“Just me, the boy and the two droids… No questions asked…”
Until now this blog has been, if not 100% historical, at least loosely based on history. However, I have to admit that I do occasionally like to dabble in a bit of Wookiee-bothering…
A couple of years ago, OC Domestic and I were on a pub-crawl with friends in London and we stopped in a pub that happened to be next-door to a Waterstones bookshop. I had a £20 Waterstones Christmas voucher burning a hole in my wallet, so I ‘nipped in for a quick one’… The military history section was rubbish (it always is these days), but on the way out I noticed a box marked X-Wing: The Miniatures Game going for £20 in the discount corner and including two very nicely-painted model TIE Fighters and an X-Wing! I’d not heard of the game before this point, but it looked like it might be fun, so bought it.
The rules were read through an alcoholic haze on the train back to our friends’ house and my mate Howie and I had a trial game the following day (post-hangover)… One game turned into two games… Howie downloaded the X-Wing Sounds App onto his phone and we had a third game with sound-effects! 🙂 The wives shook their heads in pity…
I was hooked…
But it wasn’t just me… I tried it out with my young Minions (now re-designated Padawans) and they quickly became hooked as well…
I freely confess that I then went a bit nuts buying ships… With a few months the three starting ships had become 30+ ships, including a couple of whopping corvettes, a freighter and an inflatable Death Star (thanks Martin!)…
So I buy the odd ship now and again… I can handle it… Can’t I…?
I was immediately tempted to create a campaign in order to have a purpose to our games beyond the standard points-based pickup games and the Padawans were very enthusiastic. As luck would have it, ‘Yarkshiregamer’ had already done most of the work for me and all his original campaign rules and scenarios can be found on his blog here. As he freely admits to having ‘borrowed’ it from someone else, I feel absolutely no guilt whatsoever in shamelessly ripping him off! Thanks Yarkshiregamer! 🙂 Joking aside, Yarkshiregamer’s blog is excellent, so go have a look.
Having blatantly copied Yarkshiregamer, I have since edited and refined the rules quite a bit, so here’s my version of the campaign rules:
Jemima Fawr’s X-Wing Campaign Rules v1.18
“Here goes nothing…”
The campaign players will take the role of newly qualified pilots in the Rebel Alliance, fresh from bulls-eyeing womp-rats on the farm back home. They must start from the bottom and work their way up to better ships, upgrades, fame, fortune and Twi’Lek handmaidens…
There will also be a Campaign Emperor (and Servants of the Dark Side) who will act as umpire and play the Empire ships.
Each player in their first game is given a Rebellion Grant of 22 Galactic Credits (GC), with 1 GC equating to X-Wing unit points. The player may then pick any of the basic Rebel fighters listed below. The selected ship starts the game with no upgrades and the lowest Pilot Skill (PS) of 1. Any surplus GC left over after buying the starting ship is converted into ‘cashback’ GC, which may be banked or spent on upgrades.
Ordinarily, there will be a ‘campaign admin phase’ between each mission, when the pilots first collect their bounty and bonuses (if any) for the mission just flown and then spend their cash on ships, weapons, upgrades, pilot training, crew, etc.
Ship Type – Basic Cost – Cashback
Z-95 Headhunter Starfighter – 12 GC – 10 GC
HWK-290 Hawk Light Transport – 16 GC – 6 GC
RZ-1 A-Wing Interceptor – 17 GC – 5 GC
BTL-S3 Y-Wing Starfighter – 18 GC – 4 GC
T-65 X-Wing Starfighter – 21 GC – 1 GC
A/SF-01 B-Wing Heavy Starfighter – 22 GC – 0 GC
Earning Galactic Credits
“If money is all that you love, then that’s what you’ll receive!”
As you progress you will hopefully earn Galactic Credits and will be able to buy bigger and better ships from Crazy Mark’s Pre-Loved Quality Starship Emporium (see below). However, if you lose your shiny new E-Wing or YT-1300 in combat, you can only get a “free” replacement from the list of basic ships above.
