Hi all,

I recently purchased a Gozanti and wanted to play through the Imperial Crackdown campaign that comes with the ship. Only problem - I have two close friends who I typically play with, and wanted to include them both! Solution: I reworked the campaign to feature three factions: I would play Imperials, one of my friends would play Rebels, and the other would play Scum.

The original scenarios typically call for a 100 point Rebel squad to face off against 110 points of Imperials, including the Gozanti. I tweaked it so that Mission 1 would feature 110 points of Imperials against 60 points of Rebels and 60 points of hired Scum mercenaries providing additional backup. I figured this would put me at a bit of a disadvantage, so I came up with a couple of special rules.

"Your friends are quite the mercenaries": Scum do not treat Rebel or Imperial ships as "friendly ships," and vice versa.

"I'm in it for the money": if every ship controlled by the Scum player's ally has been destroyed or has disengaged, all Scum ships immediately disengage as well.

Mission 1 was to play out more or less as in the book. I fielded a Gozanti with dual laser turret, Vector title, docking clamps, broadcast array, and Automated Protocols. The Gozanti was carrying three Academy TIEs and Howlrunner with Swarm Tactics. The Rebels took a Leebo-piloted YT-2400 (the "wing leader") with Outrider title, Mangler cannon, Lone Wolf EPT, and hull upgrade, plus a Bandit Z-95. The Scum were lead by Talonbane Cobra with Lone Wolf, joined by two Binyare Pirates with proton rockets.

My friends aren't super competitive players, but you can see from their list selections that they gamed my special rules quite a bit! I had intended the "quite the mercenaries" rule to prevent them from putting together some game-breaking cross-faction combo - unfortunately, I worded the rule in such a way that it allowed both of them to take full advantage of Lone Wolf! In the future, the rule will probably be reworded to prevent this.

Summary:

The Gozanti deployed in the bottom left corner next to a satellite, angled toward the center of the table, while the Rebels/Scum deployed in the top left corner, with Talonbane and the Outrider pointed directly toward the satellite in the top right. The Scum Z-95s made directly for the Gozanti on turn 1, while the remaining Z-95, 2400, and Kihraxz sped towards the top right. The Gozanti lumbered forward at speed 1, powered up its guns and maxed out on energy. The Gozanti took a long-range potshot at one of the Z-95s, while return fire took a shield off the Gozanti.

On turn 2, the Scum Z-95s closed, while the wing leader and his mates continued to go after the satellite. I flipped the Gozanti dial - all ahead full! I moved out into the center of the table and declared that I was deploying my TIEs. The three Academies came out at full speed, the first two barrel-rolling left and right to make room for the third, with Howlrunner coming just behind at Speed 4. The Gozanti stripped the shields off one of the Scum Z-95s and jammed the other with its broadcast array, while recovering a shield with automated protocols. Talonbane, having banked slightly back towards the center, got a shot on one of the Academies and took it down to one HP. Howlrunner and another Academy then fired at Leebo, but did minimal damage thanks to Lone Wolf. The other Academies were likewise ineffective, despite Howlrunner's presence.

Turn 3 saw the Scum Zs overshoot the rear of the Gozanti, temporarily taking them out of the fight. In the top right corner, a dogfight ensued, and I realized that I had been in such a hurry to deploy my fighters (the Gozanti is just so darn cool vomiting those things across the map, I couldn't help it!) that I had let Talonbane flank me, along with the Bandit Z-95. Still, I thought I might have a chance to do serious damage to Leebo, and the Gozanti was moving in to support. Talonbane lead off the shooting by sniping the wounded Academy before it could shoot, even with Howlrunner's swarm tactics, and my firepower was suddenly greatly reduced. Howlrunner and one of her remaining wingmen stripped a couple of shields from Leebo, but then Leebo's Mangler cannon blew Howlrunner away when my green dice completely abandoned me. Things were looking very grim! Nevertheless, the Gozanti was close enough now that ramming either Talonbane or Leebo was a very real possibility, and killing one, the other, or both would be an almost certain victory for the Empire.

The dials went down, and one by one were revealed. Talonbane, facing south and angled directly into the path of the Gozanti, had to do a hard right and break back toward the left side of the board to avoid being crushed by the cruiser. Leebo, somewhat surprisingly, followed, but ended up with a corner of his base in the Gozanti's flight path. I flipped my dial - I had banked to the right. Leebo was spared instant death, but was lit up by the Gozanti's dual laser turret and started taking hull damage. The TIEs had managed to put a little hurt on Talonbane, too, at the end of Turn 3, but on Turn 4 another one fell to Leebo's mangler. It was now just the Gozanti and a single TIE against Talonbane, a wounded Leebo, and three Headhunters.

I figured all was lost, but the threat of being rammed by the Gozanti had forced most of the enemy ships to take evasive action, giving me a couple of turns of respite. Leebo swooped into the bottom left and claimed a second satellite, while I maneuvered the Gozanti towards the bottom right to protect the final satellite. The final TIE fell to Leebo's mangler.

On the third to last turn (maybe the 6th or 7th turn overall), the three Z-95s and Talonbane made a concentrated attack on the Gozanti, which had been relatively unhurt up to that point. Talonbane fired at Range 1 with 5 dice and did a boatload of damage. The Z-95s finally got to fire their proton rockets (at which point my buddy realized that the upgrade wasn't that effective on an agility 2 ship), and the Bandit engaged as well. The Gozanti reeled, taking serious hull damage and having the broadcast array and automated protocols knocked out. But return fire killed Talonbane, and the next turn a Binayre Pirate fell trying to avoid being rammed. I used a recover action and regenerated most of the Gozanti's shields, and I had managed to maneuver to put myself on a collision course with the final satellite - and anything that might happen to be lurking nearby. But I was too late - Leebo had an angle on the satellite and would be able to scamper off the board the next turn, before I could ram! I fired a final burst from the laser turret but couldn't bring Leebo down. He took the satellite and the win.

Conclusion

We had a blast playing with the Gozanti, the first time we have used an epic ship. The game ended up being very close, although my opponents made some pretty big errors (mostly forgetting to take actions, we hadn't played X-Wing in awhile, and running into each other) and my dice failed me in a couple of key moments. The scenario probably favored my opponents a bit, but it was still a lot of fun.

We'll play the second mission of the campaign much the same way (60 pts for rebels and scum), but we have a fun twist planned if the Rebels manage to steal the Gozanti in Mission 2. At that point, the Imperials, realizing they can't afford to lose the cruiser, outbid the Rebels for the services of the Scum, and Mission 3 becomes Empire and Scum against the Rebels! Should be entertaining.

I haven't seen a lot of posts on here about the epic ships, and I totally get it (I've owned the CR-90 and transport forever and have never played them), but we had a lot of fun.