So Tie Silencer is a less expensive TIE Defender with a much easier dial. But who cares if they will be able to beat Scum in Worlds 2018. Lets talk about what really matters, what does Wave 13 mean for X-wing Epic formats.

First up with the Resistance Bomber

So bombing huge ships haven't been so easy considering they come from your rear arc and that involves getting too close to the fatal end (I think it should be errata so it isn't instant death). Well this allows you to throw bombs in front of you. Only issue is it works almost like pre-nym genius in which you will hit yourself unless you find a very specific way to clear the blast.

• Crimson specialist is just a little more flexible with bomb tokens so not much there.
• Huge ships are still not a part of the NT factions so unless the missing SKU is a Huge Resistance ship nothing is going on with Crossfire formation
• Advanced optics doesn't have any unique reactions in epic.

Can you say hello critical damage on huge ships. Another way to flip face up cards on huge ships and unless they have the fixit droid which still takes 3 energy to flip a card face down it is not going anywhere. Now the question is how do conditions resolve on huge ships. I'm going to take a guess and say that you can only assign it to one section so what ever section you assigned it to will get that condition and the extra flips. However that section will also have the action so you could use it to stop a reinforce or recover since they happen to be both on the same section card for the larger corvettes.

Now with the silencer being more of the arc dodger and focus on the starfighter to starfighter fights you wouldn't think there would be much for Epic and you would be right, however with the way Epic is set up the TIE Silencer does bring a few tricks to it.

So the TIE Silencer brings terrain more into play (I don't see any more debris clouds in the production shot though ) However on some Epic scenarios there are much larger obstacle and debris cloud tokens in the mix so sure it is a larger are but that mean more obstacles which brings us the to upgrade that has the biggest impact on Epic.

Since Epic sets up obstacle tokens in pairs as after one token is placed another one is immediately placed range 1 of it, this upgrade has a good chance of pulling 2 evade tokens every time it is used. Given how there is more firing arcs and a lot more attacks having double evade in Epic is huge, big ships or not (pun may be intended ).

• Kylo Ren we have seen IWSYTDS Before so nothing much there.
• Title isn't much different in Epic or a major game changer

This can have an effect as the point limit is larger so the point tolerance is much looser the 3 points isn't that expensive in epic where in competitive standard it is a complete rip-off. Considering that huge ships always activate after all other ships do this makes it a great chaser to those other ships keeping them from some how avoiding your arc. You would probably be using the barrel roll action more to stay behind (assuming you already were). Again since Huge ships are still not that difficult to take out this isn't that much of a game changer. But looking at all the other <tech> upgrade available this one seems to have the most compatibility with Epic.

So what do you think will have a big impact on epic. Also since they are supposed to be released simultaneously.

So given these two new waves, AKA Wave Twelveteen, what new build in Epic do you see coming up? Will it still be dominated by Starfighter Wings and the Dreaded IG-8000? Will Huge ships be unstoppable? Of what 300 point (or 200 for teams) list do you want to make?

I’m really looking forward to seeing the resistance bomber in epic. They won’t just be great against epic ships but also formation flyers.

58 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

So Tie Silencer is a less expensive TIE Defender with a much easier dial

Why even start on a downer? As you yourself point out...

58 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

Lets talk about what really matters

I think as you that the Silencer could be pretty good in Epic. It’s ancestors, the TIE Advanced and Defender, do pretty well in Epic thanks to their high number of hit points and agility. The clincher for me will be the generic point cost as I prefer them in Epic. After all an Accuracy Corrector Storm Advanced can be as little as 23 points and an Ion Cannon Glaive TIE/D 37 points are both pretty effective in Epic.

What do you think of Advanced Optics? Having a banked focus token could be handy.

11 minutes ago, Sasajak said:

Why even start on a downer? As you yourself point out...

I think as you that the Silencer could be pretty good in Epic. It’s ancestors, the TIE Advanced and Defender, do pretty well in Epic thanks to their high number of hit points and agility. The clincher for me will be the generic point cost as I prefer them in Epic. After all an Accuracy Corrector Storm Advanced can be as little as 23 points and an Ion Cannon Glaive TIE/D 37 points are both pretty effective in Epic.

What do you think of Advanced Optics? Having a banked focus token could be handy.

It could but in epic you really need to bank tokens as with all the attacks and defense it is easy for tokens to be stripped off for defensive dice modifications. Which is also why I put Debris gambit as noteworthy for epic because it gives you multiple tokens. Multi-token banks work better in epic than a single token.

I can't wait to use my opponent's Huge ships against them with Blackout. Shoot through their own GR-75, they lose evade dice. Priceless.

Just now, That One Guy said:

I can't wait to use my opponent's Huge ships against them with Blackout. Shoot through their own GR-75, they lose evade dice. Priceless.

