So we all know what's good and what's not in standard 100 point play but how do people find ships fare in larger games.

At 300 points those arc dodgers start to struggle, the slow B wings really start putting down a lot of hull points

What's peoples take on who the real winners and losers are in larger games?

The metagame orthodoxy only really knows what to make of 100 points, so anything you get about over that'll probably be pretty anecdotal.

In my experience the strength of ships doesn't really vary that much: you might think a TIE interceptor will have a hard time but you have more of them.

The only real loser in an upscaled game is any list that relies on a single ship because early on ships drop like flies.

Ghost swarm is funny, 40 points each (Rebel + ABT + AC) or you have TLT on them, the whole bunch of bobbly squares floats towards you.

Basically, the larger the game the better generics get, because weight of fire becomes much more important.

Having said that, however, in the massive Chaos Over Endor event at UK nationals the only ships to make it to the end were things which get focus/evade every round - but that was a part-free-for-all format with only 30 poitns per player which makes for weird list building and weird flying.

Actually played quite a lot of Epic games - some general rules and the logic behind them:

1. Mid- and high-level generics are good. Because you're firing with 300 points of stuff, you're actually removing ships, not just shield tokens. Shooting last with the bulk of your squad means arguably never shooting at all.
2. Arc dodgers are bad. Even in a 'standard' epic game, you've got three-to-four times as much stuff on twice the board area; hence the 'density' of fire arcs goes up dramatically so there are fewer gaps to hide in. Equally, defences which rely on having enough tokens to soak 100 points of fire per turn (soontir, say, with focus/focus/evade/palpatine) rather than 'every time you attack' abilities (like autothrusters or lone wolf) find themselves catastrophically short with an extra 50-100 points shooting at them.
3. Shield regenerators the same. Anything which gets boresighted by 200-300 points of guns ain't gonna see the next end phase.
4. Alpha strikers are one build which does work fairly well, provided they've got the pilot skill to make it work - remember your opponent is likely to have enough PS9+ships to kill a 'lynchpin' like Blount before it can do whatever it normally does. Targeting management is also a problem - Deadeye is your friend.
5. 'Friendly ships within X radius' abilities are awesome. Howlrunner is one of the most popular imperial pilots in normal play. In epic, she's a reroll-spitting nightmare. Similarly, Corran Horn suffers from not being Etahn A'Baht, not the other way around.
6. Unlimited range abilities are awesome for the same reason. Captain Kagi can annoy an entire battlefield of epic ships and long range scanners, and has space to run away in.
7. Slow ships can suffer. In a normal game, the difference in maximum speed between a T-70 X-wing and a B-wing is pretty negligible. In an epic game, on a double-sized board, boosting X-wings are fast enough to 'flank' and to 'redeploy' a meaningful distance if they get a couple of turns without being shot at. If a B-wing gets stuck in the wrong place, it's pretty much out of the fight.
8. Medium Agility matters (I mean, so does high agility, but the jump from medium to high matters more) - in an epic game, turbolasers means you can be under fire a turn early by a nasty heavy laser cannon analogue. Doubling your agility means that the difference between agility 1 (say B-wings) and agility 2 (say X-wings) is much more noticeable.

I don't get to play epic much and when I do we go for balanced lists for games that aren't swingy (because thats really stupid when you sit down for half a day), so here are just a bunch of theoretical ideas:

The stupid PS4 generics start to make sense here, since the power of focus fire is magnified even more.

Generic spam is viable with two general ideas: Either you tech to fight huge ships and spam ships with two+ agility that don't sweat too much when it comes to the big guns or you tech to fight those ships and spam hitpoints with B-Wings, Ghosts, Decimators, Shuttles and all that.

Huge ships look a lot better with the new mods. They actually are able to warp the game now by being able to removelow agility ships without being at danger themselves and can keep themselves alive longer.

Arcdodging ships with good damage mitigation fit on Gonzanti cruisers where they are protected until lategame, but that is a bit gimmicky. With a lot more points around you can afford to combine these elements freely and there probably can't be a consensus on what works best. I really wish FFG would release an epic tournament kit to promote the format. Acrylic huge manouver tools for top 4, alt art huge ship mod as door price, throw in an alt art pilot card for one of the single card huges (probably GR-75 for less overlay with getting one of the mods?) and we are in for a good time. Of course to be classified as casual thing, so TOs can leave it if they want standard epic, team epic or a custom format (maybe 150-200 points aren't a bad idea for quicker games, or 150 + 150 team games).

Then maybe, just maybe, if this is successfull, they could start making an epic rotation on a smaller scale, simialar to store - regional - national - worlds we have for standard. Thats dreaming of course, maybe more realistic are continued similar sets. Maybe combined large cards for both fore and aft sections of the Raider and Corvette, alt art for the Gonzanti, some epic upgrades, maybe even standard ones. And then we shall have it, our peace tiny bit of sorrowly lacking acknowledgement for more competetive epic games.

I play with two other guys most weeks (each one of us has specialised in one faction - rebels/scum/imperial). We play 3 player games, and so far we have found the best format with regards to points is 130pts for the single player vs 140pts for the pair on the other side. The pair get an extra 10pts for their build because we have a house rule that they can't show each other their dials, with all discussions on tactics to be open and heard by all players.

The point structure allows for the pair to have a large variation in build options (when we tried to stick to the standard 100pt mark with the pair having nearer to 50pts each they were very limited). It also makes for some interesting single player builds.

As we have all specialised in individual factions we can only use upgrade cards from those faction ships, which has also led to interesting builds and at the same time it has stopped us from going down the meta route - which I think is a good thing (e.g. Imperial don't have autothrusters or engine upgrade, but I still field Soontir and Vader, and they pull their weight. Scum don't have guidance chips so we don't have U-boats everywhere etc...)

