Played first Epic with Corvettes on each side. A few quick impressions.

1. The Raider's dual attack is much stronger than CR 90 adding a die. Raider seems much more effective and firing arcs approximate a turret.

2. The Emperor is appropriately awesome. I won't run a Raider without him. Standard play? Not sure yet.

On paper, the Raider seems more effective against small-base fighters than the CR90 but that doesn't mean it's less capable against another huge ship. How did it play for you?

Raider seems all around better ship. We both deployed with fighters near middle and Corvettes on opposite corners. By the time the Corvettes met in the middle, most of the fighter screen had burned off. The Raider was much stronger against both remaining fighters and the CR90. Double attacks and the aft arcs angling further forward were huge.

Then they need to revise the CR-90, it seems. Seems like a serious balance issue.

What were the builds on the Corvette and Raider?

I believe putting both ships on a table with appropriate fleets enough times to find how each works best will find they are components of two balanced forces rather than one vs one!!!

I have always thought of the CR90 as more of a support vessel for the fighters, ie helping keep them alive! The fighters are there to do the damage!

I see the Raider as having an opposite role, it is there to destroy the fighters!!! Then the Imperial fighters are free to go after any opposition.

Think of the appropriate role and use the ship accordingl.

If you just run the ships at each other and go by the primary weapon the Raider wins. Few things can change that if you equip your squadrons to hunt Capital Sihps.

Read the updated rules on Ion tokens and look at Y-Wings with everyone's favorite Ion Turret. You won't be firing twice with the Primary Weapon if you get hit several times.

1. The Raider's dual attack is much stronger than CR 90 adding a die. Raider seems much more effective and firing arcs approximate a turret.

You know the primary attack can only fire out of the forward arc, right?

Read the updated rules on Ion tokens

They updated the rules for ion tokens? They don't just reduce they energy you get next round anymore?

If you just run the ships at each other and go by the primary weapon the Raider wins.

This is a really important thing to keep in mind, actually. The CR90 is built for broadside attacks while the Raider is built for pursuing. So the Rebel player ought to always be perpendicular to the Raider in order to keep the fight even.

CR-90 wants both ships perpendicular. Raider wants head-to-head or (better yet) a chase, with it being the chaser.

That primary only shoots forwards; one must be careful not to let the CR-90 into a >180 degree blindspot accessible only by energy-chomping secondaries.

The CR90 has to "cross the T" of the Raider and mass fire against its fore section. Supporting fighters flank and come in behind to cripple the Raider's aft.

Actually, in our group the Raider are under-preforming compared to the CR90.

Usually on the 2nd turn the CR90 gets in 2 Single Turbolaser attacks and a primary weapon attack at barely range 5, and the X-wings can totally tank the strength 4 primary weapon when it comes closer.

(X-wings seem to be a lot better in epic than in normal 100 point games)

I am running 6 X-wings and Etahn with my Corellian Corvette from now on, forever.

What do you guys think they should of changed to the Raider to make it more competitive against the CR90?

Need to outfit your CR90s with these;

While a bit energy expensive, these were specifically intended for use against HUGE ships, as they natively have an agility value of 0 ( 0x2=0 ). Rolling 4 dice (against a max of 1 defense dice for range 3-5) (as somone pointed out.. secondary weapon = no range 3+ bonus), with a focus convert to hit is pretty nasty. HUGE equivalent of HLC, but yea, gotta get broadside to use them in arc.

Huge Ship Agility

granted by card effects, range combat modifiers, obstructed attacks, etc"

Need to outfit your CR90s with these;

While a bit energy expensive, these were specifically intended for use against HUGE ships, as they natively have an agility value of 0 ( 0x2=0 ). Rolling 4 dice (against a max of 1 defense dice for range 3-5), with a focus convert to hit is pretty nasty. HUGE equivalent of HLC, but yea, gotta get broadside to use them in arc.

Huge Ship Agility

Huge ships have an agility value of “0,” but they can roll additional defense dice

granted by card effects, range combat modifiers, obstructed attacks, etc"

Well, good news, they are a secondary weapon! (also benefit from weapons team). No additional dice

Also, I find, ironically, the front of the CR90 works best with two of these, then stick whatever in the back. 2'nd turn range 5 alpha strike on the defenseless raider! >

The corvette has superior ability to reach out. Having more crew slots than the raider is also a massive boon. Seriously, the crew upgrades (not teams) are hands down the best upgrades available for epic ships.