Good point, since TIE Silencer is focusing on obstruction obstruction is the one thing huge ships also bring.

1 hour ago, Marinealver said:

Only issue is it works almost like pre-nym genius in which you will hit yourself unless you find a very specific way to clear the blast.

Well, Deflective Plating is easily cheap enough that you can get away with at least one round of bombs without having to use your red stop or turns. That might be a little risky if you fly in a tight formation, but you also could probably stutter it.

Also I can't wait to SLAM in there with a bunch of Gunboats and deliver debilitating payloads to capital ships in the form of Ion Cannons and Ion Torpedoes.

I'm excited to run a Star Wing with Seismic Torpedoes. Yeah, it doesn't synergize with Advanced SLAM, but blowing up obstacles over and over with Reload sounds great! Unfortunately, if it really is that fun, it's going to force me to buy another ARC-170. Yuck.

Thoughts:

• Gunboat:
  • The gunboat provides a cheap, effective ordnance carrier. The Empire already had one - the TIE bomber - but access to SLAM should not be discounted. An Advanced SLAM gunboat can put range 3 missiles into your opponent's deployment zone on turn 1. XG-1s cannot SLAM-fire Ion Cannons but Ion Torpedoes (splash ion!) and Ion Pulse Missiles are fair game.
  • Combine with a Jonus Shuttle (a speed 4 straight will juuuuust keep him in range 1 of a Straight 3/SLAM 3 gunboat) and you can lay down focused, rerolled ion torps and assault missiles into the middle of an enemy block before they know what hit them.
  • Paired with Lieutenant Dormitz, you can realistically be dropping Advanced Proton Torpedoes on people on turn one, and with stuff like General Hux, Operations Specialists, etc, it's a lot easier for a generic ship to make use of APTs despite the focus/lock requirement.
  • Jamming Beams.....harumph. I love the Jam mechanic but I still can't come up with a situation where I'd really bother firing this thing as opposed to a ship's primary weapon. Maybe, maybe on a heavy scyk. In Epic, it has more of a practical use - if you can get into range 2 and slap 2-3 jam tokens on a corvette, you'll stop it generating tokens for a turn or two. On a normal corvette, that's irritating. On an Ordnance Tubes corvette, that's potentially leaving 3 hardpoint weapons unable to fire for a turn, and that is worth investing points in.
  • Seismics, as @Parakitor suggests, are a nice idea. In epic, being able to 'clear the road' is a nice use of 2 points, as a face-up damage on your corvette hurts a lot, and two mini-bomblets (because it's always a pair) going off in succession can make a right mess.
• Killer Gorilla/Kaiju Godzilla/Kimi Raikonnen/Whatever the heck it's called
  • So...bullseye arcs. Nasty, but hard to line up. Unless, you know, you have a full squadron of the little buggers in a checkerboard formation.
    • The various pilots and title are likely to be nasty in epic, though - shish-kebab-ing multiple targets with a token-stripping arc is going to be much easier in epic.
  • Again, it gives Scum a cheap, flexible ordnance carrier (not discernably better at it than the Scurrg, but cheaper). Reload probably not too big a deal because by the time you can reload and relock without OS-1 the fight's probably over one way or another. Scum have one-use missile barrages covered by Z-95 and Khiraxz swarms, though.
  • Note that it does provide impressive forward firepower without using the ordnance load. A 3-dice primary plus R4 Agromech where you spend focus then spend the lock on the same attack is not quite as good as focus/target lock but it's within a hair as good as predator, for a point less, on a generic with no EPT, with the added bonus of the bullseye if you can line it up. That's brutally effective firepower.
  • Scrambler missiles are much more useful than jamming beams. Lieutenant Blount with Deadeye and Roark Garnet can pull the teeth of an entire range 1 bubble of ordnance carriers, and uniquely can pull the teeth of both target lockers and deadeye types.
• Phantom II
  • Yeah. Butt-cheap ships with co-ordinate and awesome force multiplier abilities for their price. What do you think? Of course it's amazing.
  • It's a cheap place for Operations Specialists, Princess Leia, and any other mass-ship-enhancing crew to sit, and it comes with co-ordinate.
  • Nothing stops Fenn Rau preventing a c orvette spending tokens to modify dice.
  • Courier Droids letting you deploy anything with a spare crew slot at PS8 is unpleasant. It's not as good as Hyperwave Comm Scanner, but it can be considered a 'budget' version for ships with no tech slot. You can't 'win' in deployment, but you can certainly stack the deck very heavily! A B-wing squadron could buy B-Wing/E2 and Courier Droid for a point per ship, and getting a PS8 deploy for a generic ship is no laughing matter.
  • Maul. Yeah, unlimited rerolls to hit for scum and rebel fleets. Deployed on a C-ROC he's nice but on a CR-90 with a big turbolaser broadside......that's gonna hurt . And unlike the (admittedly cheaper) Wookie Commandoes, you have a crew slot free for the awesome fleet-boosting crew like Leia or Riekan.
• Resistance Bomber
  • Pretty much what has currently been said. A Huge ship cannot realistically dodge launched bombs, and a pattern-spread of proton bombs can break one in two in a turn. Against well-shielded corvettes, this is one of the best cap-ship killers going - not least because it also forces the ship's escorts to get out of your way or be caught in the blast.
  • Rattled is probably not going to trigger more than once simply because Crimson Leader is likely to be turbolasered to [censored] the moment she pokes her nose into range.
  • Given that their turrets are pretty awful, Targeting Synchroniser lets them play target lock buddy for someone more useful as they make their attack run.
  • Crossfire can be useful but only if you can provide them a steady supply of focus tokens (which advanced optics doesn't). For generics it's not great, but something like Jyn Erso can provide a big stack to boost up Crimson Leader if she's leading clearing the way for a wedge of T-70s (or Rey).
• TIE Silencer
  • I'm still not a fan of debris gambit, simply because most of the ships which would want a small-ship-only ability to add an evade action for a 2 point EPT already have the ability to evade naturally. Paired obstacles at range 1 are likely to make it better but I'm still not convinced.
    • Maybe it might work on HWKs to keep support HWKs alive longer?
  • Blackout - getting obstructed shots is easy with lots of terrain and huge ships, which means a cut-price blackout (trick shot) gives a lot of firepower for not much cost.
  • I think the generics are probably too expensive to use as regular gunships. As @ficklegreendice noted, autothrusters is not the same as TIE/x7. Yes, they can get FCS, but cheap, well armed ships with FCS are not exactly hard to get (compare to B-wings and even Lambda Shuttles). More importantly, FCS is 'the next time you fire at the same target' - given the rate that stuff dies in epic, it's not as great an upgrade as it is in 'normal' games.

