Warhammerfest 2014 Thread

[Defenestratus]

Am I the only one who doesn't miss Epic? I mean the first generation of rules were great but the models were always rubbish.

Right there with you. Couldn't really care less about it.

40k was much better for narrative gaming..

[40kGamer]

Right there with you. Couldn't really care less about it.

40k was much better for narrative gaming..

Until the braintrust at GW decided to blend EPIC into 40k and dilute the game system. EPIC was meant to represent apocalyptic scale battles, something 40k will never successfully accomplish no matter how hard they try.

[Defenestratus]

Until the braintrust at GW decided to blend EPIC into 40k and dilute the game system. EPIC was meant to represent apocalyptic scale battles, something 40k will never successfully accomplish no matter how hard they try.

Really?

My group seems to have no trouble playing huge apocalypse games the way they're meant to be played, with massive titans striding forth to smite the enemy....
[url]http://www.unrememberedlegion.com/2014/10/15/apocalypse-battle-report-narratives-part-1-the-battle-that-never-was/[/url]

Why don't you think 40k can capture that EPIC feeling? The problem in epic is that your infantry always felt like "oh they're just the parsely to my mashed potatoes".. meaning that they're there because either they have to be, or they just make the board look good. It was the titans and tanks that really did anything and even then it was really the super heavies who got things done.

At least in 40k, you can have a moment like, when my Autarch deep struck in behind my friend's warlord titan with 2 Structure points left and managed to chain react it to oblivion with his fusion gun. Awesome narrative moments like that were few and far between in Epic. About the coolest thing that happened was when two mega titans got in close combat with each other....

[John Bower]

Until the braintrust at GW decided to blend EPIC into 40k and dilute the game system. EPIC was meant to represent apocalyptic scale battles, something 40k will never successfully accomplish no matter how hard they try.

That's not the problem with 40k; the problem is that somebody decided it might be a good idea to try and play tourneys with a narrative game built for fun. Apocalypse was always the same; narrative, it was never meant to be balanced in any way shape or form; and is in fact further proof that as flawed as 40k may be it is still the only game that can do all sizes of battle from a few skirmishers on a 4X4 board to thousands of models on... well any board you have room for.

[Kirsten]

I wasn't an epic fan, would love to see a titan system come back though, with some awesome plastic titans.

[40kGamer]

Really?

My group seems to have no trouble playing huge apocalypse games the way they're meant to be played, with massive titans striding forth to smite the enemy....
[url]http://www.unrememberedlegion.com/2014/10/15/apocalypse-battle-report-narratives-part-1-the-battle-that-never-was/[/url]

First I have to say that the titans and game board look awesome! There’s nothing better then fully painted armies and terrain to get a person into the game!

Why don't you think 40k can capture that EPIC feeling? The problem in epic is that your infantry always felt like "oh they're just the parsely to my mashed potatoes".. meaning that they're there because either they have to be, or they just make the board look good. It was the titans and tanks that really did anything and even then it was really the super heavies who got things done.

There are several issues that come to mind. First off is that 40k games of 1750-2000 points are a terrible place to put Superheavies and Fliers. It can work in a closed setting where the game is essentially preplanned but pick up games become an exercise in futility. The rock/paper/scissors effect has always been an issue but blending Epic into the main game it is magnified to the point that one sided games are far more common. Plus there are huge issues with groundscale and timescale.

Apocalypse works as a game but it isn't 40k. To effectively represent what could be on an Epic table you can't play on a 6x4 table and you need several people per side. In fact to really represent the Epic groundscale you need to play in a gymnasium (which was a thing when the armorcast titans first came out.)

Fliers require a huge abstraction in the timescale within a game turn as you cannot simultaneously represent the fliers and the other action on such a constricted table.

I do agree that infantry felt a bit off in most versions of Epic but I also find most standard infantry doesn't accomplish much in the current 40k. Probably a side effect of more Epic scale mechanics blending into the game.

At least in 40k, you can have a moment like, when my Autarch deep struck in behind my friend's warlord titan with 2 Structure points left and managed to chain react it to oblivion with his fusion gun. Awesome narrative moments like that were few and far between in Epic. About the coolest thing that happened was when two mega titans got in close combat with each other....

40k for me has always been the narrative game but IMO the more Epic they blend in the less narrative it becomes.

That's not the problem with 40k; the problem is that somebody decided it might be a good idea to try and play tourneys with a narrative game built for fun. Apocalypse was always the same; narrative, it was never meant to be balanced in any way shape or form; and is in fact further proof that as flawed as 40k may be it is still the only game that can do all sizes of battle from a few skirmishers on a 4X4 board to thousands of models on... well any board you have room for.

