SW X-Wing: GR-75 Transport & Epic Format ‘Review’

Also a special thanks goes to Chuck Stocky and Andrew Young for helping me play this new format, as it is a few hour affair compared to the Epic format game.

Also enjoy the random scatterings of pictures for an Epic game or two.

So many ships, truly this will be epic!

Let’s start with the GR-75 and what it can do? Well, its a giant support ship, so its got that. Other than that? Well, nothing really. At this time I’d say the GR-75 is pretty average in a grand scale of things, just do to it being a pure buff ship. Now the buffs aren’t that bad. But like the HWK and the Lamba, while it seems good, they don’t seem all that great in the end. But what it does make up with is it is a pretty good damage soak. 

That is assuming if you can get it set up to block off a group of fighters. Epic play requires Huge Ships to be placed first, something I’ll admit we didn’t realize when we started. Hey, new format right? But if you succeed, it doesn’t hurt to have the Combat Retrofit upgrade and you have a 15 hit required ship for the most part. I like to take the EM Emitter as well to force them into shooting the GR unless they want to give my smaller ships 3 additional defense dice. Another sweet feature I’m sure we’re all aware of is the fact if anything runs into this ship it acts just like an Asteroid, and if the GR-75 hits them, well. Bye bye.

Sadly that does come with a price, for each ship destroyed this way you do have to roll damage dice against the ship itself. One for each ship destroyed this way, two if its a Large ship. Damage dealt as normal, and this even applies to ally ships as well, so be wary. A nice feature for the Huge ship is no matter what it can perform its action, even if it lands on a rock (which is destroyed like a ship) or hitting other ships. 

Sadly, it can only perform one action per round like any other ship. Which is a bit of a buzz kill as it does have some nice actions and nice upgrades which work as actions. It does boast some Energy based actions, sadly, they’re few and far between usefulness give or take the situation. Some require both using an action then spending energy to do. For Example the new upgrade Toryn Farr letting you remove all beneficial tokens from enemy ships within range 1-2, spending a one for one on energy to ship.

Remember that damage soak?

Over all though as it stands the GR-75 doesn’t seem all that great at this time. Its buffs are nice, but overall its a point sink and its easily killed give or take who you’re playing. 

A group of TIE Interceptors will eat this thing alive. Rebels might take a round or two more to end it with its shield repairs, but outside that eh. But as a battering ram if you can get used to how this thing moves you can end a few ships with gleeful destruction! I’ll hold off too much official judgement of good/bad till the Corvette comes out, as I think these two will work well together. Maybe.

Pretty much a bee hive of death there

This thing though is definitely worth buying just to have it, but even more so for the X-Wing that comes with it. The New Model is more than a repaint, but actually a slightly more detailed mold, as evident by the different astromech on top and the greater detail in the grooves. I can go into detail on each pilot, but I’ve discussed them before in other articles. Lets just say I enjoy using both Wes and Porkins.

Now to Epic Play. The new format that allows you to play big games and use that fancy new ship you threw a pretty penny to get. 300 max points, with a 5 epic point limit. Ships have a model limits as well as not to get to silly with things (25 TIE Fighters is pretty scary sounding). Forces you into a normal sized gaming table and brings a few more rocks to throw around.

That being said though, at the end of the day its just a large point game with not much else going on. The Huge ships do create an interesting change, but till we get a bit more it won’t change to much from basic play. And as a friendly reminder, as to not do what I did as well, DO NOT fall into the trap of ‘Oh, its 300 points, spend spend spend!’ I did make a ‘big shiney’ or two in my first game, especially in my GR-75, which well, didn’t do to much. 

Didn’t help I kind of forgot to use it one turn, it moving and activated after every other ship. Still think about it as a regular game, putting more on quantity over quality. Sure, at first it sounds awesome to take Han, Lando and Chewie with Wedge, Wes and any other big point guys, under the guise of large points. But you’ll soon be out and still left with very little.

Even in Epic, the Cluster *dirty word* can happen.

Now while I did kind of just give Epic Play some crap being nothing much different now, it is still pretty fun. It’s a lot of ships, lots of lasers and a lot of good old fashioned Star Wars. And at the end of the day, what could be better? 

For more information please check out Fantasy Flight’s site and their Epic Play format as it does not come with the GR-75. 

Thanks for reading and have a great day. Checkout our latest video un-boxing for the new miniatures, and be sure to read our other Star Wars Tactics Articles as well. -Super Kaiju