Corellian Conflict Info

It's an exciting time to be a Star Wars: Armada player.  The release of Waves 3 & 4 are sure to shake up your games and today's announcement of Wave 5 promises more options in the not-distant future.  Even with all of that I'm still the most excited for the Corellian Conflict campaign expansion that's coming soon.

To that end one of the first things I did after getting to GenCon was head to the FFG booth.  There I found Anton, who is one of FFG's main spokepersons.  He was really hesitant to say much of anything about it as unreleased product, but did mention that Alex Davy was the lead designer and had played in their in-house campaign.  He noted that the box they had was just a mockup.  The box itself was surprisingly small, but that likely helps the low pricepoint for the expansion.

So, I tracked down Alex later on in the day between rounds of the tournament.  We had a fairly long talk about the Corellian Conflict, my Regionals data, and Armada in general.  Here are my notes on our conversation about the campaign pack.  Again, I kept the questions really general and avoided asking for specific spoilers.  That way they tell me what they can rather than me having to guess what topics they can talk about.

• My first question was "Stickers?"  Yes, they are intended to be stuck to the campaign board.  He felt that they should be really easy to use in an alternative fashion that doesn't stick to the board permanently.  Think counters or something.  But we both agreed that the stickers should make for a fun effect to look at when the campaign is over.  The low price point of the expansion should allow a group to buy one together to use the stickers on.  He also anticipated many players ion a group will likely own it.

• He also talked about why the expansion was created.  He felt that the Armada player community was the right one for this expansion.  They never felt something like this would work for X-Wing, but liked the idea more for Armada.

• Their in-house campaign was reportedly a lot of fun.  He said it lasted 8-9 rounds, but felt that might have been on the longer side.

• Death of a unique in the game can mean they are out of the campaign, but not necessarily.  He said that if you put your "resources" into building up your uniques they are better able to survive.

• The campaign has a loose structure and allows freedom for the players to make it work for them.  Each game definitely impacts the next and builds to the whole campaign, but you aren't forced into specific games.

• Map position impacts the objectives that get played.  You also aren't limited to attacking only neighboring map positions.  Hyperspace will get you anywhere.

• Fleets "build" with time.  He didn't elaborate what that meant, but said it a few times.  He also said that even a fleet that loses several games will still build enough to stay competitive.

• The addition of the unique squadrons was for a few reasons.  Partially it was due to the fact that uniques are limited per side and they wanted lots of options available.

• He said that most of the games will be relatively standard, with just some minor rules modifications.

• He like the expansion as a way to revitalize the original Wave 1 squadrons and give them new options.  He mentioned the similarity to the X-Wing Aces packs.  (I may have written something about that)

• He doesn't know if another campaign would get made, but if so it would be a way to get new titles/upgrades to older ships.  It is something they have discussed.

• If there isn't another campaign, he sounded interested in having some avenue of releasing content for older waves.

• The lack of plastic will allow it to have a hopefully short production cycle.  (my guess is players will be able to by it at Worlds)

  So, there is your very non-spoilery Corellian Conflict preview.  I am even more excited after learning what I did.  I would expect us to see more spoilery previews maybe in September.  I asked about an early copy to review on the blog and was told that probably wouldn't happen for licensing reasons...oh well.  Had to ask.

More on my conversations with Alex later.