Saturday, August 6 ^th was the X-wing Epic Dogfight tournament at GenCon Indy, and it was so much fun! There were 12 of us total, and we saw some good variety in squads. Now, before I get started with my battle report, I have to gripe about one thing – the length of the “tournament.” We were supposed to have three, 3-hour rounds, but they started too late, and we had to stop after round 2, which was a huge disappointment. Nevertheless, I’m grateful to have been able to play two back-to-back games of Epic X-wing. On to the battle report!

First off, my squad:

Gozanti-class cruiser

- Suppressor (6)

- Grand Moff Tarkin (6)

- Targeting Coordinator (4)

- Engineering Team (4)

- Comms Booster (4)

- Docking Clamps (0)

- Automated Protocols (5)

4x Alpha Sq. Pilots (18x4=72) (They are docked with the cruiser)

Maarek Stele (27) (Yeah, the TIE advanced version)

- TIE x/1 (0)

- Adv. Targeting Computer (1)

- Opportunist (4)

Zertik Strom (26)

- TIE x/1 (0)

- Adv. Targeting Computer (1)

- Opportunist (4)

Commander Alozen (25)

- TIE x/1 (0)

- Adv. Targeting Computer (1)

- Opportunist (4)

“Howlrunner” (18)

- Push the Limit (3)

- Stealth Device (3)

Colonel Jendon (26)

- ST-321 (3)

- Emperor Palpatine (8)

- Sensor Jammer (4)

TOTAL 299

Here is a link to another post where I described how this is supposed to work. I don’t want to write it all out again, so if you care enough to read it, feel free. If not, you’ll probably get the gist of it in the report. One cool thing is that they passed out the expanded art Targeting Coordinator cards before round 1, and I was able to put it right in my squad! (Expanded art upgrade cards don’t look as cool as expanded art ship cards)

Match 1

My opponent was Joel. Now, the hard thing about Epic is that when you do a battle report, it’s REALLY hard to remember all 300 points of your opponents’ squads. Nevertheless, I shall give it my best.

2x Prototype Pilots (Chardaan Refit, Autothrusters)

2x Green Sq. Pilots (Push the Limit, Proton Rockets)

Jake Farrell (Push the Limit, Proton Rockets, Shield Upgrade)

Blue Sq. Pilot (Plasma torpedoes)

Blue Sq. Pilot (Proton Torpedoes)

Ten Numb (Veteran Instincts, Mangler Cannon)

Biggs Darklighter (R2-F2)

Han Solo (Predator, C-3PO, Lando Calrissian, Millennium Falcon , Experimental Interface)

That leaves 7 points unaccounted for, but gives you a good idea of his squad. This kind of think was what I was most afraid of: a whole bunch of ships without a huge ship of his own. Time to see how my brilliant strategy works in this kind of setting.

Set up

Seeing where my Gozanti was placed right in the middle, he decided to spread his forces a bit, which didn’t concern me too much, until Han Solo was placed in the top left corner. Knowing that our Target Locks would go a long way towards stopping him, I decided that would be my first target.

Round 1

We all moved forward at moderate speed, while his A-wings came sweeping around the side. ST-321 locks onto Han, and passes the TL to Zertik Strom.

Round 2

I turned my forces to face Han, but misjudged distance a bit, and didn't clear Alozen with the shuttle's bank 1. Woops. His A-wings continue their pursuit of my cruiser, and his B-wings leap into range. One of my biggest mistakes was not setting the Gozanti up closer to the rest of my forces. As it is, he is out of range of Targeting Coordinator and Coordinate action, which is part of the reason I decided not to attack the B-wings with my main force. 2 inches would have made all the difference. But I decided to opportunistically deploy my TIE interceptors to start munching through Biggs. The Suppressor uses Targeting Coordinator to lock onto the leading Blue Sq. Pilot to take away it’s TL so it can’t launch torps at Zertik, and then passes that token to the interceptor. “Howlrunner” benefits from Comms Booster, and I believe I saved my energy by only taking one action to Reinforce the aft section.

