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I think its definitely quite telling that modern 40k in some ways works better at Epic scale, both because of the volumes of units involved, the abstraction of things like close combat (compare the 'duels' of 40k 2nd edition to the versions which came after for instance) and also the kind of units in the game - with things like super heavies, knights etc. one of those is a big project at 28mm and dominates the tabletop, yet you can build a company of the things for Epic in an evening's painting.

Having said that, one way I prefer the Epic rules themselves have an advantage is that you have that layer of 'command and control' in Epic Space Marine/Titan Legions/Net Epic, where you have to place your orders before a turn starts and you can't be reactive to what someone has just done on the tabletop. It gives that feeling of perhaps an Imperial Commander sat watching a hologram of the battle and feeding down orders - also the way orders and command and control functions for some armies (your Guard army advance falls to pieces once the HQ is destroyed, or your Evil Sunz Orks just start racing across the tabletop! ). Armageddon too gives something missing from 40k, and is a much more tactical game - softening up units with fire before advancing, catching units in cross fire as a result of clever maneuver etc.

 Pacific wrote:
I think its definitely quite telling that modern 40k in some ways works better at Epic scale, both because of the volumes of units involved, the abstraction of things like close combat (compare the 'duels' of 40k 2nd edition to the versions which came after for instance) and also the kind of units in the game - with things like super heavies, knights etc. one of those is a big project at 28mm and dominates the tabletop, yet you can build a company of the things for Epic in an evening's painting.

Having said that, one way I prefer the Epic rules themselves have an advantage is that you have that layer of 'command and control' in Epic Space Marine/Titan Legions/Net Epic, where you have to place your orders before a turn starts and you can't be reactive to what someone has just done on the tabletop. It gives that feeling of perhaps an Imperial Commander sat watching a hologram of the battle and feeding down orders - also the way orders and command and control functions for some armies (your Guard army advance falls to pieces once the HQ is destroyed, or your Evil Sunz Orks just start racing across the tabletop! ). Armageddon too gives something missing from 40k, and is a much more tactical game - softening up units with fire before advancing, catching units in cross fire as a result of clever maneuver etc.

I think it's only that brief period of time when GW simplified the 40k rules so they became good for Epic scale... but then they immediately started complicating them again. But that said, I have no idea I haven't played any of the recent editions of 40k.



I've updated the 30k rules a bit, and added some rules for Superheavy tanks. For superheavy detachments, I'm thinking same as the old IG superheavy company, you can have 1-4 tanks in a squadron, 110pts per tank (can maybe tweak a bit if some weapons turn out to be more powerful than others).

I couldn't think of a good way of doing the Glaive, I've made it D6 AT shots but targets have to lie in a straight line... maybe it's simpler just to make it D6 AT shots and forget about the straight line bit... a bit of abstraction to make the game go smoother?



And updated rules for everything else (only real changed is some points values were a bit out of whack):





I think I'll remove the veterans in the next version. They're supposed to represent any sort of elite power armoured units a Legion might be able to take, but maybe Albertorius is right in that it's better represented by +1 assault or firepower to tacticals / despoilers rather than having a separate unit entry. My original idea was that the "assault" variant of the veterans would represent elite power armoured marines that come with 2 assault weapons and no shooting, but perhaps that's too confusing / complicated.

 Pacific wrote:
I think its definitely quite telling that modern 40k in some ways works better at Epic scale, both because of the volumes of units involved, the abstraction of things like close combat (compare the 'duels' of 40k 2nd edition to the versions which came after for instance) and also the kind of units in the game - with things like super heavies, knights etc. one of those is a big project at 28mm and dominates the tabletop, yet you can build a company of the things for Epic in an evening's painting.

Having said that, one way I prefer the Epic rules themselves have an advantage is that you have that layer of 'command and control' in Epic Space Marine/Titan Legions/Net Epic, where you have to place your orders before a turn starts and you can't be reactive to what someone has just done on the tabletop. It gives that feeling of perhaps an Imperial Commander sat watching a hologram of the battle and feeding down orders - also the way orders and command and control functions for some armies (your Guard army advance falls to pieces once the HQ is destroyed, or your Evil Sunz Orks just start racing across the tabletop! ). Armageddon too gives something missing from 40k, and is a much more tactical game - softening up units with fire before advancing, catching units in cross fire as a result of clever maneuver etc.

