I understand the concern with huge ships combinations but to be fair in epic you really need to work on combinations and to get the most out of both starfighter and huge ship. Combos don't work that well in standard because the 100 points is so tight that a combo heavy squadron doesn't have any room for losses. In epic ships are going to be taken off the board in the first starfighter volley, there is no stopping it.

Now for Biggs, coms booster gives it a focus but you forget that Biggs doesn't shield heavy ships. To be honest quite the opposite. However if you are worried about huge ships protecting biggs than shield projector is a bigger concern.

Eskge Turken unless it has recon specalist only uses gives one focus token. To be fair the lack of focus result modifications is what makes huge ships lose to fighter swarm. 8 TIe Fighters with foucs can destroy a Raider wholesale. The TIE Fighters that the Raider shoots at spend their focus and evade all the shots while the ones not getting hit will have focus and ensure their attack dice rolls hits that can't be dogged. However it woudl be nice If Imperials had more focus results modification and not just rebels.

Gunnery Teams are fine. Sure we needed more teams that's a no-brainer. But it only works with secondary weapons attacks. So the corvettes have 3 but the gozanti has 1 and the transport has 0. I think it is fine.

Automated protocals is a singel section huge ship fix. Since the corvets all have both recover and reinforce actiosn on a single card they would get a reinforce or recover action. The Automated protocals is a fix for both transport as well as good upgrade for Gozanti.

Raider is fine, it makes up for having more hardpoints and even keeping a hardpoint when its fore section is crippled.

Simple. Choose a ship without guns!

Thats where I would put him too if I would bring him, but then you have to play with an Epic ship that stays in the back behind your small ships and has only 1 action available.

And 'only one action' is relative. Energy is less precious for the Transport, because it does not have energy-expensive guns. So you have some elbow room in the energy phase; other ships have to economize between shooting and stuff like Comms Booster.

I ve played the transport campaign twice now and really like the transport. In fact in a competitive tournament, I would prefer it to the corvette. It is by far my favorite from any of the missions I ve played up to now and I ve tried almost any mission published.

Still, when you bring the big guys out, you want to bring the big guns out too and have fun blowing things up rather than playing defense.

The only one action is a problem not because of energy but because I like to bring Toryn Farr for support. On the corvette that guy is great, because you can both Reinforce and remove all the nasty tokens, which improves survivability a lot and is great for the late game when you don't have shields any more. On the transport you have to chose one or the other, so he is good for the early game but is not useful in the late game.

For the same reason, I don't use Repair droid in games other than the cinematic missions. Its useless against a swarm and you could use that energy better in other places. His ability is not as good as it sounds, because by the time you start getting crits from fire you usually don't have the energy to remove them. So I usually get the backup shield generator in his place.

Agreed. Biggs is a non-issue -- having focused defensive dice does not make him impossible kill, and if you think so then take some of the numerous counters to reduce agility, cancel evades, or strip tokens (e.g. Dark Curse, Autoblaster cannons / Turrets, Ion Torpedoes, Assault missiles, just about any kind of bomb or mine, Crack Shot, Intimidation, Outmaneuver, etc. etc.)

DIdn't know about Esege. It looks pretty strong, but then just target Esege. An epic fleet of ships is usually at least six ships, any single target can be taken down fast, and this one has a giant bullseye painted on it. I can see how Biggs + Esege would be highly annoying, but that's likely wrapping up a fair number of squad number points. You can afford to lose a few ships.

Some of the remaining issues I would have agreed with, but I'm hoping the gozanti will help to fix the underpoweredness. If they're still underpowered after these upgrades, then I like your suggestions about gunnery team and an energy-for-focus upgrade.

I don't think the Raider needs more crew slots. Yes it's limiting, but that's part of the game, and the raider is arguably at least as strong (maybe stronger) than the Rebel epic ship (so I've heard, through this thread and others -- I still haven't played the Raider. First game is today!)

None of these imo are fix needed! Exclamation point emphasis.

