Finally, we've gotten around to running the missions from the Epic Battles box. We decided the start with this one. While the premise seems simple, the execution is tricky enough that I think the aggressor has to plan his strategy carefully. . .

I was defending. I think this is the easier role, since mostly you can't control what is going to happen, except to decide where to allocate the tokens on the 3 shuttles. I set of the shuttle in friendly space, save one that was a little more toward the middle:

In what might be his only good tactic for the entire game, Maul tractors the outlier shuttle into R3 for some potshots on it turn 1:

My ARC and N1s get ionized, but my brother can't get the bomb follow thru because he didn't understand the new ionization rules.

My left flank falls apart, but Maul and the Hyenas really don't accomplish much anyways. The real action is on the right, where Rick and the other N1s are really able to pound the HMPs with missiles thanks to the supporting action of the LAAT/is.

The HMPs sideslip and burn towards the first shuttle, but it's too little too late, and that shuttle escapes:

My brother conceded at that point, because there was no way he was going to make up for the lack of damage on the shuttles and the higher number of dice guaranteeing shuttle tokens. I think he needed to pre-damage the shuttles more; he also did not think the shuttles could escape the same round they got three tokens. Since both things happen in the End Phase, I'm pretty sure that's true. I thought it was kinda weird that the shuttles don't move.

In any event, we will play this one again in a few weeks. . .I'm going to be the aggressor using the Empire and see what happens.

Any tips from anyone who has tried out this scenario?

I've not got any tips I'm afraid, but I look forward to seeing how it goes second time round as well!

Looks like this game went well at least.

On 11/8/2020 at 4:30 PM, Darth Meanie said:

he didn't understand the new ionization rules

What aspect of the ion rules was the issue? I ask as knowing my luck it's something I've missed too!

5 hours ago, PartridgeKing said:

What aspect of the ion rules was the issue? I ask as knowing my luck it's something I've missed too!

He thought the ion tokens would come off incrementally, so by "over ionizing" my ships they would spend multiple rounds ionized.

The way I understand it (I'm casual only, so sometimes I'm mistaken) is the (medium or large) ship will carry ion tokens only until it is fully ionized, then ALL ion tokens come off.

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Looks like this game went well at least.

It's interesting how simple and yet complicated having an Objective can be. The aggressor still needs to kill as many of the enemy as possible, and yet be ready to take out the shuttles. Which, of course, means not taking shots on enemy ships. You also need to judiciously spread your forces, because all-outing on one shuttle guarantees you'll never get to the rest.

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I've not got any tips I'm afraid, but I look forward to seeing how it goes second time round as well!

Next Friday, with any luck. We'll probably do this multiple times, because Git Gud applies to figuring out scenarios as well!! I'll keep posting batreps here.

If anyone else can contribute, it would be a lot of fun to see threads of Mission reports for players to read and learn.

1 hour ago, Darth Meanie said:

I'm casual only, so sometimes I'm mistaken

You and me both!

And I can completely understand his thought process. In my head it's the 'logical' process even if the rules say otherwise. Speaking of the rules I went and checked and you are entirely correct, I'd forgotten the carry over for medium and large ships!

1 hour ago, Darth Meanie said:

It's interesting how simple and yet complicated having an Objective can be

Very true! I've not played any of the Epic Missions, other than Aces High, but I've always enjoyed objective based gameplay in my miniatures games so will be interested to see how they play out when I get a chance to do a 'proper' Epic mission

1 hour ago, Darth Meanie said:

If anyone else can contribute, it would be a lot of fun to see threads of Mission reports for players to read and learn.

Agreed. My only non-Aces High Epic experience was a hybrid affair that myself and some friends came up with involving two separate scenarios occurring on the same board with 2 Epic players going head to head and 3 smaller lists flying around trying to score points off the big lists and each other without getting taken out. We'll need to tweak it if we play it again as it fell foul of time constraints, slightly unbalanced objectives for the small forces and some one-sided list tailoring but it was definitely good fun.

I played that one a long time ago, of the epic missions I don't remember it as my fav. As I recall it was too easy for enough shuttles to get away. There's a really sweet one where there are four turrets, and four satellites, and the defender starts basically flanked and outnumbered, so the objective vs the outnumber portion kinda works out.

