What is the best anti-fighter build for a raider or cr-90? Imo single turbos are out, quads are too close range and ion batteries are great minus the limited damage. Ordinance is still new to me but I haved used homing missles on occasion and they seem pretty good. Just want to know other peoples opinions or if someone has the numbers calculated. Thanks for your time and any responses, if this is covered in another post any links would be appreciated. May the force be with you all.

For a raider, Ordnance tubes are a beast. We used one in an epic doubles and it's terrifying.

My recommendation is Impetuous title, Weapons Engineer, Sensor Team, Homing Missiles on the fore hardpoint and 2 x Assault Missiles on the rear hardpoints.

The damage you can put out is impressive. You often find yourself missing the ability to fire at range 4, but within range 3 you can shred fighters by putting two assault missiles into a clump per turn, then finishing someone off with a homing missile and two primary gun shots, and then getting a free target lock to set up next turn's shots.

The downside is obviously the range and the need to manage target locks, but essentially your offensive power becomes energy free . That's a scary combination allowing reinforce/recover and double-tap at will, and means that target lock with the rear is very effective.

Ordnance Experts and/or Gunnery Team are also useful teams, whilst having Jonus flying wing is very nice.

You obviously have a range 1 blind spot. My response is that the raider already has huge blind spots (forward-swept guns and all) - the way to make up for it is to have some fighters tailing you to provide close escorts, and maybe a few range 1 dirty tricks. Forward and Aft cluster bombs are a cheap option to make people think twice about strafing runs, or - if investing a few more points - Mara Jade and an Ionization reactor can seriously mess up anyone who things being in close is 'safe'.

For a raider, Ordnance tubes are a beast. We used one in an epic doubles and it's terrifying.

My recommendation is Impetuous title, Weapons Engineer, Sensor Team, Homing Missiles on the fore hardpoint and 2 x Assault Missiles on the rear hardpoints.

Don't forget Targeting Co-ordinator - for a ship that doesn't have particularly great action efficiency, the ability to gain a TL - two TLs if you have Weapons Engineer - without spending an action, is well worth it

Engine Booster and 4 straight. But you might want to bring along some damage removal and energy boost afterwards.

Don't forget Targeting Co-ordinator - for a ship that doesn't have particularly great action efficiency, the ability to gain a TL - two TLs if you have Weapons Engineer - without spending an action, is well worth it

****. I'd never noticed that card. That's a VERY nice card for an ordnance boat. It still feels more like a 'backup' ability - unless you have a specific need to use 'co-ordinate', you'll have Target Lock available every turn - but I guess it opens up the option to take an ACTION header cargo or other crew (although losing the weapons engineer would be annoying).

Engine Booster and 4 straight. But you might want to bring along some damage removal and energy boost afterwards.

Or - Engine Booster, 4 Straight and Admiral Chiraneau. We used that in the same game. Used it to launch a pair of interceptors that were coming in from the opponent's flank on turn 1, in fact, which rather shocked them.

(Deploy max forwards, engine boost, Speed 4 , admiral chiraneau, launch 2, speed 5, boost, barrel roll soontir, speed 5, boost, focus Carnor).

For giggles:

There are a lot of different ways to handle enemy fighters. Each faction has different options, as well. If you look at the CR-90, it's strength is to broadside opponents and fire from long range. That usually means not flying directly at your opponents. You want to skirt around them. If your opponent has a lot of enemy fighters, you will need a way to either screen them or control them. There are numerous options for that. If you have the Raider, then you want to keep your opponent in your forward arc. The Raider will trash a CR-90 in a straight up brawl, but it is also great at knocking out enemy fighters, as well. The weakness is that it has worse protection from the rear than even a CR-90.

One of the easiest ways to control enemy fighters is to use Ion Torpedoes. They are 5 pts, do the full 4 red dice on damage, and ionize every ship at R1 of the target. If you want to control large swaths of the table, then that's a way to do it. While you can put these on both epic ships, you don't even have to. Both factions have enough ships that can carry Torpedoes these days to be able to run small ships that can protect your epic ships. For the Rebels, you have a ton of ships that can carry Torpedoes. The Imperials have the Tie Bomber and Tie Punisher. Both can run support to the big ships for not too much.