Ten Numb opens fire on Zertik, taking one shield from the auto-hit crit. Now I’m beginning to have misgivings about chasing Han. Han doesn’t do any damage, and it’s our turn to fire. Between Lando and his Evade action, Han has THREE evade tokens! Because of the new ruling that you can only spend one evade per attack, we manage to take two of his shields. With all of those tokens, we can’t activate Opportunist, and the Suppressor is too far away to assist. Now I’m really regretting this assault on the freighter. Fortunately, the Gozanti’s reinforce keeps it safe from the A-wings, and my TIE interceptor does three damage to Biggs when R2-F2 whiffs on the defense roll.

Round 3

I launch another TIE interceptor with a 5 K-turn that lands snugly beside Ten Numb. Ten Numb is in range of “Howlrunner” this time, and lands a crit right past focus, evade, and Stealth Device. Later one of the Blue Sq. Pilots finishes the job. Lando didn’t roll quite as well for Han, and we take out some more shields. He still doesn’t do damage to us (yay Palp!). I think Jake had no shot, or I’d have taken his focus away to prevent Proton Rockets. My TIE interceptors finish off Biggs. This is now the 2 ^nd round of bumping with the shuttle, meaning Jendon has been able to provide precisely one target lock the entire game. I was pining for Advanced Sensors instead of Sensor Jammer at this point.

(This is actually a picture of the start of the activation phase of round 4 because we forgot to take pictures after activation in round 3 and it's blurry. Sorry.)

Round 4

No picture! Refer to the previous picture. I thought for sure Han was going to bank 3, but I wasn’t positive. So I K-turned with Maarek so that I would be in better position to pursue. Unfortunately, Han did a bank 1, and hit Maarek, which meant Zertik didn’t have the scoundrel in arc – two lost shots this round! The silver lining was that Han was range 1 of Zertik, who prevented the bonus attack die. Han without Gunner and without Engine Upgrade is really not that scary. I should have aimed at the B-wings. Oh well. Jake did a 2 left turn and boost to try to help out the B-wings, but I launched my 4 ^th TIE interceptor right on his tail, took his focus away with Tarkin, and burned him down. One of the Green Sq. Pilots had a focus ready to launch Proton Rockets, so I used Targeting Coordinator to lock on and remove the token, then passed the TL to an interceptor. A B-wing launched torpedoes at Maarek and took away the shields.

Round 5

Once again I forgot to take the picture until after combat. Maarek was finally able to put an end to Ten Numb with the help of Opportunist. I think all three of my TIE advanced got to use Opportunist, and we took out a Blue Sq. Pilot, too. But Zertik is limping along with one hull point, and two crits. The shuttle went A-wing hunting, but didn’t have arc. The Prototype Pilot that joined Jake to rescue the B-wings is also destroyed. I think this match is swinging in my favor.

Round 6

The Green Sq. Pilots try to line up Proton Rockets on my cruiser, but we take the focus token away again (the first one overlapped the cruiser). I manage to block Han with an interceptor, making him easy pickings for the rest of my force. Unfortunately, a clutch C-3PO guess saves him two damage, and he’s not yet at half health. We do destroy the last B-wing that bravely K-turned. The shuttle got a great shot at one of the A-wings, but it survived. And then time was called before we had set any dials for the next round.

It was a good match, even though my strategy was flawed. Like I said, the Gozanti should have been closer to my main force, and I shouldn’t have gone after Han Solo in the beginning. I know he managed to get Proton Rockets off on my cruiser at one point, because it did serious damage and he got half points on that thing. I just can’t remember exactly which round that was. Also, they started time in the round 15 minutes before anybody was set up, and I would have liked to see how much more damage I could have done in one more round. But a win is a win. On to the second, and final, match!

