So, I'll finally get to play Mission #2 this week. I'm not sure which side I will play as I'll let my opponent pick. It probably means I'll be Imperials, but you never know.

If I go with Rebels, I think Thane Kyrell might be a good one to go with. I'm not sure how best to load him up, but I think Tail Gunner would be good. Maybe a Torpedo? That way I can perhaps get a Focus and a TL with a Proton Torpedo on him.

If I go with Imperials, I almost think a Tie Adv. V1 would be good. The free Evade and TL would be nice. Maybe with a missile? Either that or Tie Advanced X1's would be good. The Adv. Targeting Computer would help get through Reinforcement. Crits always help.

I think as the Rebels you have to decide whether you're going to flee or hunker down and fight while the CR-90 charges up for a battle.

If you flee (my preferred choice), you need things to distract the Imperials: blockers, ion guns, bombs... anything to earn you a turn or two of extra time to get away.

If you fight... you're going to need to deliver heavy, fast damage to keep the incoming ships off the refueling container and the CR-90. Three Y-Wings with TLT? Lothal Rebel and some A-Wings? Not sure... that's why we ended up going with the flee option

In Mu0n's campaign group, two imperial players have already picked dual phantom squads for this mission, because the rebel player is restricted to generic pilots (which don't go over PS4). A PS5+ phantom is very hard to deal with in this circumstance, and can be even harder to deal with if they're packing sensor jammers, which are very bad news for CR90s, which can't take focus actions.

A good rule of thumb for any escort ship is to maximize your aggression and/or blocking. Right now I think the best bet is probably a trio of HWKs carrying TLT and RecSpec. They can punch through a lot of defense, including cloak and sensor jammer. They'll be effective against the forced imperial TIE forces and most other ships Imperials will be tempted to take.

I think that in T2A you can't take unique pilots as the rebel;

check out the campaign pdf

Curses! Wanted to use my ARC-170!

I will not be taking any Tie Phantoms, thank you very much!

I think that in T2A you can't take unique pilots as the rebel;

check out the campaign pdf

Curses! Wanted to use my ARC-170!

I will not be taking any Tie Phantoms, thank you very much!

But what about your opponent? Strategically, it's a really good call to take phantoms. Maybe even more so if you can get under your opponent's skin

I think someone should mail your opponent and tell him to be imperial and take phantoms lol

I think that in T2A you can't take unique pilots as the rebel;

check out the campaign pdf

Curses! Wanted to use my ARC-170!

I will not be taking any Tie Phantoms, thank you very much!

I know you hate Phantoms. But I dislike taken three HWK-290s just as much for theme sake. Really, my best defense is three cargo ships? No thanks,

I think that in T2A you can't take unique pilots as the rebel;

check out the campaign pdf

Curses! Wanted to use my ARC-170!

I will not be taking any Tie Phantoms, thank you very much!

I know you hate Phantoms. But I dislike taken three HWK-290s just as much for theme sake. Really, my best defense is three cargo ships? No thanks,

If we're talking a thematic battle we'd probably want to do some ship restrictions on both sides, though. At least something to stop the Imperials from a practical auto-win with PS5+ Phantoms, even if its just a gentleman's agreement.

But in terms of a full effort to win the scenario, 3 TLT-RecSpec hawks isn't a bad play in my book. And there are worse things to see on a table than hawks.

Well, the good news is that J-bot doesn't own a Tie Phantom. He can't borrow it from me. I'm not sure anyone would let him borrow it if they knew he was going to fly one against me. That whole "if you destroy it, you get to smash it with a hammer" card might work in my favor.

I actually had another thought for Imperial list ideas. What about a Tie Defender with /D title? Go with Ion Cannon. You get 2 shots at the CR-90 each round. The first will do 1 damage if it hits and will reduce the amount of Energy it gets next turn. The second will then do damage. Not a bad idea. Still, it's 33 pts for the cheapest PS 1. I could get a Tie Bomber with some nice Ordnance for that price. It would last a little longer, though.

Hey, would Tomax Bren and Crackshot basically remove the Reinforce token?

Rhymer might also be a good deal as you can fire all missiles at any range, so if that CR-90 goes crazy, you can fire at any range.

