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Not sure if some beat me to it, if someone did I apologize, but I just bought up the ebook version of Escalation..... and I have to say I am disappointed. In a pervious post I posed the question of what the release of Escalation would do to the casual gaming scene. Here I would like to discuss the content of the book itself.

I was personally hoping for a great bit of fluff, but that was surprisingly lacking maybe being given a couple of pages and other then that it was more or less a reprint of Apocalypse save the addition of the Tau tiger shark. There where also some additional warlord traits and playable missions to fit the addition of Super-heavy units and Gargantuan creatures. They also missed a shot to add a lot of Forgeworld models like eldar super-heavy grave tanks, Ork mega dreads, and dark eldar tantalus to name just a few.

For me thou, GW really missed a shot to add fluff to universe (ie iconic units/ grand stories) and give these center piece units some depth in terms of background (ie where the STC was found or it was first encountered).

So while I may have been disappointed, I am curious about other peoples feelings towards the content?

It's garbage. Bad rules, nonexistent art/fluff. It was clearly a minimal-effort rush job that was pushed out without any polish to fill a release "slot", not a real product that anyone should pay money for. I am just glad I didn't buy my copy.

 Peregrine wrote:
It's garbage. Bad rules, nonexistent art/fluff. It was clearly a minimal-effort rush job that was pushed out without any polish to fill a release "slot", not a real product that anyone should pay money for. I am just glad I didn't buy my copy.

Indeed, the Escalation book is copy and paste from the apoc book with two additional pages concerning the integration of a Superheavy into a 40k army.

Its existence both confuses and annoys me. I think it should stop.

 HerbaciousT wrote:
Its existence both confuses and annoys me. I think it should stop.

Don't do it. Its usually cooked hotter than it gets eaten. Frankly, I like the idea to include a single superheavy into one of my armies.

I don't there is no balance between superheavies . when one army gets a super heavy with a D weapon that works in melee and another one has a D weapon that shots 4 times and moves 36" per turn , then it buffs an already very powerful army even more . It also gives too powerful options in the hands of armies that can battle brother with eldar. I played a 1500pts game today using my guard . I spread , I took melta vets , avoided big units and tanks . More or less took an tailored army , which would lose to armies not runing a raver . Still lost , because he started and killed my vets. Played another game with counts as storm troopers , holofield ment I only took down two hull points , on his turn my storm troopers were dead and his raver killed chimeras with melta vets.

However, Rev. Titan is very expensive. In 1500 pt games, its 60% of the whole army.

Best thing about Escalation from what I've read?

I just got to read Makumba talking about his army being killed by a raver.

 wuestenfux wrote:
However, Rev. Titan is very expensive. In 1500 pt games, its 60% of the whole army.

Doesn't matter . it can kill the units I could take to counter titans faster , then I can kill it . The worse thing is that the good IG units , like flyers work against me , because the more I take and the more vets I put inside , the higher is the chance that he can table me .

 wuestenfux wrote:
However, Rev. Titan is very expensive. In 1500 pt games, its 60% of the whole army.

No, in 1500 pt games it is your army, and you get 40% of an ordinary army to go free with it.

Seriously - the thing will instantly dispatch the prime two parts of your opponent's force on turn one, all by itself. And then on subsequent turns it will mop up everything else.

Throw in a few windriders to grab objectives at the end, the first four turns of the battle they'll be sitting at the back eating lembas and drinking herbal tea because they wont be needed.

Don't be silly, Lembas is trail rations. In this situation, they have a chance to make some proper food.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Don't be silly, Lembas is trail rations. In this situation, they have a chance to make some proper food.

I salute your superior knowledge . I have no idea what counts as "proper" food for Eldar. Knowing them, probably petits fours.

Anyway, point is, if take the Reaver out for a spin, it's pretty much a picnic whatever you pack.

The only reason why I don't like Escalation is because we get tons of threads like this and nobody is talking about Stronghold Assault, which is far more cool in my opinion. The sky won't be falling at my LGS, so it's all good.

 Talore wrote:
The only reason why I don't like Escalation is because we get tons of threads like this and nobody is talking about Stronghold Assault, which is far more cool in my opinion. The sky won't be falling at my LGS, so it's all good.

Oh yeah Stronghold Assault... The supplement that allows you to completely block your table-half from normal enemy vehicles by buying an Aegis and 6 tank traps.

How can something be cool , if it gets automaticly removed if it gets hit by a D class weapons , which are added in to the game at the same time .

Trenches for IG , more bunkers or even whole fortresses are nice. Till you start thinking that your opponents 3 helldrakes ignore them anyway and any elder/delder/tau player will just removed them with a raver . And because escalation brings ravers in to w40k , they don't even have to buy FW models . They can just do counts as with WK .

Well they also added void shields...so it takes at least 2 hits or possibly 4-5.

BTW you should not allow proxying the wraithknight for a revenant. They are significantly different in size and profile. It also keeps people from being so abusive if they have to pay the money and assemble the gorgeous but resin model.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
BTW stronghold assault is actually a great realise from what I saw. Fixes the building rules, adds forts that help even assault armies, and adds possible counters to lords of war. All of that and they even gave rules for terrain without GW models. Conversions ahoy!

Not really as I need to use my Wraithknight in conjunction to my Revenant (I've been looking into a few lists already) But, I also have a pretty strict rule that I don't proxy models. I either have it WYSIWYG and fully painted or 'I' don't use it (but that is another topic completely).


I've never bought any Apoc stuff as I didn't like how I saw a typical Apoc game go.

However, I bought both books as GW indicated they were for use in normal 40K. As I didn't own any other books with this information, I found both to be incredibly useful.

I think they are pretty cool. I'll let the interwebz ragequit and go on about how broken they are. I'll continue as I normally do and discuss with my opponent what type of game they want to play.

As it stands, I already have folks who won't even play against an Eldar army, so I don't play them (I only own Eldar). But, I have enjoyable games with other folks who don't mind playing against Eldar. Same with these books; we'll discuss what type of game we want to play beforehand and if they are cool facing my Revenant, then we will have an enjoyable game as we utilized expectation management.

Any game of 40K is agreed upon by all parties involved. Adding Escalation and Stronghold Assault is no different.

As for tourney play, I'll let the TO's figure out what they want to do. A lot of my tourney attendance is based on whether or not I have the time to go rather than what rules the tourney uses. For me, it's a way to get in a lot of 40K over the course of a weekend. If TO's ban these two books, I've got about 10000 points of painted Eldar to choose from still.

AtoMaki wrote:

 Talore wrote:
The only reason why I don't like Escalation is because we get tons of threads like this and nobody is talking about Stronghold Assault, which is far more cool in my opinion. The sky won't be falling at my LGS, so it's all good.

Oh yeah Stronghold Assault... The supplement that allows you to completely block your table-half from normal enemy vehicles by buying an Aegis and 6 tank traps.

donkey-caves exist? Shocking!

Makumba wrote:How can something be cool , if it gets automaticly removed if it gets hit by a D class weapons , which are added in to the game at the same time .

Trenches for IG , more bunkers or even whole fortresses are nice. Till you start thinking that your opponents 3 helldrakes ignore them anyway and any elder/delder/tau player will just removed them with a raver . And because escalation brings ravers in to w40k , they don't even have to buy FW models . They can just do counts as with WK .

It can be cool when you play with people who aren't powergaming neckbeards. It gives a lot of options for reasonable people.