The 40K Apocalypse ruleset from a few years back works great at epic scale, just switch inches with centimeters to open up the table a bit. You even have detachment orders that limit what the detachment can do in a turn.

Irdiumstern wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
I think its definitely quite telling that modern 40k in some ways works better at Epic scale, both because of the volumes of units involved, the abstraction of things like close combat (compare the 'duels' of 40k 2nd edition to the versions which came after for instance) and also the kind of units in the game - with things like super heavies, knights etc. one of those is a big project at 28mm and dominates the tabletop, yet you can build a company of the things for Epic in an evening's painting.

Having said that, one way I prefer the Epic rules themselves have an advantage is that you have that layer of 'command and control' in Epic Space Marine/Titan Legions/Net Epic, where you have to place your orders before a turn starts and you can't be reactive to what someone has just done on the tabletop. It gives that feeling of perhaps an Imperial Commander sat watching a hologram of the battle and feeding down orders - also the way orders and command and control functions for some armies (your Guard army advance falls to pieces once the HQ is destroyed, or your Evil Sunz Orks just start racing across the tabletop! ). Armageddon too gives something missing from 40k, and is a much more tactical game - softening up units with fire before advancing, catching units in cross fire as a result of clever maneuver etc.

The 40K Apocalypse ruleset from a few years back works great at epic scale, just switch inches with centimeters to open up the table a bit. You even have detachment orders that limit what the detachment can do in a turn.

I'm not really familiar with any of the Apoc rulesets, but isn't Apoc still written from the perspective that it'd be played on a board where the two factions start relatively close together so that it can be played on a table? If you played Apoc on a 16' deep table (which would be similar to an Epic table that is 4' deep table) then you wouldn't be able to reach the models at the centre of the table. Or is Apoc written from the perspective of hiring a hall and just setting up on the floor?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

I'm not really familiar with any of the Apoc rulesets, but isn't Apoc still written from the perspective that it'd be played on a board where the two factions start relatively close together so that it can be played on a table? If you played Apoc on a 16' deep table (which would be similar to an Epic table that is 4' deep table) then you wouldn't be able to reach the models at the centre of the table. Or is Apoc written from the perspective of hiring a hall and just setting up on the floor?

Hence why I'm using epic miniatures and the ranges and movement as written but in centimeters instead of inches. Gives you more room to maneuver on a regular table. I agree, regular Apoc on a regular table is ridiculous. But the ruleset itself is solid, and adjusting missions is easy if necessary.

I found the rules were terrible - especially with the very poor differentiation between units. Honestly, if you want your Leman Russ to be tougher than Chimera, play something else...

The_Real_Chris wrote:
I found the rules were terrible - especially with the very poor differentiation between units. Honestly, if you want your Leman Russ to be tougher than Chimera, play something else...

Which rules are you referring to? Apoc?

Yes the latest iteration of 40k Apoc. Had an interesting chat with one of the devs - the cards were included to bring in a tactical layer the cramped table didn't allow, and options like adding heavy stubbers to tanks (why at this scale...) was at the insistence of the money/hobby guys who insisted on players having modelling upgrade choices reflecting kits.

It's been so long since I posted here that my password had been deleted!

chaos0xomega wrote:I feel like this chart isn't helpful when half the "selected features" are only relevant to the original product? Like if I'm trying to figure out which version of the rules to use, what do I care that 1st edition came with 6 beetlebacks and expanded polystyrene buildings and plastic marine sprues? I want to know about gameplay, not a product that I will likely never be able to find or purchase NIB.

