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 schoon wrote:
Love Epic, so the gamer in me wants to believe...

Honestly, at this point, it'd be nice to see new Epic models and the potential for new opponents, but I don't trust that GW won't just completely feck up the rules.

Epic 3rd edition is probably the most elegant game GW has made (though I know some people prefer the other editions). Though there's some holes in the rules, the entire rulebook is less than 50 pages in roughly A5 format and can be read in the space of about an hour and you're ready to start gaming. There's no way GW won't completely feth that up

 Gnarlly wrote:
While I agree that GW would see a new Epic as an incentive to sell more (Epic-scale) minis, history has shown that Epic scale minis just don't sell that much in comparison to 40k scale minis. There will always be the GW whales that buy anything "new" from GW but I just don't see a new Epic doing any better than its previous iterations.

Also, it seems several people are under the illusion that all games using the new Apocalypse system must be massive all-day sessions with tables turned into congested "parking lots" of figures. The game actually plays quite well at the size of large standard 40k battles (roughly 2000 points of minis each side using 40k's points system) and such games can be played in less time than a 2000 point 40k match.

This matchup was roughly 2500 points each side in standard 40k terms of points on a 6'x4' table (not "niche" IMO as many players have armies of that size or more). A little cramped for an Ork horde but perfectly playable:

A picture like that shows me exactly why I'm getting back into Epic and not 40k It just looks like someone has taken a bunch of vehicles and infantry, set them up on the long edges of a football field, and are about to mash them together like some chaotic game of dodgeball.

Epic lets you assemble something that actually looks like it could be an army, have everything from gretchin to warlord titans on the table, play a game on a 4x4, 6x4 or 8x4 table and have space to move, realistic looking ranges, a chance for fast troops to exploit their speed because there's enough space on a table, and play a fun game that doesn't take multiple days to finish.

 Arbitrator wrote:
Model creep has definitely made 40k boards look worse, too cramped, like someone poured a bucket of their toys on the table and started bashing them together.

I guess the scales kind of made sense back in the 90's, when 2nd edition 40k was mostly games of a few squads and a vehicle or two, WHFB was a game of a handful of blocks of infantry/cav with maybe 1 big impressive monster-type-thing, and Epic was a game hundreds of models but at a smaller scale so it kind of made sense.

 Snord wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
A picture like that shows me exactly why I'm getting back into Epic and not 40k It just looks like someone has taken a bunch of vehicles and infantry, set them up on the long edges of a football field, and are about to mash them together like some chaotic game of dodgeball.

Epic lets you assemble something that actually looks like it could be an army, have everything from gretchin to warlord titans on the table, play a game on a 4x4, 6x4 or 8x4 table and have space to move, realistic looking ranges, a chance for fast troops to exploit their speed because there's enough space on a table, and play a fun game that doesn't take multiple days to finish.

That photo looks awesome. Sure, everyone started off lined up like a football game, but once everyone got moving there would be a lot of maneuvering. Does it replicate modern combined-arms combat? No. But it looks like WH40k. I bet that was a fun game once the Orks got stuck in.

I don't agree that Epic looked any better or was any more realistic. It was fun because you could mix massive war machines with infantry, but it didn't look much different from the WH40k game in the photo. And it was even more abstract than WH40k.

You're of course welcome to think it looks awesome, but I doubt there was a lot of movement manoeuvring and I'm sure the Orks did get stuck in, lol.

But I think the idea that Epic didn't look much different from that 40k photo is just factually wrong.

Of course what you think looks good is entirely subjective, I just said that for me, personally, games that look like that in 40k I find entirely unappealing. Less of a game and more of an excuse to line up all your models before removing them and packing them back away again, lol.

Tsagualsa wrote:

The_Real_Chris wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:
Model creep has definitely made 40k boards look worse, too cramped, like someone poured a bucket of their toys on the table and started bashing them together.

I guess the scales kind of made sense back in the 90's, when 2nd edition 40k was mostly games of a few squads and a vehicle or two, WHFB was a game of a handful of blocks of infantry/cav with maybe 1 big impressive monster-type-thing, and Epic was a game hundreds of models but at a smaller scale so it kind of made sense.

