Battle of the Titans is an old project I did in the early days of my articles, making a Nebulon-B and Arquitens for the Rebel and Imperial faction's epic games. However, now that I've finished printing and painting both ships in epic scale, I decided to make more up-to-date cards for them!
I quickly realised that the standard loadout design would be quite effective in epic, allowing for cheaper ships and easy-to-pick-up-and-play combinations. So I have extended my project to cover all the factions, making cards for each of their epic ships and adding a few new epic ships so each faction has 3 huge ships with 2 standard loadout cards. I have also decided to make some new epic game small ships with standard loadouts so each faction has 3 small generic ships with 2 standard loadout cards.
As this totals EIGHTY FOURÂ cards, this will be a seven-article project with each article tackling one of the factions. So now the Rebellion is done let's move on with their enemies, the Empire!
Arquitens-Class Light Cruiser
The Arquitens is what I'm classifying as a massive size ship. These ships use all the same rules as huge ships, however, they have larger bases, using one normal huge ship base at the front and a single large ship base at the back, connected by the cardboard base plate. The second difference is that they require eight ion or tractor tokens to be considered ionised or tractored over the six required by huge ships. Otherwise, they function identically to huge ships. The last change, and a change that I'd apply to all epic ships, is that when they are destroyed, the opponent places three debris fields at range zero of the destroyed ship.
The design for the Arquitens shows off the effectiveness of the classic Imperial triangular design that allows all weapons on the ship to fire forwards for a deadly cone of concentrated fire, while still having solid side weaponry. This is done by giving it a pair of arcs that are 90 degrees each, covering the full front, with them overlapping in the Arquitens' bullseye. Its ship ability allows you to fire both its primary weapons in a round, as well as giving you some additional dice modification if the defender is in your bullseye making it a very bad place to be!
Like all the massive ships, it has a new second ship ability, Capital Grade Shields. This ability shows off the strength of these ship's shields, letting them reinforce twice so they are reinforced from every angle at the cost of extra shield regeneration. This makes it hard to outflank an Arquitens or most of the other massive ships I've made. I will suggest a minor modification to the rules though as it hasn't been brought up in normal X-Wing;
If a huge or massive ship has at least one reinforce token in both its fore and rear, it ignores the flanking effect on reinforce tokens, however, the defender only applies the effect of either its fore or rear reinforce tokens.
As for durability in the shields and hull department, the Arquitens is much tougher than even the Nebulon-B I made thanks to it being a dedicated warship that is a part of a fully funded military, unlike the Rebellion's Nebulon-Bs.
Finally, the dial of the Arquitens is designed for speed over manoeuvrability, compared to the other epic ships, with it having more straight white manoeuvres but only red bank manoeuvres.
Thunder Wasp:
22 Points
If any of you have been following me for a while and know of my obsession with a certain Grand Admiral, you probably guessed the Thunder Wasp would be here. The Thunder Wasp was Thrawn's first command so of course he's made it here. His crew ability allows you to put your skills of prediction to the test and reward you with a free coordinate while his aid, Eli Vanto, an up-and-coming tactical genius in his own right makes use of Thrawn's charges to let you gain bonus tokens. The rest of the ship's upgrades turn it into a deadly capital ship, with a Turbolaser upgrade that can fire twice causing massive damage.
Shyrack:
21 Points
One of the light cruisers in Thrawn's first battle group, at one point protecting the Star Destroyer Chimaera from ground-based ion cannon fire. I decided to give the Shyrack Karyn Faro, the Chimaera's captain. Faro's ability shows off her skills of command, being very adept at listening and learning from her Grand Admiral and then being able to pass on and modify the plans and commands to be even more effective. The rest of the upgrades make the Shyrack a deadly missile platform, however, it will be limited on dice modification.
Raider-class Corvette:
Corvus:
14 Points
The most famous Raider of them all, the Corvus was the ship used by the deadly Inferno Squad as a home base to strike out from. I was very conflicted on who to put as its captain for the longest of times, however Giddeon in the Inferno Squad book was the most interested in flying the ship whenever he could. His ability shows off both his aggressive nature and the primary purpose of Inferno Squad, to get revenge after the destruction of the first Death Star. The Corvus title itself has been slightly added too, still allowing you to dock a pair of TIE's, it can also be used to recharge upgrades on these docked ships and is especially useful for Inferno Squad's leader Iden Versio!
Assailer:
14 Points
My personal favourite Raider title in the official release, solely because of the addition of a gunner slot to this ship, the Assailer is the perfect munitions carrier as it can recover its lock with the Weapons Systems Officer upgrade. This combined with ordnance teams makes this ship hit hard, especially if you can get the defender in your bullseye to roll those extra attack dice so you could be theoretically throwing 15 dice at one ship in one round!
