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Played another game on the weekend. At last my SA was defeated!!

Basically because I brought no air cover and little infantry. Well and I really brought poor anti-infantry weapons.

The opposing player also SA with loads and loads of infantry in a pioneer Co., supported by Thunderbolts and a Warhound. I was tabled at the end of T3.

After 10+ games:

- At the end of T2 it is always clear who's going to win. Kept playing for fun or to take revenge on some key enemy units

- It is pretty clear infantry is OP even when little cover and scenery is present, just because of points costs and rules.

It is definitely a fun game, despite it's faults, watching hordes of little marines wipe each other out is always going to be of appeal.

One thing I have noticed is that I don't think I have played more than one game where my opponent has had the same interpretation of the rules - often little things such as withdrawing from melee, weapons profiles, rules for reserves and shooting at aircraft etc. Each time it's a pause in the game while we both heft our rulebooks and read through the pages of quite obtuse rule description and try and get to the solution. And we are now approaching people having played 10-12 games, which to me is not the sign of a well composed set of rules.

Part of me thinks they really needed to air drop in Alessio Cavatore with a pair of scissors to cut down on some of the extraneous extra detail in the rules, make it faster flowing and just easier to play. I think you would have gained a lot from that as an 'experience' of a wargame, and those tiny little details in terms of unit variations and the way that combat works would probably not have been missed. I have honestly played skirmish games which carry less individual unit detail, and it's one of the reasons I am looking forward to the new Mantic Warpath Epic game - at this scale, and with this volume of miniatures, you need some abstraction.

SU-152 wrote:
Played another game on the weekend. At last my SA was defeated!!

Basically because I brought no air cover and little infantry. Well and I really brought poor anti-infantry weapons.

The opposing player also SA with loads and loads of infantry in a pioneer Co., supported by Thunderbolts and a Warhound. I was tabled at the end of T3.

After 10+ games:

- At the end of T2 it is always clear who's going to win. Kept playing for fun or to take revenge on some key enemy units

- It is pretty clear infantry is OP even when little cover and scenery is present, just because of points costs and rules.

It's an undeniable trend at this point, its a 5 turn game that never goes past turn 3 in terms of chance to win and it's not a feel good experience a lot of the time. Game is just too top heavy.

I'm really pushing people to try end game scoring and reserves, the simplest mechanic we've come up with is adding a rule to a scenario that says both armies have to put 1/3 of their activations(detachments) in reserve, and you roll from turn 2 onward, 4+, 3+ turn 3, turn 4 anything left comes in automatically.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pacific wrote:


Part of me thinks they really needed to air drop in Alessio Cavatore with a pair of scissors to cut down on some of the extraneous extra detail in the rules, make it faster flowing and just easier to play.

On that front I agree, I think tracking break points for formations needs to go entirely, it adds nothing but stress and time and takes way too much sideboard. It feels like being asked to take a traffic census while playing grand theft auto 5. It just needs to be axed.


There are other quality of life and speed of play considerations that I'd make some changes for. Example, instead of alternating placing formations, I'd honestly just have both players roll off and winner can choose deployment and deploy whole army or make opponent go first but lose ability to choose deployment etc. Deploying by formation also means added time organizing the whole army beforehand by formation which is a task that goes from reasonable with a few formations to quite mentally taxing when you attempt to play a big game.

As I mentioned replying to SU-152, adding forced reserves can also be a big quality of life improvement for the game. It also helps games scale up in size without having those big burdensome first two turns that just drag on because so many things are alternating back and forth their activations. But if the tempo of the battle see fewer initial units on the board, but an ok to steady stream of reserves arriving, it keeps activations at any one time lower overall but also helps battles go to turn 5 and feel a bit closer.

