New Forum category for epic! Cool.

I've never played an Epic game before, so I've never bothered with any of the Epic ships.

Is Epic any fun to play without utilizing any of the epic ships in the game?

I’ve never played either. We have our first epic match scheduled for the first Friday in February.

It can be fun without epic ships. For some people. It can quickly devolve to a standard game at a larger size taking triple the time, so if that isn't your thing it'll get dull fast.

I love using the big epic ships. It's a lot of fun. I don't play epic to smash my opponent though, I'm going in for fun and thematics.

Yay - Epic forum!!!

IMO Epic is fun even w/o Epic ships, but it's much more fun with Epic ships

V.

Oh, and also, hash. tag. first. Go me.

Epic is fun due to being able to use those ships that hardly see table time, like a mass of B-wings!

Playing with an Epic ship vs a straight out swarm can be fun, though Epic vs Epic is better.

2 hours ago, jwilliamson12 said:

New Forum category for epic! Cool.

I've never played an Epic game before, so I've never bothered with any of the Epic ships.

Is Epic any fun to play without utilizing any of the epic ships in the game?

Yes, it's great!

I've only played twice at Epic. The first was as a side event at the European Championship, using an improvised Scum list with lots of Firesprays, Lancers and Scyks. In the two games we played on this event only one rival team used an Epic ship (a Raider)... and both games were insanely fun.

The other was at my game's club, on a totally casual game. It was the first Epic game for everybody but me, so we decided to not use Epic ships as it would be too many extra rules and upgrades to take in account. It was still amazing.

Where we play. Epic night. Must bring one epic ship.

I think if both sides agree not to bring a huge ship for an “epic dogfight” it’s a way to dabble in the format before committing the big bucks.

In reality, I’m not actually happy flying epic without them. They add flavor to the board and can really turn heads at the game store if it’s not a common occurrence out there.

I played an Epic Game, with only 2 Epic Ships on one side (CROC). Imperials had only small ships.
It was great fun !

Will play like that again

I play Epic far more often without the Huge ships. I try to design flights of 4 generics kitted out the same way, each with a duty (alpha strike, tank busters (whether those are the Huge ships or the tanky large ships), or clean up.

IMHO, the best way the play Epic is to have a mission!!

I'll never pack an epic list without an epic ship because they're so fun. That said I'll never turn down an epic game with someone who doesn't have them. Though I will offer them a spare to use for the game if they wanna try the big stuff. So far both guys who accepted to play a loaner bought one since for epic play.

29 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

I play Epic far more often without the Huge ships. I try to design flights of 4 generics kitted out the same way, each with a duty (alpha strike, tank busters (whether those are the Huge ships or the tanky large ships), or clean up.

IMHO, the best way the play Epic is to have a mission!!

I love doing this as well. A group of Y's or Bombers with Ion Torps to take out Huge ships and swarms. Some A's or Scys to sneak in behind the enemy and flank. And a group X's or Kihraxz to defend the Huge or escort the bombers.

Sometimes there can be issues if one side has all small generic, fairly efficient ships vs a slow moving giant like the Huge ships. Not always, but it is often an advantage for the small ships. If you set up some ground rules with your opponent ahead of time though you usually get some fun, even games. I recently played where my opponent didn't own any huge but we both agreed to run some named ships and some ships with a fair amount of upgrades - the kind of ships that are vulnerable to the mass focus fire that epic can bring.

I brought a slim falcon with Lando and Nunb and a transport kitted to give action support to my squad and he brought some bomb laden Scurrgs so we both ended up with 9 ships. It was pretty even until I lit up 7 ships with one Ion torp shot and that pretty much sealed his fate. My fighter screens did their job protecting the transport. He only took one shot at the Transport taking off one shield for his last shot of the game before we called it.

2 hours ago, Kharnete said:

So many different models. And those sexy Red ties. This is why I love higher point level games.

Epic is...more flavorful with Huge ships. We've done a few without, though. It totally works, and is still a lot of fun. Much more thematic tham "standard" play. If you still want to try to get some of that Epic flavor, just do a house rule that at least half the points per side must be on Large bases. It will help keep the game a little shorter, too. The one completely non-Epic game we had went six! hours.

Of course, Team Epic makes everything more...Epic. Coordinating with another commander can really mess up your list. "Wait, you're not going to follow my strafing run on the Raider? Aaaaargh!"

I've heard that Epic can be a little unbalanced if one side includes an Epic ship and the other doesn't as you can usually spend your points more effectively sticking to small ships due to the amount of combined firepower they can bring against the 0 Agility huge ships. As such, when we had an Epic tournament in our area last year the organisers made it compulsory to include at least one huge ship (I took 2 Rebel Transports, this turned out to be a bad idea).

I think games not involving huge ships can work though without being unbalanced, you just need to agree some ground rules with your opponent in advance.