The way around this is to take out an insurance policy: The Rebel Alliance will always give you 22 GC for a new ship and so long as you have enough spare GCs in the bank, you may pay the difference to upgrade to the ship you just lost. If you don’t have the cash you’re back in the basic category. You CANNOT buy different ship types this way.
So for example, if you just lost an E-Wing (worth 27 GCs), the Rebellion will give you 22 GCs for a basic ship that you can then top up with the difference of 5 GCs from your bank account to get a replacement E-Wing. You can’t instead buy yourself a YT-1300 (also worth 27 GCs) as an alternative – you have to save up for a different ship from scratch.
If you find yourself flush with cash, there’s nothing stopping you from having more than one ship and simply taking the ship best suited to a particular mission on any given day, while leaving the spare in the hangar.
Galactic Credits are earned in the following ways:
Event – Bounty
Surviving a mission with a working ship – 1 GC
Hitting an enemy ship – 1 GC per round in which hit inflicted
Hitting a friendly ship (e.g. with bombs/mines) – Lose 1 GC per round in which hit inflicted
Destroying an enemy ship – 1 GC (in addition to the 1 GC for hitting)
Destroying an enemy ship with a better pilot – 1 GC per pilot skill difference
Completing a mission – Gain GC Bounty as per mission briefing
Being hit by the enemy – Lose 1 GC per round in which hit inflicted
Being shot down – Lose all GC gained during that mission
Sadly you will get shot down; some more than others, so there is a mechanism for this:
Roll a red hit die when you are shot down. A critical hit meaning the pilot has passed on. He has shuffled off this mortal coil. Bereft of life he rests in peace. Struck down, he will now return more powerful than you can possibly imagine… Yeah, like that worked for Obi-Wan…
Any other result means that the pilot has survived and now needs to get down to Crazy Mark’s Pre-Loved Starship Emporium for a new ship.
All upgrades mounted on the destroyed ship are automatically lost along with the cash bonuses accrued and ‘in hand’ during the mission, but you do get to keep your GCs already in the bank before the mission started. Your pilot, if he survives, will retain his Pilot Skill, any additional Ace Pilot Skills (see below) and/or Élite upgrade cards. You will still be entitled to receive the mission bounty if your squadron completes its mission.
Some ship types may be upgraded with additional crew-members. If you have additional crew on board, they may be killed (or survive) in the same manner as pilots.
Making The Jump To Hyperspace
“Oh yeah? Watch this…”
When you complete a mission objective or simply need to escape destruction, you will need to engage your hyperdrive and make the jump to light speed. To do this, use the following procedure:
1. Attempting to make the jump to hyperspace must be declared immediately when you reveal your manoeuvre dial.
2. No attempt may be made if there is an ‘Ionised’ token on the ship at the start of the turn (two tokens in the case of Large ships). This will suspend the process for a turn.
3. Roll two attack dice. Add an extra attack die if your ship is equipped with an Astromech droid. You will make a successful jump if you roll two Critical Hits.
4. If you are unsuccessful, any Critical Hit rolled will carry over into the next turn.
5. On the second turn, roll two attack dice as before (+1 for any equipped astromech) and add additional attack dice equal to your pilot skill halved (rounded up).
6. On the third turn of trying, you will automatically succeed in making the jump to hyperspace.
7. When successful, the jump to hyperspace is made in the End phase of that turn.
Ace Pilot Skills
“The Force is strong in this one…”
At the start of each scenario, the pilot with the most kills is designated as the Squadron Leader and is given the Initiative Token. Once per game he can re-roll any roll (i.e. re-rolling ALL dice rolled by one person at one moment) by handing the Initiative Token to the Imperial side.
