Yesterday I took a missile-boat Raider and a Gozanti carrying Thunderstruck (4xTempests w/ AC and Clusters) to a 300 point epic tourney.

Pictures

The list:

There were four players, and we called it after two rounds because it was getting quite late. I came in second, and got my Disco Vader, which makes me very happy. The guy who game in first was the one who didn't bring any Huge ships, but I never played him, so I don't know how badly I would've fared against his list (my gut says pretty badly).

My first round match-up was against a Rebel list with the Transport and a mixed bag of Rebel fighters, including a regenerating Poe, a TLT Horton, a Stressbot Gold, Tarn with R7, and Jake. I sent my Raider in a long arc from the right hand side of my deployment zone towards the left-hand mat, with the Gozer following. My opponent swung his A-Wings around the left side of the Raider, swung his X-Wings around the right side to harass my Gozer, and brought the Transport, Poe, and the Y-Wings down the middle. The Raider managed to kill all the A-Wings without taking a whole lot of damage, but I made a silly mistake and swerved it left to run over the last Prototype Pilot, which left it out of position to fire on anything worth shooting for the rest of the game. Another mistake: I split the alpha strike from my Tempests, and didn't wind up killing anything with it, and then the second pair got into a bump party that didn't let them do much.

In the end, I lost by 16 points, which I felt okay about, considering my mistakes. If the round had not been timed, I'm not sure what would have happened. The Gozer would certainly have been destroyed, but it might have tied up or run over enough stuff to let the Raider finish things, if it could get back in the fight. And I hardly ever remembered my Ordnance Experts, which might have let me salvage something from the disappointing Thunderstruck alpha strikes.

My second match was against another Rebel Transport, this one supported by a bunch of generics. Off the top of my head there were 5 Bandits with Ion Pulse Missiles, a couple Daggers with FCS and Ion Cannons, a couple Golds with ICT, and two Wardens with Conner Nets, Ion Bombs, and ton of other stuff. Seriously, those Wardens were something like 40 points each.

I had decided after the last match that having the Gozer following the Raider was not a good idea, because it made it too easy for things to get in behind the Raider, which is almost unrecoverable. So this time I set them up to do a sharper arc from the left corner to the right, and had the Gozanti in front. The Transport set up directly opposite the Gozer, pointed right at it, so I figured we were going to be bumping at some point.

My opponent sent the Zs in on my left side to harry the Raider, and most everything else came from the right, presumably hoping to roll over the Gozer and then finish off the Raider. In this match, the Raider was great. With Impetuous and the Weapons Engineer I was able to kill a couple Zs before they could fire. The greatest PS kill, though, had to be when the first two Tempests I deployed managed to down one of the K-Wings before it could shoot. I think the last point of damage might have come from the Gozanti's Dual Laser Turret, but most of it was Accuracy Corrected Cluster Missiles. I'm sure the other players must have gotten sick of me saying "Hey, look at that! Two hits!".

Things went a little downhill after that, as an early Advanced Homing Missile put a Secondary Drive failure (you must spend 1 energy to perform any action) onto my Gozanti, which with no way for me to flip it down made Automated Protocols essentially useless for the rest of the game. Also, I tried to force the alpha strike with the second pair of Tempests, and just got them ioned by the Transport's ionization reactor. I made better use of Ordnance Experts this time, though. By the end of the match I had killed three Zs, one of the Ks, a B and maybe a Y, and gotten the Transport into half-points territory, while only losing one Tempest and half-points on my Gozanti. So I ended the day with 1-1 and 2nd place on MoV.

Lessons learned:

Don't send the Raider in first.

The construction droid on the Gozanti was a waste--by the time I had face down damage cards I didn't have enough energy to make "spend an energy to get rid of a face down damage card" better than "spend an energy to recover a shield".

Don't force the alpha strike with the Gozer's carried craft. I was using Requiem, so the deployed fighters fired at PS 8 on the turn they deployed, but it would have been better to deploy the second pair from the back in the clear and let them try to get their own shots later.

Thank you for sharing! It's kind of disheartening that the guy who didn't bring any huge ships to an Epic tournament won, though. I'm really hoping that once Scum gets a huge ship of their own, the Epic Tournament Rules will be updated so that players are required to field at least 2 Epic points worth of huge ships in their squad.

Thank you for sharing! It's kind of disheartening that the guy who didn't bring any huge ships to an Epic tournament won, though. I'm really hoping that once Scum gets a huge ship of their own, the Epic Tournament Rules will be updated so that players are required to field at least 2 Epic points worth of huge ships in their squad.