Gamma Vet with Deadeye is also a good idea. It's a bit hard to get that range on those epic ships when they move last.

EDIT:

So, if I play Imperials, here's what I'm probably taking:

I actually had another thought for Imperial list ideas. What about a Tie Defender with /D title? Go with Ion Cannon. You get 2 shots at the CR-90 each round. The first will do 1 damage if it hits and will reduce the amount of Energy it gets next turn. The second will then do damage. Not a bad idea. Still, it's 33 pts for the cheapest PS 1. I could get a Tie Bomber with some nice Ordnance for that price. It would last a little longer, though.

Hey, would Tomax Bren and Crackshot basically remove the Reinforce token?

Rhymer might also be a good deal as you can fire all missiles at any range, so if that CR-90 goes crazy, you can fire at any range.

Gamma Vet with Deadeye is also a good idea. It's a bit hard to get that range on those epic ships when they move last.

I think the Ion cannon isn't a good move for this mission; if you show up with that equipped I think the rebel player would probably detach immediately. The penalty for early detaching is that you gain less energy, and if the rebel sees ion cannons, they'll probably give up on getting any energy at all and make a break for the edge on turn 1 with the penalty active. It's probably better to try to push pure damage through, one way or another.

Tomax is good for pushing through the reinforce, yep. Not a bad buy, but he would be singled out for death I imagine. I wouldn't invest too heavily in the rest of his build.

Deadeye might be worth it since the bombers are kind of stuck with a head-on approach. Rhymer still feels expensive and again, might be singled out if he's actually dangerous.

Yeah, so I gave my example list. I think I'll go with that if I'm Imperials. I think the alpha strike is good. After that, the damage is a little rough, but I'm hoping there isn't much "after that" to deal with! My only problem is the Plasma Torps fire after the Barons and there might not be much shields left. Still....I needed a cheap ordnance and it fit the bill. I could always hold the Barons for a turn as they only get one shot. Part of it would depend on what the Rebel Fighter screen is.

Hmm....I should think about what I want to bring if I were the Rebels, too.

EDIT:

I got my game in last night. I played Imperials with the above list. We did have one SNAFU with the Rebel list. J-bot made his list on the fly and didn't use an app. His list was five Z-95's with Guidance Chips and Flechette Torpedoes. The problem is that Z-95's only have Missile slots! I didn't think about it too much and didn't notice. It didn't really impact things too much.

Things started off pretty good for me, with the exception of some bad green dice rolling. One wounded Tie Fighter had 4 green dice and a Focus to avoid 1 hit and 1 crit. I didn't avoid the crit and it was Direct Hit, killing him. There was some bumpage with all the Z-95's getting in the way, as he planned. They had Initiative, so it was too hard to get the TL's and fire the ordnance. I unloaded my missiles and shot at the front of the CR-90. I stripped the shields and gave it a crit that reduced it's energy. The Tie Fighters in the rear stripped the shields in the rear.

It was at this point that things took a crucial turn. With all his ships in the way, I knew I had to K-turn everyone to get past them and still keep firing at the CR-90. So, I did all that. Everything worked great, except Soontir Fel bumped. That's when the CR-90 pulled away from the fuel pod and announced he was going to open fire on the fuel pod. Well, Soontir went first and he fired R1 at a Z-95 and did 4 damage....but the Z evaded one. Curses! OK....2 red dice vs. 2 green dice. Then, the CR-90 used his Tibana Gas and fired the rear Quad Lasers. 3 more red dice vs 2 green dice. He needs to do 3 hull. I figure he won't get it. Well....he got it. BOOOOOOM!!!!!!!! We double check the rules. Imperial player rolls 4 red dice and all ships in R1 suffer it. Crap....Imperial player rolls? I pick up the dice.......3 hits and 1 Crit. I lost 2 Black Squadron fighters and a full health V1. The CR-90 was just outside of range. Dang! That turned it around fast! I did get simultaneous fire and took the rear section down to 4 hull.

At that point, I only had 3 ships left. I made a stupid mistake and got one run over. I was sitting where it was hard to see. If he turned, I was dead for sure. If he went straight...I thought I was dead, so I tried to Boost out of range. Ended up that if I had stayed still, I would've been fine and at R1 of an unshielded section. Instead, I Boosted right into the path. Duh.....what an idiot (me). So, it was a lose. We played it through with the Bomber and Soontir Fel were destroyed. I didn't get a further shot at the ship. Man.....