Match 2

I went up against LagJanson, which was great because we’d been talking a lot about this tournament, and it was good to finally meet him. His squad:

GR-75 (Bright Hope, Toryn Farr, Engine Booster, Automated Protocols)

3x Prototype Pilot (Chardaan Refit)

2x Red Sq. Veteran

3x Red Sq. Pilot

Red Sq. Pilot (Proton Torpedoes, Guidance Chips)

2x Gray Sq. Pilot (Proton Torpedoes, Guidance Chips)

Again, I’m a few points shy of 300 here, but this was the gist of it.

Setup

So, it’s going to be a joust, is it? That picture is blurry, so here’s a close up of my squad.

So pretty.

Round 1

He moves his forces, bringing his A-wings around behind, which was a brilliant move. My forces end up going 2 straight, inching forward.

Round 2

No pic! Again. His forces on the left barrel ahead at speed 4 blocking the shuttle, Alozen, and "Howlrunner". The ships on the right take a more moderate speed 3, allowing his ordnance carriers target the Gozanti, which lands just shy of range 1, taking a face-full of torps. Good thing we were able to remove one of the locks with the Suppressor title. And we removed a focus token from an X-wing with Tarkin so we could use Opportunist (or maybe we gave "Howlrunner" a focus token, I can't remember). He decides to ignore my TIEs in favor of shooting the Suppressor and ST-321 , which was favorable for me. Sensor Jammer was a life saver, and kept that shuttle alive. Oh, I also launched some TIE interceptors to jump past his main force and plink away at annihilate one of the A-wings.

Round 3

(Again, it’s an end-of-round picture)

I really thought he was going to shoot the gap between my TIEs and the Gozanti with some of his ships, so I banked my Gozanti towards his transport, hoping the fishtail would catch him. No good. He took his entire force and cut across the axis to try and draw our fire. Bump city! Fortunately, between Coordinate, Tarkin, and Comms Booster we had the upper hand. It took all his ships firing this round to finally take down the shuttle. I launched my other two TIE interceptors out the back, resulting in a nice pincer to sandwich his forces between the coolest ships in the game . He is losing ships faster than we are, but the Huge ship sumo match has started, and the clock is ticking on the life of my support cruiser. The two torpedoes early on mean that his Bright Hope going to win the game of attrition.

Round 4

More bumps! Fortunately, “Howlrunner” is at range to receive the Coordinate action, and Pushes off of the focus action to evade as well. My opponent has sustained serious damage from the rerolls she grants, and tries his luck attacking her. I probably would have chosen different targets, but it’s a tough call. Sure, you could take out the TIE advanced first, but then she’d move into position to support the Alpha Sq. Pilots. The short story is she took no damage from all his shots.

Round 5

We try desperately to maneuver for actions, but it’s crazy. Still, we mostly succeed. My big failure, however, is that I calculated that I had enough health left (3) that I could try to bank left and survive an asteroid hit if it meant the Bright Hope zoomed past. It didn’t work. Not only did I hit the asteroid, but I was still in contact with his ship, taking two damage. Bright Hope rammed the Suppressor for its last damage, meaning no Grand Moff Tarkin this round (or any more). In hindsight, if I was still touching the GR-75, I shouldn’t have been able to move at all, and should not have hit that rock. Oh well. The cruiser did its job well. Not only did it support my fighters extremely well, it also did something I could only cross my fingers and hope for: keeping Toryn Farr far away from my fighters.

So how did things look after combat?

It was brutal. We lost Commander Alozen, but we took out a T-70 and his last two T-65s.

Round 6

No pic. We all pursued the T-70 and the Y-wing and took them out.

Round 7

Most of my squad goes up and around to try to get behind the transport, while Zertik turns 3 and barrel rolls to get a shot at the A-wing. No damage is done this round (or so I thought; for some reason the A-wing isn't in the next pic, so I guess Zertik destroyed it?)

Round 8

We have just enough firepower with my 4 ships to take down the shields and deal the last two damage to take down the behemoth. Match win!

We all waited for our final standings, lamenting the fact that we didn’t have another round. But we didn’t start until 12:30 PM, and it was almost 8:00 PM, so we were ready to be done.

