Not a fix and outside competitive gaming, of course. Some weeks ago I read in this forum about this idea. Give Epic Ships actions to a limited number of non tier ships. So yesterday we played a scenario writen by one fellow player focused on the first operational deployment of "Mk IV" Punishers with Reinforce Action.

We are starting to experiment with two "heavy" variants of this ship. "Mk III" simply eliminates Boost action and includes Reinforce. No cost title. "MK IV", an improved version, is a 2 pts title that adds Reinforce to standard Actions.

Playing with face down ordnance cards (a simple variant that adds a lot of interest to ordnance carriers) there were 2 Mk IV Punishers on the table. PS 4 pilots with EM, Plasma Torps, Cluster Misiles and Seismic Charges, plus EW warfare system ang GC. 39 pts each, aprox. Not cheap ships but quite capable.

In a 500 pts Epic environment they were supported by Tactical Coordinators, in a Gozanti and a Raider. The idea was to asign one to each Epic ship to boost the Punisher's hitting capacity. Reinforce when facing enemy threats and receiving TLs from the mother ship.

The experiment worked Ok, not perfect but quite interesting. Circa 80 pts invested in two ordnance carriers... Both bombers survived long enought to launch 3 salvoes each, only one bomb. Reinforce Action is not a superb panacea. You need external aid to gain TLs. No focus in the whole game. But it was crucial to survive and launch their toys. Plasma Torps hit hard vs Agi 1 high shield ships.

Perhaps it is a little too good when facing Red 2 A wings or Z 95s, but only 2 Rebel ships were on the table and only once one A wing fired on a Reinforced Punisher. Range 2, one focused eye...no evade...biiiiiing shoot deflected.

If you play Epic in a friendly and casual way try once the "MK III" variant. No cost title, no Boost, add Reinforce. Pair it with a ship that can transfer a TL or give a free TL action. Perhaps one if you play at 300 pts.

Not a top tier to win the day...but yes a capable ship that can survive long enought to perform some cinematic attack runs

(posted from the duped thread)

The thing about reinforce for huge ships is while it may be persistent it only covers half the ship. As for evade it is discarded after the first use. But the inherent thing is that they have a work around on both of them. Reinforce would not work on large or small based ships because it will cover the entire ship for the entire turn. You might as well just use reinforce for every action which would be bad for the gameplay.

Part of the Wave 4-6 meta was that there were very defensive tanky ship builds that just wouldn't die as they had a hard 2 damage mitigation. The damage mitigation was so heavy and so certain (not based upon green dice) with upgrades like C-3PO and Autothrusters that you needed something as powerful as TLTs to crack them.

Point is defense tokens need to have a workaround either by position or by consumption. You can't have a permanent evade on a ship even if it is one of the weaker ones like the Scyk (before the eratta).