So in the Mission Escape, how can the Rebels win? We tried it true to its original concept and Wave ships and seven TIE/LNs seem way too much for the Transport to withstand even without the mines. And putting Biggs in against Missile Bombers ranks as folly as well. How can one balance this?

Create a Ion Cannon Blast that travels across the map in a straight line once per turn.... the map can be divided into grid like segments, allow the rebel player to make a choice before the first activation phase, simlar to how a dial is set, after the movement phase, the rebel player uses the ion cannon blast, any imperial ship caught in that straight line, obtains max ion tokens (2?) to send it forward 1, and cannot do anything else that turn, the ion cannon blast wont do damage this way though! for balance.... I dont remember the rest of the mission details though, but thematically this would help

13 hours ago, clanofwolves said:

So in the Mission Escape, how can the Rebels win? We tried it true to its original concept and Wave ships and seven TIE/LNs seem way too much for the Transport to withstand even without the mines. And putting Biggs in against Missile Bombers ranks as folly as well. How can one balance this?

This is Evacuation we're talking about?

@FTS Gecko was just pointing me at this. Looks very good fun! Is it on a normal-sized board - there's no setup image on the wiki...

• So....it's purely about the GR-75 surviving long enough to reach the other side of the board.
• A GR-75 with Combat Retrofit is 10 Hull, 5 Shields behind a reinforce token/recover action (nuts to Jam or co-ordinate; keeping the thing alive is your priority)
• The good news is no asteroids! Colliding with rocks hurts....
• The mines are disgusting. If I'm reading the rules right, a single mine detonating at range 3 is bad enough - 1 dice causing automatic criticals on a hit/crit, 2 causing normal damage on a hit/crit, 1 stress token on any 1 rebel ship, 1 ion token on any one rebel ship, the transport does a speed 1 backwards move, and one damage card is flipped face-up! And it only gets worse as the mine gets closer to the transport! Going close to any mine you haven't taken control off seems suicidal.
• Fortunately the mines don't really affect the small craft.
• A Reinforce Token should be sufficient to fend off most 2-dice attacks. The Transport has nothing except recover to spend energy on, so reinforcing the first turn and recovering the second should force your opponent to chew through shields at least twice.
• Where the transport is going to go down in flames is if it gets caught in a crossfire - once Imperial ships can fire on both sections, reinforce becomes largely useless.
• Theoretically, the transport can make it in 5 turns going flat-out straight ahead, if you can stop the mines going off. By about turn 3, though, the TIE fighters should be coming at your sides, and having enough energy to keep the shields up may be an issue.
• The Imperial player can't really attack the transport from the front without risking being run over.
• Whilst Biggs can't help, Lowhhrick can - the Transport still makes a "defence roll", even if there are no dice in it, so the Wookie can pass it an extra evade result.
• Ditto Selflessness and Draw Their Fire can take the sting out of hits on a transport (but not mine detonations).
• You need to balance killing TIEs with taking over the mines. 125 points is 5 FCS B-wings or Twin Laser Turret Y-wings, which is a whole acre of firepower.

Thanks for the ideas, a fantastic list to read....

However, here's the group rub on some of your thoughts: we decided not to allow the d*** game creep to ruin the game, we want the game to be pure in SW cannon; we don't want Phantoms or Defenders on the Imps side nor some of the NPE or OP stuff you mentioned on the Rebel side. That said, we'll have to ignore your advice on Lowhhrick (nobody wants to purchase one in our group interestingly enough and he's definitely not cannon at all) and both Biggs and TLTs are really frowned upon by everyone although we allow Biggs in sometimes due to his 'old-school' cannon name, his T-65 chassis and early wave upgrades, but we always buffer with ordinance to mitigate his NPE ability. TLTs are honestly a real bane to the Epic community in general I believe, and are looked upon the same way one might view someone taking a crap on your play-mat right in front of you around here. B-Wings we thought about too, as well as ion bombs. What do you think about that? Running over TIEs might be and OK strategy, but they respawn and the Transport takes a damage roll for each one, right?

14 hours ago, Zeoinx said:

Create a Ion Cannon Blast that travels across the map in a straight line once per turn.... the map can be divided into grid like segments, allow the rebel player to make a choice before the first activation phase, simlar to how a dial is set, after the movement phase, the rebel player uses the ion cannon blast, any imperial ship caught in that straight line, obtains max ion tokens (2?) to send it forward 1, and cannot do anything else that turn, the ion cannon blast wont do damage this way though! for balance.... I dont remember the rest of the mission details though, but thematically this would help

We were thinking the same thing, thematic and fun!

Our first attempts had the TIEs in the transports range 1 in two turns and with the first mine, she was toast. Trying it again a few different ways had the Transport make it to just past half-way, but the re-spawning TIEs actually do more damage quicker, the closer to the exit point the Transport gets. Adding ion will help if you can ion the TIEs and they don't get a shot, but the closer to the exit the Transport gets, the TIEs can shoot without moving really, this will be a tough escape if we can figure a way to pull it off. Heck, we haven't even run it with Bombers since the first time because those LRS missile salvos got her in one turn...back to simple PS4 TIEs, nothing more. Ion bombs have to be the key here.....