It is also easier to bring secondary weapons to bear on the corvette because you have 2 in the fore section. The fore section will pretty much always be closer to the enemy huge ships than the aft. Getting good shots on enemy huge ships with the aft section of the raider is difficult at best.

I believe putting both ships on a table with appropriate fleets enough times to find how each works best will find they are components of two balanced forces rather than one vs one!!!

I have always thought of the CR90 as more of a support vessel for the fighters, ie helping keep them alive! The fighters are there to do the damage!

I see the Raider as having an opposite role, it is there to destroy the fighters!!! Then the Imperial fighters are free to go after any opposition.

Think of the appropriate role and use the ship accordingl.

ALLlll-AHhhh-DATsss!

As far as Escorts go: blockers with Intimidation will reduce the agility of defenders by 1 for _all_ attacks in a round when the blockers are touching another ship. That should help make it a bit easier to hit things with Single Turbolasers. If an A-Wing with Intimidation rams into a B-Wing, for instance, that B-Wing has an agility of zero when the CR-90 attacks. Same with an Intimidated Cutlass. An Intimidated Scimitar still only rolls 2 Dice.

Warning: Huge ships cannot be Intimidated by Arvel.

Then they need to revise the CR-90, it seems. Seems like a serious balance issue.

Did the CR-90 run Han Solo or something to change modify focus or even blank results? I think the CR-90 has a better chance than the raider because of Han Solo <crew>.

However I also think VaRaider is a very powerful ship against autothrusting TIE Interceptors. It doesn't matter if they hit or not that TIE interceptor with autothrusters is taking a crit and I'm recharging shields.

The Raider only wants to chase a CR-90 if the CR-90 runs properly

I lost my fore section on my Raider due to the CR-90 using it's crippled back section and it's angle to block my Raider for multiple turns, meaning he took no damage (as his aft was already wrecked) and I kept taking crits (meaning I ended up taking 2 less energy a turn and losing a bunch of other things before my fore was wrecked)

Also my first impression was; move faster early on. We both moved out epics slower, thinking the bigger base would mean you moved further anyway, but it's not the case. Our epics didn't even fire for the first few turns.

The Raider in my opinion is much better than the CR-90. The arcs are pretty much useful, and using Captain Needa you can go straight against your enemies without worrying about the asteroids. The CR-90 has to turn to shoot with the sides, wich can make the ship to collide with asteroids, wich in case of this ship is a faceup damage, and also if the CR-90 fires from the side is offering the after section, In the CR-90 if you lose that section, with only a limit of 1 enery token, the ship is only a big brick.

Friends and I played a 400 point epic game, throwing the epic points system out the window in the interest of having more ships. We did 2 CR-90s, a GR-75 with some A-Wing escorts, against two Raiders, some TIE fighters and some TIE bombers escorting the Emperor on a shuttle.

Much fun was had. It's too late at night for me to do analytics on the battle.

Then they need to revise the CR-90, it seems. Seems like a serious balance issue.

First off, the CR90 is 10 points cheaper, so for the same price it's packing another hardpoint and cargo upgrade.

In terms of ship comparison, the CR90 is a broadsider and the Raider prefers the frontal attack. The Raider's aft arc is less restrictive than the CR90's, but its fore arc is much more. If the back of the Raider goes down (or is poorly armed) it's the easiest ship to flank in the game.

Furthermore, the CR90 is capable of bringing all its weapons to bear on a single target fairly easily: its arc overlap is huge. The Raider, however, has a comparatively small area vunerable to all weapons, and even then you'd need long range guns on the back and short range guns on the front to pull it off (a la the preview).

The advantage of the Raider's frontal assault approach is that you can reinforce your front and your back is mostly safe from enemy fire: a broadsiding CR90 can be hit in whichever section it fails to reinforce. Shield Technician might help this as it could use Recover instead (and the CR90 with Tantive IV has plenty of crew slots to spare, unlike the Raider), but that's eating energy the Raider doesn't have to use.

