Rebel Alliance has struck a mighty blow against the Imperial Forces by destroying the Death Star along with Grand Moff Tarkin. The Imperial Forces are reeling from this mighty blow, but are quickly regrouping and plan to hit the Rebellion back wherever they can be found. Using guerilla tactics, skill, and no small amount of luck, the Rebellion has been able to stay one step ahead of the Imperials.

The Rebel leadership wishes to capitalize on the Imperial Navy’s disorder and has authorized your squadron to go to the Skri’La system and engage the Imperial forces there. There are several pieces of advanced Imperial Technology in the system along with a garrison squadron of tie fighters and a prototype pilot division. Several years ago, the Imperial Navy set up that area as a weapons and starship design, testing, and production facility. There are advanced pieces of technology that the Rebellion has never faced in battle before!

Despite the dangers of sending in a small battle group of ships into the area to try and destroy the facility, the Rebellion has deemed this a mission of high priority. The Imperial forces do not know that the design and production facility in the Skri’La system will be attacked and are currently unaware that a tempest is on their way…

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This is a mission based, story driven campaign that involves multiple Rebel players and one Imperial/GM player. The Rebel player(s) is given a mission by the GM, and based on that mission outcome, the story progresses. There are several campaign specific rules that are used only in this campaign that give the Rebel or Imperial players an advantage. These rules can be adapted for any campaigns written by other people, I just hope that you give me credit when credit is due.

For all intents and purposes, for this campaign, the GM is the Imperial player. The GM is there to control the Imperial faction and to introduce bumps, buffs, and nerfs to the Rebel faction based on how the game is going. The GM’s word is final.

A word to the GM: your job is not to completely crush the rebel pilot(s). Your job is to control the Imperials and to make the game interesting and fun by introducing elements into the game to make it interesting, challenging, and to continue the basic story line. Be creative! Do not crush the Rebel spirit unless that is the point of the mission.

Rebel players: Your job is to complete missions, destroy Ties, get upgrades, and survive to fight another day. There are several rules that will aid you in accomplishing these in the general rules section.

Campaign Specific Rules

The rule book for Star Wars: X-Wing will be used unless otherwise noted in this rule section.

Captured ships: The Rebellion may have use for Imperial ships. To capture a ship, an Ion cannon must be used.

To capture a ship, the hull value must be down to its last hull point, and the ion cannon must make a successful attack that adds an ion token to the ship. Instead of removing the ship as destroyed, the ship makes a 1 straight movement for one more turn. If the ion cannon hits the ship again the following turn, following all the normal ion cannon rules, it is disabled. If the ion cannon does not hit, the ship is destroyed and remove the ship from play.

Only some missions allow for captured ships. The GM will let all parties know ahead of time which ships may be captured. The captured ships may be used as normal inventory for the Rebels for any and all missions.

Ejecting: In battle, sometimes a ship gets destroyed. If a ship has an ejection seat, then the pilot may survive. For game purposes, all Rebel ships have ejection seats and Imperial ships do not have ejection seats.

Ejecting has its drawbacks though. Each time that a pilot has to eject due to the ship exploding around them, they have to roll 3d6 (three 6-sided die). If the total of the 3d6 is greater than or equal to nine (9), then the pilot survived the explosion and can be picked up after the battle. If the result is lower than nine (9), then the pilot tries to save the ship but dies in a fiery death while screaming on the radio (think Prokins).

If the pilot survives ejecting, the GM and the pilot owning player roll an additional 3d6 after the battle. Whoever rolls higher, with modifiers, recovers the downed pilot(s). If the Imperials recover the pilot, the Rebel player cannot use the pilot in future games unless the GM says so.

If the Rebel player recovers the pilot after the battle, then the pilot is injured for the very next game.

Injured pilot: A pilot may still get into his or her cockpit while injured, but their skills will be reduced significantly. To simulate injury, no pilot upgrades past tier 1 are allowed and the PR is reduced by five (5) to a minimum of one (1). You may leave the injured pilot out of the upcoming mission and s/he will be fully healed after the current mission.