The CR-90 wants to run away and fire broadsides, so Ion Torpedoes are a great way of doing this. You also get X-wings that can have Ion Torpedoes. X-wings are fantastic in Epic. You don't need to arc dodge, they are affordable, they are fast, and they hit hard. What's not to love about them? Zap those flankers as your big ship moves out of the way and continues to pound on your targets.

Imperials are better at moving forward with the Raider. What better thing can you do than to Ionize a whole squadron of Rebels and then run them over? It's priceless. It also keeps them from getting on your flanks, as well. You can tie in Ionizing with dropping Mines, as well. Use them to cover flanks or set up ioninzation into them.

The other major ordnance to deal with large numbers of small ships is the Assault Missile. Why mess around with Ionization if you can just destroy a bunch of enemy? This also works with small ships and Imperials have more ships with Missiles than Torpedoes. Even with Rebels vs. high agility Tie Fighters, it's worth it, though. Just make sure some other attack clears away their Focus/Evade and fire at the same target. Three Assault Missiles will kill all Tie Fighters in R1. With the new TAP V1 the Imperials have a cheap ordnance carrier. X1 is also not bad.

I will say that Single Turbo Lasers are not always bad against small ships. It all depends on the target. I've blown up X-wings with them before. If your target has less than 3 Agility and especially if they have no Focus for defense, then it's worth it. It's still 4 red dice and one eyeball turns into a hit. If you don't have a capital ship to fire at, it's not so bad to fire at good targets. It's not worth it if you are worried about energy and you are firing at Tie Fighters or Tie Interceptors.

Quad Laser Cannons are meant for close in defense against small based ships. R1-2 and the ability to fire again if you miss is pretty good. It can help whittle away at the small based ships.

Both big ships have their power gamer support ships that can really make both even nastier. Jonus is good for the Raider and can allow all your secondary weapons to have re-rolls. That's crazy good. Jan Ors for the Rebels can boost your important attack to be even more powerful. The CR-90 firing it's main gun with 6 red dice, Gunnery Team, and a TL is pretty nasty. If there is one enemy ship you want to take down, you can put a hurt on it from long range. Personally, I'd only use these options if you were going for the more tournament minded options. If you are playing a casual game, then it's no fun to kick in the teeth of your friend if they aren't going for the power builds.

If you go with ordnance on the big ships, then there can be some concerns. Remember that you will need to fire them with TL's only, so you need ways of generating more TL's. Weapons Engineer is good. There is a Raider title that gives you another TL if you kill a ship. You might find you don't have enough TL's, though. That can be bad. The range might also be an issue. If you don't have any long range weapons (besides main), then you lose the ability to hit enemy ships at a distance. If you are a Raider loaded out with Ordnance and your opponent has a CR-90 decked out to stay at a distance, they can pummel you before you can close the range. If enemy ships also get within R1 of you, you won't have any way to handle them, either. So, you can do a lot of damage with Ordnance epic ships, but you don't have to go that way, either.

Lastly, just good fighter screens can do a lot to clear off enemy fighters. Both sides have ships with 3 attack dice that are good for clearing out enemy ships. Tie Interceptors and X-wings are fantastic in Epic. Send them after your opponents small based ships and you should see them doing damage. I'd recommend going for generics as the powerful guys just aren't worth it in Epic. Soontir Fel can't dodge all those arcs and focused fire really kills him. If you have some beefy ace, your opponent just needs to focus fire on him and he blows up hard. It's not hard to do in Epic with a good fighter screen and/or Epic ship weapons. If you have some way to control your enemy with Ion Torpedoes and/or Assault Missiles, it gets even easier for your fighter screen to clear out the enemy ships.

