I absolutely can't wait to pick up my raider. Haven't played epic yet, but this will definitely get me to play.

Considering that I also play Armada, I'd venture to say that I will now play Epic MORE often than standard, because when I go to my FLGS and set up a 3 x 6 map, I can keep it in place for BOTH games. (Granted I could still play 3 x 3 X-Wing, using only half, but it makes more sense to use the full map for epic!)

Epic is broken. You simply don't have an incentive to field huge ships, because huge ships are ineffective, especially against fighter with high agility. Maneuvering with huge ships is boring and the energy management is no thrill either. The raider does not change this. Imperials have the edge, because the have better agile ships. Intercepting bomber before they can harm the capital ships? That was made the computer games interesting. Don't bother - you can't stop a bomber before it reaches its target and why would you? It is wave 7 and torpedos are still useless.

The Gozanti? Any imperial Captain that lets rebels come into x-wing-range without having launched his fighters walks the airlock. Even Armada with its much larger scale has no mechanism for launching and recovering fighters and for a reason.

"Broken" is a little wide of the mark - especially considering that a pair of well equipped GR-75s will ruin even the most determined swarm's day when it Jams, Slices, Rams, then repairs its damage, Recovers its shields and Reinforces to make itself unhittable to a 2 dice attack.

The Corvette is a little undewhelming for sure but a couple of well thought out upgrade cards in future Epic waves should sort that out - it's worked for (nearly) everything else.

Marinealver is probably closer to the mark with "not as refined" - arguably because not enough people have played Epic to give FFG the incentive to refine it.

The GR-75 has its uses, I give you that. But that's not very Epic.

I kinda sorta am more interested now that there's epic ships on both sides. My personal issue is that I barely have time to squeeze in a normal game at 100 points. I will be buying the Raider, regardless, because of the stuff included for standard play, and also because the model will look badass on my shelf.

It at least allows for the possibility of a game where the rebels agree to field the Corvette, and the Imps agree to field the Raider. Then fill out with whatever other ships you want to field and see what happens. I'm looking forward to giving it a try.

YES!!!

To me Star Wars is smaller fast ships darting about larger slower ones. Epic gives me the feeling of Star Wars. I'm very much looking forward to several casual/friendly games.

Now just to find someone else who's interested in my neighborhood.

I haven't played epic before the big change on defense dice. Before the CR-90 really couldn't use its range advantage against most fighters as they were rolling an absurd amount of evade dice. It was too easy to get into range unscathed with your fighters and pound the vette within a few turns. Now with anything beyond range 3 only giving you 1 evade, you have a lot better shot at actually hitting something. Still single turbolasers will be rather useless against Ties, but they will put the hurt on most large base ships and huge ships.

Hopefully I can get a few matches in. I've never actually used my Rebel Transport before.

Yes I will.

When the CR-90 came out I was not playing, my mate brought one and I said SERIOUSLY!! Now I am playing and chose imperial and within 6 weeks of me starting we have the raider and I am soooo getting one

Epic is broken. You simply don't have an incentive to field huge ships, because huge ships are ineffective, especially against fighter with high agility. Maneuvering with huge ships is boring and the energy management is no thrill either. The raider does not change this. Imperials have the edge, because the have better agile ships. Intercepting bomber before they can harm the capital ships? That was made the computer games interesting. Don't bother - you can't stop a bomber before it reaches its target and why would you? It is wave 7 and torpedos are still useless.

The Gozanti? Any imperial Captain that lets rebels come into x-wing-range without having launched his fighters walks the airlock. Even Armada with its much larger scale has no mechanism for launching and recovering fighters and for a reason.

Armada also needs some more refinement as the squadron system is just as broken as X-wing's missile and torpedo weapons. Sure there are some use for them in the Wave 1 meta but there were also uses for proton torpedoes in X-wing's wave 1 meta as well for alpha striking swarms and cutting the swarm in half to where they match the rookie pilots 1 on 1 where the X-wigns had the advantage.

As more ships came out the need for Alpha strikes became less and less. Armada will see the same as more capital ships come out the need for squadrons will be less and less. In a way holding squadrons inside a capital ship could do more than letting them stay out in the table but that's just IMHO. X-wign has missed some features (such as S-foils for X-wings and B-wings) but also Armada is missing way more (astormechs, hyperspace capable starfighters that don't need to start near a capital ship, starfighter docking launching and repair.)

It's great to see FFG has not abandoned Epic. I'm really looking forward to some true epic games now that both sides have some huge ships to do it properly. I am in favor of the "you must bring a huge ship to the fight " rule as well. I feel Epic is unbalanced without this provision, as epic ships are too inefficient for their cost compared to 4 bwings, for instance.

To date, the bigger format of the game seems to have been rather overlooked in comparison to the 100pt format.

Will the imminent release of the Raider make a difference ?

Let's have a quick straw poll of the folks who own. or are about to become owners of, at least 1 Huge ship but don't presently play Epic much.

Will the Raider get you playing larger format games more regularly?

If yes - why?

if no - why not?

Technically yes, in that I will definitely give the Raider a shakedown cruise in an epic game or two.

But I love the game at 100 points, I love the choices that value forces you to make and I love that I can get 2 or 3 games in an evening, epic I doubt that will happen.

I doubt that I will play epic more than a few times.

Fortunately the raider is free, although I think the tie advanced titles are a bit pricey.

probably not, the rules are still meh.

Nah. Not very interested in it for several reasons. If people play it and need another player, I'll join in, but I won't be fielding a huge ship.

Extra yes. We play Epic already but now that we have another ship to go toe to toe with the CR90 things will be quite interesting.

Yes, already played some Epic before but it was rather one sided each time, always in favour of the Rebels since they didn't need to bring Bombers or Defenders for the anti-huge ship action

Bringing the Raider should mitigate that...

My experience is similar to Orph3u5. The CR90 has little trouble with fighter support taking down the Imperials in a protracted fight.

Turbolasers now become a more viable option for taking on hard-point upgrade slots. I honestly never took them on a CR90 before because short of shooting a Decimator it made the defender too agile with the doubling of agility but now it seems like a good option for shooting opposing epics. This all remains to be seen but I am quite eager to try them out.

No. Turns out I don't really like epic play or the ships they've chosen to produce. I purchase only for regular X-Wing stuff and then sell or trade the rest. I expect to continue to do this indefinitely.

Indirectly it will. I'm perfectly fine flying a 300 point wad of ships into another 300 point wad of ships on a ~6x4 play area already. What the Raider will do is get potential opponents to actually play large games with me.

I mean come on now I can field 5 Alpha Autoceptors AND 8 TIE Fighters AND 4 Phantoms simultaneously. I already love huge games.