I have played the new Fly Solo rules a handful of times already, and it's pretty fun. You definitely need to be outnumbered to make it fair, and the opponents do some really stupid maneuvers sometimes, but even still, I've won as much as I've lost, so it's a challenge.

In the document they mention even being able to use this system with huge ships, and I am dying to give it a try! Did anybody else catch that? They also mention "protect the transport" type missions, which I've quoted below.

Quote

You can use the Solo Alpha rules to play a standard or Epic Battles game. If you do, the enemy squad should have 125-150 points for every 100 points in your squad (or 5-6 Threat for every 4 if using Quick Builds). Keep in mind that you will have to remember to use any upgrades equipped to the solo ships, as there is no opponent to do that!

• You can alter this scenario or create your own by adding other ships and objectives. Here are two possibilities that are easy to implement with minimal changes:

- A fearsome enemy ace is hunting one of your pilots! Replace one solo ship’s non-limited pilot with a limited pilot and upgrades using a Quick Build card. When this ship arrives in the play area it immediately acquires a lock on the nearest player ship. This will cause the enemy ace to always select that ship as its Tally, attempting to fly towards and attack it whenever possible.

- A transport carrying important cargo or personnel is attempting to escape! Place a suitable ship in one corner of the play area. It acquires a lock on the opposite corner of the play area. This will cause it to always select that point as its Tally, attempting to fly towards it and flee the play area.

With that in mind, my first Epic solo game will likely be escape from Hoth, with a pair of X-wings defending a GR-75 transport from waves of enemy TIE fighters. I'm really excited to give it a try! The catch: I'm moving this week, so you won't see a report for a while. But I wanted to throw this out there in case anybody else wants to try a similar scenario. Should be fun!

Looking forward to seeing that! And now I need to clear the table and give it a go.

I'm guessing that for Huge ships it's going to get a bit more "take the best actions for the enemy Huge ship" than it would be otherwise, but sounds worth a try.

Well, here we are 2 months later. I'm settled into my house and I haven't tried solo Epic yet. I've been busy with a lot of painting Runewars and playing X-wing head-to-head standard with my oldest. If this says anything, I think it's that the solo rules were apparently not good enough to make me prioritize them over other ways to spend my hobby time.

I think the strength of the solo movement rules is also the weakness. You only need one chart to run any ship in the whole game, even future ships, but the catch is that you have to interpret that chart for each ship. HotAC has a chart for each ship, so you have lots of tables you have to look up, but you arrive at the outcome a bit faster, with less mental gymnastics.

The second struggle is balance. The solo rules give you a good baseline for how to build a squad, but the range of acceptable points for the AI squad is rather large. The result: I don't know if it's going to be too easy or challenging, or if it will be just the right level of challenge when I finally pull all these ships out and set it up. If I intended to play a lot more Solo Epic, I would accept that it's just a learning curve, but I honestly think this will be more like a one-off game.

This is still on my radar, but I'm not sure how soon I'll get to it. I'm going to see if my oldest is interested in running one of the X-wings with me against the AI, which sounds a lot more fun than playing by myself (the number of games I played against myself when X-wing came out in 2012 were not a few!). But he's such a die-hard Scum and Villainy player I don't think he will go for it.

13 hours ago, Parakitor said:

I'm going to see if my oldest is interested in running one of the X-wings with me against the AI, which sounds a lot more fun than playing by myself (the number of games I played against myself when X-wing came out in 2012 were not a few!). But he's such a die-hard Scum and Villainy player I don't think he will go for it.

You are at home, anything goes. Give him a Kihraxz (Rebels hired a merc) and you have a T65. Off you go, on some adrenaline filled father and son story, cooperatively working together towards a goal. He might remember fondly in the decades to come.

Me and the kids do it often, as everyone in my house prefers a different faction or favorite ship. Just do not mix too unfair combos, like a Rebel with Sabine Crew and e.g. Nym flying together. Or you have to ramp up the AI forces.