Since Stress on a Huge Ship means nothing. What are some methods you have used to limit them, but still keep them effective?

Thanks,

Currently they are not a problem for Scum.

I want to actually fly my CR90 with Maul before I make a decision about him in a multiple shot corvette (because making it work costs approx 200pts and it may turn out reasonably balanced), however if Scum get a corvette using both together might be horrendous.

And then I suspect that both crew will need a 'non-huge' restriction.

I think the house rule has to be a targeted errata:

Maul gains Small or Large ship only . In the event of S&V getting their own gunship, you'd probably have to also give that restriction to Zuckuss and possibly Dengar too.

The alternative would be a house-rule that said that "any upgrade which causes its ship to receive stress as part of an effect cannot be equipped to a Huge Ships ." I'm not really in favor of this, because I rather like the idea of crew like Fleet Officers or General Hux or Bossk on a Huge ship, and they hardly seem as degenerative there as elsewhere (and in fact Fleet Officers and General Hux feel thematic on a huge, and the cost of an action very much balances out the fact that they aren't assigning stress to their ship). Additionally, it wouldn't address the issue of crew like Dengar who would let his Huge Ship reroll two dice on every attack it made against unique enemies, which in many cases is just as good as Maul.

3 hours ago, Gilarius said:

Currently they are not a problem for Scum.

I want to actually fly my CR90 with Maul before I make a decision about him in a multiple shot corvette (because making it work costs approx 200pts and it may turn out reasonably balanced), however if Scum get a corvette using both together might be horrendous.

And then I suspect that both crew will need a 'non-huge' restriction.

As someone who's flown offense-focused CR90s quite a bit, I can tell you without hesitation that he's broken beyond belief on one, despite not having personally played it. As long as you're using non-ordnance hardpoints, for 2pts, Maul means you never need to invest in things like Sensor Teams or Weapons Engineers, while also drastically improving the offense of ALL of your attacks every round, not just two of them. This also frees up your CR90 to do a Coordinate every round, since it never needs to TL.

So, compare:
Standard: Sensor Team (4pts), Weapon Engineer (3pts), TL Action, TL-rerolls on two attacks against different targets each turn = 7 Points
Maul: Maul (2pts), "Free" Coordinate Action, rerolls on ALL attacks every round, even against the same target = 2 Points

Non-TL rerolls are always better than TL-rerolls, because they give you so much more flexibility -- shoot primary target until it is dead, then shoot next primary target. With TLs, you're locked target may die before you shoot, or it may survive after you spent your only lock on it, so now your next attack has no mods because your second lock is on someone else.

So, Maul is laughably broken, especially given that the CR90 is basically always taking Tantive IV to bring the Weapon Engineer and Sensor Team, whereas the Maul Corvette could bring Dodonna's Pride (saving points, AGAIN) while also getting TWO "free" Coordinate Actions every round and still hitting drastically harder than the Sensor Team + Weapon Engineer combo.



Let me save you three hours of table-time testing: Maul is BROKEN on a CR90. Do. Not. Allow.

You are almost certainly correct, except for the point cost. To use Maul, you also need another crew carrier for Ezra or either if his ships to pilot.

A minor point, perhaps.

But the main reason I want to try him out before I ban him myself is to have a go with an awesomely good-at-shooting ship!

I have flown the CR-90 with Maul and I combined it with sensor team and Han (to transform focus results into hits). It hits hard, but so does the combination of sensor team, weapon engineer and recon specialist Esege.

The thing is that with a ship starting at 90 points (mostly reaching for the 130 plus points), it should hit hard in some fashion or another. I'll have to wait until after a few more games in the league with the new set of rules to really determine if the combination is "broken" or merely "powerful".

I see maul called a 2pt upgrade but he's minimum 6 on a cr90

3pts for maul

3pts for Ezra if you're willing to waste his ability. Need a carrier for Ezra or one of his ships so make this what 18 at least if you dont?

So for a 21+ pt upgrade I think 4 rerolls is fair.