Like Pacific said, the main purpose of that chart was to help people work out which edition of Epic they used to play, rather than a comparison guide. Even for that purpose it already got enough flak that I'm cautious about trying to do a comparison chart of actual gameplay. :-(

AllSeeingSkink wrote:I guess a criticism I have of the original game is that it didn't represent units as well as they could be, even within the rules available. For example I would like to have seen Striking Scorpions (in 40k they had T3, 3+ save) have a better Armour value than Swooping Hawks (T3, 5+ save). But perhaps for Scouts specifically, in 40k having T4 4+ save versus T4 3+ save isn't worth losing a point of armour over in Epic like I've currently done. There is limitations to the granularity of Epic, and that's one of the good things about Epic, but even within the limited granularity I think some units could have been represented better. Combining Scouts and Recon units into Tactical + infiltrator wouldn't be the worse abstraction though.

The 'detail level' for Aspect Warriors has been a very heated argument for Remastered! In the end I've gone for a detachment that includes both the original 'generic' Epic 40k versions, and new Aspect-specific versions. You can see a preview here: https://builder.epicremastered.com/card.lc?list=aaa-Remastered_Eldar_Warhost_ver2_30

AllSeeingSkink wrote:I dunno if that makes sense, basically I like the simplicity of the gameplay but would have liked a bit more complexity in the army building, so that's kind of what I've leaned towards for this. Personal preference I guess, would be curious to see what the wider Epic fanbase thinks. To me, there's not a significant difference in giving a unit it's own unique profile versus making it "base unit + a thing", either way I'm still looking up a table for the first few games to remember what different units can do and after a few games I just remember those numbers anyway.

Like, to me, if I were writing Epic Remastered, I wouldn't bother with a special ability that confers +1 armour or +1 assault or +1 firepower, I'd just wrap those abilities up in the unit stats, it feels like wasted space in the "Special Abilities" section of the rulebook for something that could just be put on the unit card, but I thoroughly despise "Universal Special Rules" in 30k/40k so maybe I'm biased

For Remastered, all the 'unit creation/modifier' abilities like Heavy Weapons, +1 Armour etc. can be hidden in the list builder so that you just see the final numbers.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:But obviously different people have different desires, I saw the thread on Epic Remastered where a lot of people supported the idea of giving Land Raiders 2 wounds, whereas to me I don't like that idea because it's something that would slow down gameplay and so should be reserved for warmachines, otherwise you start thinking things like maybe Stompas should have 2 wounds also, and Knights, and whatever, whereas I actually like the fact that Epic is streamlined to the point of everything (bar warmachines and the few units with "Save") being removed with only a single roll of a dice.

Well, Stompas, Knights, Squiggoths, and the bigger options for Greater Daemons do all have 2 wounds, that was the purpose of the new rule. ;-P

But I definitely appreciate wanting to keep all regular units with '1 wound' for speed of play. Note that the Robust rule forces you to allocate two hits to the unit before going on to the next unit, so it's pretty rare that there is any book-keeping involved, it's just two units for allocating hits and for detachment size.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:Also had a go at making a detachment sheet. Some of the points come from that calculator from the FB group, some are based on values in the original Epic Armies Book, others are my own guesses or tweaking, but I'd definitely need to do some playtesting to see how balanced things feel. The calculator rates firepower as much more valuable than close combat ability, so some of the assault-focused units "feel" a bit too cheap to me, just from the perspective of an assault focused army (e.g. Space Wolves) might end up like a horde army, lol. But maybe with playtesting my opinion will change.

Yes and no. The calculator very closely matches the pricing that GW used for their 'base units'. It's just that the points costs for 'modified' units were all over the place.

For example an Ork unit costs 9pt.
A Skarboyz unit (Ork unit with the Assault ability) costs an extra 2pt, so 11pt in total. It gains a point of Assault, but loses half it's Range. If the same formula that made the Ork 9pt is applied to the Skarboy, it comes out at 8pt.

To see what I mean about 'base units', compare the Skarboy (priced by GW at 11pt) to a generic Aspect Warrior at 10pt.
The Aspect Warrior has Speed 15 cm instead of 10 cm, the same Range, the same Firepower, one higher Assault, and the same Armour. It's equal or better in every way, but because GW's 'modified' costs were out of whack or randomly applied, it's cheaper than the GW Skarboy.
An Exarch (Aspect Warrior with the Assault ability) costs an extra 1pt. Unlike the Skarboy it's not losing half it's Range, while paying less points for the upgrade.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:I've updated the 30k rules a bit, and added some rules for Superheavy tanks. For superheavy detachments, I'm thinking same as the old IG superheavy company, you can have 1-4 tanks in a squadron, 110pts per tank (can maybe tweak a bit if some weapons turn out to be more powerful than others).