Pilot can gain Ace Pilot Skills from their campaign kills. These skills take effect during the post-mission admin phase (i.e. a pilot doesn’t suddenly acquire the Ace Pilot trait immediately upon making his fifth kill – they have to wait until the end of the game for it to take effect). The Ace Pilot Skills are listed below:
5 Kills: The pilot becomes an Ace. Once per game you can perform an action when you have a stress token.
10 Kills: The pilot becomes a Double Ace. Once per game you can treat a red manoeuvre as a white or a white as a green.
15 Kills: The pilot becomes a Triple Ace. Once per game you may change a blank to a Hit or Evade.
20 Kills: The pilot becomes a Quad Ace. Once per game you may perform 2 actions in the action phase, you also become a priority target for the enemy, if you are in range 1 or 2 of the enemy with another friendly ship the Empire must target you.
25 Kills: The pilot becomes a Quint Ace. Once per game you may perform a K turn but choose if it is at 1, 3 or 5 after you reveal your dial. Roll 1 attack die and take that damage (no mods or re rolls).
30 Kills: The pilot becomes a Hex Ace. Once per game when you receive a critical hit you can take the next three cards from the damage deck and pick the one you want.
40 Kills: The pilot becomes a Top Ace. Once per game you can change your dial (after you have revealed it) to any manoeuvre on the dial.
Crazy Mark’s ‘Pre-Loved’ Quality Starship Emporium
“The best deals in the galaxy and no Jedi mind-tricks!”
Once earned you can spend your hard earned GCs on shiny stuff during the inter-mission admin phase:
To gain a Pilot Skill (PS) level you pay the bank twice the desired PS level (max PS increase 1 per mission). For example, an upgrade to Pilot Skill 3 will cost you 6 GCs (3×2=6).
Upgrades cost 1 GC per unit point written on the card. For example, an R2-D2 upgrade (4 unit points) costs 4 GCs.
Used goods (ships or upgrades, but not Crew or Élite skill upgrades) may be traded in for 50% of their value (rounded down). So if you want a basic E-Wing at 27 GC you will get 10 GC for your battered old X Wing and will then need to find 17 GC from somewhere.
To gain Élite upgrade cards you must be at least Pilot Skill 3. You then have to buy a Pilot Élite Upgrade slot for 5 GC and then pay for the upgrade. Élite upgrades may not be traded in – if you get a new Élite upgrade, the old one is lost (unless you buy it again).
Cards that are discarded during the course of a mission (such as Proton Torpedoes) are not lost. You get them back for the next mission unless the ship is destroyed.
You can transfer upgrades from 1 ship to the next but you can only upgrade a ship in line with its upgrade bar. You will have to trade in any upgrades that cannot be fitted to the new ship.
Ship – Cost – Trade-In Value
Z-95 Headhunter Starfighter – 12 GC – 6 GC
HWK-290 Hawk Light Transport – 16 GC – 8 GC
RZ-1 A-Wing Interceptor – 17 GC – 8 GC
BTL-S3 Y-Wing Starfighter – 18 GC – 9 GC
T-65 X-Wing Starfighter – 21 GC – 10 GC
T-70 X-Wing Starfighter – 24 GC – 12 GC
A/SF-01 B-Wing Heavy Starfighter – 22 GC – 11 GC
E-Wing Escort Starfighter – 27 GC – 13 GC
BTL-S8 K-Wing Assault Starfighter – 23 GC – 11 GC
U-Wing Assault Transport – 23 GC – 11 GC
Auzituck Gunship – 24 GC – 12 GC
Scurrg H-6 Bomber – 24 GC – 12 GC
ARC-170 Starfighter – 25 GC – 12 GC
YT-1300 Transport – 27 GC – 13 GC
YT-2400 Transport – 30 GC – 15 GC
VCX-100 Transport – 35 GC – 17 GC
Campaign Emperor’s Notes (Not to be read by pilots)
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this…”
I suggest limiting the available pool of ships and upgrade cards to those immediately available in the players’ collections. You can find all the cards and ship-stats on line, but proxies and everyone maxing out their upgrades soon becomes rather tiresome. It’s much more fun if resources are limited and squadron pilots have to negotiate and horse-trade to determine who gets which ships and upgrades. It also encourages players to get their own models (though they can only actually use them if they earn them through the campaign system).