Well the last version cut down the numbers somewhat. A tourney winning marine army was:-
6 squads tactical marines,
4 squads terminators
4 squads of scouts
8 rhinos/droppods (as required for each mission)
30 marines on bikes (whats that, 6 bike squads? 3? How many bikes to a squad now?)
5 Landspeeders
4 Predators
1 Hunter
4 Whirlwinds
Thunderhawk
4 Thunderbolt fighters

I have seen that in 40k scale on a table...

Back in the day when Epic 40k was released they did a battle report with some sort of 'designers notes' for each phase, and one of the key concepts that they mentioned was that a single firefight/close combat between epic detachments would cover about the same type and extent of engagement as a typical 40k game of the time. So by that logic, a typical force of a handful of detachments and support groups would cover what would be about 4000 - 5000 points in 40k at the time, which would be closer to maybe 2500 pts today.

That was written in the Appendix of the Battles Book. They said 15cm in Epic is roughly equivalent to 24" in 40k, which is the typical distance starting distance between forces in a game of 40k, and why "Firefights" in Epic occur over a distance of 15cm, and one assault phase in Epic is equivalent to a four-turn 40k game.

So the idea I guess is that the Assault phase = game of 40k, while the Shooting and Movement phases = long ranged posturing and shooting that occurs at ranges beyond the scope of a typical 40k game.


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The_Real_Chris wrote:

Tsagualsa wrote:


Back in the day when Epic 40k was released they did a battle report with some sort of 'designers notes' for each phase, and one of the key concepts that they mentioned was that a single firefight/close combat between epic detachments would cover about the same type and extent of engagement as a typical 40k game of the time. So by that logic, a typical force of a handful of detachments and support groups would cover what would be about 4000 - 5000 points in 40k at the time, which would be closer to maybe 2500 pts today.

Yes Epic 40k (3rd edition) had the concept of being able to do your 40k army in miniature. It was neat, and you could do it with the right players. Most though very quickly moved to mono type detachments moving at similar speeds with AP or AT firepower as the enemy were likely doing the same and it was the most 'efficient'.

Yeah, it's kind of also what makes the most sense, real militaries bundle groups of similar units together because it makes sense to put all your artillery together, a bunch of similar tanks together, a bunch of cavalry together, etc. Whereas 40k might have a single artillery piece next to a tank next to a short ranged assault squad next to a cavalry unit which for some reason is supported by a single aircraft that flies no further than 100m away, lol. Not really how you'd organise a force for a real battle, unless maybe you had some very specific mission that required a small number of troops with a weirdly diverse range of capabilities.

But I do still like the way 3rd edition gave you a lot of freedom in how detachments were constructed.

tneva82 wrote:

Mr.Pickels wrote:
I'm curious, could a "Great Crusade" release for Epic work? You have the space marines front and center, Primarchs getting found, weird/wild technology, new Xenos (or at least factions that never got models), and then later on have a Horus Heresy supplement with new missions like Istavaan, and so forth. For the Xenos, GW could use this as an opportunity to test new models/factions and see what's popular and what's not, and then transition that to the normal 40k scale. Limit shelf space to just starter sets for each faction and have split-up contents to come later as a drip-feed release.

They could but I really, really, really, really doubt random new custom-made-for-epic race is going to attract that much attention as providing good quality epic orks, tyranids and eldars would. Those have existing fanbase. Sort of like how it's cheaper to keep customer than get a new one.

It could be interesting idea once epic is running but to start with it would be risk. Not impossible one but risk.

Also in terms of playstyle what new ones you could come up with that isn't just reskinned orks/eldar/tyranids/IG/space marines? Sure you COULD come up with 100 races but can you come up with 100 distinct ones?

Crusade era would still have Orks, Eldar and Imperial Army, but yeah, the others would be missing.

I love the idea of GW delving into some of the Crusade factions, but I feel like it'd be better done at 40k scale (even though I don't currently play 40k and have no intention of getting back into it).




