Personally, I think the best way is if one person makes both lists. Or perhaps two people make them together and in the open. Use almost all generics with maybe one or two uniques. Those shouldn't be alpha uniques, but probably some B rated ones.

Personally, I think the best way is if one person makes both lists. Or perhaps two people make them together and in the open. Use almost all generics with maybe one or two uniques. Those shouldn't be alpha uniques, but probably some B rated ones.

But it might be fun to have one alpha on either side. Think of the havoc they might raise the the huge target on their backs. Epic ships flying around Wedge dodging in and out, Soontir breaking formation and coming in from the side. Who to you attack?

The ability to design your own fleet is what gets people invested in games in the first place. That investment is what drives the community to keep playing games. When one player designs both fleets, the other side is always at best, just not as invested in the game and at worst, at a notable disadvantage by not being as familiar with their fleet as they'd be if they'd built it themselves.

The dance of trying to define how people "should" play and what's "fair" is what drives people to standard formats in the first place. Unfortunately, trying to shut down "alpha" uniques just makes the B's the new A's. Trying to limit people to generics makes things like swarms of TLT Y-Wings the go to answer. The power of things directly relates to their environment, and I think you'll actually find a lot of the current alphas aren't nearly as powerful when you put 3-4x the points on the table (Regeneration as a game mechanic is notorious for only working at the scale it was designed for).

I think most people agree though, that Epic as it currently exists probably needs some rules to make fleets more diverse and interesting. Spam lists tend to scare off players, as they both invalidate a lot of existing purchases and inflate the perceived buy in (a meta dominated by 4 X-Wings feels more expensive than one dominated by XYAB for example). Epic currently feels ripe for abuse in this regard, and I suspect that perception keeps a lot of players away.

I can guarantee that epic play when one player writes the scenario akin to the player's desires, is one superb game to play x wing. Ships and upgrades predetermined, you play with no ( or minimun ) ways to modify the lists given.

Free to fix what you do not like, create new stuff or what you like. A Red X with Stay on Target and free R7 T1 to fix him. Elusivenes on Horton Salm. Try the Tie Hunter. Rocks that explode if you hit them with ordnance...

Try it even if you are a "serious" six rock player. 3-4 hours of...pure fun.

One piece of advice that I would give anyone trying to start an epic league in their local meta: give a lot of hints and information ahead of time. Things like:

- No more than 1 huge

- If playing a swarm, have 11 ships or more.

- Don't put many types of torpedoes on a same bomber (you're just making it a better target)

- Do not underestimate the usefulness of generic, low PS ships

- Don't put too many points on ships with low agility.

- Etc

It takes up to 3 hours to do an epic game + setup time. It's really disheartening for a player to get crushed 300 to 30 because they wanted a fully loaded Miranda (and all other ships as well). Spending that much time to learn some lessons is hard, especially if you normally need to make the mistake multiple times to learn from it. So yeah, giving tips ahead of time... I suggest it.

The ability to design your own fleet is what gets people invested in games in the first place. That investment is what drives the community to keep playing games. When one player designs both fleets, the other side is always at best, just not as invested in the game and at worst, at a notable disadvantage by not being as familiar with their fleet as they'd be if they'd built it themselves.

The dance of trying to define how people "should" play and what's "fair" is what drives people to standard formats in the first place. Unfortunately, trying to shut down "alpha" uniques just makes the B's the new A's. Trying to limit people to generics makes things like swarms of TLT Y-Wings the go to answer. The power of things directly relates to their environment, and I think you'll actually find a lot of the current alphas aren't nearly as powerful when you put 3-4x the points on the table (Regeneration as a game mechanic is notorious for only working at the scale it was designed for).

While I do like the list building aspect to this game, it is not always required. I do like list building and having fun with trying to build interesting lists. I do not think that this aspect is required for every aspect of the game. I can think of several different reasons for going with predetermined lists:

1) While many people into the game do like to research all the cards and look through all the upgrades to come up with cool and interesting lists. I do. Not everyone who plays X-wing does. There are a lot of casual players who just like to play the game and just don't keep up with everything. For those people, they tend not to mind having predetermined lists as they just don't know all the upgrades and as long as it's fair, they are fine with that.

2) Many scenarios and missions come with predetermined lists as part of the package. Not being able to pick your list or even having limited selection of models becomes a challenge to fly the best with what you have. Many people like a backstory or reason for their games other than death match. If you give it to them, they don't mind having predetermined lists. I tend to like flying the lists as a challenge. Can you win the game with the tools you have as opposed to always using the crutch of Soontir Fel or regen Poe? Also, it's a way to fly with different ships for once. Don't you know that guy that ALWAYS flies with Soontir or Poe or <insert ship here>. Break out of your mold.

3) If you are going to go and play a game of Epic, why not have a fair fight? I know a lot of people that don't want to bother setting up and dedicating the time to play an Epic game, especially with multiple players, if they have already lost before the game began. I know a lot of casual players that don't even know all the upgrade cards. They are impaired before the game begins and they just aren't dedicated enough to "just learn the lists, dude". If one person sets up both sides of the game, then the game is more about what happens in the game as opposed to winning in the list building.

4) There is just more of an epic feel when you have a lot of generics all flying around. I mean.....waves of X-wings flying around against waves of Tie Fighters. It's just cool!

5) The gameplay goes a lot quicker when you don't have a lot of special characters and special rules going on.

@Ken: I usually like to have each side with one wave of Bomber types. I tend to at least have one wave of interceptors (A-wings or Tie Interceptors), one bomber (Tie Bomber, Tie Punisher, Y-wing, or K-wing), and general fighters (X-wings, Ties, Kihraxz). Which squads go after which enemy squads? Does your capital ship hold back or go forward?

Comming from an rpg background I used to really like the concept of list building in miniature games. The fun of town tuning the upgrades and making every unit and ship definitively mine....

... But recently I've played more and more games like Saga (a dark age and crusade skirmish game) and Lion Rampant (mediaeval skirmish). Both provide relatively simple options for builds (lion Rampant only has about 5troop types, which are purchased in units of set sizes, in the game and less than a dozen upgrades, Saga is even simpler). But they still provide a lot of room for characterisation and individuality in terms of model customisation, specific force make up and basic roleplaying and story telling.

StarWars has strong iconic ships with clear roles:bombers, interceptors, versatile (or cheap) general fighters, heavy fighters like the bwing and defender. But in the XWing game these iconics all to often seem to get lost in a sea of uniques and PowerBuilder which don't resemble the crafts' origional purpose.

Epic and cinematic play provide an opportunity for the generics to shine. Small wings of 'mediocre' Xwings become solid versatile combatants for a screening force or alpha strike, bombers get targets worthy of their ordinance, and jammy overloaded aces, or clunky heroships get blasted to pieces by concentrated fire.

Epic gets play, but it doesn't get a lot of attention. These boards especially have a fairly laser-focused view of the game as the 100pt tournament format; it's probably to the games credit that it survives such analysis on a long term basis.

The scenario play is fun, if a little weak; Epic certainly gets games in but they tend to be the more casual "Hey, we have an afternoon, let's do this sucker properly" approach - and thus, not the sort of thing you post on the boards but to brag about afterwards.

I've a Raider I cannot wait to dust off should I find a spare sunny afternoon. Yes indeed.

Sounds good all around. I picked up a transport to fleet

with my corvette. Now the Goazanti has something else to shoot at!