Here is a thread to list some cool tips, tricks and hints that you have used or seen in epic play. Some might be cool combinations of upgrades that create powerful combos, but others might simply be cards or pilots that are rarely seen in standard play, but are very powerful in epic. I will start :

Non-faction specific

Quad laser cannons and tactician : after that enemy fighter made its initial attack run, nothing will complexify its life more than the potential of 2 stress from a quad laser cannon.

Decoy, swarm tactics or Roark : anything that can boost the PS rating of a huge ship and trigger all of its weapon systems before the enemy can fire can make a huge difference.

Courier droid : place that epic ship at PS8. Positionning is very important.

Scrambler missile : practically unused in standard format, the scrambler missile can stop an alpha strike if fired early. With a good asteroid placement, this might mitigate a lot of damage.

Empire

Captain Kagi (no upgrades required): nothing screws up a standard missile or torpedo alpha strike quite as well as Kagi, especially if your opponent is using long range scanners or sensor team. At 10 hull/shield, he can blunt an alpha strike and at PS8, he might just fire too!

Dormitz with 2 Hypwerave Comm Caster : start closer to the enemy huge ship and let the rest of your fleet spawn with 2 focus or evades.

Upsilon-class shuttle with FCS, targeting synchroniser and weapon engineer : preferably followed by bombers, this little shuttle can fire, get target locks and then help those missiles / torpedoes launch at their maximum potential. Use of swarm tactics might help this combo fire faster.

Howlrunner or Captain Jonus escorting a Raider : free rerolls, always fun.

Tie defender / D with tractor beam and ruthlessness : repetitive splash damage, repositionning your opponent, lowered agility and can be a pain to destroy. Having multiple of those can start to get really nasty.

Rebel Alliance

Maul on a CR-90 : Infinite rerolls on attacks.

Han (crew) or Esege escorting a CR-90 : transform those focuses into hits.

CR-90, single turbo laser and Baze : want to destroy a high agility target, but already used the primary attack? Fire at another elusive target with the single turbo laser, hope to miss and then trigger Baze to fire at your real target afterwards.

Green squadron pilot, trick shot, A-Wing test pilot, selflessness, chardaan refit : at 18 points, this ship can absorb a huge blow thanks to selflessness. If it can absorb a 6 or 7 hit attack from a CR-90 that targets your Nym, then it just saved the day.

Nym with trajectory simulator and bomb(s) of your choice : this one is pretty obvious. The Rebel ability to delay a bomb explosion can really help to block off a corridor.

Captain Rex : assign the suppressive fire condition to an epic ship. He’ll probably die, but if the enemy has to focus on a 14 point ship, that still plays in your favor.

Scum

Azmorigan and courrier droid : place your huge ship at PS 8, transform the courrier droid into Vizago who transforms one of your cargo into something else. Transform Azmorigan into something else. Not necessarilly an optimal combo, but it surely is adaptive.

Vaksai with tracer, guidance ship and munition failsafe : the ship is relatively good and the missile is free. If it hits then you are looking at a target lock for all allies, making an interesting alpha strike at PS2. Having more than one Vaksai might be advisable.

Unkar, Vizago and cloaking device : cloak and transform your cloaking device into a dead man switch. On the next round, decloak, jump in the middle of the formation and act as a blocker, inflicting tractor beam tokens. You would be surprised at how long Unkar can last when the enemy does not want to take some splash damage in the face.

Oh and a very, very simple one (which can be combined with the other):

Vaksai and contraband cybernetics: it's a free upgrade. After the initial close range encounter, chances are that you will want to k-turn. The Vaksai has a nice 4 or 5 k-turn which helps to really jump over the enemy formation. Contraband cybernetics allow you to still have your action, at the cost of an additional stress. In epic play, where a ship can easily die in a turn, having an action sooner rather than later and using it to deal extra damage can make a difference. Doing it with an upgrade that was free feels good too!

Etahn in epic is very underrated. Especially if he can get close enough to an enemy huge. They really dont like crits.

Ion torpedoes. 4 dice vs 0 agility huge means you are gonna hit. Huge dont like Ions since it strips their energy. And the spash ion control really messes with enemy formations. PS 4 Y-Wings (rebel or scum) are my preferred delivery platform.