Han is 2 points of much better utility than carrying Esege around. (Although ok as a TLT spammer too).

Comms Booster spam with Biggs -> Again, not that big of a deal. ...

Annoying as hell.

Can you target a huge ship if you can target Biggs?

Gunnery Teams add more points. You can do better things than a 2nd gunnery team, no errata is needed.

I have a very effective Raider build that doesn't use that crew. Use your head. There's a few options.

Action economy is actually alright. There are strong ways of making the ships viable.

Ordnance is going to be a cool thing soon too.

I think the real issue with X-EPIC is that many people just do not know how to play the game. Also there are some issues with how FFG has kitted the older ships. There is a gap just like how TIE ADV sucked for a good while becuase it was an old ship in the modern game. Now I am not shooting zingers at my fellows here. It is what it is. Many people have not had a good reason to buy the HUGE ships other than as fun collectibles.

This should all change now... I think.

X-EPIC is going to get better in time. Until then it is good, just tweak some of the issues you have at home and have fun.

Having played Armada now 3 times I have to say that what is missing from X-Epic is objective play. My last X-Epic was the 3rd raider scenario that has the objective of the Imps killing a designated rebel ship before it can fly off the board. With that objective in play it changes X-Epic completely. Both Epic ships remained in play the entire game and were slugging it out because the focus was not on killing everything but on completing the objective. Deathmatch is much more viable for the small fast ships it doesn't play as well for the more tactical X-Epic.

As far as big ships being inaccurate with shooting, that sounds like Star Wars to me. Star Destroyers don't instantly vaporize all the little fighters buzzing around. How many point defense weapons on the 1st Death Star were bearing on the small force of Rebel fighters... like, several hundred thousand?

Big ships don't shoot small ships very well in Star Wars.

Now that both sides have epics we may see more balanced epic battles if both sides field epic ships. If one side goes for all fighters it's not going to be very balanced since they eat up epics so easily.

Now that both sides have epics we may see more balanced epic battles if both sides field epic ships. If one side goes for all fighters it's not going to be very balanced since they eat up epics so easily.

I thought this too, that 300 points of small ships would have an advantage over a epic squad that sinks 100+ points into an Epic ship. Then I realized, the Epic ships does not have to shoot them, it can just run them over! Yes, this damages the Epic ship, but it destroys the small and large base ships. Use small ships (like TIE Fighters) to block paths and force the opponent into certain flight paths. Then, run them over!

My last epic game I realized I should not let 8 Z-wings just shoot at me. So next round I ran over about 4 of them.

Epic might be needed some tweaking.

But its fun, nevertheless.

What ruinds the fun right now are TLTs.

No Epic ship can stand the magnitude of the firepower of 4 Y-TLTs

Its just laughable.

Epic might be needed some tweaking.

But its fun, nevertheless.

What ruinds the fun right now are TLTs.

No Epic ship can stand the magnitude of the firepower of 4 Y-TLTs

Its just laughable.

A TLT only does one damage. The Reinforce action makes the TLT useless against an Epic ship.

Two points -

1. Big (huge) ships (whilst fun) are basically rubbish.

The reason is because small ships can shoot them up. A WW2 fighter could not shoot up a destroyer or cruiser with its machine guns/cannon. It could suppress a ship's AAA pretty effectively (e.g. against the Yamato). To sink ships required ordnance (bombs or torpedoes). So to transfer to x wing - ordnance is fine but other weapons should only do damage on a critical.

2. A as minor issue - Biggs is specifically stopped in the clarifications from helping big ships (as other posters have noted). It is in epic tournament rules.

Epic Play Card Restrictions

Epic might be needed some tweaking.

But its fun, nevertheless.

What ruinds the fun right now are TLTs.

No Epic ship can stand the magnitude of the firepower of 4 Y-TLTs

Its just laughable.

A TLT only does one damage. The Reinforce action makes the TLT useless against an Epic ship.