I couldn't think of a good way of doing the Glaive, I've made it D6 AT shots but targets have to lie in a straight line... maybe it's simpler just to make it D6 AT shots and forget about the straight line bit... a bit of abstraction to make the game go smoother?

Spoiler:

And updated rules for everything else (only real changed is some points values were a bit out of whack):

Which reminds me, I need to upload the newer version of the spreadsheet, which includes reverse-engineered points for War Engines!

Hey IJW! Thanks for the reply, much appreciated. You're one of the devs for remastered, I guess?

Hopefully you don't take my comments as criticism, I know it's all subjective and I'm just giving the reasoning why I like certain approaches more than others. I think in the end it's good to know what the majority of people like, since if we can have less variants of rules it's a good thing for keeping a single larger community rather than multiple smaller ones.

 IJW wrote:
It's been so long since I posted here that my password had been deleted!

chaos0xomega wrote:I feel like this chart isn't helpful when half the "selected features" are only relevant to the original product? Like if I'm trying to figure out which version of the rules to use, what do I care that 1st edition came with 6 beetlebacks and expanded polystyrene buildings and plastic marine sprues? I want to know about gameplay, not a product that I will likely never be able to find or purchase NIB.

Like Pacific said, the main purpose of that chart was to help people work out which edition of Epic they used to play, rather than a comparison guide. Even for that purpose it already got enough flak that I'm cautious about trying to do a comparison chart of actual gameplay. :-(

Haha, when you create a resource inevitably someone won't like it. I thought it was good just from the perspective of knowing which editions have been made, most versions of Epic I know nothing about except the 1997 version which I bought as a kid.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:I guess a criticism I have of the original game is that it didn't represent units as well as they could be, even within the rules available. For example I would like to have seen Striking Scorpions (in 40k they had T3, 3+ save) have a better Armour value than Swooping Hawks (T3, 5+ save). But perhaps for Scouts specifically, in 40k having T4 4+ save versus T4 3+ save isn't worth losing a point of armour over in Epic like I've currently done. There is limitations to the granularity of Epic, and that's one of the good things about Epic, but even within the limited granularity I think some units could have been represented better. Combining Scouts and Recon units into Tactical + infiltrator wouldn't be the worse abstraction though.

The 'detail level' for Aspect Warriors has been a very heated argument for Remastered! In the end I've gone for a detachment that includes both the original 'generic' Epic 40k versions, and new Aspect-specific versions. You can see a preview here: https://builder.epicremastered.com/card.lc?list=aaa-Remastered_Eldar_Warhost_ver2_30

Yeah, I don't think the game itself needs to be more detailed, my gripe is mainly that within the game rules as they exist there's room for more granularity than is used.

Aspect Warriors are a good example, but also it's easy to go a bit overboard, like you can say X should be better than Y, so you give it a higher stat line than Y, but Y should be more powerful than Z, so Y is given a higher stat line than Z, but then X ends up more powerful than it should have been because of the desire to have a level of granularity that the rules don't really allow.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:I dunno if that makes sense, basically I like the simplicity of the gameplay but would have liked a bit more complexity in the army building, so that's kind of what I've leaned towards for this. Personal preference I guess, would be curious to see what the wider Epic fanbase thinks. To me, there's not a significant difference in giving a unit it's own unique profile versus making it "base unit + a thing", either way I'm still looking up a table for the first few games to remember what different units can do and after a few games I just remember those numbers anyway.

Like, to me, if I were writing Epic Remastered, I wouldn't bother with a special ability that confers +1 armour or +1 assault or +1 firepower, I'd just wrap those abilities up in the unit stats, it feels like wasted space in the "Special Abilities" section of the rulebook for something that could just be put on the unit card, but I thoroughly despise "Universal Special Rules" in 30k/40k so maybe I'm biased

For Remastered, all the 'unit creation/modifier' abilities like Heavy Weapons, +1 Armour etc. can be hidden in the list builder so that you just see the final numbers.