What is this “Epic Play With no Epic Ships” that you speak of? Does not compute.

It is no secret that Huge ships is one definitive feature that sets Epic apart from than just a giant game of Standard X-wing. Fortunately for us it isn't the only one. Scum has something that can be done in Epic that cannot be replicated in 3 separate but continuous games of standard and that is with their IG-2000 formation. Thing is that all 4 IG-2000 fly differently than just another set of Brobots from Standard. So there is an Epic experience that cannot be done is Standard without having a huge ship.

What FFG needs to do is to have more formations like said IG-2000, ways that could be piecemeal set up in standard for good competitive flair but really come together in Epic like an Episode of Voltron where the Megazord is formed. I have an idea of a Battle for Yavin pack, it is mostly wave 1 ships (X-wing Y-wings and TIE Fighters) but with unique titles and the Squadron Leaders that can have ships share effects thus making an Epic TIE Fighter more than just a swarm ship but really the sum of all parts. Something like Gold Leader sharing all astromech abilities with another ships with a "Gold" title or like Red Leader sharing all "Red" title abilities and Black Leader (TIE Fighters) sharing tokens from all ship with a "Black Title" abilities. Something that could be used to not only bring back X-wings in the meta but also bring Epic a real flavor of epicness and large scale battles.

Epic is balanced for epic ships which are overcosted by a bit. serious power creep in recent waves hurt them too. if you play all small ships or ordinance and dont bring your own epic, it is unfair to the other player. the format rules say each player must have an epic ship simply because if i spend 130 points on an imperial raider, it should survive a few turns and not get alpha striked into dust

16 minutes ago, Vontoothskie said:

Epic is balanced for epic ships which are overcosted by a bit. serious power creep in recent waves hurt them too. if you play all small ships or ordinance and dont bring your own epic, it is unfair to the other player. the format rules say each player must have an epic ship simply because if i spend 130 points on an imperial raider, it should survive a few turns and not get alpha striked into dust

I've heard of some house rules that change that a bit such as allowing huge ships to have multiple blue target lock tokens without weapons engineer (it still can't have to red target lock tokens on the same ship like reading and only does 1 target lock token per target lock action without weapons engineer). I think that might balance huge ships mroe on the shooting side, the ramming is a bit OP but the fact that it is the only true weapon against smaller ships swarming it nerfing it without some super buff to huge ships (see above) would remove them from any sort of competitive standing in huge ships. I thought of a single green dice (can be modified with focus or evade tokens) as a way for small and large ships to dodge given that they have agility >0, not stressed and not ionized.

Recently played a game of Epic: Fighter Squadrons and it was a blast!

300 points of small-base ships only. We ended up trading points-for-points until the game devolved into a final showdown of our aces. It was up in the air for victory until my buddy bumped his Fenn Rau at the pivotal moment of the battle, causing him to lose his flanking position over Kylo and Blackout and allowing me to take out his other Protectorate Ace and Viktor Hel.

Honestly, it was a lot of fun but some takeaways were that 1.) we ended up not even using half the size of the board and 2.) I think we would’ve both gotten the same ‘feel’ of an Epic game at 200 points on a 3x3. I think for the Epic: Fighter Squadrons format, 300 points of small bases on a 3x3 isn’t too bad, but it would definitely skew list variety towards PtL repositioners over other options, that is unless we cut the obstacles from 6 on a 3x3 to 4 or 5.

And shameless plug: My personal instagram profile in the above link is almost 100% X-Wing content so feel free to check it out!

You can play Epic with no Epic Ships. Even more...perhaps your first play will advance more smoothly without them.

Epic Ships are awesome. I love them but to my taste Epic is more about Cinematic experience and less about Epic Meta listbuilding.

If you play "by the book" and build optimal 300 pts list weird things will happen. Per example abusing Stress generating Crewmembers.

Try to avoid simply "kill them all" games. Not much fun 300 pts 3x6 game that 100 pts 3x3 one. You can include special obstacles. Ioniced Gas Clouds. Ice Asteroids. Mynock's Swarm... Let your imagination guide your games.

As a sidenote about game balance, if you include Epic Ships, both sides should deploy them. And if you play "Do it yourself your fleet" better if you must field a minimum number of pts invested in Epic Ships.

I think 300 pts without epic ships is pretty cool. Lots of death on both sides. I think build them as squads and fly them like squads for bonus fun. Make a Gold Squadron and a Green Squadron and a Scimitar Squadron, etc.

I prefer at least one huge on the table in an epic match. I don’t mind if only one side has one, though, as I find asymmetrical battles interesting. I had a blast a couple of weeks ago with a Raider surrounded by cheap TIEs and interceptors against a group of upgraded rebels led by Han Solo.

Han may have shot, first, but he was also the first to die.