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 Psychopomp wrote:
I got into epic with Epic 40K. I really should read the 2e rules someday to see why there was so much disappointment with what I thought was an amazing game. I did pick up Renegades, Warlords, and Hive War for a song, just for the extra fluff. I think I still have the cards stuck in a box somewhere, but I'm not sure about the books...

But even when I got into 40K 3e, I always felt like what 40K tries to do is best expressed in Epic scale. It always felt grander, more involved than the Parking Lot Blitzkrieg 40K eventually finished devolving into.

I started with Epic 40k back in '97, so I'm probably biased, actually had an Epic 40k army before I had a regular 40k army, back in the day one friend bought the 5th ed WHFB set, another bought the 2nd ed 40k set, and Epic came about a year after I started so I bought that set when it came out.

But I think it was likely because Epic 40k simplified the game, which people saw as removing depth, and maybe they were right.

But Epic 40k was built from the ground up to be a good game, not necessarily a good representation of the 40k universe on the table top, but a good game. It was super simple and the designers on occasion spoke about how they worked to trim it back to the bare minimum. That let it scale well from relatively small games to huge games, without becoming tedious affairs that would take multiple weekends to play. From memory, Rick Priestly said in an interview that he thought it was the best game GW have made purely as a game... though I can't find that interview now so maybe my brain just dreamt it up




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Tsagualsa wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:


And hey, go for a grander scale of battle than classic Epic. Being set during the Heresy, up the numbers of tanks and infantry (classic Epic being largely set in 40K).

Tanks in 40k are about 20% too small anyway, so the 'solution' to embiggen the scope of the game is pretty simple: leave titans, planes and tanks scaled as they are and reduce the size of infantry a little bit, and everything looks much better and truer to fluff immediately. So if e.g. infantry in Titanicus scale should be 8mm, just go to 6mm anyway, but do the tanks in 8mm. That would also account for the slightly higher level of detailling that's needed to make the tanks look good while not overburdening infantry with unnecessary details.

Maybe I'm just a weirdo, but at Epic scale the difference between tanks and infantry scales bothers me less than it does in 40k scale. So when I printed my Epic Marines I went with 8mm scale to the eye (which was about 8% bigger than the STLs out there), and yeah, they look a bit big next to the tanks, but IMO they still look good and to my eye an 8mm Marine looks better on the table than a 6mm one.

Here was one of my early test prints where I was deciding on the scale...

Clearly you haven't seen my Ultramarines swarm



That's just a placeholder because I didn't have any bases on hand, so I just blutacked them down to a couple of bigger bases to keep them together.... but I find it oddly appealing nonetheless.

I think 10 man bases could be a possible change for a new version of Epic, probably a 32mm round might fit 10 marines.

Epic, more than most other scales, is also really well suited to 3D printing. You can have most of your supports on the bottom of the integral base, maybe 1 or 2 supports on the model itself that are easy to clean up and can't be seen once you've assembled them on their base.

I'd say it's preferable to moulded plastic, where you'd have to clean mould lines off insanely small details.

On bigger scale models you end up with little pock marks over much of the model from the supports that can be worse to clean up than mould lines.

 Stormonu wrote:
I have the old rules from Space Marine and the original Adeptus Titanicus and its supplement. Never went beyond that, unfortunately, before the line ended.

Which versions of the rules for Epic are the ones most people play with, and are they the ones that were available for free on GW's site before they dropped all the old game rules? I've downloaded the latter, but never really looked into them, as I didn't have anyone to play with.

There's a lot of variation, I asked a few months back on the Specialist Games subforum, and you'll find people like different editions for different reasons.

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/806694.page

Basically, I think Epic Armageddon and fan versions of Epic Armageddon are probably the most popular, but 2nd edition (early 90's version) also has some followers and is the basis of the NetEpic fan rules.