Good to see you got your game in, I hope you had fun

2 things I noticed:

• You cannot use energy from tibanna gas in the round to use them to distribute it to guns because the [distribute energy] step comes before the [energy action step], so you will have distributed what you have, then gain 3. Also the way it makes sense because if you are at 5 energy from the maneuver, you can give energy to guns, then gain 3 again. Other way around the energy limit would prevent you from gaining 3 because it never goes above 5. Also it makes sense "thematically" since it should take aturn for the tibanna gas to kick in You have to activate the gas the turn before if it should go to guns, but have to check how much you still get from the maneuver next turn so you don't exceed the limit.
• I think it is not possible to be out of range of the fuel pod. It is definitely not out of range 1 when you do a straight 4 with the CR90 since a straight 4 only moves 16cm, then the distance corner to corner is 8cm and range 1 is 10cm. A bank 2 will not get the rear section out of range1 by a long shot, since I did just that when I played it and fired on the container as well, taking damage to my rear on purpose to kill off the TIEs. So I assume there was either bumping material or other stuff going on? A fact is, the CR90 will take the damage of the fuel pod if it explodes the turn the CR90 detaches. Also that would mean you'd have killed it off since it did 3 hit + crit and you mentioned it only had 4 hull left So congrats to you

Good to see you got your game in, I hope you had fun

• You cannot use energy from tibanna gas in the round to use them to distribute it to guns because the [distribute energy] step comes before the [energy action step], so you will have distributed what you have, then gain 3. Also the way it makes sense because if you are at 5 energy from the maneuver, you can give energy to guns, then gain 3 again. Other way around the energy limit would prevent you from gaining 3 because it never goes above 5. Also it makes sense "thematically" since it should take aturn for the tibanna gas to kick in You have to activate the gas the turn before if it should go to guns, but have to check how much you still get from the maneuver next turn so you don't exceed the limit.

I did have fun! It was pretty good, even though I lost.

I think you have it a bit wrong. You don't have to have the energy on the upgrade card to use the energy. You can spend energy that is on the main ship section for things like secondary weapons. It's just that you can put some energy on them and then add more to the main card, too. Shifting energy to secondary weapons just lets you reserve that energy for that specific weapon, but then gain more energy on the main card. If you don't have any energy on a secondary weapon, you can still use the energy on the main ship card.

I think it is not possible to be out of range of the fuel pod. It is definitely not out of range 1 when you do a straight 4 with the CR90 since a straight 4 only moves 16cm, then the distance corner to corner is 8cm and range 1 is 10cm. A bank 2 will not get the rear section out of range1 by a long shot, since I did just that when I played it and fired on the container as well, taking damage to my rear on purpose to kill off the TIEs. So I assume there was either bumping material or other stuff going on? A fact is, the CR90 will take the damage of the fuel pod if it explodes the turn the CR90 detaches. Also that would mean you'd have killed it off since it did 3 hit + crit and you mentioned it only had 4 hull left So congrats to you

Well....doesn't it matter where the fuel token is placed? If it's connected to the far end and you do a 2 bank, that's a bigger change than if it were placed on the front. It is quite possible that the fuel token was knocked and it should've been in range. It would be interesting to see if that were true. I'll have to bring it up to J-bot next time I see him!

Mission T2a: Refueling Ambush

Shaken by the unexpected encounter with the TIE patrol, the CR90 stops to refuel at a nearby station sympathetic to the Alliance. Before it can completely refuel, the battered remnants of the TIE patrol scream back into view - and they've brought company! With a refueling container still attached, the corvette fires up as the station's guards move to intercept.

Mission Setup

Rebel: CR90, 75 squad points; the Rebel player cannot field any unique Ship or Upgrade cards.

Imperial: Soontir Fel with Push The Limit, 3 Black Squadron Pilots, 75 squad points; the Imperial player cannot field more than one large ship.

The play area is 3' by 5'.