True, you need Ezra, and apparently Maul is 3pts and not 2pts (bad memory, my apologies). Ezra you can stick anywhere as a crew ... unlike Esege or Howl or Jonus, the huge ship doesn't lose any utility if the Ezra ship gets killed or gets too far away, so it's not fair to factor the cost of Ezra's ship into Maul's cost (****, you could even just slap Ezra onto the CR90 if you didn't want another crew-capable ship... it's still cheaper than Weapon Engineer + Sensor Team).

Either way, Maul's still insanely broken. The CR90, played well, is already a force on the tables and can carry its weight plenty well-enough. As far some empirical basis for my claims: I have played in (and won) four Team Epic tournaments using a CR90 (one tournament even had 12 Teams! 12Teams at a Team Epic tournament, woohoo!) and I've flown against everything from Double Raiders to 16 "TIEs" with Stealth Device to Quad-IGs. I've also played in FFG Team Epic Events and solo Epic Events at Gencon and Origins. I suspect this is more empirical experience at "competitive" Epic X-Wing than most have had, so I'm not just theory-crafting here.


I suspect if someone thinks that a CR90 "needs" Maul to be worth its points, they haven't quite figured out how to get the most out of a CR90 on the table yet. I promise you he's absurdly broken, because I know what a CR90 without Maul can accomplish. With Maul it'd just be disgustingly effective for even fewer points while also granting the Rebel Fleet two additional "Coordinates" each round...


But if you want to put Maul on your tables and curbstomp your friends with the "Death Star" of X-Wing... well go ahead I guess! One of you will be having lots of fun!

26 minutes ago, Dabirdisdaword said:

So for a 21+ pt upgrade I think 4 rerolls is fair.

This is disingenuous. You can just put Ezra onto the CR90 for a total of 6pts and two crew slots invested. And even if you put Ezra onto another ship, it's not fair to include the cost of that ship as a tax onto the CR90, because unlike Esege or Jonus or Howlrunner, that ship Ezra is on does not need to yoke itself to the CR90 nor does the CR90 lose any utility if that ship is killed, blocked, or whatever else.

AllWings, could you post your non-Maul CR90 build? It's distinctly possible that we genuinely haven't found a really good build for it!

6 minutes ago, Gilarius said:

AllWings, could you post your non-Maul CR90 build? It's distinctly possible that we genuinely haven't found a really good build for it!

For a variety of reasons, I don't post my lists for X-Wing. It's hard enough to come up with a list that feels like "your own," run it through tests, put it through the ringer of a few tournaments, and tweak it to that perfect spot where you're happy with everything. The last thing you want to then do is go to an event and set up across from your own list, and the community has a pretty poor track record of groupthink/net-decking. Look at Dengaroo as a cautionary tale: it wins a Regional out of nowhere and within a month it makes up like 20-25% of lists at future Regionals until it gets nerfed.

Critics can say I'm just talking out my bum or whatever, and that's fine, I have nothing to prove (I also suspect posting my current particular list wouldn't convince them that the CR90 actually was good, anyways). But my advice would be to keep trying the CR90. Toy with its loadout, toy with its escorting ships. But to anyone who's Epic X-Wing Resume includes like only a half dozen casual games with a buddy, I'd advise against already jumping to the conclusion that it's trash or that it needs something like Maul to even be worth taking. Get more reps, try some totally new things, don't let yourself rely on the "Maul" crutch. Though, if that's a spot someone finds themselves in during their casual Epic games, maybe they could put Maul on a CR90 and not break anything. In which case, go for it and hopefully it lets you enjoy Epic in a new way! But please, don't let grizzled Epic Enthusiasts like me bring a Maul-CR90 to some Epic side event at Worlds or a System Open, because I can fairly confidently say that it wouldn't be pretty.

50 minutes ago, Gilarius said:

AllWings, could you post your non-Maul CR90 build? It's distinctly possible that we genuinely haven't found a really good build for it!

Weapons Engineer and Han Solo <crew>.

or

Wookie Commandos (and no maul). May put in Weapons engineer if going for a Tantive IV ordnance build.

