An Unexpected Visit, Mission 1 of my new Pirates' Run Campaign

We finally had time to start testing the new campaign. I wanted to create a narrative and to keep learning the game by trying out as many ships as possible, so I will add some "mission creation" comments to the battle reports featuring the missions I designed.

You can find the whole campaign here: Pirates' Run Campaign
And the PDF for the first scenario is here: An Unexpected Visit

The Story so far

The Perlemian Trade Route is one of the oldest and most well-traveled hyperlanes in the galaxy. One of the major trading posts along the Perlemian is The Wheel, an enormous, circular hub- and spoke style space station near the outer edge of the Mid Rim. The Wheel holds a special status in the Empire, as it holds no formal Imperial presence. This makes The Wheel not only a major tourist destination, with popular casinos and entertainment zones, but also a meeting point for smugglers and pirates and their fences.

Usually, the Empire is glad to leave those smugglers and pirates alone, as the apparent neutrality of The Wheel makes it a worthwhile asset for Imperial Intelligence. Lately, though, a band of pirates calling themselves the Insurrection Privateers have become so bold, that their criminal acts can no longer be tolerated. Imperial Intelligence has found out that the profits of the Insurrection Privateers is being funneled to fund the burgeoning Rebel Alliance.

A Nebulon B Frigate, the Triumphant has been sent to the nearby systems with its full battle complement; its mission: to track and destroy the pirate group. The commander of the Frigate, a promising young officer called Captain Gilad Pellaeon, has devised a ruse to capture the pirates. His technicians have inserted special tracking codes in the program of several droids. Several droid shipments with the tampered droids have been sent along the Perlemian Trade Route, following the side lanes where the pirates have been known to attack. The Imperial spies under Pellaeon's command have been busy selling information in The Wheel about these shipments' routes.

Soon enough, the information reaches the pirates, one of the shipments is attacked by the Insurrection Privateers, and the Triumphant's hunt commences...

 

Scenario 1: An Unexpected Visit

The pirates have ambushed one the freighter convoys in a nebula cloud near the Roche system. This section of the Roche system is one of the favourite ambushing spots of the pirates, as the electrical and magnetic jolts of the nebula can play havoc on a ship's helm and engine systems.

Unbeknownst to both the Pirates and Captain Pellaeon, a third party has been tracking this group of pirates, and his intentions may disrupt not only the Pirates' attack but also Captain Pellaeon's well prepared plans. 

The Pirates spring their ambush on the Imperial convoy; in the image, two Y-Wings race toward the Shuttle

The HWK-290 and a B-Wing try to close the gap with the Shuttle

Battle Report

Planning the Ships' list
I was going to play the Pirates this time and had many interesting choices to contemplate. I think this is an important aspect when creating a new mission; you have to try to give the players enough choices so that the planning is interesting and not obvious or too constrained. At the same time, I wanted to force players to play certain configurations to be able to try as many ships as possible.

In my case I could go for two basic configurations: a 5 Ship list with few torpedoes or a 4 Ship list with a lot of torpedoes. I decided to go for the second list because I wanted to bite quickly through the Shuttle's shields to be able to disable it.

JL's list, Pirates: (100 points on B-Wings and Y-Wings plus Rebel Operative HWK-290 with 10 upgrade points, ion weapons cost one less point).

1. HWK-290, Rebel Operative with Ion Cannon Turret, Recon Specialist and Hull Upgrade (27)
2. Dagger Squadron B-Wing with Fire Control System, Ion Cannon and two Proton Torpedoes (37)
3. Two Grey Squadron Y-Wings with Ion Cannon Turret and two Proton Torpedoes (33x2)
Total: 130 total points

Beni then came with his list and we decided to increase the points given to the Bounty Hunters so that he again would have some flexibility in their design.

Beni's list, Imperial convoy (60 points with one Omicron Group Shuttle)

1. Omicron Group Pilot with Recon Specialist (24)
2. 2 Black Squadron TIEs with Draw Their Fire and Hull Upgrade (18x2)

 Beni's list, Bounty Hunters (80 points with one Firespray, ion weapons cost one less point)

1. Bounty Hunter with Ion cannon (36)
2. Two Grey Squadron Y-Wings with Ion Cannon Turrets (25x2)
Total: 86 (3 points more than expected, but I decided on the 80 points after our test game)

The Bounty Hunter stalks its prey, who are busy attacking the convoy

Setup
I wanted to give both the Imperial and the Pirate player the possibility to complete their major objectives. They should both be hard but possible. My main concern was that the Shuttle would speed as fast as possible towards its fleeing edge, and that's why I considered adding the Nebula effects to the scenario: it was interesting from the thematic point of view and it would force players to maneuver around the Nebula tokens. The initial rules were not enough in my opinion, so I finally decided to add a speed reduction rule that would also work well with the asteroids of mission 3.

The Bounty Hunters should arrive on time to annoy the Pirates but not so early as to make their mission impossible. I think placing them on the board at the start of round 2 is a good solution (at least in our test game it worked well).