I'm partial to 3rd edition (the one that came out in 1997), it was the one I played as a kid, but many people don't like it because it simplifies the rules a lot... that's the entire reason I do like it though because I think it plays well as a game and allows you to play anything from small games to very large games quite quickly, and the entire rulebook can easily be read in a single sitting which helps with explaining to other people how the game plays (though there are optional rules and rules clarifications scattered through the battles book and magazines which came out in the late 90's that can now be found online). The fan rules for 3rd edition are probably the least fleshed out though, so you can't easily just download a copy of the fan rules (you can find the original rulebooks without too much effort though).

That said, even though I like 3rd edition, I'm building armies that could easily be adapted to the other versions of the game, and am basing my models in a way that would be legal in other versions of the rules. The different editions aren't too fussy in terms of models, so you can jump from edition to edition, the only thing that I think you need to watch out for is 3rd edition has the most flexible army selection options, so by building an army specifically for 3rd edition you may not be able to reform it into a legal army for other editions without having to add some units.

If you can find an existing local community, they could potentially be playing any version or any fan adaption of that version.

semajnollissor wrote:
Anyway, if Epic does return, I hope it uses a similar rules set as Epic: Armageddon, and not 2nd Ed Epic or Epic:40k. I find the latter is too abstract (and I hate using the firepower chart) and I don't have time to play the former.

I had a quick think about this, I think it'd be pretty easy to house rule the firepower chart away if you don't like it.

In Epic 40k, you only need 1 dice roll to kill an enemy with a shooting attack... the purpose of the firepower table is kind of to allow that.

So you could replace the firepower chart just by making it "to hit" and "to wound" instead of just "to hit". You'd just need a table where infantry marching, mobile war engine in open, or immobile war engine in cover is 3+ to hit, infantry in open or mobile war engine in cover is 4+ to hit, infantry in cover is 5+ to hit, and immobile war engine in open is an auto-hit.

If you don't like tables at all, you could just make it 4+ to hit and have modifiers (+1 to hit marching, +1 to hit war engines, -1 to hit units in cover, auto hit immobile war engine in open).

Then what is currently called "to hit" in Epic 40k would be renamed "to wound" and you just follow the rules as written.

It'd only slightly change the statistics by making cover a hair moire effective and marching units a hair less vulnerable, but it'd be pretty close and wouldn't really change how the game plays, just an extra dice roll instead of looking up the firepower chart.

Tsagualsa wrote:

 stonehorse wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Well gw stuck with 6mm scale with at...

No, that is 8mm scale.

The difference between 6mm 'heroic' scale and 8mm 'true' scale is probably negligible enough that you would not immediately notice it.

We've had this discussion many many times. AT and AI are 1/4 of 40k scale. Old Epic was ballpark 1/5 of 40k scale, but with massive variation (some infantry models were as small as 5mm, some models were approaching 8mm, the aircraft were probably closer to 3mm scale, etc).

A Space Marine is currently 32mm to the eyes, so if that's your reference point, then 1/4 of 32mm = 8mm. But 40k scale itself is inconsistent, so naturally if 40k is inconsistent scale then a game based off 1/4 of that is also going to be inconsistent.

But we won't know unless GW actually release some infantry, the closest thing we have at the moment are the Grot gunners on the Bommers, and they're about 5mm, but they're sitting down and no one uses Grots as their reference unit of measurement

 stonehorse wrote:
Oh and the game designers have said that Epic 40,000 is the best version of Epic they have made.

I think I've heard a couple of GW designers from back then say Epic 40k was the best game GW put out at the time.

Andy Chambers has said he thought Epic was one of the best games he's worked on, but also in a recent interview, Andy Chambers also lamented that Epic 40k killed the game because it was too big of a change for a single edition which meant too many fans didn't like it and because the people in charge at GW were looking for an excuse to kill Epic, that was kind of it for Epic.

Kind of like if GW stopped supporting AoS after so many people complained about it on release, except GW was dedicated to AoS so kept pushing it.

So the lesson Andy learned from Epic 40k was that it's important to cater to the fans, even if you write the dogs bollocks of rules it needs to cater to the fans.

But what I've gathered from rules writers, they don't dwell on games as much as the fans do. The good game writers will write a game, play it for a while, then write another game and play that. It's the fans that want a single good ruleset that doesn't change for a long time and they can play over and over and over again.


