Back in X-Wing 1.0, Huge Ships were by generally consensus "not good". One of the reasons for their lackluster performance, aside from the clunkyness of the Epic rules in 1.0 in general, was that they were simply to weak, unable to deal enough damage or generally to do what they were designed to do. In 2.0, this problem has been remedied. Huge Ships perform well enough to be used in battle, and in this article, we'll go into the basics of how this works.
The first important thing to consider is that Huge Ships use a maneuvre tool that makes them move a bit slower than the other ships and restricts their movement to straight, bank and stop. However, the nature of the tool leads to some strange effects that one needs to contemplate when assigning dials.
The first is that straight maneuvers don't go as far as you think. Dialing a 5-straight with a Raider seems like it should cover an enormous distance, but it really doesn't. Don't overestimate how far you will be able to go.
The second thing is that Huge Ships are activated last and also engage last. Your action selection and maneuver options may be dictated by this, as everyone else moves into our out of your way before you activate.
The third thing is that banks lead the aft section of the ship to move a much larger amount than you probably assumed. Huge Ships are best compared to heavy goods transports on roads. They come with a red flag on a pole warning you that the aft will move some distance.
That makes them more agile in terms of turning their arcs than one might assume, which can become especially problematic for owners of the CR90 with its dependence on rather narrow side arcs.
For this reason alone, you want to be careful with your movement. A Raider overshooting its target will likely never get it in arc again, and a CR90 dialing a bank might end up not being able to use its main armament and being forced to rotate its turrets. So, keep the arcs in mind at all times.
It's also important to remember that the maneuver tool is no maneuver template; overlapping obstacles with it has no inherent effect, and in theory, a Huge Ship could jump over an obstacle with its movement, although in practice this likely won't happen due to the aforementioned slow speed.
While your dial shows red maneuvers as well, and your ship can theoretically get stressed, the existence of energy will usually prevent that. Every Huge Ship has energy, of which it will regenerate one or two units each End Phase (depending on the size of the ship). When you dial a red maneuver, you will lose one energy (unless you have none, in which case you need to gain a stress token). Likewise, blue maneuvers usually aren't that important since you'll rarely have stress tokens. They might become more relevant with deplete tokens, but that remains to be seen.
Another thing relating to movement is the overlapping of ships and obstacles, more colloquially known as ramming. Whenever you overlap an obstacle, it gets destroyed (removed from play), and you suffer a critical damage (debris and asteroids) or a jam token (clouds).
The damage itself is usually not that big a deal since you regenerate one or two shields each End Phase, which in all likelihood you will still have during your activation (baring bombs and the like), and you also don't lose your action, so overlapping obstacles is not nearly as bad as with normal ships. Still, if you can, avoid it, for the negative effects might just ruin your day.
If you overlap normal ships, something interesting happens. You complete your maneuver and pick up the overlapped ships. They suffer critical damage equal to your chosen speed (yes, that can mean five critical damage, get rid of that water in your mouth) and are then placed in your full rear arc by their owner. After they're placed, you may turn them 90°. The Huge Ship suffers no effect.
However, ramming comes with some caveats attached.
On the one hand, it's difficult to ram in the first place. As already mentioned, the ships aren't all that fast, and unless you're at the wrong side of the aft, you'll likely be safe.
On the other hand, ramming is agnostic. You can ram your own ships to death as well.
On the third hand (it's Star Wars, some alien will have enough hands for this exercise), you are usually NOT going very fast (because Huge Ships going fast are losing their targets, as discussed), so the damage is often mild and absorbed by shields.
And on the fourth hand, the owner of the ships gets to place them in your full rear arc, which is a big deal. Allow me to explain with a little example.
If I'm flying a B-Wing equipped for hunting Huge Ships, it's very attractive for me to land in your front. You'll likely only inflict one or two damage, which my four shields can easily stomach, and then I'm behind you. And that's where you really don't want me to be. And yes, you can turn me 90°, but there is no way that will get me out of arc. If I place the ship facing the Huge Ship very closely, no matter where you turn it, I'll have a shot. So, be careful for what rams you pray.
Another important mechanic is turrets. Huge Ships can equip up to two turret Hardpoints (currently) that can be turned independently. While one action may turn one or both of them, you will want to avoid wasting actions on this as often as possible. Since your turrets still adhere to the printed firing arcs, always remember that range is measured from them. This is fringe case with most normal ships, but with the size of Huge Ships (it's in the name, duh), this can considerably shorten your range when the side arcs want to fire at targets roughly in front of you.
On the plus side, Huge Ships not only get two actions (each of which can be linked with the right upgrades), they also get as many attacks as they can fit on them. Right now, that amounts to a maximum of six attacks (primary, hardpoint, four times Point Defense Battery). While the additional attacks all drain energy, they can be conducted against the same target, stripping it of tokens and then of shields and health in a hurry.
The rule for bonus attacks is the main reason why Huge Ships have become so powerful compared to 1.0. I consider the Point Defense Battery as almost mandatory on the Raider and the CR90 at this point. If you can afford the four energy, between your primary attack and the four bonus attacks, there isn't that many ships that can survive the onslaught, especially if you have access to mods. But that's a discussion for another time.
Until now, I neglected to mention setup. Technically, it's the first step, but we really need to understand all the rest before we can go into setup. In Epic, it's much more important than in standard play who is set up where and when. The reason for this is that Huge Ships are placed first. So whoever has the initiative signals to their opponent where the whole thing will go down and what the game plan is. If you deploy your CR90 perpendicular to your edge, the other player might deploy a Raider directly opposite and come into firing range round 1. That's a joust you're certainly going to lose.
Since you are activating last, you will also never be able to move out of the way for your normal ships; if they're caught on the wrong side of your Huge Ship, they'll likely lose one to several rounds maneveuring around you. One wrong decision in setup can take an entire wing out of the game for hald the duration of said game! Be careful where you place your ships, is what I'm saying.
That's it for the basics of Huge Ships. Next time, let's get into more details.
No comments:
Post a Comment