Umm, no? The TLT is still rolling 3 dice in order to hit. Reinforce only adds one Evade result, making it still fairly easy to hit.

Sithborg is right - "Reinforce only adds one Evade result, making it still fairly easy to hit." TLTs should do no damage to a huge ship apart from scratching paintwork. Hence my earlier post.

Epic might be needed some tweaking.

But its fun, nevertheless.

What ruinds the fun right now are TLTs.

No Epic ship can stand the magnitude of the firepower of 4 Y-TLTs

Its just laughable.

A TLT only does one damage. The Reinforce action makes the TLT useless against an Epic ship.

Right on Brah... and this too:

You would have to bring like three TLT's and focus (as in stay on dat ass) with them to do any good work. Meanwhile you are getting into that ugly place where a good ship can go to dat hip meat with it's batteries of anti small ship stuff.

OHhhh... you wanna come on in... close and such, sure why don't you?!

GLORY!

The key against TLTs is to use Recover rather than Reinforce. Every shield recovered is an ineffective TLT shot. It won't keep you alive indefinitely, but it helps keep you in the fight long enough to destroy them or run them over. This works better now that Raider and Corvettes can reinforce and recover in the same turn.

As to the issue to 300 points of fighters versus a huge ship and support. That is really the crux of the issue. In an ideal world we would be able to have those games and they would be relatively fair. However, the conservative approach to design of the huge ships means that the Corvette and Raider in particular are not doing near enough "work" to justify almost half your points. They are fun to be sure, but need a little balancing upward to increase their battlefield presence and effectiveness. They had to be conservative originally to avoid making overpowered death machines, but now that things are a bit more settled the epic ships could use a boost in my opinion.

COME ON IN!

NOW WITH TORPS AND MISSILES TOO!

The key against TLTs is to use Recover rather than Reinforce. Every shield recovered is an ineffective TLT shot. It won't keep you alive indefinitely, but it helps keep you in the fight long enough to destroy them or run them over. This works better now that Raider and Corvettes can reinforce and recover in the same turn.

As to the issue to 300 points of fighters versus a huge ship and support. That is really the crux of the issue. In an ideal world we would be able to have those games and they would be relatively fair. However, the conservative approach to design of the huge ships means that the Corvette and Raider in particular are not doing near enough "work" to justify almost half your points. They are fun to be sure, but need a little balancing upward to increase their battlefield presence and effectiveness. They had to be conservative originally to avoid making overpowered death machines, but now that things are a bit more settled the epic ships could use a boost in my opinion.

Reinforce isn't necessarily the worst choice against TLT, if they only have one section as a target. Reinforce forces them to roll 2 hits in order to hit. And the biggest issue with TLTs is that you tend to have a bunch of unmodified attacks. And the Bright Hope would be an even bigger pain in the ass for the TLTs to attack.

And with the 2 card ships, you could help redirect TLT fire with a Reinforce.

I have to say, even taking all the things mentioned in this thread into account, the biggest issue with Epic battles is how long they take to play. We've had to scrap a few battles because after four hours there was still no clear winner. Granted the group I play with are not practiced tournament veterans, but that doesn't make not compleating a game any less frustrating.

That being said, Epic is a lot of fun and we continue to play it over standard play. The Assault carrier is only going to add to the fun. And, I sure hope Scum & Villany get entries in the huge category soon.

Epic might be needed some tweaking.

But its fun, nevertheless.

What ruinds the fun right now are TLTs.

No Epic ship can stand the magnitude of the firepower of 4 Y-TLTs

Its just laughable.

A TLT only does one damage. The Reinforce action makes the TLT useless against an Epic ship.

Does a reinforced section take damage from in ion cannon or turret? Doesn't a reinforce count as 1 evade dice (two for bright hope) not 1 negative damage?

Yeah you need a bunch of time for Epic

Epic might be needed some tweaking.
But its fun, nevertheless.

What ruinds the fun right now are TLTs.
No Epic ship can stand the magnitude of the firepower of 4 Y-TLTs
Its just laughable.