Yeah, so basically I've just gone for that initially and cut out the middle man But I can see how it keeps things neater to have it like is in Remastered versus unique profiles.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:But obviously different people have different desires, I saw the thread on Epic Remastered where a lot of people supported the idea of giving Land Raiders 2 wounds, whereas to me I don't like that idea because it's something that would slow down gameplay and so should be reserved for warmachines, otherwise you start thinking things like maybe Stompas should have 2 wounds also, and Knights, and whatever, whereas I actually like the fact that Epic is streamlined to the point of everything (bar warmachines and the few units with "Save") being removed with only a single roll of a dice.

Well, Stompas, Knights, Squiggoths, and the bigger options for Greater Daemons do all have 2 wounds, that was the purpose of the new rule. ;-P

But I definitely appreciate wanting to keep all regular units with '1 wound' for speed of play. Note that the Robust rule forces you to allocate two hits to the unit before going on to the next unit, so it's pretty rare that there is any book-keeping involved, it's just two units for allocating hits and for detachment size.

I'll have to try a game and see what it's like. Part of it's speed of play and part of it is also just nice not having units that are overly dominant (outside of war engines).

That said, I was just building a unit of Knight Cerastus models and I was thinking "hmmm, these dudes are big, they should probably have 2 wounds" But the way Knights were handled in Firepower was to give them a Save, which is a bit of a middle ground I think.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:Also had a go at making a detachment sheet. Some of the points come from that calculator from the FB group, some are based on values in the original Epic Armies Book, others are my own guesses or tweaking, but I'd definitely need to do some playtesting to see how balanced things feel. The calculator rates firepower as much more valuable than close combat ability, so some of the assault-focused units "feel" a bit too cheap to me, just from the perspective of an assault focused army (e.g. Space Wolves) might end up like a horde army, lol. But maybe with playtesting my opinion will change.

Yes and no. The calculator very closely matches the pricing that GW used for their 'base units'. It's just that the points costs for 'modified' units were all over the place.

For example an Ork unit costs 9pt.
A Skarboyz unit (Ork unit with the Assault ability) costs an extra 2pt, so 11pt in total. It gains a point of Assault, but loses half it's Range. If the same formula that made the Ork 9pt is applied to the Skarboy, it comes out at 8pt.

To see what I mean about 'base units', compare the Skarboy (priced by GW at 11pt) to a generic Aspect Warrior at 10pt.
The Aspect Warrior has Speed 15 cm instead of 10 cm, the same Range, the same Firepower, one higher Assault, and the same Armour. It's equal or better in every way, but because GW's 'modified' costs were out of whack or randomly applied, it's cheaper than the GW Skarboy.
An Exarch (Aspect Warrior with the Assault ability) costs an extra 1pt. Unlike the Skarboy it's not losing half it's Range, while paying less points for the upgrade.

Yeah, I see what you mean, I noticed the same thing, some things don't seem internally balanced in the original rules.

I'm curious, how do you find the points calculator goes versus playtesting? Do you find that things are reasonably well balanced, or does the calculator favour certain units (and upgrades) over others?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:I've updated the 30k rules a bit, and added some rules for Superheavy tanks. For superheavy detachments, I'm thinking same as the old IG superheavy company, you can have 1-4 tanks in a squadron, 110pts per tank (can maybe tweak a bit if some weapons turn out to be more powerful than others).

I couldn't think of a good way of doing the Glaive, I've made it D6 AT shots but targets have to lie in a straight line... maybe it's simpler just to make it D6 AT shots and forget about the straight line bit... a bit of abstraction to make the game go smoother?

Spoiler:

And updated rules for everything else (only real changed is some points values were a bit out of whack):

Which reminds me, I need to upload the newer version of the spreadsheet, which includes reverse-engineered points for War Engines!

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Hey IJW! Thanks for the reply, much appreciated. You're one of the devs for remastered, I guess?

