I'll try to avoid spoilers as much as possible, but far and away my favorite part of the campaign is a specific mission that involves the heroes infiltrating a large vehicle. One map represents the vehicle in question, while a separate one acts as a sort of minimap, on which the infiltrated vehicle and others can interact.
In my opinion, it really captures that classic Star Wars spirit by being a layered and complex battle, while still remaining intimate to its heroes, and I would really love to see more missions like it.
If it Ain't Broke...
One possible way to do this would be to basically just replicate the Tyrants mission's mechanics, and maybe flesh them out a little more. For instance, maybe a future expansion could be about the heroes infiltrating various Imperial shipyards, and could incorporate gameplay with a trusty Falcon-wannabe freighter and a couple separate "dogfighting" tiles in space and the sky.
There's a lot you could do with that, including making the freighter a class in its own right with upgrades to shields, attack, and abilities.
The use of the freighter could totally vary, too. Some missions may heavily incorporate it, such as fending off Imperial boarders while also being pursued through an asteroid belt by TIEs. Some missions might use it simply as a mobile deploy/extraction tool, allowing for more traditional gameplay. And some may be super complex, forcing the heroes to decide who is part of the away team and who will remain on board to pilot the ship and man turrets.
As far as components go... obviously FFG could do with the Tyrants mission did and just suggest using mission markers for the vehicles. This is obviously the cheapest method, and those of us who own other FFG titles may just happen to have suitable minis to use anyway.
But if this is a legitimate space-themed expansion, I could see a handful of space minis make their way to the game for the minimaps. Obviously the Rebel freighter, but also some enemy ships as well- maybe some TIE variants, Z-95s for the mercs, and possibly even some Rebel allies (which, if this would be usable in skirmish, would be pretty needed).Or, maybe even capital ships, depending on the scale the expansion decides to go with.
And yes, that begins to encroach on X-Wing and Armada's territory a bit, but given how there's a constant chorus of "It's a different game!" whenever Legion and Imperial Assault are compared, I figure this is pretty much the same case, right?
Sea of Blood-Style
The Sea of Blood is, depending on who you ask, potentially the reason that we have a second edition of Descent, in that it was so bad that it allegedly killed the first edition. I'm not sure why that is, though, because it looks totally dope.
Basically, from what I can gather, the heroes in the expansion have a pirate ship, and can use it to sail around a very large map, land on an island, and even attack other ships. As far as I can tell, it looks like there are even canons on the ships for heroes to interact with and use!
I don't know, maybe the rules were super clunky or something, but I'm pretty confident that FFG could take a similar approach to this and make it work better now.
I'd imagine this as sort of inspired like the video game Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, in that the ship would exist on the map (instead of being represented in a minimap) and there would be various tokens representing intractable objects inside it that the heroes could utilize.
I've gone ahead and made a graphic below of what this could potentially look like in Imperial Assault. In the example, you can see Jyn piloting the ship, while Diala uses a turret to fire on the enemy. Gideon provides Diala with support, while Mak prepares to ward off boarders. On the Imperial ship, the Stormtroopers are also tending to the cockpit, shields, and turrets. While the units move according to the grid on the ships, the ships move according to the grid in space.
Obviously, the glaring problem with this idea is marrying the ideas of components and scale. With the Sea of Blood, the map and ships were huge, but they were made of a cheap thin plastic sheet instead of the higher quality cardboard tiles. I would like to avoid that, if at all possible.
Now, in the above example, it's obviously pretty cramped. Those ships have absolutely nowhere to go, and that's utilizing what's probably roughly 4 large square tiles. It's probably pretty hard to imagine a box adding many more than that, and we're nowhere near the space needed to make these battles worthwhile.
The first thing that comes to mind that could potentially work for inspiration is Magic the Gathering: Arena of the Planeswalkers.
The large tiles for this games can easily cover my entire table. They're not quite as sturdy as the Imperial Assault/Descent ones, but they're much better than a cheap plastic sheet. And even though these tiles are from across three expansions, I feel like four of them would easily be sufficient.
If a space expansion shipped in a larger, rectangular box, we could pretty easily get a sufficient amount of space tiles (perhaps reversible with cloud tiles) in it. Add in some more traditional tile thickness for the ships, and maybe a few for space stations to board (though honestly, we probably have enough in core that could work for that). Throw in some more traditional components like a few deployment groups and a hero or two and you've got yourself a very solid expansion.
What About Skirmish?
I always approach these articles from a Campaign player's perspective, but I think this idea could be incredible for Skirmish as well. Imagine skirmish battles with each side trying to shoot down or board the other. Obviously I haven't delved too much into the specifics of the rules yet for how the actual space combat could work (I could do that if there's an interest) but I don't really see why it wouldn't work for Skirmish too, maybe with two or three maps that make their way into the rotation at some point. The main obstacle now, as far as I can tell, is getting enough table room to host a tournament!
Heck you could even figure ship damage into the point accumulation of Skirmish, not totally unlike the Space Assault mode in the (good) Battlefront II.
Heck you could even figure ship damage into the point accumulation of Skirmish, not totally unlike the Space Assault mode in the (good) Battlefront II.
Anyway, let me know what you think. Is this idea something you'd be interested in? A well intentioned, but unrealistic wish? An absolutely terrible idea that would kill Imperial Assault like how it allegedly killed Descent? Is there a method above that you preferred above the other? Let me know in the comments below!
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