The Rebel player places the CR90 within Range 2 of the Rebel edge. He must place the CR90 such that it is parallel with the Rebel edge and approximately equidistant from both neutral edges. Then, he places the class-E cargo container in the play area so that the entire flat edge of the container is flush with the edge of the aft section's base that is nearest to the Imperial edge. Then, the Rebel player places four tracking tokens on the CR90's aft Ship card.

The Imperial player places three Black Squadron Pilots at Range 1 of the Imperial edge. He must place these Black Squadron Pilots beyond Range 1 of each other. Then, he deals one facedown Damage card to each of these ships. Then, he places his remaining ships within Range 1 of the neutral edge nearest to the CR90's fore section.

Then the Rebel player places his ships within Range 1-3 of the CR90 and beyond Range 3 of the damaged Black Squadorn Pilots.

The Rebel player has initiative.

Special Rules

Running on Fumes: When the CR90 gains energy during its "Gain Energy" step, reduce the amount of energy it gains by one for each tracking token on the CR90's aft Ship card.

Docking: At the start of the first round, the CR90 is DOCKED. At the start of the Activation phase, while docked, the Rebel player removes one tracking token from the CR90's aft Ship card. After removing a tracking token, the Rebel player chooses either to keep the CR90 docked or to DETACH. If the CR90 remains docked, it activates as normal but does not execute a maneuver. If you either choose to detach, or the container is destroyed, the CR90 is no longer docked and activate as normal during each following Activation phase.

Class-E Cargo Container: The class-E cargo container is not an obstacle and can be attacked, target-locked, damaged, and destroyed as if it was a ship. It has an agility value of "2" and a hull value of "3". For each damage or critical damage the container suffers, place one damage token on it. When there are three or more damage tokens on the container, it is destroyed, and the Imperial player rolls four attack dice; all ships at Range 1 of the container suffer all damage (Hit) and critical damage (Critical Hit) rolled. Then, remove the container from the play area along with its damage tokens.

Mission Objectives

Rebel Victory: The CR90 flees off the Imperial edge of the play area. Alternatively, destroy all Imperial ships.

Imperial Victory: One section of the CR90 is crippled.

======================================================================

So.....I'm a little confused by the setup as I don't have the booklet in front of me (which I hope has a map). It's this part that gets me: "Then, he places his remaining ships within Range 1 of the neutral edge nearest to the CR90's fore section." Is this saying that you place on the neutral board edge? So....you can start off really close to the CR-90? Or is it on the Imperial side, but just really close to the neutral board edge? How can you fit all those other reinforcements within R1 of the neutral board edge and on the Imp side. So....I'm thinking it means you can put it anywhere on that neutral side and be super close to the CR-90 at the start of the game! If that's the case, it seems really easy for the Imperials to blast that refueling container before the CR-90 finishes refueling. Am I wrong?

Wow....this seems really hard for the Rebels to me. The CR-90 gets no energy for the first while until it fills up. If it leaves before it's done refueling, it's really not going to get much energy at all. So, you will only be firing with the main gun and no boosts. I think the CR-90 will pretty much have to wait 4 turns to refill or else it's just going to be ineffective. Well, I guess you can use the Tibanna Gas in the hold for some energy, right? I didn't use mine in the first mission as I still wanted to actually deliver it.

What would be good ships to take for Rebels? My first reaction is to go for 3 Rebel X-wings as I can fit them in 75 pts. They are fast, durable, and can dish out some damage. Is that the best thing, though? The CR-90 might be able to hit through Soontir Fel's defenses as it's not the horrible Stealth Soontir w/ Emperor to help. So, you could get some hits through. The X-wing would be able to help kill Soontir. You could run a lot of Z-95's, as well. Maybe Guidance Chip and Concussion missiles? I don't know how they would hit well vs. Imperials with all that green dice, though. I could go with 3 TLT Y-wings. Or even a mix of some X-wings and one TLT Y-wing. It might help get through Soontir Fel's defenses and help finish him off. Other Rebel ships that would be good?

What should the Imperials take? It says only 1 large ship max, but would you take any? The Single Turbo Laser would eat it up. Then again, maybe an Omnicron shuttle with FCS? That would give 3 red dice, be a distraction, hard to burn through all those hits, and it's still pretty cheap. You can have Tie Fighters, but they might have a hard time getting through the Reinforce Token. You can probably afford 3 Tie Interceptors. There is also the idea of at least one Tie Bomber with Extra Munitions. That's not a bad idea, but it might become target #1 to the Rebels. I'm almost thinking the Advance V1 might be a good option. It's got good offense/defense with the title and TL combo.