A TLT only does one damage. The Reinforce action makes the TLT useless against an Epic ship.

Does a reinforced section take damage from in ion cannon or turret? Doesn't a reinforce count as 1 evade dice (two for bright hope) not 1 negative damage?

Reinforce counts as an evade dice result.

Not seeing the problem with Esage, either. It's a 28-point ship, 31 with a Recon Specialist, and even more if you want to use him for more than passing tokens. That's comparable to what the Empire gets from Jonus, but at a much higher squad cost.

The difference is that huge ships can already get rerolls via target locks but all the cards that help huge ships modify focus results (Esage and Han crew) are rebel only. Rebels also have Roark to let the corvette fire at the highest possible PS.

I'll totally give you Roark, though.

IMO the OP is right on many points.

epic ships as of now (ordnance will change that to a degree, ironically) are NOT how they should work. they should (and I think we all agree on that) obliterate anything that comes into range with lasers, missiles, ioncannons and possibly worse (if they hit, that is..).

they should NOT scream "chaaaarge..." and search for the broadsword/battleaxe.

while that -is- funny, it shouldn't be the most effective thing to do, but a desperate one.

here are some things that bother me.. NOT because I think it's unbalanced, but it's just not fitting to how these huge things should behave:

-roark, esege, jonus, howlrunner etc: a huge ship should NOT profit from abilities small ones have/give.

you're a fighter pilot in a nimble interceptor making your attack-run.. and that corvette shoots right before you at ps14? ..because there is a hwk parked 300mtr from here. hwks make corvettes super-reactive for no reason at all..?

the same goes for the rest. makes no sense that a big raider should shoot better because some guy named jonus sits in a small, unimpressive ship 100mtr away.. while he might get away with his "thing" with small-ships (comm-chatter with the guy or whatever), he certainly isn't guiding 30+ gunnery teams on that star-destroyer, or several thousand on that deathstar.. all. at. once.

the huge ships should feel like huge ships.. that quirky interaction with small ones is just "off".

and you can see that by the simple fact that in 100p games roark oder jonus are not often taken (though I like them, but well..)..

in epic game THE FIRST thing you buy if you use a huge ship is your roark or jonus.. as the cherry that makes the pie tasty..

that's wrong.

IMO. YMMV ;-)

and to lighten things up but still drive the "wrong!"part home:

enjoy

Quite the opposite about the TLTs in Epic. TLTs are rubbish in Epic games.

I played against a list that had 2 TLT ships last weekend.

The first ship blew up at range 4 before even using the TLT a single round.

The second one was able to fire once before it died too.

In the hypothetical scenario that there were two more, that squadron would have lost 1/3 of it's squad points without doing much.

Their main problem is that Y-wings and K-wings have one evade dice and HWKs too few hull. TLT also means you always have to stay at range 2-3 which means you are not even trying to get at range one that hurts the Huge ships more than anything.

When you go against a ship that can regenerate 4-5 shields after the first round of fire and is usually supported by a swarm of small ships you need something that can output damage fast or can evade a lot in order to achieve something.

Surprising as it may sound 4 ion T ships instead can rend the Huge ship useless and are far better in Epic. Of course if you manage to bring all 4 at range 1 before you loose to low hull or low evade.

here are some things that bother me.. NOT because I think it's unbalanced, but it's just not fitting to how these huge things should behave:

-roark, esege, jonus, howlrunner etc: a huge ship should NOT profit from abilities small ones have/give.

Could not agree more!

the huge ships should feel like huge ships.. that quirky interaction with small ones is just "off".

and you can see that by the simple fact that in 100p games roark oder jonus are not often taken (though I like them, but well..)..

in epic game THE FIRST thing you buy if you use a huge ship is your roark or jonus.. as the cherry that makes the pie tasty..

that's wrong.

IMO. YMMV ;-)

Indeed. Ideally they'd be the first thing you'd buy in Epic to boost your small craft now that you have the "elbow room" to field them.