Something that needs to be pointed out is the Scurrg with title, trajectory simulator, extra munitions, Genius and the bomb of your choice (let's go proton). In my mind, that is a far more effective use of the trajectory simulator than any other bomber as they can hit the enemy force on turn 1. Every other bomber may need one round to get closer before being effective, which, unless you have tons of them, will mean their end by focused fire / capital ship fire.

Scrambler missiles may end up being really disruptive against alpha strikes and ordannce carriers. That's going to be hard to tell.

Courrier droids should not be understimated on the C-Roc or a ranged configured Corvette. Assuming both players bring huge ships, then the ability to deploy it at PS 8 is a major, major difference. Controlling the range of engagement is critical.

Maul... yeah, I hope he'll get FAQed before he gets to jump in a Rebel Corvette. That would be really, really nasty.

1 hour ago, dotswarlock said:

Courrier droids should not be understimated on the C-Roc or a ranged configured Corvette. Assuming both players bring huge ships, then the ability to deploy it at PS 8 is a major, major difference. Controlling the range of engagement is critical.

Agreed. Definitely on an ordnance tubes Raider, which wants ideally to set up 'head on' more or less directly across the board from you, whilst a turbolaser corvette wants to hold the range at 4-5 for as long as possible....

1 hour ago, dotswarlock said:

Something that needs to be pointed out is the Scurrg with title, trajectory simulator, extra munitions, Genius and the bomb of your choice (let's go proton). In my mind, that is a far more effective use of the trajectory simulator than any other bomber as they can hit the enemy force on turn 1. Every other bomber may need one round to get closer before being effective, which, unless you have tons of them, will mean their end by focused fire / capital ship fire.

That's a fair point. It is unique (thankfully) because the [System] and [Salvaged Astromech] requires the Havoc title, but even one proton bomb going off in the middle of your lines can be scary as heck. For extra stupidity, add engine upgrade and throw a free action across from co-ordinate with AP5 to get a bank 1 boost before you activate.

7 hours ago, Parakitor said:

I'm excited to run a Star Wing with Seismic Torpedoes. Yeah, it doesn't synergize with Advanced SLAM, but blowing up obstacles over and over with Reload sounds great! Unfortunately, if it really is that fun, it's going to force me to buy another ARC-170. Yuck.

Gunboat + Seismic Torpedo + Experimental interface.

You can pop an obstacle every turn

Oh, another thing... and it is such a small and so easily overlooked thing.

The basic Kimogila is PS 3. I'm not sure what the epic meta looks like in other areas, but in ours, lists with swarms are a thing, and those swarms are PS 1 or 2 (depending on the faction). Having a 22 point ship with long range scanners (target lock), a focus and the ability to prevent an enemy from using focus or evade defensively could end up being a major asset.