From the games I've had whats missing is a "sudden death" scenario system, something where a side thats taken a hammering can still win by grabbing one or two of several objectives.

then casualties just determine the scale of victory, you had a mission, and you succeeded.

currently as noted by turn two you know who will win because its a grind of defined length, grab a VP lead and its seldom taken back if you are laying on the pain

reserves can help with traffic management but just draws the grind out - though its going to be an easy win v someone who decides "I will hold and wait for my reserves" to win a mobility game.

tracking formations etc hasn't been a problem here, I guess coming from other systems where similar is needed helps - e.g. FoW v3 with large soviet units than intermingled.

the first change I'd make is to the missions, experiment with a lift & drop of the Flames 3 system

essentially you "win" by grabbing one of the objectives in the enemy area, you do this by moving something onto it (well within 3") and no enemy within 3". you do this on your turn - but you win at the start of the next turn, so the enemy always has their turn to dislodge you or contest - you need to firmly secure it, not just toe in

the level of casualties you take, and only the winners casualties matter, determines the level of victory.

there is no "oh a point for killing your leader" or "a point for killing a unit first" stuff - its all about "capture that bridge/landing zone, bunker etc

leopard wrote:


reserves can help with traffic management but just draws the grind out - though its going to be an easy win v someone who decides "I will hold and wait for my reserves" to win a mobility game.

Reserves in conjunction with end games scoring.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

leopard wrote:


tracking formations etc hasn't been a problem here, I guess coming from other systems where similar is needed helps - e.g. FoW v3 with large soviet units than intermingled.

But tracking works against having larger and larger games, especially even attempting say 2 v 2 games. It's certainly not the only impediment to scaling up but it's there. We can agree tracking 1-2 formations, especially very different ones with zero crossover in models isn't as taxing but man, as you scale up to 4-5-6 formations it gets a bit nutty and the ever more space you need for sideboard as well just adds to that. But its so out of step from what the game is trying to be, and most orders just end up being advance order anyway tbh.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

leopard wrote:

the first change I'd make is to the missions, experiment with a lift & drop of the Flames 3 system

essentially you "win" by grabbing one of the objectives in the enemy area, you do this by moving something onto it (well within 3") and no enemy within 3". you do this on your turn - but you win at the start of the next turn, so the enemy always has their turn to dislodge you or contest - you need to firmly secure it, not just toe in

the level of casualties you take, and only the winners casualties matter, determines the level of victory.

there is no "oh a point for killing your leader" or "a point for killing a unit first" stuff - its all about "capture that bridge/landing zone, bunker etc

I don't mind 1vp per leader or tank commander so long as objectives are worth more, like 3-4vp each. I'm fine with ones in or near enemy zones being worth more like 4 instead of 3. A big problem with the progressive scoring is just the scale of it, like I joke that the scores resemble basketball games.


I agree though the focus should be on controlling objectives over killing stuff, casualties are just sorta the name of the game.



We also gotta get people using more varied terrain types, infantry are just too good if you play wall to wall structures, but also, the cadence of a turn based game is different than alternating and that also means that terrain for alternating benefits a lot from big mountains/rocks/los blockers that break up the flow and pathing of units, because a grid of 2x2 structures basically means infantry are playing on an open board in terms of pathing. If the flow of the board is more like a real time strategy style, with very defined pathing/cliffs/ramps ect you get a lot more maneuver play and a lot less demolition derpy mosh pit traffic jame around every objective for 2 turns until both sides just wanna tap out.

end game scoring goes right back to "oh I don't need to worry about objectives if I just kill stuff", its why I like them being sudden death or progressive

though progressive gets to the point you also need "if you are 'x' ahead you win" to avoid utterly pointless games when the outcome has already been decided.

and seriously unit tracking isn't half the problem you think, don't even need the sideboard for it - you have say four formations, you note the starting strength of each, you then note the break strength of each in terms of whats left on the table.

stuff dies, back in the box, you never need to look at it, you count what you have left.

all thats then needed is a way for a player to clearly see which unit something belongs to, base markings, unit colours, flags, whatever, job done.

managed it fine with some 12-14 units that need tracking and unit sizes varying from 2 to 10 "things", quickly becomes at a glance - especially if you have sensibly designed formations, and in LI if you have a lot of formations they are not individually containing many units - unless you go infantry spam where you will need a way to tell units apart anyway.