Inventory: Since the battle group does not have access to ship production facilities, the Rebel forces use WYSWYG rules. What You See Is What You Get. The GM decides at the beginning of the campaign how many X-Wings, how many Y-Wings, how many A-Wings, etc. Consider the time period of this battle! It is right after the first Death Star was destroyed. A-Wings were still in the prototype stage… If the campaign takes long enough to see the emergence of new ship types, then so be it.

The Rebel player gets to use all of the available ships in inventory. Each ship comes with no upgrades and a base stat line.

Panic: If a pilot panics , the opposing player randomly chooses their movement by spinning the movement dial while not looking at it. The dial must turn at least once around to simulate random evasive action. Perform the movement on the dial following the normal X-Wing rules. If the movement dial is between movements, spin again.

Pilot points: Successful missions, kills, and other objectives give the player options on how to upgrade their ship or pilot. The points may be saved and it is the Rebel player’s responsibility to keep track of their points. Pilots that do not participate in a battle do not get the pilot points for the mission.

Pilot upgrades: Pilots naturally gain knowledge, skills, and abilities as they complete missions. The more missions a pilot completes, the more skillful the pilot. The more confirmed kills, the more skillful the pilot as well. For each confirmed kill that a pilot has, they earn one point. Each mission also has a set number of points for completed mission objectives that apply to each pilot respectively.

The pilots get an unlimited number of pilot upgrades. If the pilot has the points for an upgrade, they get to buy the upgrade and keep that upgrade for the rest of the campaign! It is possible to have a crack X-Wing pilot that has expose, marksmen ship, and swarm tactics for a very effective attacking ship! All of these abilities stack as well.

Example – if two Rebel pilots are conducting a combat air patrol (CAP) mission for the battle group, the mission might be worth three (3) upgrade points. If the pilots engage four (4) Tie Fighters on this mission, and destroy three (3) and drive off the last one, both Rebel pilots each get three (3) points for the completed mission, and one (1) for each confirmed kill.

Pilot upgrades are divided up into tiers. Each pilot upgrade card has a point cost in the lower right corner, and this is also the tier of the upgrade.

A pilot may only have one upgrade from each tier in play at a time. A single pilot may take Expose (tier 4) and Veteran Instincts (tier 1), but not Veteran Instincts (tier 1) and Determination (tier 1).

Pilot ranking: The pilots that accompany the battle group are skilled, but have not made a name for themselves yet. To represent this, the pilot ranking (PR) of all pilots start at a base of three (3), and points may be spent to upgrade the PR of any pilot.

To purchase a PR point, a pilot takes the current PR and adds one point. To upgrade a base pilot from PR3 to PR4 would cost the base of three (3) + one (1) for a total of four (4) points for PR4. PR5 would cost four (4) + one (1) for a total of five (5).

Any pilot may max out their PR to a maximum of nine (9) using this system. It is possible to get to PR11 using Veteran Instincts , but that uses your tier one pilot upgrade.

Pilot Upgrade costs: Since an easy maneuver is easy to learn, and a hard maneuver is harder to learn, the cost of each upgrade is set by tiers.

Each upgrade card has a normal cost in the lower right corner of the card. This is the tier and cost of the card. In addition, each upgrade that you buy per tier increases in cost! If a pilot has one Tier 1 upgrade, s/he may purchase a second one, but the cost is doubled . The third of the same tier is tripled . A pilot may have unlimited upgrades in a single tier, but the cost increases by the number of same tier upgrades the pilot already has.

A pilot may forget a pilot upgrade if they wish, but the points to purchase the upgrade are not recovered in any way! If a pilot wishes to purchase the forgotten upgrade, the pilot may, but must purchase the upgrade at the same cost as above. If a pilot has two tier 1 upgrades, and forgets one, treat the next tier 1 upgrade purchase as a second upgrade for tier 1.

Ship points: Each successful mission is a boon to the Rebel cause. To represent this, each completed mission has a point value attached to it for the ship point pool. The ship pool is used to purchase ship upgrades for the battle group fighter wing.

Ship upgrades: Some ships are better than others. A pilot can spend years upgrading a ship to his or her liking. Points can be spent on ship upgrades just like pilot upgrades, but do not increase in cost like pilot upgrades. There are three types are upgrades, munitions, and droids.