40k definitely isn’t a well balanced tournament system by any stretch. Even if we side step the fact that GW used to be the ones promoting and running these events there’s the looming problem of the pick up game. My best pal and I have played against each other for over 20 years. Up until 40k transitioned into 6th-7th edition we never felt the need to discuss what we were going to use ahead of time. In fact unleashing a surprise was part of the fun of our random pickup games. Now it’s just not fun to play that way cause who wants to go “surprise” I brought a Revenant to a 1750 game. Not saying this is horrible but we have to either restrict the rules or plan the game together to make it worth playing.

[Arkhan Land]

I miss Epic and BFG cause although I own probably close to 40 tanks and number of super-heavies. Its still a different kind of fun to do so even bigger. I want the old space battles. I never got to do it (cause quite frankly ive never had the money to shell out for anything but normal GW print), but watching people do the IA3 BFG battle as an outset for an campaign that was going to consume their lives for a week was kind of amazing, definitely what inspired me to get the few BFG pieces I did.

and also sort of thinking a now versus then sort of deal, Ive spent a carefully planned lotta-bucks on trying to appreciate larger and larger portrayals of the 40k universe, albeit in a smaller and possibly less glorious scale, Epic did kind of have the way less expensive version of that going till all the stuff went oop.
Though considering I always bring painted minis and have still yet to play an Apocalypse battle against a fully painted/finished army, the term less glorious could be argued/contested. This I attribute to the Expense of building large costly (in real bucks) units whose rules are changed up every new edition (every 3-5 years), every new codex (every 3-4 years in the alternating year) and every new apoclypse edition (every 3-5 years in another alternating year) not withstanding any dataslates, temporary/exploratory FW provided rules that one can download. Its tough keeping an army of 2000 up to date sometimes, let alone an army of 20k!

also on the main topic THANK YOU to all the people posting up pictures and info and culling it from other sites for us to read!

[Asymmetrical Xeno]

To effectively represent what could be on an Epic table you can't play on a 6x4 table and you need several people per side. In fact to really represent the Epic groundscale you need to play in a gymnasium (which was a thing when the armorcast titans first came out.)

Agreed, when I played Epic - it actually was epic-scale, as in there would be space marine -legions- yes, yes legions, not chapters. One guy had litterally 10,000 epic space marines, and that isn't even counting all the tanks and titans he owned. My own Epic Necron army is about 3000 infantry and growing. I wouldnt even dream of painting that many models in 40k scale, and I'm certianly not Rich enough to buy that many.

[Mr Mystery]

Epic was the first game I properly played. Many a happy weekend spent in the garage, playing against my brother and my mates.

Going to have to track down complete copies of all the rules, and then set about getting some armies together. Absolutely love the 2nd Ed Space Marine and Titan Legions rules.

[Erik Setzer]

Really?

My group seems to have no trouble playing huge apocalypse games the way they're meant to be played, with massive titans striding forth to smite the enemy....
[url]http://www.unrememberedlegion.com/2014/10/15/apocalypse-battle-report-narratives-part-1-the-battle-that-never-was/[/url]

Why don't you think 40k can capture that EPIC feeling? The problem in epic is that your infantry always felt like "oh they're just the parsely to my mashed potatoes".. meaning that they're there because either they have to be, or they just make the board look good. It was the titans and tanks that really did anything and even then it was really the super heavies who got things done.

At least in 40k, you can have a moment like, when my Autarch deep struck in behind my friend's warlord titan with 2 Structure points left and managed to chain react it to oblivion with his fusion gun. Awesome narrative moments like that were few and far between in Epic. About the coolest thing that happened was when two mega titans got in close combat with each other....

You can have moments like that in Epic too, at least in "Space Marine," before the mess they made with "Epic 40K." It's a different scale of epic moments, so yeah, individual infantry-size models won't often make a huge difference, but the little guys could sometimes have their moments, like when a Warbuggy took out a super-heavy tank that just happened to be Yarrick's command vehicle... and that's how he got captured by Ghazghkull, because of a crazy event that happened in a Space Marine battle report. I used mobs of Nobz to great effect. At the very least, they could reliably strip a Warlord Titan of all its shields.

But you're talking completely different settings, and to be honest, a lot of Apoc games end up seeing the infantry just be dressing on the side anyway. My Stompa mulched through all kinds of non-vehicle models (including Thunderwolf Cavalry and Centurions) while shooting a lot of tanks on its way to walking across the board to rip a tank's turret off and beat the tank with it (the tank kept trying to shoot the Stompa, but missing to an amazing degree). My Lord of Skulls has never taken a wound from infantry, but has a LOT of kills to its credit, including blasting a bunch of Space Marines with its Hellfire template and even killing Dante in the process. All my infantry did was clog up the middle of the table. It felt like a game of Epic 40K, only with larger models.