My crew has been playing through the campaign and it’s been awesome thus far. The Legion is now arriving at fort calisco, with Panyar burning as of last session. With pressure mounting I am wondering if i ran our first advance correctly…
After the first mission we set our initial time, intel and pressure. then we advanced the legion on to the western front. During that advance the commander rolled for advancing as per the rules. is this correct? I don’t see anything in the book or handouts that indicates to not use the advance rules after the first session. How did you run it in your game?
Did the same. As you say, if no rules say it’s different, then it’s the same. So my players arrived at Western Front with six segments already ticked on the first Time clock… (2 from initial time after a successful Shreya first mission, 1 from Time passes, 3 from a bad Advence roll).
Thanks! We also had a nasty roll for the first advance, our commander is convinced the Legion won’t make it to skydagger keep(that’s great for morale…) I’m just trying to shake the feeling that I’ve done something wrong and cost extra time (don’t think I have though.)
The equation is simple. Between Western Front and Skydagger Keep, you have a minimum of 7 advances, or 8 if you take the mountain road. Each advance costs 2 to 4 time segments (taking Time passes into account). So you could succeed in all missions and still loose the Campaign game because of bad advance rolls. But you can’t think like that at the beginning : you have to think in probability terms. Which is difficult because you won’t know how many Pressure you will have at each stage.
So let’s consider you have:
A mean of 1 Pressure at each advance. Your mean Time spent will be 2.7, that’s 19 in 7 advances. So if you have been unlucky at your first advance, you are at 6 segments on the first Time clock, you have 24 ticks of time available, meaning you have 5 “spare”. But let’s say only three, to give yourself a safety margin. Those 3 spare Time, you can use for 3 additionnal missions (without advancing), or to account for mission Failure penalties when you lose Time. If you have been lucky, or if you Don’t want to spend more than one mission at each location, then you can take the longer northern road.
A mean of 2 Pressure at each advance. Your mean Time spent will be 3, that’s 21 in 7 advances. It’s not such a big difference, which is not obvious before you do the calculation. But it means you have almost no margin to do additionnal missions.
If you are Under 6 Time at Western Front, it gives you a bit more margin, just adapt the above calculations.
So the players have to try to roll their advance with no more than one die. But it’s interesting to note that the difference between mean Time spent at each advance is NOT that big if you roll 1, 2 or 3 dice (2.7 , 3 , 3.3 respectively). They should not fret too much if they can’t spend a Horse use to reduce their pressure on a specific advance. It looks bad but it is not that bad, if it’s only once in a while.
Sure. But it does not compensates. Because there are 9/24 cases where Pressure is a penalty. And because you have to consider that you will generally speaking succeed in the primary mission, that the secondary mission will be more and more difficult to succeed when you have wounded specialists or you Don’t want to lose Rookies any more… and that in 5 cases out of 6, you have 3 missions and you fail at least one…
My question is this… If pressure is zero at the start of the campaign, does the Commander simply roll zero dice for this? Thus time does not advance after the initial mission?
Hi plingemch, welcome to this community.
The general rule of all FitD games apply also for the roll when you advance. If your pressure is zero (that’s if the initial mission was a success, (Edit) AND you spend at least a horse to compensate the pressure taken during the “time passes” phase), you roll two dice and take the lowest result. You’ll find that in the “ADVANCE” section on page 119.
So if you roll 2 dice, get 3/5, the result you take is 3, meaning you will only tick one segment on the Time clock.
The principle is exactly the same as any other roll… except here, the less dice you roll, the better.
I could have sworn I read something on these forms that the first advance to the Western Front is handled by the denouement of the first mission: you don’t roll Pressure or advance Time because you’ve already set their initial values as part of the end of the first mission, which included automatic advancement to the Western Front.
We did it this way as it is noted in the book, after the initial mission and forced advancement, that you “Continue with the other phases as normal.” (my emphasis). Which we took to mean the initial Time, Pressure, and Advancement are not handled as normal, instead set at the values resulting from the first mission’s outcome, and the remaining phases occur out of the normal order – since the choice to Advance normally occurs after the QM’s and SM’s phases, except during that first mission, since if the QM and SM don’t get their phases prior to advancement, they can’t reduce Pressure by spending horses.
I note now that it says under the Commander’s Initial set-up that the QM does act first. So we may have gotten this all completely wrong based on seemingly contradictory instructions. (The denouement for the initial mission and set-up for the command roles do not feel well out-lined and have created confusion in both the groups I’ve played in.)
Hi Greyorm
The Roles are created after the initial mission, but before the bookkeeping and back at camp scenes of the first mission phase.
During the bookkeeping phase, you ask the “initial setup” questions to the GM, and apply what he says (depending on the results of the initia mission). That’s just the equivalent of applying Penalties and Rewards. But those numbers are just your starting numbers.
So in the campaign phase that follows, you still have to do things as normal : add one time and one pressure, spend one food. Then you do your campaign actions. Then you advance (mandatory here) to the Western front, and you have to roll your pressure.
That’s how I’ve read it as well. Appearances are deceiving though, while the game makes your initial time clock roll extremely high, the later missions have a lot of Special Missions that reduce time by a lot.
So if the forced advance happens after the QM/SPY and other campaign actions…what happens if the QM wants to do an acquire assets action on their turn prior to the advance? Where are they officially located prior to the mandatory advance to Western Front?..what’s the asset rating? My assumption is 0 (so roll 2 and take the lowest value).
We assumed 0. We didn’t see an actual rating in any of the “After the First Mission” sections, in the QM “Initial Set-up” section, or in the Locations section.
I suppose, however, it could be “None” given the fictional situation (in the midst of fleeing Ettenmark) EXCEPT THAT Shreya’s and the Horned One’s initial missions both place the Legion firmly on the far side of Hozelbrucke Bridge, and thus well into the Western Front. (Zora’s initial mission is different in this respect, as it takes place “on the border of Dar”, which suggests the Legion is either south of the Western Front or significantly to the west of it at that particular point.)