So I don't use the maul "crutch" for one major reason. Stupidly loyal to the empire. The reason I say maul shouldn't be banned is I have not lost to a cr90 build while I ran my raider builds+jonus. That access to infinite rerolls with good arcs still beats out the infinite rerolls and (imo) poor arcs on the cr90. Them getting rerolls on the cheap might help em a bit and ain't gonna make it unsinkable or now from what I've seen. Epic red dice are worth less than non epic reds. It's not a free upgrade. We'll wait and see if ffg changes things but I sure wont be house rule banning them.

Also empirical evidence sure sounded anecdotal.

"I have lots of experience, all the experience. I know it's good. No I wont show you the numbers because trust me they're just great."

Only works on US voters. I am not one of those.

huge ships need buffs lately, so to me Zuckus and Maul are fine in epic as a sort of soft buff. A zero agility ship can go down in one round of fire easily, with its only real defence being dangerous offence and taking ships with it. to risk losing 70 to 150 points in an alpha strike you need an incentive. also capital ships are the centerpiece of epic, they should play better than their weaker smaller brethrin

4 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

huge ships need buffs lately, so to me Zuckus and Maul are fine in epic as a sort of soft buff. A zero agility ship can go down in one round of fire easily, with its only real defence being dangerous offence and taking ships with it. to risk losing 70 to 150 points in an alpha strike you need an incentive. also capital ships are the centerpiece of epic, they should play better than their weaker smaller brethrin

I don't think they should be insanely powerful, but it is no secret that 150 points on a huge ship is no where near 150 points of smaller ships and that includes Maul or Zuckuss.

I say it is reasonable that if you spend 70 points on a ship it should be able to handle 70 points of other ships . That being said it is able to do 70 points of damage (calculating partial points for ships that are not destroyed) or at the very least take 70 points of small/large ships to take down 70 points of huge ships.

Right now Epic point investment seems more like 40/70 (40 points of small/large ships = 70 points of huge ship). It is getting better, much better. It used to be way worse like 20/70.

Dengar's fine, Zuckuss is a bit of stretch(but currently restricted to a one shot ship) but Maul is absolutely broken in Epic. It eliminates several upgrade combinations and is a must have.

14 hours ago, Dabirdisdaword said:

The reason I say maul shouldn't be banned is I have not lost to a cr90 build while I ran my raider builds+jonus.

Well, that's all well and good but it has not been my experience. While flying a CR90 I've paired against Raiders three times (once was a Dual Raider), with all of them using Jonus, of course. The CR90 sunk all four Raiders and never went down itself.

But don't take my word for it! Just yesterday the Outryder Cup First Round featured a CR90 absolutely eviscerating a Jonus Raider and the rest of the Imperials' 300pts in what looked to be awfully close to a 300-0 match... now just imagine if it would have had Maul!

I made it about 5 minutes into the commentary before skipping towards the end and yeah that looked like a one sided beat down. Part of me wants to watch it to see what mistakes were made but... That commentary is just... ugh.

My suggestion, is that anything that works by giving stress to an epic ship, can only be used for a maximum of 2 stress per turn. This way both maul and Zuckuss can at max turn 2 dice. Wait till you face the C-roc with both, and the ability to add +2 dice to a shot. You will see how broken it really is.

34 minutes ago, eagletsi111 said:

My suggestion, is that anything that works by giving stress to an epic ship, can only be used for a maximum of 2 stress per turn. This way both maul and Zuckuss can at max turn 2 dice. Wait till you face the C-roc with both, and the ability to add +2 dice to a shot. You will see how broken it really is.

...or you can assign Ion tokens instead.

55 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

...or you can assign Ion tokens instead.

Hmm, this is actually a pretty elegant solution. i guess the only worry would be that corvettes (of the CR90 and possible eventual Scum persuasion) could just max out on Ordnance Tube missiles, thus not requiring any energy for their weaponry. And this is not an uncommon build. Then they could pretty aggressively abuse Zuckuss/Maul on every shot, and the only real downside would be they wouldn't have energy to Recover (but this just means they'll be dedicated to Reinforcing).

1 hour ago, Dabirdisdaword said:

I made it about 5 minutes into the commentary before skipping towards the end and yeah that looked like a one sided beat down. Part of me wants to watch it to see what mistakes were made but... That commentary is just... ugh.