When you do play Epic, you have to think strategically. If you play conservatively, you might be able to get your opponent to rush his fighter screen out without the big ship for support. At that point, you can concentrate your fire on them while the big ship is too far away to help them. Once that happens, you can win the game pretty easy. Make sure your fighters and capital ship are near enough to each other to support them both.

OK...this is kind of rambling, but hopefully it helps.

heychadwick touches on a useful subject: the way other ships may benefit your ship.

Etahn, Roark, Howlrunner, Jonus, Kagi, Esege etc etc

Yes. Ships like Garven Dries, Chaser, Kir Kanos, and others are better in Epic games than Wedge or Soontir Fel. The combined fire power on a table can take out big shots quicker than you would think.

I will say, though, that too many named guys slows down game play. Are you playing in a tournament? Well, build the awesome combo. Are you playing to have fun? Build your list so that it's easier to play the game and leave the super awesome death dealing combos at home. Go mostly generic and not all the same PS. Don't fly 12 Academy Pilots and make that guy wait 20 minutes while you move them all.

Indeed. Different pilots come to the fore in big games. Etahn A'Baht is a BEAST in epic games, as is Youngster.

Captain Kagi is a right pain in the butt for an ordnance-loaded epic ship. Pack him with a Sensor Jammer and Flight Instructor and he can be a real pain to engage.

I would support Heychadwick's views - stick to (mostly) generic ships, but consider the (normally never used) 'better' generics - in a 100 point game, you generally take the bargain basement rookie/academy/novice or else play the greasy pole PS game. In epic, with 300 points of ships, you have enough firepower to do serious damage to a squad before it shoots, even without an alpha-strike based squad. Being PS3-4 rather than 1-2 means a big, big deal - think of it like the mechanics of facing Contracted Scouts on a larger scale.

I second support for 'splash damage' weapons - Ion Torpedoes, Assault Missiles, Bombs, Ruthlessness and Tractor Beams* - with a 300 point epic game, you have three times the number of ships in twice the board size - meaning an increase in 'density' of ships. With a 400 point epic doubles, even more so. It's rare to find yourself not getting to catch at least one other target, and common to catch multiples.

Equally, as noted, the increase in density of ships means fewer 'safe spots' - which means arc dodgers have a much harder life. Even Echo or Soontir Fel won't dodge all the arcs from an entire T-70 X-wing squadron flying in a loose formation, which is a perfectly valid epic squad.

As a result, whilst the game needn't necessarily devolve into a head-to-head joust, it's going to be largely blocks of fighters flying en mass. Break up into a furball, and you lose the advantage of an epic game - picking one ship and slamming 200 points worth of ships' fire into it. X-wings and Defenders have always been the kings of epic, because they're fast and well armed and tough. B-wings, whilst efficient, can't react - and the board is big enough for an X-wing squad to say "not today, thank you" and fly off and engage some other part of your squad.

That's one of the most important things, by the way. Remember that a ship deployed on one flank, if it pulls a hard turn, then maximum speed straights across the board, will take four turns or more to get into a position to engage opponents on the other flank. This isn't a knife fight in a box like a 100 point dogfight; split up your force too far to support one another and you WILL get punished for it. I've seen too many people put one epic ship on a flank and fighters on the other with words like "flanking" and one part of the force or the other NEVER gets into the action in time to do any good. Stick to one board, or (if in the centre) one board's-width of your deployment zone. Only go outside it if you run out of space or manoeuvring room. Remember you can deploy up to range 2 in - and so can your opponent. Turn 1 shots are very possible.

* Splash-next-turn-blocking, I guess

Corvettes are so beautiful. Sigh. I might just want another one for campaign home bases.

I feel the same way.

And Raiders too.

Magnus Grendel has some really good points.