It sure is fun being able to get all four Brobots out on the table together. Still yet to find a combo to round out the 300 points that I'm totally satisfied with though.

3 brobots plus Moralo with Engine Upgrade and HLC (plus IGD, Bossk, 4LOM). Yeah.

It sure is fun being able to get all four Brobots out on the table together. Still yet to find a combo to round out the 300 points that I'm totally satisfied with though.

Actually played quite a lot of Epic games - some general rules and the logic behind them:

1. Mid- and high-level generics are good. Because you're firing with 300 points of stuff, you're actually removing ships, not just shield tokens. Shooting last with the bulk of your squad means arguably never shooting at all.
2. Arc dodgers are bad. Even in a 'standard' epic game, you've got three-to-four times as much stuff on twice the board area; hence the 'density' of fire arcs goes up dramatically so there are fewer gaps to hide in. Equally, defences which rely on having enough tokens to soak 100 points of fire per turn (soontir, say, with focus/focus/evade/palpatine) rather than 'every time you attack' abilities (like autothrusters or lone wolf) find themselves catastrophically short with an extra 50-100 points shooting at them.
3. Shield regenerators the same. Anything which gets boresighted by 200-300 points of guns ain't gonna see the next end phase.
4. Alpha strikers are one build which does work fairly well, provided they've got the pilot skill to make it work - remember your opponent is likely to have enough PS9+ships to kill a 'lynchpin' like Blount before it can do whatever it normally does. Targeting management is also a problem - Deadeye is your friend.
5. 'Friendly ships within X radius' abilities are awesome. Howlrunner is one of the most popular imperial pilots in normal play. In epic, she's a reroll-spitting nightmare. Similarly, Corran Horn suffers from not being Etahn A'Baht, not the other way around.
6. Unlimited range abilities are awesome for the same reason. Captain Kagi can annoy an entire battlefield of epic ships and long range scanners, and has space to run away in.
7. Slow ships can suffer. In a normal game, the difference in maximum speed between a T-70 X-wing and a B-wing is pretty negligible. In an epic game, on a double-sized board, boosting X-wings are fast enough to 'flank' and to 'redeploy' a meaningful distance if they get a couple of turns without being shot at. If a B-wing gets stuck in the wrong place, it's pretty much out of the fight.
8. Medium Agility matters (I mean, so does high agility, but the jump from medium to high matters more) - in an epic game, turbolasers means you can be under fire a turn early by a nasty heavy laser cannon analogue. Doubling your agility means that the difference between agility 1 (say B-wings) and agility 2 (say X-wings) is much more noticeable.

Totally agree with all of this plus:

9. Missile are torpedoes have their day. You have the points to add a support ship (TL passing Lambda, huge ship to Coordinate) that lets ordnance platforms get a TL and a Focus when needed to make bangers and boomers shine.

10. Huge ships (with the new rules and upgrades) are devastating. Their main guns pound large ships from afar, while the Quads can eat squadrons at close range. And the ability to crush any ship in its path makes it something you don't want to be in front of. With Automated Protocols, they get 3 actions per turn.

For the Imps, the Defender x7 is murderous in moderate numbers. But even the little ships can shine. I once made the mistake of ignoring a 6 ship squadron of Scyks. . .and they ate one of my large ships for lunch.

Massed ions can be beasty in epic sometimes, for two reasons:

1. Denying energy to the huge ships (in my admittedly limited experience, huge ships live or die by energy management.)

2. Ioning enemies near the front of the huge ship, then running them over next turn is fun.

It sure is fun being able to get all four Brobots out on the table together. Still yet to find a combo to round out the 300 points that I'm totally satisfied with though.

4 Brobots should take up about 200 points (depending on your loadout) so just add your favourite 100 point list on top of that. Dengaroo or U-boats seem like possibilities.

Despite what that squad builder thinks, you can't have 2 modifications on the Raider.

Scum don't have guidance chips so we don't have U-boats everywhere etc...)

You get 2 copies of chips with the punishing one. You mean deadeye?

Despite what that squad builder thinks, you can't have 2 modifications on the Raider.

Scum don't have guidance chips so we don't have U-boats everywhere etc...)

You get 2 copies of chips with the punishing one. You mean deadeye?

yes, I meant deadeye - good spot

So we all know what's good and what's not in standard 100 point play but how do people find ships fare in larger games.

At 300 points those arc dodgers start to struggle, the slow B wings really start putting down a lot of hull points

What's peoples take on who the real winners and losers are in larger games?

One time I made the mistake of telling my opponent that I had 8 TLT cards.

So I had to face 8 TLT ships. It was absolutely devastating and not fun.

At least it wasnt 12.

I wonder how a 300 point list comprised entirely of Mindlink ships would do.

That seems pretty **** effective.

Well it also depends on what other limitations. Not all standard lists are 100 points. Also are you talking 300 point epic game or just 150 points with no ships?

You might want to try escalation matches and when you get to the 120= point matches find your real winners and losers. Also what other limitations like how many number of the same ship you can have. In 100 point standard there is no problem because you can't go over 8 without breaking the squadron point limit. The only other restriction is if all the ship's pilots are unique like the attack shuttle.

So all in all we need a little more information on what type of match you are playing other than more than 100 points.

Thanks for all the comments. Not specific points but wanted to generate discussion around what ships see more play in larger point games that don't in 100. But 300 seems a good number to use

This thread makes me happy. Seeing ANY discussion that isn't centered on the 100/6 format and it's meta game makes me happy