Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-27029853-20170129150901/@comment-454133-20170309165659

Last night's huge ship battle was fun, even though it took so long we couldn't even come close to finishing. In the end, we'd taken out the enemy's Gozanti, and lost the front of our Raider. Small ships probably put us ahead: we lost 1 small and killed at least 2 (I think more than that). We didn't have time to figure out points, game store was closing.

For my gozanti, I chose:

Ordnance Tubes + Ion Torpedoes + Ordnance Experts + Weapons Engineer + Suppressor + Rear Admiral Chiraneau + Engine Booster + Docking Clamps

I fielded 4 Royal Guard Pilots with Crack Shot and Autothrusters. Once they got into the fight they just wrecked stuff, as interceptors tend to do. I decided to not dock them even though I had the clamps for it... I wanted to fly them in formation around the outside of the fight and come at the bombers and enemy gozanti that way, and this ended up working well enough. Though deploying them inside might have worked just as well, if not better. Live and learn.

Finally, I had Captain Jonus with Determination + Lightweight Frame + TIE Shuttle + Operations Specialist + Systems Officer. Determination I fielded on a whim, just as a minor defense boost, and in case I met Kylo; he never took a shot so it never mattered. Operations Specialist was a nice idea, but he stayed between the huge ships and thus never had chance to give focus tokens to anyone but himself. Systems Officer I never used, because during play I forgot it was acquiring a target lock instead of a free lock action, so assumed I couldn't use it for my huge ships. But I'd put him on the ship just to give locks to our huge ships... grrr... I need to read those cards better. :)  It particularly would have helped near the end...

My buddy had a Raider with Darth Vader (Crew), and a bunch of weapons (I didn't pay close enough attention sadly). He had Ordnance Tubes but never used them, because we learned he could only fire those from the sides, and he never got a chance to do so (never had the action when he had a shot). :(  But Vader?  He wrecked a couple of ships and it was awesome.  Enemy Carnor died very early from a direct hit.  Vader did particularly well since the Raider can shoot twice or more in a turn, and restore its shields next round.

There was one moment, one glorious moment, where I had the chance to ram 3 or 4 heavily loaded bombers/punishers with my Gozanti. They were all clustered together around a TIE Punisher, begging to be tagged with an Ion Torpedo. Their ion'd movement would have guaranteed being plowed through by the Gozanti for instant death! I locked, I fired, and I rolled blanks and focuses. I Jonus'd 2 dice... blanks. And finally, I forgot my Ordinance Experts, but it wouldn't have mattered because he rolled one evade.

Those dice, they hate me. It was such a beautiful alignment of the stars... the very heavens opened themselves up and blessed this torpedo shot... but the dice said no.  :)

At one point I rammed his gozanti with mine so we'd be locked in place permanently, accumulating crits. And then my TIE Interceptors swooped in and just *poured* damage on it. That was one dead gozanti.

Sadly my gozanti took a crit that prevented locks, so I couldn't do my normal shenanigans. And around this time the enemy Raider finally joined the battle and started wrecking ours (killed the front section, which was already damaged). And then we had to end things and pack up.

All in all, that *was* a fun battle. I really wish it was faster, but such is life in Epic play.