19 hours ago, clanofwolves said:

Thanks for the ideas, a fantastic list to read....

However, here's the group rub on some of your thoughts: we decided not to allow the d*** game creep to ruin the game, we want the game to be pure in SW cannon; we don't want Phantoms or Defenders on the Imps side nor some of the NPE or OP stuff you mentioned on the Rebel side. That said, we'll have to ignore your advice on Lowhhrick (nobody wants to purchase one in our group interestingly enough and he's definitely not cannon at all) and both Biggs and TLTs are really frowned upon by everyone although we allow Biggs in sometimes due to his 'old-school' cannon name, his T-65 chassis and early wave upgrades, but we always buffer with ordinance to mitigate his NPE ability. TLTs are honestly a real bane to the Epic community in general I believe, and are looked upon the same way one might view someone taking a crap on your play-mat right in front of you around here. B-Wings we thought about too, as well as ion bombs. What do you think about that? Running over TIEs might be and OK strategy, but they respawn and the Transport takes a damage roll for each one, right?

I wouldn't deliberately move to run them over, but nor would I deliberately move to avoid them. I wouldn't expect the Empire to keep feeding TIEs into the front! Sacrificing a TIE fighter for a single attack dice roll (which can still be soaked by shield tokens) is a pretty bad deal, especially since it doesn't even slow the transport down; theoretically an entire Black Squadron Squad of 7 TIE fighters plus the full reinforcement wave of 7 academy pilots all being run over will only do an average of 7 damage - enough to take down the shields and lightly annoy the transport (2 out of 10 hull damage), but nothing more.

Biggs doesn't protect epic ships, so it's not so bad.

Lowwhrick I have kind of a soft spot for - regardless of his rule, he's a character from the Edge of the Empire starter set, and was my first Star Wars RPG character.

19 hours ago, clanofwolves said:

Trying it again a few different ways had the Transport make it to just past half-way, but the re-spawning TIEs actually do more damage quicker, the closer to the exit point the Transport gets.

Note that TIE fighters can only ever respawn once, and you can manage the reinforcements to a degree:

Quote

At the end of each End phase, the Imperial player may call for one reinforcement for each Imperial ship with a pilot skill value of "4" or higher that was destroyed that round, excluding ships that fled or were overlapped by the GR-75. For each reinforcement, he takes the lowest-cost Ship card that matches the destroyed ship's type and places it outside the play area. Then he places the matching ship within Range 1-2 of any corner chosen by the Rebel player. The Imperial player uses this ship as normal.

The important bits of the reinforcement rule are highlighted. Note that the Reinforcement rule in every scenario is different!

• Because only PS 4+ ships generate reinforcements, and the reinforcement must be the lowest-cost pilot, the reinforcement will be an Academy Pilot/Alpha Squadron Pilot/whatever and won't be eligible to generate reinforcements themselves.
• Reinforcements only come on from the 'target' corner (the one between the two Imperial board edges) if you elect to let them. Bringing them on from the corner you're running away from (top left) or the opposite corner if you're crossing the board at an angle (bottom left or top right) is perfectly legal!

Good thoughts @Magnus Grendel, but I thought Biggs protects any friendly ship?

Oh, and even if the Rebel player wants those respawns to come in behind him, getting to hit that whale didn't take but a turn, she's incredibly slow (and mines slow her) and has to take on at least three mines and seven ties round two/three (which the whale hasn't made it past round three but once, but that time she just got her tail past the board center and flamed out from tail shots; plus she had a mine that was going to back her up anyway. I played a few practices where TIEs only attacked her rear, she died; just attacked the front, she died.....I think the closest game was where I let the TIEs only protect mines until they respawned at which time they could shoot, she made it near the edge by about range 2, but died.

17 hours ago, clanofwolves said:

Good thoughts @Magnus Grendel, but I thought Biggs protects any friendly ship?

Epic Tournament Rules - the closest thing we've got to an Epic-specific FAQ:　

Quote

Biggs Darklighter’s card text should read "Other friendly small and large ships at Range 1 cannot be targeted by attacks if the attacker could target you instead."

On a related note - if you've not read this one - are you starting the transport with full energy? Might make a difference in how quickly you can start using recover actions...

If it really doesn't work, maybe try it with 4 TIE interceptors as the imperial squad?

17 hours ago, clanofwolves said:

she's incredibly slow

She can make an effective speed 4 (relative to other ships) with an Engine Booster. Using it does stop you using Reinforce, though, so it's a tradeoff.

just rereading the mission rules: you can equip other stuff to the transport - it's just that only the GR-75 Pilot card and Combat Retrofit don't count towards your fleet list.

Observation: if you're having problems with the transport being shot up by TIE fighters - try equipping the Bright Hope title, which makes you to all intents and purposes immune to 2-dice attacks from your frontal arc, and some cargo like Cluster Bombs.

Here's a battle report from someone who made it through with the transport (the text is a little confusing because he occasionally calls the transport 'the shuttle' when his opponent has an Omicron on the field!)

Starting heading along the neutral board edge your opponent hasn't set up on and swinging in towards the 'escape point' once more of the mines in the middle have been secured might be a good trick.