Thoughts on this one?

Mission T2a: Refueling Ambush

Thoughts on this one?

Undock turn one and move at max speed straight. If I remember right you fly off the edge in 4 or 5 turns

It's a little hard to pick up on, but the escape edge is the long edge that the Black squadron TIEs deploy on. Take a close look at the mission diagram and victory conditions and you'll see it.

The fastest escape you can make is 7 turns. You need to do 3 banks of either speed, and 4 4-straights to get off the edge in that amount of time.

Undock turn one and move at max speed straight. If I remember right you fly off the edge in 4 or 5 turns

Slight problem with that. If you fly straight, you fly off the short end of the map. That's not the edge you need to retreat off of. If you actually look at the little diagram you see only the long side is labelled "Imperial Side". Number 1 represents "Imperial Deployment" and Number 2 represents "Imperial Table Edge". So......the CR-90 needs to actually turn before it gets off.

EDIT: NINJA'D!!!

Good to see you got your game in, I hope you had fun

• You cannot use energy from tibanna gas in the round to use them to distribute it to guns because the [distribute energy] step comes before the [energy action step], so you will have distributed what you have, then gain 3. Also the way it makes sense because if you are at 5 energy from the maneuver, you can give energy to guns, then gain 3 again. Other way around the energy limit would prevent you from gaining 3 because it never goes above 5. Also it makes sense "thematically" since it should take aturn for the tibanna gas to kick in You have to activate the gas the turn before if it should go to guns, but have to check how much you still get from the maneuver next turn so you don't exceed the limit.

I did have fun! It was pretty good, even though I lost.

I think you have it a bit wrong. You don't have to have the energy on the upgrade card to use the energy. You can spend energy that is on the main ship section for things like secondary weapons. It's just that you can put some energy on them and then add more to the main card, too. Shifting energy to secondary weapons just lets you reserve that energy for that specific weapon, but then gain more energy on the main card. If you don't have any energy on a secondary weapon, you can still use the energy on the main ship card.

I think it is not possible to be out of range of the fuel pod. It is definitely not out of range 1 when you do a straight 4 with the CR90 since a straight 4 only moves 16cm, then the distance corner to corner is 8cm and range 1 is 10cm. A bank 2 will not get the rear section out of range1 by a long shot, since I did just that when I played it and fired on the container as well, taking damage to my rear on purpose to kill off the TIEs. So I assume there was either bumping material or other stuff going on? A fact is, the CR90 will take the damage of the fuel pod if it explodes the turn the CR90 detaches. Also that would mean you'd have killed it off since it did 3 hit + crit and you mentioned it only had 4 hull left So congrats to you

Well....doesn't it matter where the fuel token is placed? If it's connected to the far end and you do a 2 bank, that's a bigger change than if it were placed on the front. It is quite possible that the fuel token was knocked and it should've been in range. It would be interesting to see if that were true. I'll have to bring it up to J-bot next time I see him!

Actually I think I'm right, please read the card for the single turbolasers again, it explicitly states:

ATTACK (ENERGY): Spend 2 energy from this card to perform this attack. The defender doubles his agility value against this attack. You may change 1 of your focus results to a hit result.

Same with the quad turbolasers.

ATTACK (ENERGY): Spend 1 energy from this card to perform this attack. If this attack does not hit, you may immediately spend 1 energy from this card to perform this attack again.

So you will have to divert energy to the weapons in the activation phase for them to fire. It's all on the card really.

Same goes for other cards really like Ionization reactor:

Energy: Spend 5 energy from this card and discard this card to cause each other ship at Range 1 to suffer 1 damage and receive 1 ion token.

You cannot fire a secondary weapon if you don't have enough energy on THIS CARD, also you can fire the quad turbolaser only once if you only had one energy put on it.

And I assume the recover action also was played wrong if you played the energy system like you described, it says:

To perform the Recover action, a huge ship removes all energy tokens from the corresponding ship card. For each energy token removed, the ship recovers one shield, up to its maximum shield value.

