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 FOUR cards, this will be a seven-article project with each article tackling one of the factions. So now the Republic have had their turn, let's move on with their clanker enemies, the Separatists!
C-9979 Landing Craft:
When I started to make these epic ships for each faction I knew I wanted to make the C-9979, however, it has caused me a new problem, it is too wide! Its width is big enough to make it a massive ship like the Nebulon-B and Arquitens I've already made. There is an easy solution to this, just turn the base sideways, however because of the movement template this won't work as you then can't execute bank manoeuvres. I could have made a custom 3d printed base, however, I want everyone to be able to play with these ships, even if you don't have access to a 3d printer as you don't need the model to play. So unlike all the other massive ships I've made, instead of being one large base and a huge ship base, the C-9979 is two huge ship bases side by side.
The design for the C-9979 in-game is one more suited for a support role, with its ship ability being designed to boost the range of the common Network Calculations ship ability.
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 C-9979 Landing Craft is tough, only slightly less durable than the Arquitens I made.
Finally, its dial is relatively poor, with one exception, its zero-speed manoeuvres are all white. This is becasue as a planetary lander it felt fitting for it to be able to stop and rotate a lot more efficiently than epic ships.
Nest:
22 Points
As the C-9979s are all unnamed I came up with a pair of names for them. Nest shows off the advantage of having your starfighters able to stick to the surface of your capital ships, with it being able to hold up to twelve vulture droids in two wings. This is especially useful in an epic game as you can easily expect to lose a few of the weak Vulture droids before they can attack, so having the docked with the Nest keeps them safer and allows you to spread damage across the swarm while still being able to make attacks. The three other upgrades harken back to the Occupation of Ryloth and make this ship incredibly deadly.
Hive:
20 Points
Hive takes inspiration from the fact the Tri-fighter could be shot out of capital ships' missile tubes for a boost of speed to get them into combat range. Although the C-9979 does not have a missile tube, I see this being a purposely modified lander for this purpose. The Hive can choose to shoot out two of its six docked Tri-fighters each round when it engages, this does mean the Tri-fighter doesn't get to attack until initiative zero, however, it does keep it safe until it has the chance to shoot unless someone can take the lander down first. Its Tactical Droid and Targeting Batteries upgrades, help all your freindly ships increase their attack range and Grevious' presence enables you to get the shot off before most of your low initiative ships shoot!
Trident-class Assault Ship:
Trident:
10 Points
Ventress' personal Trident makes use of all the Trident's terrifying close-range weapons, with it being able to use both the deadly Tractor Tentacles and Drill Beak to devastate an enemy ship that gets too close, which is made easier by the assassin herself, allowing her ship to rotate 180 degrees after executing a speed 0 manouvre. The Title also gives you a massive boost as you can spend the tractor tokens from your previous attacks to boost your current attack.
Neimoidian Grasp:
10 Points
This Trident was present during the Battle of Mon Cala during the Clone Wars, and although it has no other lore connected to it, it feels fitting to give it Riff Tamson as he was the Separatist commander during the battle. Otherwise, this Trident is outfitted as a speedy torpedo carrier, with it having the Enhanced Propulsion ship ability instead of Tractor Grasp allowing this ship to keep up with the fastest droid starfighters.
C-ROC Cruiser:
Jondo:
9 Points
Unfortunately, there are no named C-ROCs in the Separatist fleet so I made a pair for this. The first is Jondo, a ship I imagine being used by the Separatist General Kleeve, a minor Separatist leader who appeared in the Kanan comics pressing Gamut Key's world. Kleeve would eventually take the name Jondo during the rule of the Empire to avoid being captured, and that is where I got the name for this ship! As for abilities, Kleeve's role in the Separatist as being good at dealing with bounty hunters is shown here as he can aid ships in your squadron with the Bounty upgrade, while the title and Proton Cannon Battery give this ship a deadly kick at long ranges.
D/C-ROC/68R:
9 Points
For some context in Star Wars Armada, the Separatists can also have C-ROCs in their fleets and my favourite upgrade to play on them is the Overload Pulse or NK-7 Ion Cannons which can easily disable or discard enemy ship's defence tokens, so this ship is my recreation of that! It's filled with ion cannon weapons to achieve this. I also see this ship using a droid brain instead of an organic or droid crew, letting it use a version of Network Calculations. However, this does have a cost as the Overload Pulse upgrade splashes an Ion token onto your ship and as we all know a droid becoming ionised is a bad idea.
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, a 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 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 Separatists having the Vulture-class Droid Fighter, Hyena-class Droid Bomber and Droid Tri-fighter.
Vulture-class Droid Fighter:
The Vulture Droid like the TIE/ln Fighter for the Empire is one of the two ships in the game that still has use in a wing thanks to its well-priced generic pilots, however, I have tried to create a pair of interesting generic upgrades that would be worthwhile bringing in an epic list:
Trade Federation Drone:
2 Points
This cheap little drone gets a massive boost over all the other generic versions of the Vulture Droid as it has the deadly Energy-Shell Charges upgrade to allow it to perform a three-die attack. this is far too good for a two-point generic, even though you can't reload this version of the upgrade, so I also gave this version of the Trade Federation Drone a massive flaw, they are dependent on a massive capital ship like the C-9979 to function, so if your opponent concentrates fire on your capital ship, suddenly your swarms are in big trouble.
Separatist Drone:
2 Points
This version of the Vulture Droids has the Siege of Coruscant upgrade, Contingency Protocols, allowing the swarm to gain bonus actions when one of their ranks falls to enemy fire, which is useful as in an epic game it's very easy to lose a Vulture Droid or two each round. It also has the Reflexive Strusts Upgrade which allows this droid to avoid damage from being overlapped by an epic ship.
Hyena-class Droid Bomber:
Techno Union Bomber:
3 Points
The first of the Hyenas for this pack is a deadly missile user, with each of them being able to potentially perform a four-die attack against a ship in their bullseye, which isn't too hard when you have epic ships on the board. They also have a modified version of Munitions Failsafe which recovers all the charges spent to perform the attack instead of just the normal one.
Separatist Bomber:
3 Points
The Sepratist Bombers have a basic but solid bombing loadout, a set of Thermal Detonators to drop (although they have one less charge than normal) and a Skilled Bomber upgrade repackaged as an astromech.
Droid Tri-fighter:
Colicoid Interceptor:
3 Points
This version of the Colicoid Interceptor is built purely for speed. With the Intercept Booster upgrade, your swarm can quickly reach and/or flank your opponent. There is a small negative to this version of Intercept Booster as all ships in the wing still gain a disarm token, even though only the Wing Leader performs the SLAM action. However, I did counter this with the Rerooted Power Systems, which allows your Tri-fighters to exchange your disarm tokens for deplete tokens.
Separatist Interceptor:
3 Points
This version of the Separatist Interceptor like the Separatist Drone has the Siege of Coruscant upgrade, Contingency Protocols, allowing the swarm to gain bonus actions when one of their ranks falls to enemy fire. This is even better on the Tri-Fighter as it has more action to perform and can allow it to reposition so it has the enemy in its bullseye for its Aggression Sequence 2 ability.
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!