Alright, so this is a spinoff thread from the huge ships one.

We are talking an epic game 1000+ points in scope.

We are talking either a large table or multiple tables.

We might be talking cruiserweight ships (four foot long at least on a table).

Logistically: How?

How could this reasonably be done?

Discuss.

Be prepared to take all day. It will go quicker if it's just 1 person per side, but usually a huge game like this is 8+ people. People get to talking and socializing, and the next thing you know everyone's waiting on a Red Squadron Pilot to activate, but that dude isn't paying attention because he's telling someone else about last week's Doctor Who.... and little things like that make the game take 12 hours.

The question I would like to see answered is when and where do I need to be for this game

Be prepared to take all day. It will go quicker if it's just 1 person per side, but usually a huge game like this is 8+ people. People get to talking and socializing, and the next thing you know everyone's waiting on a Red Squadron Pilot to activate, but that dude isn't paying attention because he's telling someone else about last week's Doctor Who.... and little things like that make the game take 12 hours.

Time, right. Let's assume a battle takes a weekend. So we'd need a phase/turn timer on the side to keep it solid, and activation tokens to keep track on ships.

Table Size.

Normal 3X6 won't cut this. Dual 3X6 tables? (so 6X6?) or dual 4X8? ( have to be able to seperate down the middile maybe, so i dunno, 4 2X8s?

It's my dream, that's why I am looking at the logistics first. I can see the requirement to hire a venue, my War-room won't cut it.

Is there a wargame club in the area?
We pulled the station-assault campaign once, and the club provided us with 40k apocalypse size table

and it took 2 days time.

The station itself was taken there by me in a simple car.

it resides at the club, they asked to keep it as a landmark for x-wing shelves.

There is an FFG star wars club who do x-wing nights at a local sobeys, it's always on a day I can't attend, so have yet to see it.

6 players, multiple tables.

1 6x3, 2 3x3.

The 6x3 is the main Epic table.

The 3x3 tables are smaller epic games/skirmishes.

When the 3x3 table games end, the winner "hyperspace jumps" to the 6x3, deploying their surviving ships at the start of the next turn to join the carnage, as "reinforcements".

Theoretically you could also put hyperspace navigation buoys at the centre of a neutral edge of all of the tables, allowing ships to jump between battlezones - i.e. one of the 3x3 tables is losing badly, so the player on the 6x3 jumps a couple of ships there as reinforcements...

...that could be quite tactical - the full-size Epic game is going to last the longest, but the players there would have a vested interest in what's happening on the smaller tables as well (they wouldn't want one of those games to go 100-0 and then see their opponent getting a 100 points of reinforcements, for example). So you'd effectively be playing three individual games, with the possibility of sending forces to help out where needed.

That, that is probably the best kind of way of settling this Gecko...

With Christmas vacation coming up, this is a great project to be working on. If it took all week... no problem...

As for size, that is something I have struggled with as well. Too many tables are too small to begin with, and if you get them large enough, then you have trouble reaching the pieces.

I would say the 6' folding tables that are about 2.5' wide would work. If you got 4 of them it would allow you a lot of room butted up together. You'll have to put something over the top of it cause they have rounded edges, but you could cut a sheet of 4x8 material to a 5ish x 8 shape easily enough and texture it and paint it. It all comes apart easily enough but you have a raised surface for the ships and room on the sides for the cards with a pretty decent area to play on.

Not necessarily a super cheap option, but is one I am leaning toward, especially as I already have 3 of the folding tables.

Though, to be honest, if you are going this route, I guess you could use saw horses and plywood and make it whatever size you wanted. Having a place for cards for enough ships to fill a 1,000 points is going to be a bit intimidating. You almost need tables behind your main table to line up the cards and tokens on. If someone wants to look at the cards from the other side, you have to walk around. Unless you could figure out a way to make a two tier table with good lighting underneath.

When we run bigger epic games (Not this big but we have discussed 1200pt games) we make it an unofficial rule that you need to group generics up in at least 3's if possible and just set one dial for the group until attack ranges are met. a 3x6 scales up to approximately 500pts so long as you aren't taking exclusively the cheapest generics. This many points you're probably taking a bunch of generics for ease those so I would say the ideal size would be a 4x10 area but that is pretty tough to find. Multiple tables is tough to run and as others have said it will be tough to keep everyone on point. If you can find "commanders" maybe 1-2 a side that will help you move your ships but not question your choices that'd be perfect but could be tricky to find. My epic partner is moving to Ohio and I think we are going to try and get a mass epic day in with something like this, I will film it and share so we can work out kinks as a community.

We've done a couple large-scale epic games at my FLGS, but nothing quite that big. Our most recent one was 200 points per player, 3 players per side, on a 9x3, and that worked pretty well (though really we could have had it on a 6x3 just fine).

I recommend some way of breaking the game up into smaller zones that each operate independently from each other, with the ability to send ships from one zone to another, like Gecko suggested. This should help speed things up. Even with "only" 600 points per side, and very minimal side chatter, it took us about an hour to set up and in the 3 hours we had remaining before the store closed we only got through (I feel) about half the battle. So by that standard I would plan on 1 hour of game time for every 100 points (on each side) fielded.

Have everyone compose their list(s) and prep all their ships ahead of time if possible, to speed up set up time.

And lastly, take and post LOTS of pictures. Have fun!

Until ducks are rowwed this is purely a hypothetical, but splitting into sections seems the only logical choice. Unless of course we somehow use a table that can be hoisted/moved.

6 players, multiple tables.