I didn’t have the presence of mind to gather all the squad info, or all the standings. A local guy named Sean (Shawn?) came in 1 ^st , I came in 2 ^nd , and Rilesman came in 3 ^rd . Top three got the awesome acrylic huge ship maneuver template, we all got alt art Targeting Coordinator x2 and Predator, a few of us got alt art Corran Horn, and 1 ^st place got a challenge coin. I was wondering how they’d divvy up the energy tokens, but they scrounged up enough for all 12 of us to get five of them. Well done FFG OP!

It was great fun to see my squad work the way I envisioned, and I am chomping at the bit to get more X-wing Epic play in. There are so many cool cards and combos, I have just barely scratched the surface.

Great work, Epic and Cinematic play is the real heart and soul of X Wing IMO!

Congratulations. The Energy Tokens are pretty nifty...!

Congrats!

A couple of questions:

The prizes. First promo stuff for epic game?

Top 4. Someone can tell what list were played? (I n addition to the posted )

Beautiful, great report. Well done!

Congrats!

A couple of questions:

The prizes. First promo stuff for epic game?

Top 4. Someone can tell what list were played? (I n addition to the posted )

EDIT: These are the first prizes for Epic, but the second tournament in which they were handed out. The first Epic tournament was at Origins this year.

Congrats!

A couple of questions:

The prizes. First promo stuff for epic game?

Top 4. Someone can tell what list were played? (I n addition to the posted )

I wish I could. I can tell you that first place had a beautiful, light-up Raider in his squad. I'm pretty sure Rilesman, in 3rd, had a CR90. No idea about 4th place. And standings aren't very indicative because it just comes down to who destroyed the most while losing the least in two games. Still, I'd love a list of all the squads.

EDIT: These are the first prizes for Epic, but the second tournament in which they were handed out. The first Epic tournament was at Origins this year.

This is correct. The Epic and Team Epic event at Origins had the same prize support. I really hope they continue this, it may help grow epic a bit from the competitive stand point.

It was a great time. I blew it in our match, I certainly was not making decisions on the same level as you were. Beautiful job supporting your fighters with Gozanti.

I wonder if anyone was flying Scum ...

Yes. I flew against a four brobot list with three z95 dead men and a Hawk.

I won that one, but he proceeded to win his second match by a significant manner so MOV I believe gave him top 6. I'd have to double check to be sure on placing.

There were others too.

It was a great time. I blew it in our match, I certainly was not making decisions on the same level as you were. Beautiful job supporting your fighters with Gozanti.

Thanks. And thanks for keeping me honest about Opportunist. There were several times when I tried to activate it even though the target had a focus token. I just got so used to the Suppressor taking those tokens away!

I have to go back and read the battle report. Just made me feel insignificant because I don't remember anything. Broke Rule #2 Get lot's of sleep

But here is the list. I also go for smash mouth set in the middle most likely and run over ion'ed ships. Roark to get that B-Wing to shoot first or Lt. Blount tracer round out so whatever B-Wing is still alive can put in some damage and set up some Huge ship road kill.

Didn't go that way...but that is the plan.

R90 Corvette (Fore) — CR90 Corvette (Fore) 50

Weapons Engineer 3

Quad Laser Cannons 6

Homing Missiles 5

Sensor Team 4

Ship Total: 68

CR90 Corvette (Aft) — CR90 Corvette (Aft) 40

Toryn Farr 6

Homing Missiles 5

Ordnance Experts 5

Engine Booster 3

Ordnance Tubes 5

Ship Total: 64

Roark Garnet — HWK-290 19

Twin Laser Turret 6

Hull Upgrade 3

Moldy Crow 3

Ship Total: 31

Lieutenant Blount — Z-95 Headhunter 17

Veteran Instincts 1

XX-23 S-Thread Tracers 1

Ship Total: 19

Blue Squadron Pilot — B-Wing 22

Fire-Control System 2

Extra Munitions 2

Ion Torpedoes 5

Guidance Chips 0

Ship Total: 31

Blue Squadron Pilot — B-Wing 22

Fire-Control System 2

Extra Munitions 2

Ion Torpedoes 5

Guidance Chips 0

Ship Total: 31

Blue Squadron Pilot — B-Wing 22

Fire-Control System 2

Extra Munitions 2

Ion Torpedoes 5

Guidance Chips 0

Ship Total: 31

Gold Squadron Pilot — Y-Wing 18

Ion Torpedoes 5

Extra Munitions 2

Guidance Chips 0

Ship Total: 25

What I do remember:

First Battle did not have any Huge Ships.