There's a perception that small/large ship squad points are more efficient than huge ship squad points, so you'd expect this result. I think that's probably a real thing, but I also think it's not as big as we think it is. If we make an effort to play with the huge ships and get better with them, especially with the new tech that's just come out like Automated Protocols, I think it'll start to look a lot more even.

In this one two round tournament I doubled my lifetime number of Epic games. If I had gone into the first round match knowing what I know now, I would have won. Who knows how I'd have done against the guy who won if we'd gone to three rounds?

I don't want to see a compulsory 2 Epic Point rule in effect, because flying against skinny transports with tons of fighter escorts is not significantly different than flying against 300 points of fighters. If there were also some kind of required squad point expenditure, then I might support it, if only to speed things up.

Lessons learned:

Don't send the Raider in first.

The construction droid on the Gozanti was a waste--by the time I had face down damage cards I didn't have enough energy to make "spend an energy to get rid of a face down damage card" better than "spend an energy to recover a shield".

Don't force the alpha strike with the Gozer's carried craft. I was using Requiem, so the deployed fighters fired at PS 8 on the turn they deployed, but it would have been better to deploy the second pair from the back in the clear and let them try to get their own shots later.

Good advice.

I've only had one game with the carrier - in my case I was using the complete TIE all-stars (all 10 named TIE/ln pilots) and again, the carrier alpha strike is....so so. I ended up deploying before the lines met because I didn't want to be deploying mid-combat. I used the Suppressor title, by the way, and it's amazing. Given Tarkin to back it up, you can cripple an aces ability to do.....well....anything in one go. It's remarkable how useless Vader becomes when his target lock and focus token disappear between the end of his move and the start of the combat phase.

I did use the construction droid and like you it never got used. In my case, energy wasn't a problem - I used optimised generators, which meant that powering up the turret actually increased the ship's net energy. I think that card's overkill on a carrier in hindsight - better on a raider with all those power-hungry guns.

Why ordnance tubes when packing so many quad lasers, by the way?

Why ordnance tubes when packing so many quad lasers, by the way?

I only had one Quad Laser card on the Raider, just to avoid having a Range 1 blind spot in the aft section. Homing Missiles did most of the work. If I had it to do over again I might just put another missile there, because they didn't wind up being very useful for their points.

Look into Ion Torpedos for epic. They do the 4 damage, but also ionize everyone at R1 of the target. Great against snub nosed fighters.

digitalbusker, on 19 Jan 2016 - 03:06 AM, said:

Magnus Grendel, on 19 Jan 2016 - 12:51 AM, said:

Why ordnance tubes when packing so many quad lasers, by the way?

I only had one Quad Laser card on the Raider, just to avoid having a Range 1 blind spot in the aft section. Homing Missiles did most of the work. If I had it to do over again I might just put another missile there, because they didn't wind up being very useful for their points.

Your list in the spoiler is showing the Raider as having 3x Quad Lasers, and no missiles.

Your list in the spoiler is showing the Raider as having 3x Quad Lasers, and no missiles.

Well, foop. Looks like the bugs aren't all ironed out of Voidstate's squadron builder for Ordnance Tubes and/or Huge Ship Modifications yet.

Why ordnance tubes when packing so many quad lasers, by the way?

I only had one Quad Laser card on the Raider, just to avoid having a Range 1 blind spot in the aft section. Homing Missiles did most of the work. If I had it to do over again I might just put another missile there, because they didn't wind up being very useful for their points.

With the quad lasers mounted there is little incentive for ships to try and leap into range 1. So just be aware if suddenly the quads are not there, ships at range 3 that you didn't shoot at with the quad will make a special effort to get closer and possibly be in the donut hole.

Why not use cluster missiles instead of quads? You already have ordnance, your homing missiles don't spend target locks, the clusters are cheaper, energy free and provide the same dice rolls.

Last time I raider'd I used the OP's build but with clusters, Lag. I also opted for ion pulse missile on the front, for anti-huge ship and lining up the raider's ram.

It was an absolute beast. The Raider is just great with ordnance tubes, it makes it so energy efficient.

Why not use cluster missiles instead of quads? You already have ordnance, your homing missiles don't spend target locks, the clusters are cheaper, energy free and provide the same dice rolls.

That's a good suggestion. Off the top of my head the only thing I can think of as a downside is poor dice modification. On the rare occasions where I used the Quads, I was saving them for last so I could use the Target Locks left over from the rest of the shooting.