We'll play an epic 4person, many hours long game with 1000 points per team on a 6x3 mat, empire vs rebels with at least one huge ship each. We settled on the Raider, and there are some other constraints like 6 strikers or at least one phantom. And of course a limited number of ships. Here's what I have:

Outer Rim Patrol (146)
Plasma Torpedoes (9)
Mag-Pulse Warheads (6)
Ordnance Tubes (1)
Ion Cannon Battery (5)
Admiral Sloane (9)
Bombardment Specialists (6)
Damage Control Team (3)
Optimized Power Core (6)
Corvus (3)

Striker Wing:

“Duchess” (42)
Marksmanship (1)
Dreadnought Hunter (6)

5x Black Squadron Scout (34), Marksmanship (1)

Defender Wing:

3x Delta Squadron Pilot (67) Veteran Wing Leader (2)

Inferno Wing:

“Howlrunner” (46)
Swarm Tactics (4)
Veteran Wing Leader (2)

Seyn Marana (30)
Marksmanship (1)

Del Meeko (30)

“Wampa” (29)

“Mauler” Mithel (31)

Gideon Hask (30)

Wing Defense Force:

2x Cutlass Squadron Pilot (36) Trajectory Simulator (6) Proton Bombs (5)

The Heroine:

“Whisper” (57), Juke (7), Passive Sensors (3), Fifth Brother (11)

Total: 996

View in Yet Another Squad Builder 2.0

The thoughts behind the choices:

• The two punishers are there to hurt other wings, simple as that. I'm for sure not the first person with that idea and it might go horribly wrong.
• 6 Strikers are a must-have. But I want to go with the dreadnaught hunter because we will have huge ships, and marksmanship should allow me to shut it down pretty easily if I understood precise shot correctly.
• Defender Wing is apparently pretty good, and I'd want to use them as fighter screen. They should draw shots and chase ships around the raider.
• Inferno Wing because I had points and not too many ships left... and I would like another wing.
• Whisper is an auto include
• The Raider:
  • I am aware that plasmas and mag pulses might look a bit tame. But plasmas because all rebels have shields, and mag pulses can then throw a crit in there at large range. The jam and deplete are less interesting. The alternative are concussions.
  • Ion battery mainly because I have no idea which ones are good. They all look a bit bad to me. Turbolaser is tempting but looks like a trap, and point defense seems to be energy draining. Targeting battery does not allow the range 5 lock, and that would have been my only interest in it.
  • Speaking of range 5 locks, I have Bombardment specialists for long and shortrange ordnance. And corvus to give me an extra calculate. The only reason I would take the assailer is 5th brother crew, but he goes with Whisper.
  • Ordnance team for the eventual reload is missing as I went with the damage control instead. I think I prefer range 5 ordnance in the beginning and then we'll see. Sensor experts are also incredibly tempting, but might be another trap. No clue.
  • Admiral Sloane because we have 18 small ships on the table!
  • And finally the power core. Again, no idea.

Ships I have left:

• 2x x1
• 1x v1
• 3x Interceptors
• 1x Gunboat
• 2x Aggressor
• 2x Bomber
• 1x Reaper
• 1x Decimator
• 1x Lambda
• 3 more phantoms (how does the decloak in a wing work*?! The same as ailerons I guess? Or is it a difference because one is systems and the other activation phase?)
• 1x Gozanti

I would love an interceptor wing, but I'd think that they just melt. They could simply replace the punishers, points wise.

Super excited to finally play another epic game!

edit: *I just saw this blog by @Stefan, thanks for that: http://thenerdstreamera.blogspot.com/2020/01/musings-about-epic-action-stations.html

Is it correct that dreadnaught hunter applies to the entire wing? Do I even have a wing without veteran wing leader? Because I won't use it then, of course. And that frees up 20 points because then I don't need black scouts+marksmanship. Maybe the scouts, but definitely not marksmanship.

One more idea was to add Tarkin to give the striker, defender and inferno wing a devastating double modified attack. I should get the lock early with the bombardment specialists.

But my main problem as I see it is to get actions with the huge ship. Those ordnance and laser attacks are pretty anemic with two calculates and a lock - my main reason not to take tibanna gas.

So, because I expect the shots from the corvette to be pretty dice dependent, and because I will mainly rely on the small ships to deal damage, I might as well take Tarkin+Impetuous instead of corvus. 15 target locks are way better than a single calculate.

@Stefan you're a goldmine! I saw your remark about jamming and why targeting battery is an autoinclude on the raider. So I adjusted the list a bit already: no more ion battery, replaced by targeting battery.

The defender wing got now Rexler with a jamming beam. I think I misunderstood the dreadnaught hunter, so that is gone.

Leaning more on concussions now, even if it is redundant with Rexler.

A phantom wing would be sweet, but probably not really good. The punishers are dismissed for the moment, and I welcome 3 interceptors instead.

New list

For the TIE/ln wing, I would recommend using a TIE Advanced V1 (for the boost action) with Agent of the Empire as wing leader... and also consider giving it Daredevil as an EPT.

The ability to speed across the board and rotate the entire formation 90 degrees is amazing!

15 minutes ago, DexterOnone said:

For the TIE/ln wing, I would recommend using a TIE Advanced V1 (for the boost action) with Agent of the Empire as wing leader... and also consider giving it Daredevil as an EPT.