1 6x3, 2 3x3.

The 6x3 is the main Epic table.

The 3x3 tables are smaller epic games/skirmishes.

When the 3x3 table games end, the winner "hyperspace jumps" to the 6x3, deploying their surviving ships at the start of the next turn to join the carnage, as "reinforcements".

Theoretically you could also put hyperspace navigation buoys at the centre of a neutral edge of all of the tables, allowing ships to jump between battlezones - i.e. one of the 3x3 tables is losing badly, so the player on the 6x3 jumps a couple of ships there as reinforcements...

...that could be quite tactical - the full-size Epic game is going to last the longest, but the players there would have a vested interest in what's happening on the smaller tables as well (they wouldn't want one of those games to go 100-0 and then see their opponent getting a 100 points of reinforcements, for example). So you'd effectively be playing three individual games, with the possibility of sending forces to help out where needed.

And Ties would need a Gozanti!

Or otherwise a designated mothership. Card stock station would be do-able.

And Ties would need a Gozanti!

Absolutely! Hyperspace-capable ships only, unless you're being carried to the action!

Sigh... if only we had our XG1's..

Games this size are all about table placement/dimensions. I have found the following problems:

-tables deeper than 4' across quickly become inaccessible. Most people simply can't reach 2+ feet across (and some shorties not even that).

-long tables (really anything more than 6' wide) tend to basically just result in sectionalized squareoffs. (Dave and Jim play against each other because they happen to be facing one another. Jim isn't going to put his z95's on this edge and his e wings WAAAAAAY down on the other end simply because he doesn't want to have to move back and forth all the time and bump into fellow x wing player randy, brushing his junk across randy's bum every time he has to move behind him to set his e wing dial. I find this tends to have the same problem as a dinner engagement with a single long dinner table...usually the people on the far ends don't get to interact with one another.

So, a thing we used to do in huge warhammer games was this:

-an "L" shaped board of 2 tables. In warhammer that would represent unusable space, such as sea/water or perhaps the inside of a castle. In X Wing, the "pocket" could represent a dense asteroid field that is un-navigable.

-a "U" shaped board. Same idea as above, but with more vertices.

They aren't perfect solutions by any means, but I find they tend to physically bring people a little more together.

In addition to breaking it up into several 200 or 300 point games, I'd also add a strategy map.

Odd weird expensive thought...

Vertical glass. Heavy magnets. Ships on both sides.

Obviously this is not practical and would be a very expensive proposition, but would it be capable of being done?

The play area could increase dramatically and everyone could access things easily. Tokens would be a pain (unless you put one up on each side at the same time).

The table below the glass would be filled with cards and your normal stuff with plenty of room. You could see through the glass to the opponents cards.

I cannot afford to do this, but in a showplace kind of area, I wonder if you could do this? I guess the key would be getting magnets strong enough to hold each side and still be able to move the ship when you applied the template to the glass wall. After that, the rest should fall into place... and yeah... trusting not just one but two Tantive IV's to magnets?

Until ducks are rowwed this is purely a hypothetical, but splitting into sections seems the only logical choice. Unless of course we somehow use a table that can be hoisted/moved.

Yep. Think about missions in X-Wing Alliance as well, maybe.

Launch

Jump to location 1 - deal with enemies, complete objective

Jump to location 2 - deal with enemies, complete objective

Jump to location 3 - deal with enemies, complete objective

Jump back home

There's no reason why an absolutely massive Epic game couldn't be played in a similar format. Ships starting on seperate tables, then moving between them to spread the play out over a larger area.

Could lead to some hilarious situations as well - imagine a YT-1300 jumping onto your table, and you being happy for the help, only for a fully loaded Gozanti to jump in after it the following turn...

It'd make carriers like the Gozer and frigate much more interesting... Lack of standard hyperdrive gives empire a disadvantage though...

Not sure about that, it's only TIE's, Bombers and Interceptors that lack hyperdrive.

And Assault Carriers aren't that expensive!

I guess you could also make a donut hole table and have it be the planet that you are fighting around. This would allow for Imperial reinforcements from the surface. I do like the separate tables being different warpable areas. I guess you could look at rules from the RPG for making the jump, but it would be easier to say when a board is cleared you can jump to another sector. That is certainly a disparity in how rebels and scum work opposed to the Empire. But you really don't want to be there when a capital ship pops out of hyperspace and disgorges 72+ TIE Fighters.

The more and more I'm liking a group of 4X4 tables representing sectors...

We can just say roidfields too dense for capital ships/larger stations. Allow small stations that maybe placed in the centre of said station, no more than 12" diameter.

For the more complex, said stations can be fought over in IA...

Alright. So, 4X4 fight. Sake of argument, rebs vs imps.

5 tables. each 4 by 4 also.

first 4 tables are pairings, final table in centre of these is the main objective. Each table should have a mini objective, in the hopes that it stops a rush to the centre.

Objective could be a planet to land shuttles on, a convoy to capture/destroy, a space station to capture/destroy, your pet cat. Whatever.

each table can jump point to three tables based on side. either jumps to the adjacent table, or from the corner to the centre.

Whoever does whatever needs doing in the centre or 3/4 mini objectives wins. If one has the centre, and the other has 3/4 it's a draw, play may continue until it's not a draw.

Drive jumping with a large or huge base ship tapes one turn

Drive jumping with a smaller, weedier starfighter hyperdrive takes 2 turns. This might balance out the gozer tax.

Any large ship which has 2 crew may trade 2 crew for a landing team, in the event someone wants to play IA and capture objectives that way.