goal should be "here is your mission", the enemy is just something thats in the way trying to stop you

and totally agree on more terrain, but a mix, you want some open areas as well as some dense areas. rivers, river crossings, impassible rubble areas etc.

best way is to actually dig up some actual maps or the edges of towns etc and adapt them

leopard wrote:
end game scoring goes right back to "oh I don't need to worry about objectives if I just kill stuff", its why I like them being sudden death or progressive

though progressive gets to the point you also need "if you are 'x' ahead you win" to avoid utterly pointless games when the outcome has already been decided.

and seriously unit tracking isn't half the problem you think, don't even need the sideboard for it - you have say four formations, you note the starting strength of each, you then note the break strength of each in terms of whats left on the table.

stuff dies, back in the box, you never need to look at it, you count what you have left.

all thats then needed is a way for a player to clearly see which unit something belongs to, base markings, unit colours, flags, whatever, job done.

managed it fine with some 12-14 units that need tracking and unit sizes varying from 2 to 10 "things", quickly becomes at a glance - especially if you have sensibly designed formations, and in LI if you have a lot of formations they are not individually containing many units - unless you go infantry spam where you will need a way to tell units apart anyway.

You're doin a poor job of sellin me sir, tracking is dead


Automatically Appended Next Post:

leopard wrote:


goal should be "here is your mission", the enemy is just something thats in the way trying to stop you

and totally agree on more terrain, but a mix, you want some open areas as well as some dense areas. rivers, river crossings, impassible rubble areas etc.

best way is to actually dig up some actual maps or the edges of towns etc and adapt them

I think if the game system can't handle controlling 3-5 objectives with end game scoring it won't work for complex missions.


Ya terrain needs a mix, but we also need to write some additional terrain sub types in the vain of how they have obstacles and reinforced obstacles, and mainly to have stuff that also slow down infantry, like cliffs needs a re-write because you can just b-line up and down over a damn mountain with 15 inches of movement, poor assault marines feel pretty redundant lol.


The problem with alternating is its just hyper-i go-u go but if you spread objectives out enough, and i do think 5 is better than 3 for most games, but if you spread 5 out enough, 1 in center say and 1 in each quadrant with interesting terrain in between the game can function. Missions still need to limit the hell out of infiltrate but its a start. Also gotta force 1/3 of armies into reserve as like a baseline I feel. And do whatever else is needed to pull back from all the alpha strikey/drop podey/million flyer/bombers spammy/rending ogryn top heavyness we see ruining games and making them all turn 2-3 affairs at best. I want turn 5, i want games that feel close and engaging and i think its possible to get pretty close.

Q: how do people handle tracking which model is from which unit in other games? genuinely curious why this is considered such a problem when large numbers of games have it.

heck 1st & 2nd edition Space Marine certainly had "which unit is that model from" as you had break points, e.g. the old Land Raider company from 2nd being fragile with only 10 models and breaking at 5 gone

curious, some games go for "total models", some do it unit by unit, others formation by formation, sometimes with a smattering of stuff that doesn't count for morale.


and yes terrain needs a lot more granularity, I want minefields, razor wire etc, and for them to be different

go look at Battletech: Alpha Strike, three types of woods, and then three types of jungles - each with different line of sight rules for how far you can see through and at what penalty, an entire height system (Z axis is Heresy though)

FoW at its most simple sticks two objectives each side of the table, within 8" of the baseline but more than 8" from the corner. both players place one at home and one away, so usually one is easier to defend than the other

that system often has reserves, more often for the defender so its not symmetrical.

also has a system that I think could be very easily brought into legions, a formation has a "type", there its infantry, mechanised or armoured. infantry is more likely to defend against mechanised who are more likely to defend against armoured

means tank heavy forces tend to be the attacker, and thus infantry heavy ones by design get to play a more defensive game - though not always.

in legion give each formation a score, say infantry "1", armour "2", heavy armour "3", fliers "4", titans maybe "3". total it up, highest number is attacking

your point on a close engaging fight needs a fundamental re-write, its not just cover, the lethality needs roughly halving from ranged fire.

