So a few days ago I participated in my first 400 point epic game. I have done some smaller scale epic and some of the scenarios but I have not tried epic in such an epically epic scale. For starters I would warn anyone that wants to try this you should plan to be at it ALL day. We started setting the game up around 3pm and didn't get started playing till probably 4:30-5:00pm and the game went until close to midnight. This was a casual game night with good buddies so there was a lot of Tom foolery so that probably added some time but we did try to move things along. I will give an overview of the game and then some thought my and questions.

We had 4 players each with 200 points to build squads with. My main force was 6 tie bombers with seismic's then I ran Jendon for TL fun and Vader w/ATC and Maarek w/ATC to try and get some nice Crits on the big boys. My partner tried out some large base ships. He had firesprays and Decimators and a swarm of ties with them. One thing we definitely found out was that large base ships really cause problems with moving even with a 3x6 board. Next time I would cut out the Firesprays and stick to turreted deci's. In my opinion the true hero was the one HLC defender my partner threw on a whim. That thing freaking wrecked everything!!! He was absolute death to the CR-90. For my squad I would put clusters on the bombers next time to really hurt the CR-90 early.

The rebels ran a comms booster transport and a 4 gun CR-90 along with a Z-95 swarm , 2 Btl-a4 Y's and some B-wings. We really wasted too many points on the CR-90 by adding a few never used cards like a comms booster and engineering team. We ran it at 140 points and we should have been around 125. Next time I think I would add some 3 range turrets for the rebels so that they could combine fire on targets with the CR-90 to get more ships off the board faster. The transport player wanted to try and ram with it and got it killed way to early also which lost them the comms boosters.

The CR-90 if run right can be a beast. It was doing I would say an average of 6-7 damage a round with the 4 guns we had on it and we imperials were rolling pretty well on defense. The first turn it did 5 hits on the shuttle and it put the fear into us. Han crew and Weapons engineer are indispensable if you want to be effective on offense. The player running the CR-90 ran it up a little too fast also and he met my bombers at range 1 which make quick work of his front section. We talked later and had the CR-90 been held back a bit he could have just lobbed range 2-5 shots in and been less exposed to 6-8 ships at once. Once the front section dropped it was very wisely used as a battering ram killing two bombers that should have moved range 3 instead of range 2. Long story short the imperials pulled it out after a major slugfest of a 5th turn where about 8 ships blew up. Once the CR-90 went down around turn 7 or so it was pretty well decided.

It was an incredibly fun game! It has such a different feel then the 100 point dogfights. The coordination required to move that many ships in unison makes for a very tactical aspect. It is not fast paced like a normal game. Small mistakes with an important ship are a death sentence. We had a Decimator move up to quickly into range 1 and he took about 12 points of damage in one round! You really have to craft squads very differently. The auto-death from crashing into the huge's also has a terrifying effect when picking moves close to it. I can't stop thinking about my next game of epic. It really does feel like this is a completely new game on this scale.

The game did bring out quite a few questions that I can't seem to answer.

1. Can a huge ship be given a focus token?( I thought I had read somewhere they can't but I do not know where)

2. Can the WED repair droid bring a defeated front or rear section back to undefeated? If it can do all the upgrades stay gone?

3. We used Airen Kracken, can he give the huge's an action?

4. Comms booster seems to be aimed at the escorts but can't it work for the CR-90?

If anyone is on the fence about the epic I would say do it! They are incredibly fun games.

1)

Yes it can. However, the token is discarded immediately.

2)

No it cannot. There is no way to flip a crippled ship card to the other side.

3)

No he cannot. Huge ships cannot perform free actions.

4)

Comms booster removes stress and assigns a focus token. Huge ships discard any stress or focus tokens they receive immediately. Therefore it does not work.

The answers for 1, 3 and 4 are on page 7 of the current FAQ.

I've played Epic and really enjoyed it, too. If you want to save time, try to have the lists done ahead of time. Of course, that's not always possible, but it does reduce the time needed. I've created my own 205 vs 205 battle using only my own stuff and it's worked well.

I've found in Epic that if the Imperial players go with a lot of the high damage output ships (Phantoms, Interceptors, etc) then the CR-90 dies fast. If they go with Tie Fighters, then you need to really work on killing that CR-90.

Another fun option is to go ahead and use all Generic pilots. It's great for epic, but also fun for 100 point matches. It really brings the game back to basics.

I look forward to having my first BIG game. waiting on the raider (even though i have like 1200 points each side).

It should be very interesting once the raider drops, I look forward to seeing the big boys slug it out.

Han crew and Weapons engineer are indispensable if you want to be effective on offense.

I've found it useful to pack it with quads, fly it straight into the enemy formation and then let either double or triple tacticians let rip.

I'm thinking that a CR-90 vs 2 Decimators would work alright.

I'm thinking that a CR-90 vs 2 Decimators would work alright.

Judging by the 400 vs. 400 game I played where the rebels had a Cr-90 and a bunch of fighters vs. 5 decimators and fighters, the CR-90 would completely own the game. 0 Agility cannot withstand firepower of that magnitude!

In my very limited experience with epic, I would agree that the Defender really shines. It's a tanky damage dealer that loves to sit just outside the furball and drop HLC nastiness.

I agree, the defender really shined and his 4k kept him on target with the huge ships easier then the other ships. I would definitely run small ships with some range 3 lobbers behind them for support. Does anyone else have any lessons learned for what you works in epic? It doesn't get discussed much.

did you use 3x6? Which way did you set up. With your opponent across the short side or the long side? Was it a jam-fest?

We've played all of our 300vs300 games on 6x6 tables with 24 rocks. its been very satisfying except for the little bit of reaching you have to do to move a ship in the middle.

Also considering giving out free Ion Torps or Assault Missiles 1 or 2 to each list to avoid allowing for the "line-em-up, mass 12 ships fire on one ship"... but maybe thats jsut for 300 pt fighter games. i can see why its needed to take down huges.

This is interesting but it ain't epic.

Pictures and charts and videos would make it an EPIC Post.

did you use 3x6? Which way did you set up. With your opponent across the short side or the long side? Was it a jam-fest?

We've played all of our 300vs300 games on 6x6 tables with 24 rocks. its been very satisfying except for the little bit of reaching you have to do to move a ship in the middle.

Also considering giving out free Ion Torps or Assault Missiles 1 or 2 to each list to avoid allowing for the "line-em-up, mass 12 ships fire on one ship"... but maybe thats jsut for 300 pt fighter games. i can see why its needed to take down huges.

We played on a 3x6 field with 12 asteroids. We started on the short ends so maybe if we switched to the long ends next time it would be a little more open.

We have many games 1000 points or more.

1000 points? How long did that take? 400 took us about 7 hours!