There are also those odd pilots that aren't seen in normal games, but can do pretty well in Epic events. I'm thinking of Kir Kanos for one. Give him an Evade action and he gets to add on an extra damage result for R2-3. When you fire at epic ships, then 3 red dice +1 is great. They will either have 1 or 0 green dice (range modifier) and while you don't get an EPT and your action will be Evade (instead of Focus), ensuring you get at least one hit in is pretty good. You also have decent chances to do a lot more than that. It helps break through the Reinforce action that Epic ships have. There are also ways to boost his actions by having someone with Squad Leader or Fleet Officer or such pretty cheaply. When you have 300 pts, you can do these combos more.

Fel's Wrath is another one that might not be a bad option. PTL isn't as important for Interceptors as you won't be dodging arcs. Fel's Wrath has a good PS and will get to fire even if destroyed. With all the massed firepower, it's quite possible he would die early. It might even have people avoid him for a bit, and that's OK too! He's only 1 pt more than a Royal Guard, but he WILL get to shoot that last round.

Just save the uniques for a few as having too many special guys just bogs the game down.

There are also ways to boost his actions by having someone with Squad Leader or Fleet Officer or such pretty cheaply. When you have 300 pts, you can do these combos more.

Especially with epic. The Fleet Officer (rather appropriately) is very at home on a carrier - the fact that big ships ignore stress makes him much better value provided you don't need your action for something else.

Also....let us know how your game goes! I'd like to hear about it and hopefully we helped.

I just want to say how happy I am to see a sincere and well-reasoned discussion of Epic strategy. Especially as sometimes I feel like the format gets dismissed or discounted.

Grendel's right about the 'flanking' as I have definitely made that mistake. I spaced out an Imperial Ace Epic Squad to 'give them room' I thought and half weren't able to get into the fight before the other half were shredded by too many arcs on the board.

I'll second that Fleet Officer is rad as a way to double-coordinate if you have an open crew slot.

This doesn't address the OP's 'anti-fighter' question but certain upgrades that get ignored in Standard Play are immensely better in Epic. My favorite is Opportunist as normally it's rather expensive, but you can spam it on generics with EPTs (it's busted on Keyan Farlander) as Huge ships can't focus or evade or it can be paired with a 'control' type squad like a Gozanti with Suppressor and Tarkin or a Transport with Toryn Farr.

Sensor Jammer is also nasty against Huge ships as their options for dealing with eyeball results are pretty limited and the jammed eyeball can't be rerolled per Jammer's text.

Well, for epic ships kitted out with Gunnery Team and/or Ordnance Experts , Sensor Team , and Weapons Engineer ; then Proton Torpedoes.

Proton Torps allow you to turn a focus into a crit (also an ability the single turbolaser has which makes it good).

This is useful on big ships because while they usually have ways to deal with blanks rolled, they can't under normal circumstances have ways to deal with focuses like all other ships in the game do.

Torps and Missiles don't cost energy, and some don't even cost target locks, but also lock out your modification slot from some other great options.

Proton Torpedoes hit hard, and I would argue are better on Epic ships than concussion missiles.

Now some wingmen/escorts for epic ships.

Imperials:

I would never not take Jonus . If I wanted to, build him into a TIE shuttle with Targeting coordinator so the epic ship can use its aft action for coordinate or something on a card like Fleet Officer.

And if Jonus is already going to be taking green maneuvers, might as well throw on Mrk2 TIE engines and a stress inducing ability, like moving said fleet officer to the shuttle or ditching the engines for saboteur+experimental interface.

Also, Swarm Tactics . (or decoy I guess). PS6 firing raider can then kill a CR90 before it can return fire, and same when attacking basically all the generics in the game. Remove ships from the board before they can remove you. Its evil and brilliant. I died to it.

Captain Kagi, and fly him alongside the raider for obstruction protection, or screening the raiders rear with his own stop action and a powerful attack. Basically to act like a biggs of sorts for epic ships and force your opponent ordnance boats to chew through a ten hitpoint shuttle before they can start on the raider. In that mindset, also take sensor jammers and other upgrades to make those 10 hitpoints as miserable as possible so the raider survives to the midgame intact and with little damage. Not as good/effective as a Jonus though. Jendon is also nice, but if you already have Jonus with officers in his shuttle, its sort of overkill.