for example two roughly equal infantry forces, one sits tight, the other advances. you want the firepower balanced so when the attacked assaults the game is now about 50-50 who wins.

so assault needs to provide an advantage to those who charge in relation to likely casualties and distance to cover. then best use of cover by the player provides and edge, as does cross fire etc.

as for forcing a third into reserve, fine with that, indeed its something I am surprised the base rules do not allow as an option - not outflanking or anything, just some units arriving 2nd and 3rd turn, either by dice roll or pre-programmed by formation. e.g. "this armoured company arrives on the left flank on the 2nd turn"

infiltrate.. curious, here Team Yankee I think gets this right, a unit that wants to infiltrate deploys as normal as a drop, then gets its nornal move forward - and it extends the deployment zone around it - but nothing can, ever, get closer than say 16" to the enemy deployment zone or an already deployed enemy unit

so infiltrators can go forwards, can bring others along for the ride, but becomes a skill in alternate deployments.

frankly the idea of legions is good, and its not a bad game, but it could be oh so much better drawing from a range of other games

Okay so latest version of the scenario for event hopefully soonish. The reason it has so many special rules is its simpler than asking people to read like a home brew FAQ and its also seen as less of a threat to core rules people may like, it's easy to show this and say "try it with some or none of the special rules at you and your opponent's discretion". The reserves rule is a bit of a slog to read, but only because it has so many loose ends to tie up. The goal of all of this is to make the game playable in a reasonable amount of time and have it be possible for newer and more experienced players to be able to finish their games in a timely manner. The board size might change from 5x4 back to 4x4 in terms of doing an event, space wise we may only have 6x4 tables and you really need some sideboard. If doing 5x4 is possible for an event that's still the preference.

So basically the hope would be trying to do a 2 or 3 round event at some point in spring/summer using this scenario/mission. In the context of an event, it'd be like 5 objectives round one, 4 objectives round two, 3 round 3. Each round would be a different deployment type.

If we could get 8-10 players, we could split between loyalist and traitor and pool victory points for an overall traitor or loyalist victory in addition to awards for best overall generals for both sides and best sportsman/coolest army etc as usual. Location and time would be tbd, possibly not a store.

Having fiddled with an online list builder, I think we’re still to see the game at its full potential.

Marines are hurting for flyers, artillery and light tanks, for instance. As such various strategies are shut off from Marine players until those units are released. And that’s just the sort of units with no models announced - there’s still plenty shown, but not yet released.

The knock-on effect of course is going to be armies feeling pretty samey, because we’re all currently drawing from a very limited pool - even if your 3D printing to be slightly ahead by being able to field bikes, speeders etc.

Makes sense, seeing as how they have decided to release the army list piece by piece over multiple DLCs...

Expansion Books don’t bother me personally.

It helps keep knock-off makers from getting ahead of the game, and if that release model is what keeps the games in production? I’ll live with it.

Plus, this is what GW has always done. Sometimes it’s Codexes or boxes like Ork and Squat Warlords. Sometimes it extra volumes with variant rules and new units for multiple armies.

Even way, way back to Rogue Trader, you had to keep up with White Dwarf to keep up to date.

That of course isn’t then to say “STFU”. Just…it is what it’s always been, and I’m cool with that. Other opinions are welcome and valid.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Expansion Books don’t bother me personally.

It helps keep knock-off makers from getting ahead of the game

Yeah that's uhhh objectively false. We're now back at where gw was during the chapter house lawsuit with books out for months now without models, the only way I even have an air force or half the models I do is "knock-off makers" who in some cases were years ahead of gw making files and prints. The epic community is so far ahead of he game its not even funny. The terrax drills gw previewed for the yet to be named third book, there are 1 piece files/prints that have had files for like 3-4 years.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Expansion Books don’t bother me personally.

It helps keep knock-off makers from getting ahead of the game, and if that release model is what keeps the games in production? I’ll live with it.

