9 minutes ago, Khyros said:

One thing though that I think is absolutely necessary - epic ships cannot be affected by effects of non epic ships . They've already done that a bit with Biggs, but it should apply to Jonus, Roark, and Esege as well. Jonus rerolls on the Raider is just a ridiculous buff to the ship, and Roark making the Tantive shoot at PS12 can easily erase entire ships before they shoot a single time, and Esege's "you can use my focus tokens" is on similar levels as Jonus (but more expensive and less reliable). Getting rid of all of those is a requirement imo.

Also, increasing to 400 points seems to help quite a bit. It allows you to field a full 150pt epic ship without having to only fly 4-5 fighters. And it allows you to fly both epic ships and then a good 200pt escort for quite the immersion of a space battle.

Gah, now I want to play some more epic!

I definitely agree with the 400-point idea. . .at 300 points it is way too easy for the Huge to be 1/2 you list.

And better crew and teams would need to happen to replace small ship effects, but I think this is a good idea as well--command should go huge to small, not the other way around, from a military logistics POV.

What Epic really needs is:

1. Squadron effects for units of same-type small ships.

2. Better crew and teams for capital ships.

3. Large ships that are Epic only.

4. Commanders for large ships that can affect the fleet (list) as a whole.

5. More than 1 ship every 2 years.

54 minutes ago, Shockwave said:

@ Blodvargarna (I think just requiring a minimum 3 epic points fixes this.)

Yes and no, It forces a Raider or CR-90 for 3 points or 2 Goz or Transports (4 Epic points, but only list 60pts ) – Still leaves 200+ points available for small based ships

My one and only Epic tournament I played in had this rule and it worked fine. One way to tweak this could be that at least 1 epic ship is required, 3 epic points minimum and large based ships count for 1/2 epic point.

I run an Epic League every 6 months. We are up to 20 players for this current league. I posted another topic with some more details, but we did do some tweaks to Epic Tournament rules to make it a bit more balanced to make having Epic ships at least playable. You might want to check it out.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_ldTxrpsKiooir7XwSkhio6_NwjlAN_NA9nSciP_bz4/edit?usp=sharing

FWIW, while I quite like the Gozanti with docking clamps and its certainly fluffy, I think the upgrade is powerful enough to not be required. Limiting the cargo slots limits its ability to use some different tools, notably the Jam action.

Bodhi Rook, for 1 pt, makes a good crew for the CR90. Can potentially save you three points instead of taking the sensor team, depending on your tactics.

1 hour ago, kingargyle said:

I run an Epic League every 6 months. We are up to 20 players for this current league. I posted another topic with some more details, but we did do some tweaks to Epic Tournament rules to make it a bit more balanced to make having Epic ships at least playable. You might want to check it out.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_ldTxrpsKiooir7XwSkhio6_NwjlAN_NA9nSciP_bz4/edit?usp=sharing

If I remember, tonight when I get home I'm taking a serious look at this!

6 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

The Objective is to have fun; winning is a side-effect of playing a two-sided game. Fly casual.

I think you took that statement to be far more Militant than it was.

6 hours ago, LunarSol said:

Not until there's more low Epic point ships added. Requiring 2 transports to run a transport is silly and expensive in a format that already has a pretty high barrier to entry. I'd actually be fine with this if you could declare a large ship as worth 1 Epic point though. I think that could almost be a rule in general honestly.

While I'm not convinced (At least at this stage) that this is necessary, I'm not opposed to it either (Though I'm not certain all large ships should count in that manner).

5 hours ago, Khyros said:

Point 1 - One thing though that I think is absolutely necessary - epic ships cannot be affected by effects of non epic ships. They've already done that a bit with Biggs, but it should apply to Jonus, Roark, and Esege as well. Jonus rerolls on the Raider is just a ridiculous buff to the ship, and Roark making the Tantive shoot at PS12 can easily erase entire ships before they shoot a single time, and Esege's "you can use my focus tokens" is on similar levels as Jonus (but more expensive and less reliable). Getting rid of all of those is a requirement imo.

Point 2 - Also, increasing to 400 points seems to help quite a bit. It allows you to field a full 150pt epic ship without having to only fly 4-5 fighters. And it allows you to fly both epic ships and then a good 200pt escort for quite the immersion of a space battle.

Point 1. This I agree with, I find it highly irritating that to get my Raider/ CR-90 in a position where it has a shot at pulling it's weight I staple Jonus or Esege to the card. I would like to think that we could get to a point where we could have a blanket rule that works along the lines of "Unless pilot ability specifically stats that it works on a Huge based ship, you are to assume that it does not"

As to Point 2 - I agree with the sentiment, though I would be more inclined to see if 350 works first.

