The Future Is Epic.

[Mr Mystery]

No, not epic. Epic. As in, Epic Scale.

This stuff.



Mmmmmmmmmyeah!

Epic. It's easily the besterest wargame ever made, and if you don't agree?

(may not be accurate)

In short....Epic does (well, did, to be fair) everything 40k currently tries to do. It's kind of like seeing a kid try to fill there absent father's shoes, only for Dad to walk in the front door years later, having been a John Doe Coma Victim for years, left alone, unknown and forlorn in a hospital bed.

You want Superheavies? We got everything from a Stormhammer to an Emperor Titan, and everything in between.

You want fliers? Thunderbolt and Marauder first kicked off in the Titan Legions era. And they had stuff to actually do, rather than act as really fast and slightly unwieldy skimmers.

You want to field a Tank Company? Knock yourself out. You won't be the first!

You want amusing damage results on Titans instead of 'ping, ping, ping, ping ASPLODE'? Try shooting them in the MIU. That's always good for a laugh. As is taking a leg off at the hip. Check out the God Machine. It's fallen, and it can't get it up.

You want really, really big games? No probs. It's almost as if that's what Epic is designed for.

You want a game where your infantry actually matter? Yep. Believe it or not, that's Epic. Take and hold buildings! Take and hold those incredibly important objectives. Very few games of Epic were ever won without infantry support and the proper application thereof - whether it was the noble sacrifice of mobbing an enemy Titan to allow yours to scarper clear, or even (and this is my favourite) using them to board an Emperor Titan and blow it's legs off next turn? Infantry are your diminutive men and women.

You may have noticed, I have a near tectonic relationship with Epic. I absolutely love it. Always have, always will. Even Epic 40,000, it's weakest incarnation, was still a reasonably good game.

And now it's coming back. And, if it pans out as it did in the past, I can quite easily foresee it over taking 40k in popularity. As I attempted to illustrate above, all the things 40k has grown to do over the past few years, Epic naturally does better. Here's some examples to further drive my possibly-by-now-meandering point home.

In 40k - Your opponent takes a Knight or other Superheavy. You didn't plan for this. You've been trumped.

In Epic - Your opponent takes a really big Titan. Don't worry, you'll be able to deal with it. Maybe not quite as quickly if you had your own, but strip off it's Void Shields and then shoot it in the face. Sooner or later, it's going down.

In 40k - Drat, drat and double drat! My opponent has overdosed on Fliers, and my Codex has extremely limited, or worse, no, AA capacity, let alone the army I've chosen to field. Well done. Checkmate. Hope you're proud of yourself, and I'm sure you Mum tells you you're cool.

In Epic - Gah! Accursed Fliers! EAT FIRST FIRE, FLYBOY! Dakkadakkadakkadakka



40k has tried, desperately, to fill the void Epic left in it's enforced absence. And don't get me wrong. When everyone is of a mood, really big games of 40k are a hoot. But like a night on the pop in Nottingham bracketed by visits to the Red Hot World Buffet to first line the stomach and then kill off the hangover, it's not something you can do every day, and for the most part, nor would you want to.

And so 40k has mutated beyond it's natural boundaries. Consider the fun challenge of a proper, dense terrain City Fight, or even better, the small force, sodding expensive board, giggles of Zone Mortalis where the biggest nasty you're likely to meet (and even then likely straight into range of Johnny Melta) is a Dreadnought of some description. That to me is when 40k seriously comes into it's own.

But now? Now Epic is coming back in the form of Adeptus Titanicus Horus Heresy. Apparently, the scale is going from 6mm classic, to a shiny new 8mm - or in other words, everything is getting 33% embiggened on the resizograph, so sadly us old duffers with Epic armies gathering dust somewhere can't necessarily transpose those straight across (unless everyone is doing that, in which case Happy Days...eeehhhhhhhhh!) And that means all the things that 40k is doing at the moment that, let's be honest, the system struggles with....are about to be done much, much better.

Of course, right now nobody knows (apart from those working on the game, natch) what the rules are going to be like, or what sort of scope they're aiming for. So various and sundry of my rather excitable points above may not pan out (like First Fire, part of the orders system. Might come back, might not. I hope it does, as that really made Epic for me)

But any game which has 'well, Legionnes Titanicus, one of them each' as it's starting point probably isn't gonna go far wrong in satisfying for those with a craving for warfare on a truly ludicrous scale - even at Forgeworld prices (and even then, this is part of the Specialist Games Revival, or GW Year One as it's starting to feel. Or perhaps GW New 52 type thing. I dunno. I'm not hip and rap with the kids, yo, so who knows if this'll be plastic or resin kits for the most part? Again, probably some dude within FW overseeing this project. But not us, that's what I'm trying to get at)

So where does that leave 40k?

Well, I don't imagine for a moment we'll see the end of plastic Super Heavy Kits being available. Apocalypse is, after all, a total blast to play, and even in standard sized 40k game, taking on a Super Heavy with prior warning can prove a very satisfying challenge of your ability. But as a wider community? Will we see 40k shrink a bit to it's natural comfort zone - 1,500ish games in dense terrain, leave the Big Toys at home. I don't know.

But what do you think?

Oh, and just to be clear.....ATHH is the beginning - a toe in the water if you will. When it's successful (yup, I'm that confident. I know a lot of lapsed gamers, dusty old souls every last man jack of them, and they're all aquiver with excite for this, and have deep pockets....), we can expect Xenos and non-Heresy era stuff to come along in time.