One thing I've noticed about all the epic missions (except AcesHigh, don't like it) is that really if you focus the objective as either side, ignoring EVERYTHING else, you should have it. It's really just a test to see who gets distracted, and then maybe a damage race after that. There was only one where I thought it was possible to have a purely combat victory. Orbital landing though was a real flight skill exercise too.

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So, as you can see from the above, my brother is trying to make me hate the HMP as much as I used to hate the B-Wing, by making it his all-time spam ship. *sigh*

Anywho. . .

I finally decided to get back to the Empire to see if Squints could do any better in Epic. Short Answer: No. Flying a glass cannon in an Epic **** storm of ships still makes for a bad blend.

I spread my forces out, with the idea of trying to end-around my aces, and keeping his fleet busy with a semi-frontal attack by Saber Squadron. It started off pretty good, with a round 2 kill of a HMP and some shots on a shuttle to begin whittling them down for later. Sadly, after that HMP died I should have quit with a warm fuzzy feeling to take home. . .it will be my ONLY kill of the evening.

Things go moderately well on the flanks, but up the middle my TIE Heavy gets in too close and gets stuffed with no real way out. Oiccun lands on a rock on his 2nd maneuver, meaning he can't help at all.

It's basically all down hill from here for me. My brother never misses a roll to score tokens for the shuttles, so they get ready to escape very fast. The first one to leave I never even had a chance to shoot at. The second one I have to make an all out gambit to kill, which does not work and basically allows The Grand Inquisitor to get destroyed in the process. From this position the TAP K-turns to get shots, and one of the Squints attacks the shuttle. It wasn't enough, and the escape of a second set of tokens means the game is effectively over by turn 4.

Also, I admittedly played by Brute very poorly, and didn't get much value from Rampage.

2 lessons learned:

A. This is the last time I'm allowing my brother to use surrogates for his HMPs. He's wants to spam 'em, he needs to buy 'em. 😤

B. I think @ForceSensitive is right, the shuttles escape too fast. One easy change would be this: At the Beginning of the End Phase, any shuttle with 3 tokens jumps. At the End of the End Phase, roll for tokens. This allows the attacking player one full round to do something about a shuttle that's about to leave, and forces the defending player to commit to protecting it. As is, the defending player can be totally passive and just let the shuttles do whatever. The other possibility would be to make the departure random: When a shuttle has 3 tokens, roll a red die. On a hit or crit, the shuttle jumps. Now the defender really needs to keep an eye on the shuttles; if he tokens it up but it fails to jump, there is some risk that the defender needs to mitigate. In both the games we played, the defender NEVER had to worry about shuttle defense.

Thanks for this. Biff and I will be playing Recon Specialist soon in a grudge match. One rule is that we have to take an Epic ship We did a show on this back in the day and I need to look up what we said. I do recall that you have to strike fast to hit the shuttles. I'm thinking either a wing of Tie Interceptors or a bunch of Tie Bombers. I think I'll go for a cheap Gozanti and the rest ships. Don't go cheap on the Init, but don't waste points on Aces.

So my question is for the Jump calculations. IF I roll three dice on turn three and get three hits, does each Shuttle get 1 token or do I assign 1 shuttle 1-3 tokens? FFG confuses me when they say choose 1 shuttle instead of choose 'a' shuttle for each hit\crit. 1 is very specific in the number of shuttles chosen. Choose a shuttle for each hit\or crit would tell me each hit and crit is assigned to a shuttle till that total number is 1.

On 1/6/2021 at 8:33 AM, Patrick_patrick said:

So my question is for the Jump calculations. IF I roll three dice on turn three and get three hits, does each Shuttle get 1 token or do I assign 1 shuttle 1-3 tokens? FFG confuses me when they say choose 1 shuttle instead of choose 'a' shuttle for each hit\crit. 1 is very specific in the number of shuttles chosen. Choose a shuttle for each hit\or crit would tell me each hit and crit is assigned to a shuttle till that total number is 1.

I think the intent is that each shuttle can only get 1 token per round. More dice with less shuttles just increases the probability that it will get 1 token.