Round 1
I started dividing my forces so as not to give Beni an easy choice. I also placed my Nebula tokens so as to prevent him from going straight towards his fleeing edge... he would need to do some maneuvering.

Beni decided to veer his Shuttle towards the Y-Wings, probably considering to put more pressure on my HWK-290 and to make it more difficult for me to complete my major objective.

The Shuttle turns toward the Y-Wings while avoiding the Nebula tokens

The HWK-290 and the B-Wing race toward the fleeing Shuttle... It seems it will easily escape!

I then used the Proton Torpedoes in one of my Y-Wings to batter the Shuttle's shields (yes, my strategy was working!) while hitting the Shuttle with the Ion turret of the second Y-Wing.

Beni's choice of upgrade for the TIEs (Draw Their Fire) was perfect and he cancelled some hits, but was not able to cancel all the Ion hits... I would have chosen a different Modification for the TIEs (even give the points to the Shuttle) but they proved to be a good choice to increase the TIEs durability.

The Y-Wings start battering the Shuttle while the TIEs try to protect it

Round 2
The Bounty Hunters started racing toward the Pirates... The Firespray was quick enough, but the Y-Wings suffered a bit of strain from such high speeds.

The Bounty Hunters fly full throttle towards the convoy

Meanwhile, the Y-Wings entered a dogfight with the Imperial convoy with may interesting close maneuvers!

The TIEs try to protect the Shuttle, but it gets a second Ion token and its engines slow down

The HWK-290 and the B-Wing keep pushing as fast as they can

Round 3
The Y-Wings manage to keep ionizing the Shuttle with the Firespray hot on their heels. The B-Wing risked going over the Nebula trusting on the Pirate ships shielding... but a double Hit roll on the Nebula attack dice meant it would get a random maneuver in the following round.

The Y-Wings keep stopping the Shuttle while the B-Wing shoots on the TIEs ionizing one of them

Round 4
The Y-Wings finally manage to disable the Shuttle, but one of them is so damaged (he suffered damage from the Firespray and other TIE attacks) that it's finished off by one of the TIEs.

Mission accomplished! The Shuttle is disabled!

Rounds 5 and 6
The HWK-290 tries to approach the disabled Shuttle without getting too much fire from the TIEs. Meanwhile, the B-Wing's random maneuver placed it in a collision course with the Firespray...

The Shuttle was disabled just shy of escaping!

The B-Wing managed to avoid the Firespray and get at his back, but one of the TIEs went right into the HWK-290 (poor piloting there) and its hull burst in million pieces...

In the close dogfight, the Y-Wing tries to protect the HWK-290 with its Ion turret and one of the TIEs is destroyed in a collision

Rounds 7 and 8
The already heavily damaged HWK-290 boards the Shuttle, but the Bounty Hunters are too close and they disable it without too much problem.

The Firespray approaches the HWK-290 for the final blow, escorted by a Bounty Hunter Y-Wing

There was also lots of maneuvering and running into Nebula tokens, and several of the ships had the risk of quitting the battle before its end.

The surviving TIE fighter had to play a risky maneuver after an encounter with the Nebula put him with a bad facing near the edge

Rounds 9 and 10
The battle ended with a exchange of fire between the B-Wing and the Firespray, which was finally destroyed... Beni almost managed to disable my surviving Y-Wing, but a bit of luck on my part and some evasive maneuvers allowed me to keep him alive

The HWK-290 is captured just before leaving the disabled Shuttle

While the last Y-Wing pirate ship is pursued by the TIE and the Firespray, the B-Wing manages to come back to the battle just in time for a final assault on the Firespray

In the last round of the battle, the Firespray was destroyed and the Y-Wing escapes into hyperspace with 1 Hull point remaining!

Conclusion
The mission ended with 1 Campaign Point for the Imperials (disabling the HWK-290) vs. 2 Campaign Points for the Pirates (disabling the Shuttle, destroying one Bounty Hunter ship).

The battle was exciting, both sides had a chance of completing their major objectives and there were many exciting dogfights and close call situations... I think the original design of the mission worked, but I decided to tweak some things:

1. I augmented the build points of the Bounty Hunters from 75 to 80, so that they would have some design choices.
2. I tweaked the rules for attacking ships boarding other ships to make them much simpler. Basically, the first hit on a boarding ship is cancelled and that's it. I also allow now the boarding ship to choose facing when performing the boarding action.
3. The Nebula tokens will now reduce the speed of a Ship affected by them. I did this to prevent the Shuttle from barging through the Nebula tokens no matter what. In the mission, Beni played it thematically and tried to avoid the Nebula tokens from the beginning, but with the original rules I think it would have been easy to escape with a Shuttle outfitted with the Boost action.

So, very few changes to be done for a Mission that turned to be quite complex and eventful... The first turns were a blast, exciting and complex. The good thing with the mission is that, as time progresses and one becomes more tired, there will be less ships to worry about and the last rounds took less time than the first ones, so the end result was satisfactory.

We have already tested the 2nd mission of the campaign, quite a different beast from this one I must say... I'll post the battle report in one or two days...