Now, Rexler with Decoy means your Raider is firing at PS8 and you get to attack after it at PS4 (possibly with your target lock from targeting coordinator or the coordinate action) to flip all the damage cards they dealt face up. Yup. Moff Jerjerrod ain't gonna save them from that.

Lieutenant Colzet should also be on the field and be receiving free target locks from support abilities to do his sapper thing and be flipping damage on whoever needs it. Just a good thing to have until you forget about his ability and to use him for an entire game... hurr... On that note, Fel's Wrath is a good and funny jouster some people have included in lists. Just don't get him run over. Omega Leader is a good counter to a lot of epic ship builds. I guess the same is useful for dark curse .

Now, Howlrunner does effect both your primary weapon attacks, but honestly you should use jonus, and also not have more than one ship slaved to supporting your epic ship.

Fat Carnor Jax at range one inside of a furball however, is great if you are using single turbolasers. You can easily pick off the pilots that are unlucky enough to be caught inside of his bubble of death. Use him like a ordnance spotter, and call in your close fire support. I really wish the rebels had someone like him for my gunboat CR90. And he can hold his own in a fight, unlike a lot of the support ships like the shuttles or howl.

For Rebels.

Etahn. Maybe even throw in a splash of Dodonna on a EM transport screening your CR90 with dash onboard. Sure I will take 3 defense dice on my corvette, let me just dust off my flight instructor first.

Roark Garnet . Hell. Yes. Can also take a turret, so you can fly in formation to the CR90 and not worry about losing your ability to attack.

Dutch. Frees up actions on your CR90. Can also take a turret.

A better pilot is Esege Tuketu with recon specs. Allows you to save a lot on upgrades to your CR90 because now it has 2 focus tokens to use when it is attacking at pilot skill 12. Give her Twin Laser Turret so she still has the reach to deal damage, or ion turret so making a run on the corvette becomes potentially suicidal. Especially if you have Dutch and Roark flying alongside you, with ion turrets. Zap the lead ships of a approaching wave, then run them over with your epic ships.

Eaden Vrill is at home being a cheap and powerful escort to a jammerboat GR75, in case people haven't figured that one out yet.

I would not take an attack shuttle or a VCX into an epic game yet, the first has too few hitpoints/evasion for its cost, the latter will die to just about everything because of 0 evasion. Stressed Ezra being the exception.

Did I miss anything?

It depends on what you are fighting, what is your escort and how well you place your asteroids. If your escort and asteroid placement is well configured then your opponent may not be so eager to deploy straight in front of you for an alpha strike. If that is the case then the range 5 of a single turbo laser does wonders against anything with 0 or 1 agility and does ok against something with 2 agility.

You may think that a single turbo laser is horrible against anything with 3 agility, but keep in mind that if you strip the enemy's focuses (and you have a lot of ships that can do the job), then landing 3 to 4 hits on a target can still matter, even if it has 6 dice to defend itself (bearing in mind how fickle green dice are).

You missed Scum. Oh wait...

I was in another thread that was talking about the new TIE/SF FO and Youngster...and I realized I'd never thought of him for Epic. Use him with Expose and a formation of generic Tie Fighters and you will be doing well. The low price of a Tie Fighter means you can probably get more than the incoming enemy ships. 3 Attack dice with a Focus will do really well to help shred the enemy up! Yes, you will lose Tie Fighters since you reduce your Agility, but you should do enough damage before you get chewed up, especially if you take high PS generics. I know Tie Fighters have a hard time getting through the Reinforce token, but an extra die will help out with that. You can even have Youngster hang back and keep out of range of the enemy ships. He can give his EPT to those at R3, so he can stay far enough away that he can't be picked out by all enemy ships.

You will be able to rip apart some Y-wings and really put the hurt on X-wings. You can even punch through on agile A-wings with 3 red dice. B-wings can also get burnt down with concentrated fire.