Carnor did get in to stop Blount from firing his Tracer and for the B-s to use their focus. I fired EVERY SINGLE ship and secondary weapon at that guy and did not kill him.

Then he started dropping my B's.

He also got clogged up and I kept him clogged up but he started escaping.

He then made his big mistake. He brought his Palp Shuttle to far in. I ran over it, Vader, and Soontir Fell in one boosted Turn 2 move. Then fought my way to a victory.

Only the shuttle put damage on CR90 so I got my health back fairly quick. I was not recovering as I was using Toryn to pull some tokens off of Vader and Soontir Fell.

I should have lost but that one error changed the game. His Palpmobile could have just stayed and continued to put damage into my CR90 changing my decision cycle.

I myself showed poor sportsman attitude because I started to have the Target Lock Re-Roll the same exact dice again. I need to grow up and stop thinking about the final game of a regional (24 dice for 4 hits---while 20 TL re-rolls came up blank so 4 in 44). So while the homing missiles were not getting in hits, the B-Wings when they could fire started to pop some stealth devices so his ships became vulnerable.

I am officially apologizing for my attitude and grunts, groans, and my I hate this situation grin on those Homing Missile and B-Wing Target Locks.

Second Battle. I think his name was Joseph Alden-Sawtelle.

We both set up directly across from each other and at an angle. I had the initiative. I liked his build and how he played it but he also had to make some modifications to his plan with my build. He had Gamma Vets with Concussion and Homing missiles, an Ordnance Raider, and some other stuff I don't remember.

I did get a concentrated B-Wing ION shot with my remaining B-s on his front section that crippled his front. The crits then helped set up the situation to eke out a win. He tore through my B-s like nothing.

Then I surprised him with a move using Roark and ended up a chain bump session for all his ships. I used that opportunity to put in some damage from tokenless ships.

Our huge ships ended up bumping into each other and I called a TO to AVOID a situation that i had at the ETX Regional in Tacoma WA. In that regional, the front of my CR90 bumped on the cardboard part. If you have ever done that you will notice that the plastic base will slide underneath and then your opponents back base will keep bumping into your base...even though logic would say a straight would not do this bump. So I asked for a ruling before it happened and it happened. The ruling this time was that a Huge ship can go straight without bumping. So while physically bumping, logically it does not.

Someone my Homing Missiles started to land, the attacks on his aft section of his Raider which he didn't get on target a lot...as he chased down my Roark. Roak on the other hand kept pinging away a the bombers taking them down slowly one at a time.

Now this is where my opponent was a class act. He realized that while yes he can take actions and remove the crit preventing the recover shields (would have won him the game) he identified that his Raider still did not have that action after he did it twice. As I had stripped 3 shields after he recovered 3, he only had 3 hull left and removed his Raider from play. That won the game for me. I owe it all to him.

Thank you.

It is amazing that both games came down to my opponent making two mistakes and capitalizing. With all the points you would think more mistakes would be survivable, but not the case. I also can not stress considering Engine Booster for Huge Ships using ordnance. It really turned me around or got me places that otherwise would have left me not supporting.

After reading the battle report and taking on 7 ShadowCasters and 6 Fang Fighters....don't keep your ships to far out from the Gazanti. The support it provides is very critical.

Congrats!

A couple of questions:

The prizes. First promo stuff for epic game?

Top 4. Someone can tell what list were played? (I n addition to the posted )

Yup, I would like to know what was first.