As the players get more experienced, it may be wise to inflict a ‘weapons shortage’ and make pilots permanently discard a torpedo/missile/bomb card as they use it.
I find that it’s easier to keep a track of GC bonuses if you keep a pot of poker-chips or similar to hand and award them or take them back as GCs are earned or lost.
Scenarios
Have a look at Yarkshiregamer’s blog for a huge list of scenarios, as well as the scenarios supplied with the basic game and the various ship upgrade packs. However, I tended to find that after a while, the results of one scenario would provide inspiration for me to write a whole new scenario from scratch, continuing the narrative from what happened in the previous game, so our campaign totally diverged from Yarkshiregamer’s campaign.
The whole point of this campaign is primarily to provide interest and inject fun into clubnight games over and above the usual points-based competitive play. There doesn’t necessarily have to be any sort of back-story, but it does add an extra dimension if you do. I will shortly be posting reports of our games and the chronicle of the Rebellion’s Brown Squadron in the Treveen System.
Imperial Squadron Creation
Once the Rebel pilot roster is determined for a mission, you’ll need to create an Imperial squadron to oppose them (flown by yourself and any spare Servants of the Dark Side who aren’t otherwise involved in the campaign). Sometimes the Imperial force will be determined by the scenario, but use this method to create generic squadrons:
Allocate 1x TIE Fighter per rebel player. Most of these will be PS1 ‘Academy’ TIE Fighters, but make every third TIE Fighter a random named Ace or higher-quality Squadron Pilot (I just get the pilots to pick random cards from the TIE Fighter card deck).
Note that as the campaign progresses you will need to beef up your TIEs with a higher proportion of Squadron Pilots and Ace Pilots.
Allocate Speciality Ships; 1 for every 2 Rebel Players.
For each Speciality Ship roll 1 d10 and add 1 to die (per PS level) if average PS skill of Rebels is more than 2. Then consult the cart below to see what type of speciality ship you get. For the pilot randomly pick a pilot card from those available for the ship type.
Modify this list to suit your collection of models.
1-3 TIE Interceptor
4 TIE Striker with Adaptive Ailerons Title and Lightweight Frame Modification
5 TIE Advanced Prototype with 1x Concussion Missile
6 TIE Advanced with TIE x/1 Title, Advanced Targeting Computers System and 1x Concussion Missile
7-8 TIE Bomber with 1x Proton Torp, 1x Concussion Missile and 1x Proton Bomb
9 Lambda Shuttle with Weapons Engineer, Anti Pursuit Lasers Modification and Sensor Jammer System
10 TIE Punisher with 1x Flechette Torp, 1x Proton Torp, 1x Cluster Missile, 1x Assault Missile and 2x Proton Bomb
11 Guard TIE Interceptor with Shield Upgrade and Targeting Computer
12 Roll 1d6 again:
1-2 TIE Defender with Heavy Laser Cannon and Ion Pulse Warheads
3-4 TIE Phantom with Flight Instructor, Stygium Particle Accelerators and Advanced Cloak
5-6 Firespray-31 with Heavy Laser Cannon, Seismic Charges, Expose, Homing Missiles & Mercenary Co-Pilot
Note that named ace pilots can only appear once in the same game and will be permanently removed from the campaign if they are killed, so make a note of any Imperial Ace pilots killed. A few named Ace pilots appear in different ship types, so if a named Ace is killed flying a TIE Interceptor, that pilot can’t later turn up flying a TIE Defender.
Version 1 or Version 2…?
“Jabba no Wanka!”
In the last year or so, X-Wing 2nd Edition has appeared… The unutterable bastards… I have no intention of spending a fortune on conversion packs and I don’t do competition gaming in any case, so will stick with 1st Edition. Feel free to use this for either version – it should work just fine with 2nd Edition.
Have fun and may the Force be with you always!
[Edited to add: As an example of how the campaign system works in practice, our first campaign game report can be found here]