Maul doesn't have infinite rerolls (despite what some on this forum may claim). Also the jury is still out on Esege until FFG gives us an F.A.Q. section in the Huge ship rules.

Opportunist always procs against Huge ships because they don't have focus or evade tokens. Liberal use of support craft can make for some hard-hitting ships. I use TIE Advanced with Opportunist and Advanced Targeting Computer: 2 dice + 1 for Opportunist + crit for having a target lock. At range 1, you have a 4 dice attack with a crit tacked on!

This one I took for granted, but let's put it here anyway: do not underestimated the lowly Tie academy, scum Z-95 or Rebel A-Wing prototype pilot. Even a single one can cause catastrophic consequences for your opponent. Sure, they are low PS 1 pilots, but if they cause a bottle neck and multiple bumps on the enemy side, it could en up costing your opponent multiple actions (think 5 to 7 fewer focus tokens on the board). For a 12 or 15 points, a lowly PS 1 pilot can cause a LOT of damage.

29 minutes ago, Parakitor said:

Opportunist always procs against Huge ships because they don't have focus or evade tokens. Liberal use of support craft can make for some hard-hitting ships. I use TIE Advanced with Opportunist and Advanced Targeting Computer: 2 dice + 1 for Opportunist + crit for having a target lock. At range 1, you have a 4 dice attack with a crit tacked on!

It needs to be errata to include reinforce tokens

• Youngster - note that TIE fighters, TIE/fo and TIE/sf all benefit from his ability. Provided you can offer bonus action or rerolls from other sources (Howlrunner, Expertise), Expose goes from a bad joke to terrifying.
• Targeting Webs - Fire Control System and Targeting Synchroniser was mentioned by @dotswarlock above, but remember that the TIE/sf can carry this combination as well as the Upsilon. Watching the blue token of a target lock pinball round your squad as you shoot is a very satisfying experience.
• Darth Vader - provided you've got the recover actions to deal with the fallout, Darth Vader behind a Raider's multiple guns can make for a terrifying blizzard of critical damage. A Vader/Tactician/Quad Laser 'Flak Raider' can decimate a cloud of light fighters with ease.

15 hours ago, Marinealver said:

Maul doesn't have infinite rerolls (despite what some on this forum may claim).

Could do with a formal confirmation but I'm not convinced Maul doesn't work.

Argument Against:

• Huge ships do not receive stress tokens
• Maul's ability is " you may receive any number of stress tokens to reroll that many attack dice ."
  • This makes receiving the stress tokens a prerequisite cost rather than a result
• If you do not receive the stress token(s), you don't get the reroll(s) (precedent: Captain Yorr's FAQ where Soontir Fel doesn't get his focus token if Yorr 'intercepts' the stress)

Argument For

• Huge ships can receive stress tokens.
  • The huge ship rules state that:
    • Focus, evade, and stress tokens do not affect huge ships.
    • When a huge ship receives any of these tokens, immediately remove them and return them to
      the token supply.
  • Not being affected by a token does not inherently prevent you possessing it.
  • The second line says that a token is immediately discarded upon being received, not that it can't 'be received' in the first place (in fact it kind of confirms in passing that this is possible by telling you what to do upon receiving one), which is the trigger for Maul. He doesn't require you to retain the token.
• Compare R3-A2/Nien Numb; the T-70 is able to receive and immediately discard a stress when attacking.

By comparison, Esege I'd come down on it not working for the same reason:

• it's not the 'immediately discard' line that's the issue here (because the CR90 has not received the tokens - you can make use of a token without it being assigned to your ship, and if that's the case you never 'receive' it.
• However, it's unarguably the Corvette attacking, which is a huge ship. Hence the rule that focus tokens do not affect huge ships means that even if you have access to a focus token, it doesn't actually do anything.

Another fun combo: Jabba (on any ship), rage and contraband cybernetcis: that's up to 3 rounds of having a focus + rerolls + k-turns and not caring about the stress. If the ship survives past those 3 rounds, however, then the guy must be close to a nervous breakdown!

