I am firmly of the opinion that huge ships should not be required to be Epic. This allows more people to participate and have fun, even if they don't own a huge ship. And since I'm there to have fun, if they demolish my huge ship, then at least they had a good time, and will likely play again. Honestly, the huge ships have so many weird rules, I understand if people aren't interested. For me, it adds that extra layer of complexity that makes Epic games engaging. My favorite is a Gozanti support ship, which doesn't play the way most people expect a huge ship to play.

I do need to give Epic: Fighter Squadrons a try. Looks fun!

You can have an epic game with no epic ships and it's still great fun.

• If you want a really interesting experience, though, but don't want to draw in too many rules, remember the provision for "using huge ships as obstacles".
• A huge ship takes the place of 3 obstacles, but is a very different type of obstacle compared to a normal asteroid or debris marker:
  • It does damage like a asteroid, and obstructs attacks
  • It follows the rules for colliding with other ships (you can't land on it, and are pushed back 'up' your maneuver until clear)
• Theoretically, instead of 12 obstacles in 6 pairs, you could play a dogfight in a 'fleet engagement' with both players placing 2 huge ships (since they can neither shoot nor be attacked, it doesn't really matter if they pick corvettes or transports). 4 Huge Ship bases (or even cardboard cut-outs to represent them) can give a very different feel to the board, because obstacles that can actually block a move are very odd to deal with.

Actually, one of the better epic games we did was a while ago using a load of 40k terrain for a 'low-altitude dogfight' for Takodana

• Trees (removable on a base) were debris
• Rock Spires (removable on a base) were asteroids
• Large hills were considered huge ship obstacles

Really wanting to run that again; it'd be a good charity/intro/fun event - I've got lists in my back pocket for 6 players; each with a 100 point 'squadron' - 3 TIE/fo squadrons of 5 TIE/fo each (Epsilon, Zeta and Omega) and 3 T-70 squadrons of 3 T-70s each (Blue, Red and Black).

5 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

You can have an epic game with no epic ships and it's still great fun.

• If you want a really interesting experience, though, but don't want to draw in too many rules, remember the provision for "using huge ships as obstacles".
• A huge ship takes the place of 3 obstacles, but is a very different type of obstacle compared to a normal asteroid or debris marker:
  • It does damage like a asteroid, and obstructs attacks
  • It follows the rules for colliding with other ships (you can't land on it, and are pushed back 'up' your maneuver until clear)
• Theoretically, instead of 12 obstacles in 6 pairs, you could play a dogfight in a 'fleet engagement' with both players placing 2 huge ships (since they can neither shoot nor be attacked, it doesn't really matter if they pick corvettes or transports). 4 Huge Ship bases (or even cardboard cut-outs to represent them) can give a very different feel to the board, because obstacles that can actually block a move are very odd to deal with.

Actually, one of the better epic games we did was a while ago using a load of 40k terrain for a 'low-altitude dogfight' for Takodana

• Trees (removable on a base) were debris
• Rock Spires (removable on a base) were asteroids
• Large hills were considered huge ship obstacles

Really wanting to run that again; it'd be a good charity/intro/fun event - I've got lists in my back pocket for 6 players; each with a 100 point 'squadron' - 3 TIE/fo squadrons of 5 TIE/fo each (Epsilon, Zeta and Omega) and 3 T-70 squadrons of 3 T-70s each (Blue, Red and Black).

Excellent ideas all. My favorite is the huge obstacle variant. I would even go further and make it the cr90 and raider placed roughly mid field parrallel to each other. Should cause a furball around them and be very thematic of two ships duking it out while players control their fighter support.

Don’t know if it would dookie the play but maybe each round roll a d6 or something for each huge ship and that is how much face down damage the opposing team takes distributed as you like on any enemy within say range 2. You could even conceivably destroy the other huge ship!