Munitions – These upgrades are proton torpedoes, cluster missiles, et al. The owning player may purchase unlimited munitions from the ship points, and distribute the munitions to the ships under their control. Each ship may have up to two (2) munitions loaded on their ship if their ship has the missile upgrade icon.

Upgrades – Upgrades are like stealth devices, shield upgrades, and other ship upgrade cards. You may only have one of each upgrade card per ship. The cost of non-expendable ship upgrades are twice the cost of normal. In addition, if you do not physically have the ship upgrade, you cannot take the upgrade. You may not remove upgrades from a ship once they are installed.

Droids – Astrometric droids may be moved around like pilots. Only common astrometric droids may be purchased, ie no R2-D2. Droids may be captured or procured throughout the campaign though. If a ship with an astrometric droid is destroyed, the astrometric droid is destroyed along with the ship.

Also, once you add more than one ship upgrade to a ship, only one pilot may fly that ship since it is now customized for that specific pilot. Keep track of which pilots can fly specific ships. This can be accomplished by giving each customized ship a unique name. The pilot may fly other ships as the mission demands, but only one pilot may fly a “custom” ship. Droids do not count towards the “custom” upgrade limit.

Ships retreating: At the beginning of the game, the each player will have one board edge designated as their retreat line. A Rebel player can designate their ship(s) as retreating at the beginning of the planning phase. A Rebel ship that is retreating *must* end its movement phase closer to the retreat line. If the ship cannot physically end its movement closer to the board edge with any available maneuver, the pilot will panic .

After declaring that it is retreating, the pilot/ship moves, performs actions, and shoots as normal. In addition, the pilot gets a free focus token to spend how it wishes in addition to its normal actions.

If the retreating ship reaches the table edge, and any part of the plastic base goes outside of the field of play, the ship has retreated. For the rest of the battle, the pilot/ship may not enter play again! Do not count this ship as destroyed.

Rebel Player Campaign Starting Inventories

Twelve (12) x-wings

Three (3) Y-wings

Four (4) Proton Torpedoes

One (1) Concussion Missile

One (1) Cluster Missile

Eight (8) Pilots, Rebel player chooses names/sex of each pilot

All pilots have two free pilot points to spend each

Combat Air Patrol (Mission One)

Background: The Rebels have just exited hyperspace in the Skri’La System. Sensors have determined that the ships are in tight formation and the escort fighters have taken picket positions around the battle group. The first mission is to fly a combat air patrol.

Mission: Engage any enemy fighters on patrol in the area and establish a perimeter for the ships. Protect the ships in the fleet and do not let any fighters past your patrol sector.

Maximum ships: Two (2) ships

Ship points: Three (3) at mission completion

Pilot Points: One (1) at mission completion

Conditions: Destroy or drive off enemy fighters. The enemy Tie Fighters will automatically retreat towards their table edge at the beginning of turn 12 of combat.

Bonus: Two (2) ship points if you destroy all enemy fighters.

After that, it is completly story driven. What happens? The GM gets to decide based on the mission outcomes. I am going to play this with a few different people, 1 one 1 and see where the stories lead.

So? Anything that is glaringly wrong with the expanded rules set?

I like what you are doing here. The RPG aspects is pretty cool. I'm currently running a similar story based league. Had the first session of our local Star Wars X-wing League. Had a total of 7 players for the first mission. I used the following rules for the league: X-wing League Rules if you want to check them out. As the rules state each player is a pilot in the newly formed ad-hoc fighter squadron “ The Reapers ” assigned to the rebel Nebulon B2 Escort Frigate “ Timeron “.

My story starts just after the rebels get access to T65 X-wings and each mission will move the players closer to the fateful Battle of Yavin IV and the destruction of the Death Star. If the players want to continue the story I will take them thru events of the “Empire Strikes Back”. This will allow me to add the Wave II stuff. I've created custom cards for each player listing their achievements, upgrades and a running cost, which is used to set the Imperial Presence in ships on any mission. Pilots can have an unlimited number of abilities, some given for free and others purchased with xp points. Were ships can only have one of any upgrade and lose them all if shot down.

The first two missions have been completed and a run down posted in the Battles section. Please check them out. I've slowly been modifying and updating the rules as I go along (more upgrades and pilot abilities). It seems to work really well. I hope you have similar response.