Hopefully you don't take my comments as criticism, I know it's all subjective and I'm just giving the reasoning why I like certain approaches more than others. I think in the end it's good to know what the majority of people like, since if we can have less variants of rules it's a good thing for keeping a single larger community rather than multiple smaller ones.

No worries, I didn't take it as criticism! And yes, there are two of us working on the rules rewrite, while army lists updates are mostly in my hands.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Yeah, I don't think the game itself needs to be more detailed, my gripe is mainly that within the game rules as they exist there's room for more granularity than is used.

Aspect Warriors are a good example, but also it's easy to go a bit overboard, like you can say X should be better than Y, so you give it a higher stat line than Y, but Y should be more powerful than Z, so Y is given a higher stat line than Z, but then X ends up more powerful than it should have been because of the desire to have a level of granularity that the rules don't really allow.

I'm 100% with you there. You could see GW starting to explore the available unit design space in the Firepower and Epic 40,000 magazines.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I'll have to try a game and see what it's like. Part of it's speed of play and part of it is also just nice not having units that are overly dominant (outside of war engines).

That said, I was just building a unit of Knight Cerastus models and I was thinking "hmmm, these dudes are big, they should probably have 2 wounds" But the way Knights were handled in Firepower was to give them a Save, which is a bit of a middle ground I think.

I can't say it's noticeably slowed things down at all, it's just made a few units 'feel' better.

Knights are one of the example units that the Robust/2DC rule was designed for. Partly because the suggested Epic 40k Knight profiles were particularly anaemic even compared to the other editions of Epic, and partly because of the shifting balance of units in 40k. These days, a Knight is as tough as a Baneblade, plus the Ion Shield!

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Yeah, I see what you mean, I noticed the same thing, some things don't seem internally balanced in the original rules.

I'm curious, how do you find the points calculator goes versus playtesting? Do you find that things are reasonably well balanced, or does the calculator favour certain units (and upgrades) over others?

Pretty good so far. Obviously it has limits, like all points cost systems, and if unit creation were completely open you could make minmaxed units that would 'break' the formula. In particular, GW's costings for Speed could be horribly abused by making an Infantry unit with Speed 40 cm and Assault 10, which would then be able to charge 80 cm in the Assault phase, from outside Volcano Cannon range.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Which reminds me, I need to upload the newer version of the spreadsheet, which includes reverse-engineered points for War Engines!

That would be good! I imagine it's complicated with damage tables though?

Do you have any opinions on the critical damage tables? It was commented back in Firepower 1 that the critical damage table for Super Heavy Tanks was a bit too brutal, as a 7+ critical would result in catastrophic damage, which meant a shot from a Death Ray into a super heavy tank basically had a 50% chance of insta-killing it. They provided another table that I thought maybe went too far the other direction (only a 11+ would cause catastrophic damage, and no critical rolls could cause additional damage points). So I wrote my own table that I thought is part way between, where 11+ is catastrophic but also results for 8+ give +1 damage.

Of course there's things like Warhound Titans, where an 8+ critical roll causes catastrophic damage, which maybe feels a bit too rough for a unit that costs 200pts.

I've done a lot of work 'normalising' the Critical Damage charts so that all WEs of the same size have roughly equal odds in terms of how much damage the average critical does. Particular outliers were the basic Gargant which went catastrophic on 10+ and bypassed it's DC12 completely! Another was the DC8 Plague Tower, where the extra damage taken from criticals was higher than for a DC12 Warlord.

For DC4 War Engines I'm currently using one universal Critical Damage chart. It's inspired by the updated Baneblade chart in Firepower 1 but with slightly tweaked odds as it uses a d6:



This happens to match the old white glancing hit dice for 40k, making it very easy to track criticals. It arguably makes some units like the Eldar Revenants and Scorpions too tough, but GW undercosted them quite a bit anyway by never applying the updated Anti-Tank costs!

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Also, I'd be curious to know if you think I'm wasting my time making new army lists for 30k I know there's a couple of other fan rules out there for 30k, but none of them were to my liking and either seemed a bit skewed or didn't represent the units well (4x AT shots for a Spartan? Dayam!), that's why I started writing my own. Still haven't had a chance to playtest them yet.

From my personal point of view, the more the merrier.