5 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

I definitely agree with the 400-point idea. . .at 300 points it is way too easy for the Huge to be 1/2 you list.

And better crew and teams would need to happen to replace small ship effects, but I think this is a good idea as well--command should go huge to small, not the other way around, from a military logistics POV.

What Epic really needs is:

1. Squadron effects for units of same-type small ships.

2. Better crew and teams for capital ships.

3. Large ships that are Epic only.

4. Commanders for large ships that can affect the fleet (list) as a whole.

5. More than 1 ship every 2 years.

1, Not so sure myself - They are good enough as is.

2, Certainly - Also something we can do ourselves. Any idea/ examples you have in mind?

3, Interesting idea - Difficult for us to implement being that we can't just start selling new ships

4, Intriguing - Again any examples that you have in mind?

5, Completely beyond our ability to influence

14 minutes ago, Shockwave said:

While I'm not convinced (At least at this stage) that this is necessary, I'm not opposed to it either (Though I'm not certain all large ships should count in that manner).

Yeah, it was sort of originally an off the cuff remark mostly looking for a way to make a 3 Epic Point minimum work. As I thought on it though, I actually can't think of too many lists that would be unfairly punished by making large bases 1 Epic Point. I suppose Scum couldn't run 4 brobots and 4 Jumpmasters... but I'm not really convinced that's a bad thing either....

A decent rule of thumb for min/max Epic points is probably 1 per 100 points for the min, with the max being double that -1.

One of the additional things I was wanting to look at is the things in the core rules that aren't clear.

Example - Can a crippled section perform an action?

Can you repair a section so that it is Un-crippled?

1 hour ago, Shockwave said:

One of the additional things I was wanting to look at is the things in the core rules that aren't clear.

Example - Can a crippled section perform an action?

Can you repair a section so that it is Un-crippled?

Answers:

1. Yes, but the section loses its action bar so is limited to surviving equipment.

2. No, you can't uncripple a section.

edit: but I agree with your point... There are some bits that need to be clarified or fixed.

I'm going to be playing in an epic league this summer. Will see how I feel about the format. I like the huge ships but I'm not sure about the format yet. I've flown one epic game before with my transport, but the other side was all small base fighters so I'm hoping to learn about how real epic is done where everyone has to bring a huge ship.

If I don't care for it, I'll probably skip out on the other huge ships. As much as I want the Scyk stuff and everything with the c-roc, I can't quite justify it unless I'm getting that big ship out on the mat.

If I do like epic, man is it going to be expensive.

4 hours ago, Shockwave said:

1, Not so sure myself - They are good enough as is.

2, Certainly - Also something we can do ourselves. Any idea/ examples you have in mind?

3, Interesting idea - Difficult for us to implement being that we can't just start selling new ships

4, Intriguing - Again any examples that you have in mind?

5, Completely beyond our ability to influence

Admiral/Commander Cards

Allows a player to use a special ability up to 6 times during a game (discard a Command Token).

• Change to a different heading of the same speed

• Remove a Stress Token

• Fire a Missile/Torpedo without a Target Lock

• Gain 1 PS for the turn

The best thing you can do for Epic is to NOT restrict things too much - the entry level is already much steeper than standard x-wing, forcing anyone to play a Huge Ship is overkill.

We have a 20 player Epic League that's in its final stretch now (double elimination play-offs) and the variety of lists is very good - Raiders & Tantives are seen enough, though the Raider dominated early season, people have been learning how to deal with it a bit more - some still fail, some succeed much more readily, Gozanti & Transports were seen a bit but not as much, and then the mix & match non-Huge lists were hit or miss against Huge and against non-Huge lists.

Our league rules are:

General - 1 Unique Pilot or 1 Unique Crew on either a Huge or Large Ship

Lieutenant - 1 Unique Pilot or 1 Unique Crew on either a Large or Small Ship

Total costs of both must be 80 pts minimum, General must cost more than the Lieutenant.

3 Pts for a win, 0 for a Loss

1 Pt for killing the enemy General

1 Pt for killing the enemy Lieutenant

Final league standings determine the play-offs positions

Play-offs lists cannot be changed until your first loss and then your second list is your final list until eliminated.

Whoever makes it to the end of the bottom bracket will need to defeat the top bracket winner twice to be declared winner (since that would be the top bracket winner's first loss)

We made no restrictions for pilots, ships, upgrades - PS12 Tantive with Esege & TLT train following it and some blockers, PS8 Raider (decoy most of the time from Howlrunner) with Howlrunner reroll or missile Raider with Jonus rerolls - they have been beaten, they have won, Mindlink scum spam lists have won and have lost.

