The campaign comes with an intro mission called Local Trouble. It's designed to let the players get a couple of XP and to get used to the mechanics. Each mission comes with a bit of story, a deployment map, victory conditions and special rules. It might be hard to see in the image below, but the deployment map is broken into range 1 squares. This lets you know exactly where to place things. In the game I played, two TIE Fighters were deployed, one at each of the blue dots on the north end of the map. I deployed in the red band. Then, game play starts "as normal".
This is what my initial deployment looked like. I'm the X-Wing in the corner, with my two opponents across the map. If I'm alive at the end of Round 10, I win. If not, the Empire wins.
In the Heroes of the Aturi Cluster, the Empire always has initiative. The game work as normal in that the game round is identical. You choose a maneuver and then ships activate in initiative order, followed by shooting. The major difference is that there is obviously no Empire player.
Instead of setting a dial, an Imperial shop rolls on a special table when its turn to activate comes around...
Each ship picks a target using the "Select Target" logic. It's different for every ship. Then you roll off to select a maneuver. Depending on which direction the target is, you roll on a different table above. Red band if the ship is at Range 1 or Range 2 and coming towards the TIE. Green band if the ship is at Range 3 or Range 2 and moving away from the TIE. The card then tells you what action to pick. Attacks happen as normal during the combat phase.
I was a little hesitant about whether or not this would work. It does. It overwhelmingly does. The AI is pretty brutal. I played twice. The first time, they murdered me...
The second time through, I killed a TIE with a really solid single shot. I wounded a second before an Interceptor flew onto the board behind me and took me out...
I ended up losing the mission, but gained 3XP in the process. Because I died, I had to roll on an Eject Table, losing one of my upgrades in the process. It was a net loss of 1 squad point. Realistically, in a campaign situation, I would have just flown off the table, kept my upgrade and kept the 3XP.
This is super fun. If you play X-Wing, try it out ASAP.