The ability to speed across the board and rotate the entire formation 90 degrees is amazing!

That's sneaky! I was thinking about just giving Howl an afterburner instead? It's clearly not the same, the v1 is much better, but I would also like to see the mass-Iden in action

It was pretty epic...! 2000 points on the table.

We went all in with the Raider. The Interceptors were on his left flank. Their (only) task: disrupt the 6 X-Wings. I wanted to fake with the punisher, moved through the Raider and threw some bombs into the X-wings. The Punisher dealt 4+3 damage with proton bombs, and a total of 5 damage with one diamond boron missile. Success! The Defenders mainly jammed the CR90. The TIE and Striker swarms mainly took on&out the B- and Y-Wings. We played a total of 6 turns, in a bit over 3 hours. Images below.

Setup:

Turn 2 viewpoint 1: please note the two blocks with my interceptors. They split from the wing and blocked a 1 straight maneuver.

Turn 2 viewpoint 2:

Turn 3: please note my single defender, I dialed in the wrong 3 bank who, instead of blocking the Bwings, ended up on a rock... It was also the Leia turn. The maneuver with the TIEs was a mistake in hindsight. I was under the wrong impression that an overrun ship always deals a damage to the huge ship. We checked again when it happened, and realized it was on a crit roll only, with a stress on hits... whoopsie!

Turn 4:

Turn 5: the CR90 exploded here, the Raider took HEAVY damage. Wedge just barely fit besides the raider and, instead of breaking up the wing, dealt plenty of damage cards.

Turn 6 is not shown, but the Raider survived on 1 or 2 hull. We called it and it ended at 534 for them and close to 700 for us. Even a dead Raider would not have changed anything.

This was the final list:

Outer Rim Patrol (146)
Plasma Torpedoes (9)
Concussion Missiles (6)
Ordnance Tubes (1)
Targeting Battery (6)
Admiral Sloane (9)
Ordnance Team (4)
Damage Control Team (3)
Boosted Scanners (8)
Corvus (3)

“Duchess” (42)
Veteran Wing Leader (2)

5x Planetary Sentinel (31)

Colonel Vessery (84)
Jamming Beam (0)
Veteran Wing Leader (2)

Delta Squadron Pilot (67)
Jamming Beam (0)

Delta Squadron Pilot (67)
Jamming Beam (0)

“Howlrunner” (46)
Swarm Tactics (4)
Afterburners (6)
Veteran Wing Leader (2)

Seyn Marana (30)
Marksmanship (1)

Academy Pilot (22)

“Wampa” (29)

Scourge Skutu (31)
Swarm Tactics (4)

Gideon Hask (30)

4x Alpha Squadron Pilot (31)
Veteran Wing Leader (2)

Cutlass Squadron Pilot (36)
Trajectory Simulator (6)
Diamond-Boron Missiles (6)
Proton Bombs (5)
Total: 998

Comments/ possible improvements:

• 6 Strikers with Duchess
  • Her ability was amazingly useful
  • Next time: rather black squads for the i3 shots; afterburners on Duchess!
• TIE swarm
  • Howl, Gideon, Wampa are must includes, imo
  • Seyn was awesome with Gideon
  • Scourge is nice, but also because of the i5
  • An academy is actually good to eat damage
  • Next time: maybe even 2 academies, or exactly the same
• Defender wing
  • Amazing!
  • Vessery agaist the always-locked huge ship, and jamming beam are crazy
  • I completely missed the value of Rexler against huge ships - I see him now as must have
  • Ryad would be a great wing leader, too.
  • Next time: MOAR defenders. Rather 3x2. I would love to keep two around my huge ship as bomber/fighter deterrence. Rexler with the i5 shots should bring jamming beam, and maybe even juke. Ryad could lead the defense squad. So maybe a (small 2-3) wing with Ryad around my huge ship, and Rexler+Vessery going against the other huge ship
• Cutlass
  • Great value!
  • He dealt a lot of damage and forced them to move strangely around. Tanked a lot of shots from my Raider But DBM are unique, so one is all I'd do
• Interceptors:
  • Amazing to break up wings!
  • Next time: Not in wings. Use as individual ships from the start. 4 were too many. I should have used the other two to break up the Ywing Wing. Maybe simply reduce to 2 total.
• Raider:
  • Brutal!
  • It takes a bit of attention for the correct weapon rotation...
  • Plasmas and Concussions were good. Magpulses would not have been a bad idea. Proton torpedoes should be fine, too, but I removed a shield every time, so here I had better value with plasmas
  • I really missed the Bombardment specialists to in/decrease range! So next I'd go with Bombardment AND Ordnance teams.
  • You'll easily shoot more than 2 torpedoes, so reload seems necessary -> use the ordnance team!
  • Boosted scanners were for nothing, I'd rather leave it empty or take optimized power
  • core Sloane was (surprisingly!) useless, partially due to our setup. I'd take Moff Jerjerrod now, or Cpt Needa.
  • Targeting battery seems necessary, but I would love to have something else, too.
  • Corvus was awesome! Maybe try the Instigator with a third team slot, likely for the damage control team. Instigator also includes a kind of ego-sloane, so that's rather nice with the 4 attacks!
  • Next time: I'd probably give the instigator a try for a third team, swap Sloane for Jerjerrod, and change boosted scanners.

That's it

Why was I not paying attention here! 🥺 Could have made the perfect anti-list.