If a ship has more than one ship card, then for each energy token, the ship recovers one shield on either of its sections.

If you didn't assign any energy to secondary weapons you will have 0 energy on the ship after a recover action, and you only get maximum shields. It will not take "only the energy needed to fill the shields to maximum". Either you probably played it wrong or never used it at all.

Regarding the fuel tank: You have no choice in where to put the fuel tank, the mission makes it 100% clear where it is:

He must place the CR90 such that it is parallel with the Rebel edge and approximately equidistant from both neutral edges. Then, he places the class-E cargo container in the play area so that the entire flat edge of the container is flush with the edge of the aft section's base that is nearest to the Imperial edge.

Try it out with your CR-90 and do all maneuvers possible with the CR on detachment, you will see every maneuver will leave the aft in range 1 of the container.

OK.....if this is the case, then it's a huge shift in Epic rules for me. I think I need to contact FFG on it. Thanks for pointing that out.

Personally, I hope it's not the case as it just makes secondary weapons that much worse and Epic ships that much worse.

Jay's reading of the rules sounds correct to me, that's the way I've always played epic ships

-The energy gain/distribution steps have always seemed awkward to me; if you bank energy on a huge ship in one turn, the next turn you run the risk of not gaining your full energy since you are at or near your energy capacity. Huge ships would have a much easier time if the energy management was more permissive, but I suppose that's part of the challenge of flying a huge ship.

We're moving on to the next mission soon. Does anyone have a good idea as to how to win T2B as the Rebels? It seems really rough to me.

Jay's reading of the rules sounds correct to me, that's the way I've always played epic ships

-The energy gain/distribution steps have always seemed awkward to me; if you bank energy on a huge ship in one turn, the next turn you run the risk of not gaining your full energy since you are at or near your energy capacity. Huge ships would have a much easier time if the energy management was more permissive, but I suppose that's part of the challenge of flying a huge ship.

And probably this is the main reason that made the ordnance tubes (with homing and cluster) so incredibly awesome.

Mission T2b: Emergency Repairs

We're moving on to the next mission soon. Does anyone have a good idea as to how to win T2B as the Rebels? It seems really rough to me.

Wait, if the Rebels won, why are you moving on to T2B? Shouldn't you be moving on to T3A?

We're moving on to the next mission soon. Does anyone have a good idea as to how to win T2B as the Rebels? It seems really rough to me.

Wait, if the Rebels won, why are you moving on to T2B? Shouldn't you be moving on to T3A?

We're moving on to the next mission soon. Does anyone have a good idea as to how to win T2B as the Rebels? It seems really rough to me.

Wait, if the Rebels won, why are you moving on to T2B? Shouldn't you be moving on to T3A?

We're covering all the missions in the campaign, not playing through it the normal way. We'll cover 2B next, then 3A, 3B, and 4. To cover the campaign thoroughly, we need to look at every mission.

I want to know how you handle 4 then because there's goodies for the rebels depending on how many missions they have won before. Winning all 3 before basically ensures win on the last if you field Biggs and that Cargo that will make the CR90 an obstacle that adds 3 dice instead of 1.

For T2b, can't give much advice here since in our campaigns Rebels always won T1. But I think judging from the description it should be fine, bring firepower.

Like

Wedge Antilles (29)

Crack Shot (1)

R2 Astromech (1)

Integrated Astromech (0)

Rookie Pilot (21)

R2 Astromech (1)

Integrated Astromech (0)

Rookie Pilot (21)

R2 Astromech (1)

Integrated Astromech (0)

Total: 75

First turn, get 3 energy, place them into weaponry (2 in single turbo, 1 in quad), then get 3 energy from gas containers. Burn 1 energy during main gun attack to attack with 5 dice. 2nd turn get 3 energy again, have 5 energy at disposal -> put into weapons again or recover shields. Intercept main attack force with all your x-wings, try to block and of course focus fire on bomb carriers/heavy hitters. That's what I would do, not sure it would do it but yea. Love to hear how to turns out. Definitely bring a squad that has firepower so you can take stuff down, maybe block stuff to deny actions. Not sure if 4 A-Wings would cut it though.