Yeah... dunno. At the end of the day, I don't feel like it's something that benefits me instead of GW.

Expansion books, particularly for these Specialist Games, do actually bother me, a lot. Even more so when they leave out stuff that really should be mainstays out just so that you have to buy a supplement, like mfing drop pods or Land Raiders, FFS.

It is the main reason I went back to the Necromunda Community Edition.

 Albertorius wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Expansion Books don’t bother me personally.

It helps keep knock-off makers from getting ahead of the game, and if that release model is what keeps the games in production? I’ll live with it.

Yeah... dunno. At the end of the day, I don't feel like it's something that benefits me instead of GW.

Expansion books, particularly for these Specialist Games, do actually bother me, a lot. Even more so when they leave out stuff that really should be mainstays out just so that you have to buy a supplement, like mfing drop pods or Land Raiders, FFS.

It is the main reason I went back to the Necromunda Community Edition.

But at the end of the day they need these games to make money. Things like Necromunda, Epic, Blood Bowl etc have failed to do that in the past and stopped getting support as a result.

If this is how they have decided they can justify doing the specialist games then that’s the way it is.

My only current gripe with Legions is that there’s a shortage of official models and expansion books.

FLGS have had a restock of the expansion book, not sure I can be bothered know I know how little actual content is in there

still think the game looks amazing, haven't had a drive to play it with what used to be semi regular opponents when it first dropped recently though

its not that people have moved on its just "oh yeah, I've got a box of that somewhere"

entertaining bit is a club set up more or less for 40k players with a smattering of AoS now sees regular Bolt Action games, Battle Tech (classic and alpha strike), heroquest, blood bowl and a whole range of other games

and occasionally legions, issue is so far the few who play it have an established pecking order for who will win thats not really shifted in all the games played

leopard wrote:


entertaining bit is a club set up more or less for 40k players with a smattering of AoS now sees regular Bolt Action games, Battle Tech (classic and alpha strike), heroquest, blood bowl and a whole range of other games

and occasionally legions, issue is so far the few who play it have an established pecking order for who will win thats not really shifted in all the games played

Wow, exactly same experience here. So far away.

At the end of the day, I honestly think that's a net positive.

 Albertorius wrote:
At the end of the day, I honestly think that's a net positive.

its entertaining watching a few go for "whats that rubbish?" and general micky taking over "historical rubbish" to "that seemed quite close" (even when it wasn't) to a demo game or two and then the shop the club is attached to start stocking it

now have a chunk of Warlords range in and are talking to both battlefront and catalysts distributors

I suspect and hope legions will drift back as people gradually get a few more bits

leopard wrote:

essentially you "win" by grabbing one of the objectives in the enemy area, you do this by moving something onto it (well within 3") and no enemy within 3". you do this on your turn - but you win at the start of the next turn, so the enemy always has their turn to dislodge you or contest - you need to firmly secure it, not just toe in

Chat to some of the GW design teams. The rules have to have granularity for modelled options and have to have winning revolving around what happens to models. While they depart a bit its pretty core as they believe it is part of their model centric offering to customers.

for sure, its common across their games, sometimes one model or another counts extra but its usually "stuff that dies", even 40k that has largely gone objective based still has a lot of VP for killing stuff being possible.

it is their system and they do tend to stick to it, pity as the rules framework they have could support that and a range of other possibilities in the core scenarios that could, perhaps, shake up army building a bit

not expecting it to change

How are people finding Titans behave/perform in the game?

Is it better to have one big scary one, or multiple Warhounds or something?

 General Kroll wrote:
How are people finding Titans behave/perform in the game?

Is it better to have one big scary one, or multiple Warhounds or something?

so far only seen warhounds used in games I've played, and heard of a reaver and a warlord

not impressed with any of them, the warhounds die far too quickly, shockingly so to any reasonable anti tank guns, and from what I have seen the others go down in a single turn also, though taking more fire - in theory being a bullet soak for a turn could help but they are so many points you don't have the stuff to capitalise on it.

local games are set up often as "x" points + a titan or two, simply so both sides have to have the things otherwise the side that doesn't has a huge advantage.

first time I saw a warhound it fires a few shots that didn't do a lot, then a vanquisher unit of four tanks removed it from the game in one volley (4x cannot & 4x las cannon, bye bye shields, bye bye titan), didn't expect it to go down so fast

leopard wrote:

 General Kroll wrote:
How are people finding Titans behave/perform in the game?