And if not for playing bad (made 4 huge mistakes in the game) my Dormitz list would be unbeaten, now I've gotta grind up the loser bracket to get to the finals ]:

Here's what happens when someone doesn't think about deployment against Dormitz (I won in 2 turns, game wasnt 90 minutes long)

Thats the deployment - Dormitz did a 2 forward, Coordinate on Carnor Jax to Barrel Roll boost.. ended up blocking 5 ships of their Attani shenanigans after I moved (though I bumped but with only like 1 shot coming Carnor's way and a TLT Palob trying his luck)

So that was just before combat - I destroyed 4 ships, 1 protectorate surviving but dying on turn 2.

At the end of turn 2 I had only lost the PS1 TIE/FO and wasn't close to losing anything else.

Dormitz is incredibly fun in Epic format and definitely intimidating and confusing at first (its hard to properly deploy honestly , all bunched up around Dormitz) for both players, it can have an incredible alpha strike while having so many tokens to resist the opponent's forced alpha strike (of whatever remains alive after I've had all my high-PS ships shoot~)

9 hours ago, Kalandros said:

The best thing you can do for Epic is to NOT restrict things too much - the entry level is already much steeper than standard x-wing, forcing anyone to play a Huge Ship is overkill.

We have a 20 player Epic League that's in its final stretch now (double elimination play-offs) and the variety of lists is very good - Raiders & Tantives are seen enough, though the Raider dominated early season, people have been learning how to deal with it a bit more - some still fail, some succeed much more readily, Gozanti & Transports were seen a bit but not as much, and then the mix & match non-Huge lists were hit or miss against Huge and against non-Huge lists.

Our league rules are:

General - 1 Unique Pilot or 1 Unique Crew on either a Huge or Large Ship

Lieutenant - 1 Unique Pilot or 1 Unique Crew on either a Large or Small Ship

Total costs of both must be 80 pts minimum, General must cost more than the Lieutenant.

3 Pts for a win, 0 for a Loss

1 Pt for killing the enemy General

1 Pt for killing the enemy Lieutenant

Final league standings determine the play-offs positions

Play-offs lists cannot be changed until your first loss and then your second list is your final list until eliminated.

Whoever makes it to the end of the bottom bracket will need to defeat the top bracket winner twice to be declared winner (since that would be the top bracket winner's first loss)

We made no restrictions for pilots, ships, upgrades - PS12 Tantive with Esege & TLT train following it and some blockers, PS8 Raider (decoy most of the time from Howlrunner) with Howlrunner reroll or missile Raider with Jonus rerolls - they have been beaten, they have won, Mindlink scum spam lists have won and have lost.

This is awesome. The General/Lieutenant idea (although shouldn't the be Admiral and Commander?) creates smaller secondary objectives that mean you can still pull something out of a game loss.

It's nice to hear the Raiders were kicking butt in the beginning, since many people seem to be unable to figure out how to make the ship viable. And I also am glad to hear no artificial constraints on TLT, Mindlink, etc., are needed.

We also had one guy play 6 Defenders as his Epic list - he won some games! Fully tooled out Defenders and maybe a 7th ship as support? I forget. Anyway, so few ships in an Epic game is madness - but if they can do massive damage while taking very little in return and then shuffle around to force the opponent to spread damage around instead of having the focus on one...

I also had the chance to face off against all 4 IG88 plus 4 TLTs and my imperials performed well and wiped em out~

I think the Gozanti, Transport and maybe the C-Roc need something extra to make them worth it as they can go down to focus fire quite easily - even the Bright Hope (double reinforce to the front) can go down quite easily - Maybe they are more justifiable at higher points games - 300 is too little to spend 50 pts on something so fragile that doesn't do much return fire (maybe the C-Roc will be more aggressive, the Gozanti is quite weak and the Transport is only there as support, though it can be awesome support like Toryn Farr)

12 minutes ago, Kalandros said:

We also had one guy play 6 Defenders as his Epic list - he won some games! Fully tooled out Defenders and maybe a 7th ship as support? I forget. Anyway, so few ships in an Epic game is madness - but if they can do massive damage while taking very little in return and then shuffle around to force the opponent to spread damage around instead of having the focus on one...

I also had the chance to face off against all 4 IG88 plus 4 TLTs and my imperials performed well and wiped em out~

I think the Gozanti, Transport and maybe the C-Roc need something extra to make them worth it as they can go down to focus fire quite easily - even the Bright Hope (double reinforce to the front) can go down quite easily - Maybe they are more justifiable at higher points games - 300 is too little to spend 50 pts on something so fragile that doesn't do much return fire (maybe the C-Roc will be more aggressive, the Gozanti is quite weak and the Transport is only there as support, though it can be awesome support like Toryn Farr)

I often use plenty of Defenders (pre nerf) and have faced off vs. 4 brobots. It seems like plenty of people do well with the Gozanti and Transports. Nice to see that everything finds it's niche.

