Campaigns, The good, the bad, and the ugly.

[Skipper]

We've been running a series of great campaign games lately and they have overall be a blast. However our last campaign could be described as the bad and ugly.

Generally we have four players in the campaign and battles are pretty cool. This last campaign, two of the players choose Shadows and Vorlons respectively. Now that in itself changes the flow of the campaign game with their ability to regenerate between campaign turns and with their awsome personality roles. But what has really taken this campaign down the dark road is that they have both decided to play spoilers. Niether one will jump a strategic point and all they do is jump the Trade route or interdict it. That way they draw a minimum of 10 RR each turn with no possibility of loss.

Its actually put a bad enough taste in my mouth that I'll probably not finish the current campaign and will start working on my other "games".

OK, what stories of good, bad, and ugly do you have out their in the coll darkness of space?

 

[Greg Smith]

They can't both get the trade route. Also, the double cost of Shadow and Vorlon reinforcements offsets their regeneration. Finally, not taking other targets deprives them of a continuous flow of RR points.

 

[B5freak]

From a theme standpoing, I can totally see why the Vorlon and Shadow players might take that track. From a campaign structure standpoint, don't they each have to try and hold at least one strategic point to stay in the campaign? If so, that strategy could really hurt them since anyone attacking their "home" makes that battle an all or nothing for them.

In a campaign I played here, we saw that the Abbai had great potential for acting as a "spoiler". Imposing peace treaties on select parties or a campaign-wide peace treaty could really throw people off. Combine that with an initiative modifier that will usually let you go last and the fact that we get more RR every time we don't fight let me build up a massive fleet in no time at all. I accrued enough RR eventually that I started building starbases.

 

[prelude_to_war]

I joined a campaign in the later stages. My inexperienced Minbari have been taking a beating thanks to all of the experiened stealth rerolling fleets out there. Not to mention we've been using a house rule for stealth (+1 vs. stealth within 10", standard otherwise). Why, oh why, did I take Minbari?!?

Can experience be used to make an opponent reroll a successful stealth roll? I believe our current campaign rule is no.

Tomorrow I get smacked by a certain ISA player out there. Whee!

EDIT: House rule is +1 vs. stealth within 10", not 8".

 

[Court Jester]

Is +1 to the stealth roll within 8"only a house rule then?

 

[prelude_to_war]

Yes, just a local house rule.

 

[Hash]

+1 bonus to stealth rolls within 8" is actually an official rule in Armageddon....

However the full rule also stipulates that the Stealth ships gets a +1 to it's Stealth rating over 20", so a Sharlin would move from 5+ stealth to 6+ stealth over 20"!

Since you didn't mention the second part I'm guessing that's why your rule is a "house" rule...that or you are playing SFoS rules for the campaign instead?

 

[prelude_to_war]

Hash you are correct.

Correction on my part - our house rule is +1 vs. stealth within 10", standard roll at all other ranges (vs. the new Armageddon rules which Hash has written above).

 

[Ripple]

yup...it was a suggestion on the boards for quite a while on a simple dirty fix for stealth.

On exp we've ruled after a severe issue with beating the ISA under the SFoS stats that ships could only force re-rolls for things their ship did. IE you could not force someone to re-roll a crit, a hit, an SA check, a successful stealth check...all you could do was try to make you own checks better. We thought this better reflected what exp ment fluffwise and balanced the issue of our ISA player simply removing the few crits that actually got through the layered defenses. At the time we had not adjusted stealth as we simply did not allow SFoS Minbari to play.

Both of these rules would be up for grabs if we do another campaign, but we're always cautious about changing mid stteam. Though if someone can wrack up a majority vote we will...just not all that easy with our group to arrange.

Ripple

 

[Hash]

On exp we've ruled after a severe issue with beating the ISA under the SFoS stats that ships could only force re-rolls for things their ship did. IE you could not force someone to re-roll a crit, a hit, an SA check, a successful stealth check...

I like that house rule, will perhaps steal it for our next campaign

In our current campaign we don't have that restriction and well, I think all exp that has been used so far has been made to make someone re-roll a crit...I agree that it does seem a bit strange forcing your opponent to re-roll dice because of how good your crew are...