Is it better to have one big scary one, or multiple Warhounds or something?

[...]

first time I saw a warhound it fires a few shots that didn't do a lot, then a vanquisher unit of four tanks removed it from the game in one volley (4x cannot & 4x las cannon, bye bye shields, bye bye titan), didn't expect it to go down so fast

In fairness, that is a spectacularly rare event as generally you don't expect the Warhound to take even one wound from the first volley like that (four Vanquishers hitting on 4+ cause two hits that will be stopped by the Voids as defender decides their order, after which four lascannons hitting on 4+ become two 3+ saves). A second similar volley starts to hurt badly, though.

As the rules are set up, the bigger engines do not individually cost all that much more for starkly increased staying power. A Warlord with its larger pool of regenerating shields is harder to spike damage dead in one go without letting the rest of the enemy force to ravage the troops concentrating on it. When I tried out the psi-titan, pretty much all fire that the enemy threw at it without managing to kill it was merely wasted from stopping my other forces that then slaughtered their army even if the titan itself didn't necessarily kill all that much.

Thanks both

The Titans are disappointing, but I see potential in the Warbringer for larger 2K+ games. It not only has good range on it's Mori and Volcano cannons, but also benefits from skyfire for it's defence batteries. If going with the stock kit then the laser blaster is a respectable answer for most things closing in on it's position.

On the subject of GW's approach to releases of minis and rules, as I love Epic as a 'system' and scale, I am against anything that is a barrier to entry - I want the game to succeed so more people play Epic, and unfortunately GW have put up a fair few of these barriers:
- Poor availability of the game and 'core' models for many months knocked a lot of wind out of the sails and stopped momentum building.
- Not having 'core' units (Land Raiders, jet bikes etc) available at launch - still not widely available actually - and putting rules for these units in a book that is still difficult to get hold of. Having to use a 3rd party app to play the game, many will just not bother.
- An extremely crunchy and poorly edited rulebook, a heavy tome which is good to use as a blunt instrument to stop home invasions but not much else. I would say it is the most difficult to learn and play Epic system of any of the five editions released at a time when the industry has moved in the opposite direction and more streamlined games. 'For us, not for them' is a quote I have seen aimed at Necromunda, and I think applies here too, and the game is not suitable for casual gamers.
- Almost no attempt at marketing the game in White Dwarf, to the point where you might not even know the game exists.

All of these factors mean that I think this game is only ever going to be a 'fringe' system and definitely won't be as popular as Bloodbowl or Necromunda. I will be surprised if it persists as long as the 28mm game.

Suggesting 3K points for a standard game also didn't help, when 2K was plenty.

My current thoughts on LI:

Loving the models, and keep finding all sorts of other GW games I can use them with. We are finally starting HH2.0, and will be playing with LI models (distances converted to centimeters, stands have their multiples of wounds). I am also going to start playing 1st edition Adeptus Titanicus and Space Marine, once I have collected enough stuff.

But the actual LI rules? meh. I was initially optimistic about them, but have since come to the realization that they are pretty raw, betatesting tier stuff. Nice to have in a pinch, but I have better uses for the models.

Who knows, perhaps the game will mature and will turn out decent after half a dozen DLCs.. but I'm not holding my breath. I love the models, everything else is secondary for me

 General Kroll wrote:
How are people finding Titans behave/perform in the game?

Is it better to have one big scary one, or multiple Warhounds or something?

I'll use them on occasion as I just like the models. But so far none of them have impressed me. The Reaver especially so. For the pts cost I'll just usually take more tanks.
I haven't used the Dire wolves yet though as they're sitting on my desk waiting to be built.