Gozanti-class Cruiser:
Blood Crow
10 Points
What is this, one article, but two Thrawns, is it my lucky day? The Blood Crow was the first ship Thrawn served on during his time with the Empire and it is my favourite ship in the official epic ships as its title ability and Suppressive Gunner ability allow it to completely shut down an enemy ship when firing a Point Defence Battery. I replicated this combo on my card with Thrawn acting as a Suppressive Gunner, however, he uses the Buzz Droids he had on the Blood Crow and used during one of his early victories to trigger this ability. The grumpy Filia Rossi who commanded the ship can "sell" off these Buzz droids or other upgrade charges like she planned to in the book, however, here she gains additional energy or calculates tokens instead of credits.
IGV-55 Surveillance Vessel
10 Points
The final capital ship for the Empire, the IGV-55 is the ship used in Rebels to spy on the Ghost crew through Chopper after he was hacked on a mission. Although this ship is very combat-heavy, it is incredibly useful at causing havoc to enemy ships through its jamming abilities, being able to jam multiple ships at longer ranges.
Wingmates:
I'm personally a fan of the game's current design where generics are a rare sight in normal play. However, that being said it makes epic games very complex and hard to run, with far too many abilities and components to keep track of. I believe this could be one of the reasons Epic has been left untouched by AMG at the current time, along with other issues and reasons, however, my solution is simple, new standard loadouts for the generic pilots of the game that are designed for epic play!
These pilots are designed for the wing mechanic with each of them being equipped with the Wingmate upgrade. This is a reworded Veteran Wing Leader, however, it does make all the ships worse whilst they are apart from their wing, with all their actions becoming red, and prevents them from being part of a wing that has a high initiative Wing Leader.
This allows the Generics to be slightly cheaper and have a pair of upgrades to make them effective. Although all the generic ships of the game could easily have a new standard loadout card each, for my sanity I only made cards for the classic small ships of each faction, with the Empire having the TIE/ln Fighter, TIE/sa Bomber and TIE/in Interceptor.
TIE/ln Fighter:
The TIE/ln Fighter like the Vulture Droid for the Separatists is one of the two ships in the game that still has use in a wing thanks to its well-priced generic pilots, so I decided to create some three-point generics that can be used instead if you need a wing with a little more punch.
Obsidian Squadron Pilot:
3 Points
The Obsidian Squadron is the group that chased the Falcon during the Empire Strikes Back, so I designed their upgrades around obstacles, giving them Trick Shot to roll extra attack dice and Obscured as is inverse to roll extra defence dice making this squadron both more deadly and harder to hit. Just make sure not to destroy all the obstacles with your huge and massive ships.
Black Squadron Ace:
3 Points
I gave the pilots of Black Squadron Ruthless to match their ruthless squadron leader, Vader. This is an especially deadly upgrade in an epic game thanks to the sheer number of ships on the board so you have lots of allies to chip away at so your shots hit straight and true. I also added the Endurance upgrade so your TIEs don't just detonate from one bad critical damage, especially if you are using Ruthless on them.
TIE/sa Bomber:
Scimitar Squadron Pilot:
3 Points
The bombers of Scimitar Squadron are geared up to disable as many ships as possible with their masses of ion missiles and bombs. While the single Ion Bomb is there so its Ship Ability has a reason to exist, the Ion Missiles are quite valuable to increase the chance your bomber even hits its target if it has a decent agility value.
Gamma Squadron Ace:
3 Points
The pilots of Gamma squad are built to be the best bombers possible, with the entire wing being able to drop 12 thermal detonators in a single round. This is made even better with the classic combination of Skilled Bombider and the TIE/sa Bomber's Nimble Bomber ship ability.
TIE/in Interceptor
Alpha Squadron Pilot
4 Points
Alpha Squadron's combination of Juke and Diciplined allows the TIE/in Interceptors to evade to attempt to survive until their engagement phase and still have a use for the evade during the attack if they didn't spend it, but also accept the fact the epic games have high casualty rates so that Disciplined also triggers and the squadron all get a free lock action.
Saber Squadron Ace
4 Points
The aces of Saber Squadron are already incredibly powerful at a solid initiative of four, however, they are helped with their pair of upgrades, the basic but always useful Marksmapship and the slightly different version of Targeting Computer that requires you to keep your opponent in your front half.
For high-quality images of all the cards and the base plates, of the Battle of the Titans project, ready to print, click HERE! Be aware the base plates are in two halves to allow for easy printing on A4 paper. For use, glue it onto a piece of cardboard of the right size.
Conclusion:
The second I got my 3D printer I decided I wanted to print epic ships for X-Wing, however for some reason, I've only just gotten around to it after two years of having the printer. But it was worth it, and they look amazing! This is what inspired this project, however, it has grown so much larger and I'm excited
to show off all the other cards I've created from the
remaining factions alongside some pictures of the 3d printed ships I have for these epic battles!
Thank you all for reading.
Watcher Leader out!