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

• Youngster - note that TIE fighters, TIE/fo and TIE/sf all benefit from his ability. Provided you can offer bonus action or rerolls from other sources (Howlrunner, Expertise), Expose goes from a bad joke to terrifying.
• Targeting Webs - Fire Control System and Targeting Synchroniser was mentioned by @dotswarlock above, but remember that the TIE/sf can carry this combination as well as the Upsilon. Watching the blue token of a target lock pinball round your squad as you shoot is a very satisfying experience.
• Darth Vader - provided you've got the recover actions to deal with the fallout, Darth Vader behind a Raider's multiple guns can make for a terrifying blizzard of critical damage. A Vader/Tactician/Quad Laser 'Flak Raider' can decimate a cloud of light fighters with ease.

Could do with a formal confirmation but I'm not convinced Maul doesn't work.

Argument Against:

• Huge ships do not receive stress tokens
• Maul's ability is " you may receive any number of stress tokens to reroll that many attack dice ."
  • This makes receiving the stress tokens a prerequisite cost rather than a result
• If you do not receive the stress token(s), you don't get the reroll(s) (precedent: Captain Yorr's FAQ where Soontir Fel doesn't get his focus token if Yorr 'intercepts' the stress)

Argument For

• Huge ships can receive stress tokens.
  • The huge ship rules state that:
    • Focus, evade, and stress tokens do not affect huge ships.
    • When a huge ship receives any of these tokens, immediately remove them and return them to
      the token supply.
  • Not being affected by a token does not inherently prevent you possessing it.
  • The second line says that a token is immediately discarded upon being received, not that it can't 'be received' in the first place (in fact it kind of confirms in passing that this is possible by telling you what to do upon receiving one), which is the trigger for Maul. He doesn't require you to retain the token.
• Compare R3-A2/Nien Numb; the T-70 is able to receive and immediately discard a stress when attacking.

By comparison, Esege I'd come down on it not working for the same reason:

• it's not the 'immediately discard' line that's the issue here (because the CR90 has not received the tokens - you can make use of a token without it being assigned to your ship, and if that's the case you never 'receive' it.
• However, it's unarguably the Corvette attacking, which is a huge ship. Hence the rule that focus tokens do not affect huge ships means that even if you have access to a focus token, it doesn't actually do anything.

This. RAW maul and zuckuss work. RAW esege doesnt.

8 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

...

Could do with a formal confirmation but I'm not convinced Maul doesn't work.

Argument Against:

• Huge ships do not receive stress tokens
• Maul's ability is " you may receive any number of stress tokens to reroll that many attack dice ."
  • This makes receiving the stress tokens a prerequisite cost rather than a result
• If you do not receive the stress token(s), you don't get the reroll(s) (precedent: Captain Yorr's FAQ where Soontir Fel doesn't get his focus token if Yorr 'intercepts' the stress)

Argument For

• Huge ships can receive stress tokens.
  • The huge ship rules state that:
    • Focus, evade, and stress tokens do not affect huge ships.
    • When a huge ship receives any of these tokens, immediately remove them and return them to
      the token supply.
  • Not being affected by a token does not inherently prevent you possessing it.
  • The second line says that a token is immediately discarded upon being received, not that it can't 'be received' in the first place (in fact it kind of confirms in passing that this is possible by telling you what to do upon receiving one), which is the trigger for Maul. He doesn't require you to retain the token.
• Compare R3-A2/Nien Numb; the T-70 is able to receive and immediately discard a stress when attacking.

...

I was referring more to the whole balance to the force argument, but I was being a little nit=picky as dice can only be rerolled once. So Maul can't just be rerolling dice until a hit comes up. It all sums up that the argument against is that it doesn't give the card penalty for using the advantage thus it is a net positive instead of a trade off. The argument for is that there is a trade off as it isn't that huge ships are not as good as the small and large ships when it comes to attacking.

1 hour ago, Marinealver said:

I was referring more to the whole balance to the force argument, but I was being a little nit=picky as dice can only be rerolled once. So Maul can't just be rerolling dice until a hit comes up.

Oh. Then definitely; there's no debate on that front - you can never reroll a reroll, even if it was your opponent did the rerolling and not you.