Epic is a different game all together. It will be tough to fly against but Toryn Farr laughs at all those tokened up Defenders.

Not lame... but if you can trade the concussion missile for a homing missile you'll be in better shape. The ion pulse and concussion both spend the target locks, so it's better to be able to fire a homing missile without spending the lock so you can fire the second missile at the same target. Focus fire from the Raider! You'll have some duds, but it's by far better than to fire at two different targets. I've splashed Dash in two turns of focused Raider fire.

Weapons engineer is helpful as well on an ordnance Raider, but with this setup, having just the one lock is likely ok.

4 Defenders are tough, but due to the points your opponent may have 2 decent fighters for each Defender and you may find it balances back out. That's a lot of fire to contend with.

I love Epic, and to be honest you're often better off running more generics and less named pilots.

For example a squad of cheap Interceptors is really good - even a squad of Tie Bombers with homing missiles or proton torps.

I actually prefer at least one cluster missile on my ordinance raider. Covers that range 1 space your primary can't, and can do some nasty damage (especially with jonus support or when shooting an enemy epic). As a side note, make sure you put your back up shield generator on the aft. That way you can still regain shields even after your fore goes down (and you lose access to the recover action).

I actually prefer at least one cluster missile on my ordinance raider. Covers that range 1 space your primary can't, and can do some nasty damage (especially with jonus support or when shooting an enemy epic). As a side note, make sure you put your back up shield generator on the aft. That way you can still regain shields even after your fore goes down (and you lose access to the recover action).

The quad serves the same purpose... Bit more expensive, less potential damage, but more flexible as it doesn't need a target lock... Which is big without weapons engineer. I thought about mentioning the clusters too, but it's not a small change to make.

Not lame... but if you can trade the concussion missile for a homing missile you'll be in better shape. The ion pulse and concussion both spend the target locks,

Ion Pulse Missile doesn't spend the lock, so it works out pretty well.

In Epic, numbers normally carry the day over fantastic abilities. In order to win epic games, you need:

1. Counters against swarms. Assault missiles are great. Ion torpedoes are equally great (ionise into a Huge ship's path). All kinds of area-effect bombs are also useful.

2. Counters against aces. If an ace survives to the end-game of an epic matchup, it'll have a great advantage against a weakened swarm, or a damaged Raider. Counters include Homing Missiles (a good use for the Raider), Crack Shot, Snap Shot swarms and Connor Nets.

3. Counters against other Huge ships.. Good counters include Swarms, high-damage, low cost ships and Ordnance alpha-strikes (e.g. four A-wings with Crack Shot, Homing Missiles and Guidance chips - 100 pts, and is near-guaranteed to kill a Raider's fore section in one go).

A god epic squad needs an answer for all three of these in order to be competitive.

This is great advice for tournament-style epic play. More ships does tend to be more valuable than having fewer ships with good abilities. In my opinion, it's good to have a balance. Do you need a certain pilot ability? Does PS matter for your strategy? Go ahead and include the named pilot of choice. If not, you might be just fine having a generic or two take its place.

I would like to add on point 2 that your list of answers to aces seem focused on standard tournament play. Epic players shouldn't forget things like the Jam action (and Slicer Tools), Ionization Reactor, and Grand Moff Tarkin. (You did include Toryn Farr above, so I know you didn't forget about it, but it's good to think about those epic-specific tools we have at our disposal).

@Wiredin, it looks like a fun squad, but with only 5 ships on the board it will probably be a challenge to fly. Emperor Palpatine is pretty safe on the Raider, but it also makes the Raider a pretty big target. As such, I'm not quire sure about Shield Projector. Are you planning to use it to keep a defender alive in case it runs into trouble? The way your Raider is built, you should have plenty of energy, but you have a lot of points sunk into it, so I'd target it first. I wonder if Comms Booster might not be a better choice of cargo to protect the defenders.

1) If a defender gets blocked, you can still assign it a focus

2) If it gets stressed, you can remove all stress tokens AND assign it a focus (good for rounds in which a defender has to do a red maneuver or to resist opposing stress tactics)

3) If an opposing ship's shields are down, you can assign a second focus token to Rexler Brath so he can use his ability.

Just something to think about. (P.S. I am still looking for a good use for Shield Projector, but 3 energy is a hefty price to pay, so I haven't found the right ship yet. I like that you have a decent use for it here, and maybe you can share more of your thought process behind it).

Comms booster may not be a bad idea. But yes, the idea was to keep the defenders alive.

it may all be a moot cause as I can't find antoher Veterans pack and another defender before my game tonight

I really wanna fly my raider, but I'm not having much luck find a build I like that doesn't sink everything into it...

I have a missile carrier CR90 build I'm leaning towards as it has 8 fighter backup with Rookies, B-Wings, and Wedge/Wes

or then there is this idea...

Not sure how effective the Uwing will be, but I love the crits.

Ion Pulse Missile doesn't spend the lock, so it works out pretty well.

Apologies; this is what I get for posting late at night... I was thinking of the Ion Torpedo. As it currently stands, the Ion torpedo gives a decent support ability, but Homing missiles give out so much more damage.

@Wiredin, it looks like a fun squad, but with only 5 ships on the board it will probably be a challenge to fly. Emperor Palpatine is pretty safe on the Raider, but it also makes the Raider a pretty big target. As such, I'm not quire sure about Shield Projector. Are you planning to use it to keep a defender alive in case it runs into trouble? The way your Raider is built, you should have plenty of energy, but you have a lot of points sunk into it, so I'd target it first. I wonder if Comms Booster might not be a better choice of cargo to protect the defenders.

My epic build contains 4 PTL + Targeting Computer TIE Interceptors specifically for killing Huge ships. Facing your list with my example one above, I'd ignore your Defenders completely and just go for the Raider. 2 turns of focused fire per section will bring it down pretty handily, maybe one turn if you don't reinforce. At which point your Defenders lose all those nice buffs and become very ordinary. In other words, the hard counter to your Raider loadout is to attack it.

I wouldn't swap the U-wing for another B-wing, but I would drop Sabine and the bomb (which are fairly useless on such a ship) and upgrade the U-wing to Bodhi Rook to really help out the Tantive in getting shots.

Then, I'd either get rid of the Mangler cannons or Etahn. Rolling two critical hits isn't much better than rolling one, since one of them is normally canceled. Its not worth the 16 points. If you get rid of Etahn I'd swap him for Biggs and give the B-wings Fire Control System, to massively boost their offense. You then have an extra six points to play with. All in all, you still get the crit dealing shenanigans, but with added protection and free target locks.

Hey Astech, that was my screw up on the ion pulse missile. You must be really tired!

I like the suggestion on the Uwing. Rook is a great upgrade from the Sabine pathfinder. And while I love tossing the crits at an epic ship, the fire control is a lot more flexible.

Yeah, for my first Epic match I took FCS B-wings and Etahn and they rocked (with a BIggs escort), but even without mangler cannons, I was still racking up the crits.

I'm going to try convincing my FLGS to let us do a three-faction list:

Howlrunner

Serissu

Biggs

Captain Jonus

Etahn

Rerolls on everything forever!