Many of the Heavy ships are legends in the Star Wars universe, associated with the most heroic or villainous types. They are the toughest fighters, but often the dearest builds.

Heavy ships are more accustomed to fighting on their own than acting in support roles. Unlike true support ships, they are often heavy in Ordnance, but can also offer plenty of Crew or other non-combat upgrades.

Heavy ships can usually act as both a support to a squad of smaller ships and as front line combat ships in their own right. Two of these can be as powerful as any squad in the game.

Rebel (YT 1300, YT 2400, VCX 100)

The Millenium Falcon, Outrider and Ghost are the spine of the Rebel legend. All three are potent, even without their Titles, and are still capable of decent upgrade synergy.

The YT’s can move better than their size would have you believe, the 2400 has 2 agility and a Barrel Roll and the VCX can Evade, but compared to the Scum ships in this class they are pretty vanilla.

Offensively both YT’s offer a Turret, the VCX a 4 Primary and Turret upgrade option and the 2400 a second Cannon. Each also has at least 1 or more Crew and one a System slot, so they can also be good support ships.

Some of the better, and definitely most famous Rebel Pilots can be found here. Strongly aggressive, defensive or supportive as needed and often synergise well with the various Crew they can host.

Scum (Aggressor, Firespray, Lancer, Jumpmaster);

A totally different vibe here with 4 stone-killer ships, all different, but equally potent. The Jump Master is an elusive Ordnance platform, the Aggressor a slow but very agile, relentless knife fighter, the Lancer strangely fast and agile for a big bird, with a semi-turret primary and the Fire-spray is a tough, dual arc bag of Ordnance tricks.

All of these ships have dangerous Pilots and lots of upgrades, offering an enormous range of options. Not strong as support ships generally, they can still offer some choices. The Aggressor can link to another through IG-88D (assumed rather than Title in BB), the Lancer can Tractor, The Firespray can take many forms, especially with Ordnance and Crew and Manaroo is a genuine supporter with an appropriate Attanni Mind link-like token sharing talent.

Three have evade, one has 3 agility, which some fighters do not share, two have Barrel Rolls and one has white 5 speed. These things can move. The lack of mods hampers them slightly, but here again is a good example of BB letting the core concept of a ship shine, without either over doing it or allowing other ships to blunt their uniqueness. Until I directly compared them, I had not noticed just how each offers a better feature or features than any other ship in this class.

Without Titles, Mods and EPT’s, they are as blunted as the rest of the BB ships, but even in their simplified forms they are fundamentally strong and the ship to ship tactical synergies are nearly endless. Every ship but the Aggressor has a Crew slot, 1 or more Illicit and the JM a Droid. The Aggressor offers Systems, that fits into it’s robotic theme. I have to come to respect the relentlessness of the Aggressor. Very robotic.

Imperial (Decimator, Raider);

A small offering for the Empire, the Decimator is still one of the toughest and most useful Large ships in BB and the Raider fills the role of the genuine “Big Bad” in 200+ point, scenario driven games.

The Turret, with 2 other Ordnance options makes it stronger than the YT’s before builds, 16 health is equal to the VCX and 3 Crew slots make it intimidating, versatile and it adds a lot to Imperial build options. Not even the two huge ships in BB can feel safe with it on the table.

The Raider is the only two card Huge ship in the game. Including this at the expense of the CR-90 Corvette is as much by design as by necessity. I missed the last of the 1e CR-90’s and have not yet been able to get a full set of 1e parts for my 2e one (latest purchase). This is not really a problem for me though as the Raider was originally bought as a scenario driver for the game, offering the nasty end point for a campaign or the big Imperial intimidator that the rag tag Rebel forces had to combat (mini Death Star scenario if you will).

It also adds all of the missing facets of the Huge ship, 1e experience (a two card ship, multiple hard points and teams). Without it, the C-Roc has to carry much of the Huge ship weight.

The main reason the Raider is in the combat, not support ship group is it’s emphasis on Teams and Hard Point upgrades and lack of support actions (Coordinate only). This ship goes up front, it does not not hang back. Costing more than half of a 200 point squad and being very forward arc biased, generally means it carries the weight of the attack, with it’s escorts defending it’s soft rear. Fully tooled up, there is generally only room for a 4 Tie escort out of 200 points.

Coming in at 100 points for the base ship, this can only be played either as a match the build scenario (build the Raider and match it with opponent points), or a full 2-300 point game, which is generally easier in BB as the builds are simpler. You can actually get 4 X Wing, 3 B Wing and 3 Y or A Wings up against it and some escorts for a mini battle. I am also experimenting with the basic “Epic” template rules from 2e.

As a rule, if we include the Raider, Palpatine can also get a go.