That's about three minutes farther than me! I too just peeked ahead. That was perhaps the most vulgar and juvenile commentary I've ever heard.

But the basic data point stands in that a CR90 Rebel fleet pretty much "PERFECTION!"ed (read in Mortal Combat voice) a Jonus Raider Imperial list, and quite likely without any egregious mistake or mistakes being made by the Imperial. And this matches all of my own personal experience with that sort of match-up. So I really can't see a case for thinking Maul is acceptable, let alone necessary, for the CR90's kit.

1 minute ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

That's about three minutes farther than me! I too just peeked ahead. That was perhaps the most vulgar and juvenile commentary I've ever heard.

But the basic data point stands in that a CR90 Rebel fleet pretty much "PERFECTION!"ed (read in Mortal Combat voice) a Jonus Raider Imperial list, and quite likely without any egregious mistake or mistakes being made by the Imperial. And this matches all of my own personal experience with that sort of match-up. So I really can't see a case for thinking Maul is acceptable, let alone necessary, for the CR90's kit.

Necessary no.... acceptable... well the guys I play obviously ain't doing it right so I'll still be quiet about maul. But if he gets an epic nerf/ban I won't be shocked.

I will say I saw one major error on the raiders part during my skip through and that was not bringing all his arcs into play. Go in with 3 shots instead of 5 driving a raider and you'll have a bad time

1 minute ago, Dabirdisdaword said:

I will say I saw one major error on the raiders part during my skip through and that was not bringing all his arcs into play. Go in with 3 shots instead of 5 driving a raider and you'll have a bad time

Interesting, this may have been a tactical error.

But, I'd caution that on the other hand, it might have been a feature of a his battle plan and not a bug . I know some of the better guys around here accept that their Raider will not best the CR90, and that they'll be getting a section crippled quickly, and possibly even in the first round of combat, especially so now that Supercharged Powercells are a thing. So what they do is accept that fact, and approach such that their aft section is obstructed by the fore section. This way, when the fore section is (inevitably) crippled, it can still offer some offensive output, since it gets its "zombie" primary attack and retains its "zombie" hardpoint upgrade in the front. So the front can keep fighting on--though at reduced efficiency--while effectively shielding the now-invincible aft section from the CR90. Which is better than having both sections crippled and the Raider destroyed entirely. So, it may well have been intentional or perhaps was just a lucky accident? Because around here, the savvy Raider players do this on purpose when facing a CR90 (pending the kits, of course).

Note : The CR90 can't as easily use this strategy, as it doesn't retain any hardpoints on its crippled sections.

22 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

For a variety of reasons, I don't post my lists for X-Wing. It's hard enough to come up with a list that feels like "your own," run it through tests, put it through the ringer of a few tournaments, and tweak it to that perfect spot where you're happy with everything. The last thing you want to then do is go to an event and set up across from your own list, and the community has a pretty poor track record of groupthink/net-decking. Look at Dengaroo as a cautionary tale: it wins a Regional out of nowhere and within a month it makes up like 20-25% of lists at future Regionals until it gets nerfed.

Critics can say I'm just talking out my bum or whatever, and that's fine, I have nothing to prove (I also suspect posting my current particular list wouldn't convince them that the CR90 actually was good, anyways). But my advice would be to keep trying the CR90. Toy with its loadout, toy with its escorting ships. But to anyone who's Epic X-Wing Resume includes like only a half dozen casual games with a buddy, I'd advise against already jumping to the conclusion that it's trash or that it needs something like Maul to even be worth taking. Get more reps, try some totally new things, don't let yourself rely on the "Maul" crutch. Though, if that's a spot someone finds themselves in during their casual Epic games, maybe they could put Maul on a CR90 and not break anything. In which case, go for it and hopefully it lets you enjoy Epic in a new way! But please, don't let grizzled Epic Enthusiasts like me bring a Maul-CR90 to some Epic side event at Worlds or a System Open, because I can fairly confidently say that it wouldn't be pretty.

yeah netlisting is trash. its what got me outof MTG, turns a strategy game into follow the leader