The primary weapon, which, with the new ruling on range bonuses, is a huge ship's often greatest asset, is also worth discussing. While it has a higher energy consumption the Raider's is significantly more powerful in a low agility battle (the CR90's specialises in punching through agility with a huge number of attack dice) and is arguably better against agile targets too. Its lower range is both a great strength against nearby starfighters and a minor weakness at long range (Single Turbolasers and the CR90 primary can outrange it giving it a round with no return shot). It has one major, glaring weakness compared to the CR90's primary though.

Coverage.

The CR90 has a turret with the blue line limitation. When you consider that it can't fire at Range 1, the main gun can only fire at things that are physically in front of its base. The fore section's broadside capability is zero with anything short of a Range 1 Quad Laser emplacement, and even then it's barely anything.

This means that the Raider can usually only ever bring one section to bear, whereas the CR90 can easily bring both. Furthermore, if the aft goes down (the aft is overwhelmingly the priority target on the Raider, which isn't true of the CR90) the Raider loses its sharp turns, making it incredibly difficult to bring that fore arc to bear on a CR90 that's flown past it.

I think it might take some experience to fly the CR-90 as it does want to get the broadside, like everyone states. I think that is what can make the game interesting, as the two ships fly very differently. One wants to fly directly at and the other wants to outflank.

@InterceptorMad: I read what you wrote about how the CR-90 used it's crippled rear to block shots, but was then firing back. You know you can't fire the main gun through it's rear section, right? So, you can't use the rear to block shots and then fire through it. I'm not sure if that's what you were doing, but just wanted to throw that out there.

Another thing that I think is different about the CR-90 is the snub nosed fighters you can bring with it. Most Rebel ships have good firepower while Tie Fighters just don't have the strength to do much to Epic ships. As previosuly stated, X-wings are fantastic in Epic. They are fast, have good enough agility to evade some damage (especially single turbo lasers) and have good damage output. B-wings are slow, but they can take a lot of punishment. The Imperial ships are more agile, but a lucky hit will take them out. The Rebel ships can take more of a beating. The regular fighters can support the CR-90 better than the Imperials.

I also want to suggest Proton Torpedoes. Yes, I know people don't like to take them and believe Ordnance sucks. You don't get action economy. Proton Torps turn one eyeball into a critical. Have you seen the critical effects on epic ships? One of them can lose you the game at the right time. Even if you have no way to effect the dice, you are probably going to roll 2 hits and an eyeball with 4 unmodified dice. That's 2 hits and 1 crit to get through! Those critical hits on epic ships are utterly nasty. If you have 3 generic X-wings with Proton Torpedoes, that's a nasty thing to have coming at you. Use one round to knock out the shields, then fire away with torpedoes. Can you imagine 3 Y-wings getting in range and dropping two rounds of Proton Torpedoes on the Raider? Some might roll bad, but I bet you roll well enough.

There is another suggestion that I have for epic play. When you select your fighters, try to make little squads of different ships. Have something like 3 ordnance carriers. Have 4 Interceptors (to attack their ordnance ships). Take 3 attack ships. Fly them all together and fly them strategically. Have the ordnance ships go wide and try to sneak around the furball. Have the Interceptors (and I mean things like A-wings, Tie Interceptors, or even just standard Tie Fighters) go after their ordnance to create a bit furball. Send your attack ships to either attack the furball or go for their main ship. If you have a small squad of torpedo carriers make it through and do a run on an epic ship, it can really wreck them. Also....to me at least, it's really more fun when you run things like that. This can work on both sides. If you are Imperials, you can send a few Bombers wide on the side that you think the CR-90 is going to go. Or....as Rebels, send your Y-wings on the side you aren't going to go. That way you ensure their side is going to be open.

Actually, in our group the Raider are under-preforming compared to the CR90.

Usually on the 2nd turn the CR90 gets in 2 Single Turbolaser attacks and a primary weapon attack at barely range 5, and the X-wings can totally tank the strength 4 primary weapon when it comes closer.

(X-wings seem to be a lot better in epic than in normal 100 point games)

I am running 6 X-wings and Etahn with my Corellian Corvette from now on, forever.

What do you guys think they should of changed to the Raider to make it more competitive against the CR90?

Let the bloody thing shoot to Range 5. You bought the ruler and everything.