Attempted to play team epic at Worlds last night, but unfortunately missed playing in the "actual tournament" due to it being full. I was the first team cut from the tourney. Fortunately we found a team to play and space to play and ended up getting a game in anyway.
My list was
TPV with Attanni Mindlink, HLC, SD, and title X3
Serrisu with AM, HLC, SD, title
Manaroo with AM, Unhinged (focus battery)
Kaa'To with Bodyguard (for Serrisu)
Palob with AM, TLT, Greedo, Title (would replace with somebody else)
My teammate was playing
Brobots with HLC, Autothrusters, Senser Jammer, VI, title
We played against 10 X7 Glaives with Crackshot, Ryad with PTL, and Vessery with Juke.
I don't remember the exact details of each round of combat so this will be an approximation.
The initial setup was all 12 defenders setup on the right mat, while my Syck cluster setup on left mat near the center. Brobots on the far left of the left mat. When we finished everybody agreed that the IGs needed to be setup closer because they took way to long to get into the fight which cost us.
First 2 rounds were just maneuvering with the Defenders coming through the asteroid field to engage the Syck swarm. Then the 3rd round we had our first engagement where 2-3 defenders were in range to shoot at 1 of my HLC Sycks. At the start of combat I did my schenanigans. Kaato steal a focus to bodyguard Serrisu. Manaroo pass focus to lead Syck to give focus back to the Syck that got stolen from by Kaato. Now the lead Syck had 4 agility, 2 focus, evade, and then 1 re-roll from Serrisu. The 2-3 defenders then shot at the HLC and proceeded to do 0 damage to it due to all the tokens and re-rolls. My list building hope was fulfilled in that the Sycks turned out to be very tanky. I did have to spend some tokens to avoid crackshot removing my SD but was ok with that. I returned fire with 2 HLC sycks (I think) and recall doing 1 or 2 damage.
Next round is when the furball started Here is where I semi-regretted taking HLC because it was as valuable due to the number of range 1 shots. After all the movement (none of my sycks bumped so they all had focus evade) there were I think 8 defenders facing my syck cluster. I did my start of combat schenanigans again and bodyguarded Serrisu, and then gave the lead syck double focus evade. IGs were not yet in range to shoot (which I think would cost us some). The shooting started with the Defenders taking 4-5 shots at a Syck and 2-3 shots at Palob. Palob took a few damage due to crackshot and only having 2 defense die. (Serrisu rerolls helped him though too) I am a little fuzzy on if the lead Syck was killed in this round or the next. But I know he ate 3-4 shots in this round with no damage, until a crackshot took out his steal device. I do think he survived another round before finally succumbing next round. I then proceeded to almost kill Ryad before she shot.
Next round the furball got even worse as the defenders had bump city and most of the ships were in range 1. Did the combat schenanigans and then firing started. I think the IGs got in range to start shooting but due to defender tokens the IGs did 1 damage per shot and gunner abilities were ignored. I also had a range 1 shot with Serrisu at ryad but manage to not be able to finish her off. After a few more defender shots I lost my damaged syck. I can't complain though about a Syck taking approximately 10 shots before finally dying (that's Soontir territory!) The opponent also put through a few more damage on Palob. I think they made a few shots at Serrisu but 6 defense dice (3 + SD + bodyguard + range 3 or obstructed) makes it hard to get through a focus/evade stack.
The rest of the game was just a furball so hard to remember the round details. The end state was:
My team lost:
1 Syck
Palob
1 IG
potentially 1/2 an IG.
We had killed 2 or 3 defenders and I think damaged a few more.
We lost but also ran out of time/space to play. I did learn that my build was very very tanky and I had a blast piloting. Our senser jammer IGs were also very tanky. Unfortunately there were more x7 defenders than our ships so they had more shots so the tankiness of each squad was canceled and the sheer number of dice that the x7s threw at us won out.
I think next time I would remove palob and debate going to Manglers to save points and maybe try to squeeze something else in. Another thing that we suffered from was lack of offensive re-rolls to really push through a ton of damage on the defenders.
Overall it was a blast playing in my first EPIC game. Thanks everybody for reading and let me know if you have any questions on this!
I rushed to get it published too while it was still semi-fresh.