10 minutes ago, dotswarlock said:

Oh, another thing... and it is such a small and so easily overlooked thing.

The basic Kimogila is PS 3. I'm not sure what the epic meta looks like in other areas, but in ours, lists with swarms are a thing, and those swarms are PS 1 or 2 (depending on the faction). Having a 22 point ship with long range scanners (target lock), a focus and the ability to prevent an enemy from using focus or evade defensively could end up being a major asset.

Yeah, that's terrifying. I think the trick is to try to shoot it down at range 5, and also try to sitting out, rather than flying straight ahead in formation.

But the very fact that you have to think about your tactics just to theater that one, cheap ship...well, I guess it tells you just how good it is. (I say 'one', but you'll likely run two in epic to keep the bullseye pressure on).

17 minutes ago, Crimsonwarlock said:

Gunboat + Seismic Torpedo + Experimental interface.

You can pop an obstacle every turn

Drooling.

18 minutes ago, dotswarlock said:

Oh, another thing... and it is such a small and so easily overlooked thing.

The basic Kimogila is PS 3. I'm not sure what the epic meta looks like in other areas, but in ours, lists with swarms are a thing, and those swarms are PS 1 or 2 (depending on the faction). Having a 22 point ship with long range scanners (target lock), a focus and the ability to prevent an enemy from using focus or evade defensively could end up being a major asset.

Long Range Scanners isn't generally an issue unless you're desperate to fly a long range bomber, because shots fired turn 1 is pretty common. PS3 rather than PS2 is nice, though.

At the same time, epic is the one time we tend to see the PS4 generics come out to play (although the fact that the elite generic is PS5 in turn means your point is still a valid one!).

The easy answer to doing nasty things in epic remains massed salvo-splash-damage the heck out of your opponents, so PS5 deadeye harpoons sounds nasty

The Silencer is pretty useless in Epic for the most part. Epic relies on the use of cheap, efficient generics, usually things with missile/torpedo/turret slots. The Silencer is too expensive to be spammed. I can see Blackout as a decent ace for your list though. Tuck him behind a huge ship and fire away.

Maul is going to be bonkers on a CR90 as long as you hide Ezra somewhere in your 300 points.

31 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Long Range Scanners isn't generally an issue unless you're desperate to fly a long range bomber, because shots fired turn 1 is pretty common. PS3 rather than PS2 is nice, though.

At the same time, epic is the one time we tend to see the PS4 generics come out to play (although the fact that the elite generic is PS5 in turn means your point is still a valid one!).

The easy answer to doing nasty things in epic remains massed salvo-splash-damage the heck out of your opponents, so PS5 deadeye harpoons sounds nasty

Now take that train of thought, and push it one step further:

- You can mass generics

- Answer to mass generics is to mass EPT generic PS 5 with harpoons

- Answer to mass generic PS5 with harpoons is to have a single high PS with a scrambler missile to dirsupt everything. Two of them if you are paranoid.

- That scrambler missile won't do any good against a mass generic kimogila with long range sensors, because they'll sacrifice their target locks

Rock, paper, scissors, lizard and Spock... add bombs just to screw things up and you start getting a headache. Every time that I think of a combo, there is something else in this wave that can neutralize it (which was not a prelevant before). Epic is going to become very hard to predict

And another so easily overlooked upgrade that can play a large role in epic: contraband cybernetics on Kihraxz with title (so it's free). When swarms are concerned, there is usually a round of shooting at range 2-3, followed by a bump fest. Afterwards, a k-turn will likely follow on at least part of the fleet. The Kihraxz is one of the few ships that can pull of its k-turn successfully (because its a speed 4 or 5) but by using contraband cybernetics, it can still have its action (but being double stressed, he will lose his action for the following turn).

Still, one action "right now" might mean one less enemy to worry about on the following turn, so for a free upgrade, it could very well be worth it.

You’re forgetting the craziness that is the C-ROC with both Maul and Zuckuss aboard.

Courier droid also also makes placing epic ships interesting.

Of course reload is huge too

Maul crew in epic, free rerolls for days for 3 points, beats dragging Jonus around.

7 hours ago, dotswarlock said:

Epic is going to become very hard to predict

Yeah, now if only anyone would play it...

7 hours ago, ScummyRebel said:

Maul is going to be bonkers on a CR90 as long as you hide Ezra somewhere in your 300 points.

Why? From my understanding of the rules, it won't work on a huge ship. The rerolls are conditional on taking stress tokens.

21 minutes ago, That One Guy said:

Why? From my understanding of the rules, it won't work on a huge ship. The rerolls are conditional on taking stress tokens.

Zuckuss sets a precedent. He works fine on the C-ROC. Basically, a Huge Ship immediately discards stress tokens (among some others) but still technically receives one, so the ability works, IIRC