More specific musings:

Admiral/Commander Cards

Allows a player to use a special ability up to 6 times during a game (discard a Command Token). Only one Command Token may be used per turn.

• Admiral Ackbar. Huge Ship Only. When attacking another Huge ship, your Command Tokens may be used as Focus Tokens.

• Admiral Constantine. When you discard a Command Token, you may change your dial to any other maneuver. Next turn, your opponent chooses your maneuver.

• Mon Mothma. Discard a Command Token before any ships are activated. Your ship may not be the target of attacks for the turn.

• Grand Admiral Thrawn. Discard a Command Token to cancel one pilot’s special ability for the turn.

• Commander Sato. Discard a Command Token to give all A-Wings at Range 1-3 a second action.

20 hours ago, LagJanson said:

Answers:

1. Yes, but the section loses its action bar so is limited to surviving equipment.

2. No, you can't uncripple a section.

edit: but I agree with your point... There are some bits that need to be clarified or fixed.

Your edit is the point though.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were players that didn't even notice the lack of action bar.

I'm sure there are other points out there that need to be highlighted/ addressed (Please feel free to list them) before we start changing existing cards, let alone adding entirely new rules (Though I have entertained the idea of "un-crippling a ship" in some form)

As was stated before, if you're not using huge ships, you're not really playing Epic. At most it's Epic lite: just one calorie, not Epic enough. There should be a mandatory minimum on Epic points, even if it's only 1.

Additionally, to really tweak some noses, what if you were only allowed to bring up to 50 pts of small-based ships for each Epic point in your list? Notice I only said small ships. Knock yourself out on large, but don't expect to be able to field a non-epic Epic list of 6 Defenders or whatever it was. It'll let you bring a CR90 or Raider and 150 pts of small ships, but you can't do a transport and swarms of smalls.

I'd almost wish for Epic ships to be almost impervious to non-Epic primary and most secondary weapons because they should have powerful shields and good armor. Unfortunately, the Rebels show has pretty much shown us that nothing except the Ghost has shields that actually do anything, and they are apparently all unarmored as well. A single pass of firing standard TIE lasers is enough to sink a corvette. Of course, if you really think back on it, shields never really seemed to do anything in the movies anyway so maybe this isn't a change.

38 minutes ago, Kharnvor said:

As was stated before, if you're not using huge ships, you're not really playing Epic. At most it's Epic lite: just one calorie, not Epic enough. There should be a mandatory minimum on Epic points, even if it's only 1.

Yeah, I'd have to say I disagree with this 100%. 6x3 changes things a lot--more room to maneuver, less KKKKK-turning, and multiple theaters of engagement. 300 points makes one-shot EPTs far less valuable, makes generics way more viable, and dilutes a lot of "broken" cards like Palps.

I got bored of 100/6 after about 5 games of learning how to fly. It's like playing chess with only the king, the queen and the bishop. . .sure, they are the most powerful pieces, and you can play an intense endgame, but you are lacking all the depth and breadth of a full game of chess.

Epic (even sans Huge ships)? Now that's pod racing!!

On 5/12/2017 at 4:56 PM, Shockwave said:

One of the additional things I was wanting to look at is the things in the core rules that aren't clear.

Example - Can a crippled section perform an action?

Can you repair a section so that it is Un-crippled?

A crippled section can't perform an action unless it has a crew still that let's it do it. This is where the Tantive title on the cr90 cones in handy. Usually a crippled section will lose it's innate abilities like target lock or recover.

22 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

Yeah, I'd have to say I disagree with this 100%. 6x3 changes things a lot--more room to maneuver, less KKKKK-turning, and multiple theaters of engagement. 300 points makes one-shot EPTs far less valuable, makes generics way more viable, and dilutes a lot of "broken" cards like Palps.

I got bored of 100/6 after about 5 games of learning how to fly. It's like playing chess with only the king, the queen and the bishop. . .sure, they are the most powerful pieces, and you can play an intense endgame, but you are lacking all the depth and breadth of a full game of chess.

Epic (even sans Huge ships)? Now that's pod racing!!

So call it Cinematic Play then or something. No Epic points spent = not playing Epic.

I'll admit, it's splitting hairs, but really the only thing that differentiates a really large dogfight from an Epic game is the huge ships. I don't think just changing the size of the play area is radical - if you up the points, you need to up the table size else things get ridiculously crowded.

All that said, we all have in common the fact that we want to emphasize the non-100/6 much more and get it recognized as a 100% legitimate, and maybe even superior, way to play casually. Why limit ourselves to one vision of 'Epic', however we define it, and let it encompass everything from 300/12 to Huge Ships Required Epic and anything else we can think of, like HOTAC.