Awesome discussion! The only thing better would be more Epic battle reports over in the Battle Reports section. IHaveBadLuck and I have played a few games of Epic on Vassal, so I'll see if I can break those down into pictures of key events during our matches and report on my thoughts. Lots of work in the next little bit, so I may not get those up for a week or so.

I am so excited to be in the Epic tournament Saturday at GenCon. It's gonna be great! Anybody else going? I'm glad that most of the suggestions are in line with my current thinking on Epic play, but I am sure there is going to be some crazy off-the-wall squad that will destroy mine.

Han Solo crew is the best way I know of to have a pseudo focus token (barring support ship shenanigans, of course), especially with Homing Missiles.

I was in another thread that was talking about the new TIE/SF FO and Youngster...and I realized I'd never thought of him for Epic. Use him with Expose and a formation of generic Tie Fighters and you will be doing well. The low price of a Tie Fighter means you can probably get more than the incoming enemy ships. 3 Attack dice with a Focus will do really well to help shred the enemy up! Yes, you will lose Tie Fighters since you reduce your Agility, but you should do enough damage before you get chewed up, especially if you take high PS generics. I know Tie Fighters have a hard time getting through the Reinforce token, but an extra die will help out with that. You can even have Youngster hang back and keep out of range of the enemy ships. He can give his EPT to those at R3, so he can stay far enough away that he can't be picked out by all enemy ships.

Expose still remains worse than a focus token unless you have another form of dice modification .

But in epic, those TIE/fo fighters could also be flying wing with Howlrunner. Combine both pilots, and suddenly they're scary as hell.

Alternatively, Youngster/Rage and Epsilon Leader for stress management.

Also, Crack Shot - I know everyone loves this card anyway, but given how it interacts with added evades, it's also capable of knocking Reinforce tokens out of the way. There's a real argument for a TIE interceptor swarm with Crack Shot and Howlrunner.

A decoy/swarm tactics ace passing high PS to a capital ship is a nasty, nasty trick. I'll have to remember that one!

I was in another thread that was talking about the new TIE/SF FO and Youngster...and I realized I'd never thought of him for Epic. Use him with Expose and a formation of generic Tie Fighters and you will be doing well. The low price of a Tie Fighter means you can probably get more than the incoming enemy ships. 3 Attack dice with a Focus will do really well to help shred the enemy up! Yes, you will lose Tie Fighters since you reduce your Agility, but you should do enough damage before you get chewed up, especially if you take high PS generics. I know Tie Fighters have a hard time getting through the Reinforce token, but an extra die will help out with that. You can even have Youngster hang back and keep out of range of the enemy ships. He can give his EPT to those at R3, so he can stay far enough away that he can't be picked out by all enemy ships.

Expose still remains worse than a focus token unless you have another form of dice modification .

But in epic, those TIE/fo fighters could also be flying wing with Howlrunner. Combine both pilots, and suddenly they're scary as hell.

Alternatively, Youngster/Rage and Epsilon Leader for stress management.

Also, Crack Shot - I know everyone loves this card anyway, but given how it interacts with added evades, it's also capable of knocking Reinforce tokens out of the way. There's a real argument for a TIE interceptor swarm with Crack Shot and Howlrunner.

A decoy/swarm tactics ace passing high PS to a capital ship is a nasty, nasty trick. I'll have to remember that one!

I wish there were a way to temporarily increase the pilot skill of the Huge ships during the activation phase, but the only way I can think of is Carlist Rieekan for the Rebels.

Expose still remains worse than a focus token unless you have another form of dice modification .

I wonder, though, if it's not better with more ships? You will get a greater variance of numbers with 3 dice that aren't modified. Maybe you get more hits through overall? Well...it would be chancy.

... a Huge ship can use Coordinate to allow....

You know, I think the Coordinate action should give a lot of ally ships a free action. Otherwise, it's just not worth it so much. One ship isn't so important that it gets an action over the epic ship. Maybe if a number of ships got it, it would be worth it. Am I wrong?