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 xttz wrote:

 Platuan4th wrote:

 MajorWesJanson wrote:
No love for Apocalypse 2.0? It was just 40K scale Epic rules after all.

I liked it, but there was zero support for it.

I'm sure the global pandemic arriving ~6 months after release didn't help to inspire support for a game reliant on getting multiple players together at once.

It's a shame it never got a reprint though. We had an end of year Apoc game at my local club just this week and it went great.

Does it play well at 6mm scale? Better than actual Epic rules?

I've never really had a desire to play Apocalypse at 40k scale, one of the big benefits of Epic scale is that the armies can start a distance apart that makes more sense without having to occupy a basketball court sized gaming table Then the other big benefit is I can paint 100 Epic scale models in a weekend, whereas even speed painting I can only paint half a dozen or so models at 40k scale in a weekend.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Scale doesn’t matter to me. I just want the models. I’ve a near complete set of 2nd Ed Epic rules, so provided both players are using the same era of models, the exact scale matters not one jot.

3rd edition Epic doesn't really even care what era the models are from. The models don't even have to be based the same way (though smaller bases make a unit easier to get into cover, they also make it easier to hit them with blast templates). You can only fit 2 units into combat with 1 enemy, which stops players basing for advantage to get either more or less units in combat, and snap firing (where you have to halt 10cm away from the enemy unless it's the assault phase) means even a unit on a small base has some area that they can deny the enemy passage.

 Dysartes wrote:
E:A, on the other hand, sold well enough to be 400% (or more) to target upon release

That could just be that they had bad targets, lol. GW frequently either under or over predict by large margins.

They probably just projected that sales would be in line with the trickle of Epic sales they'd been getting previously (when the game was barely being kept alive by the likes of Andy Chambers, Jervis Johnson, Gav Thorpe, Warwick Kinrade and a dedicated group of fans around the world) but when it released it got 4x whatever that trickle was.

All games have a spike in sales at release and that spike is pretty difficult to predict, and then it's similarly hard to predict how the size of that spike translates to longer term sales. Look at the number of limited releases GW have had that are still sitting on shelves now... or the number of limited releases that didn't last the first hour of being up for preorder. GW doesn't intentionally do that, they just can't predict the initial spike.

Unfortunately, despite the strong sales, someone at HQ had it out for the game, and knee-capped it before it could get all the core armies out.

I think that's the key problem. GW wanted AoS to succeed badly enough that they rode out the massive amount of negative publicity from killing WHFB and turned it into a popular game.

If GW wanted Epic 40k to succeed, and had a mindset of "well, the customers didn't like it because it was too big of a change, but we think this is a solid game so are going to put some effort into making it popular" then it could have been quite different. Instead it seemed to be more like "Well, that release didn't go as well as expected... we never liked Epic anyway so lets kill it".

Epic 40k was far from universally hated, there was a pretty strong community that kept it going and the original creators liked it enough to keep writing publications on it, but unless those publications were being announced widely and sold through stores it was never going to be enough.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 tauist wrote:
I can only think of one thing going against Epic from a manufacturer's POV: Player's financial investment level. IIRC, getting into Epic was super cheap compared to getting into 40K or WFB of the time. You bought one (small) plastic kit, maybe two blisters of tanks/artillery, and one larger titan, and you would be set for a while. A lot of the game was about learning to "play your army", so it would be some time before you'd start to think you'd need more models. Such a framework doesn't encourage amassing a big pile of shame, and lets face it, those piles of shame are what keep GW happy.

Looking at Aeronautica frames I think GW has nothing to fear on that front this time round, with the... embiggening... of the scale and cranking up the detail level we-re getting just 2-3 multipart vehicle models per frame where they would previously be single 1-2 inch pieces.

Yeah, these days I think GW would make Epic as expensive as just collecting a 40k army, lol.

But yeah, maybe back in the day Epic was too cheap of a game for GW. But it was only really cheap to get into, if you wanted to expand your force a lot of it was metal, titans were pretty expensive also, you could certainly still spend a lot on a army, still not as much as a full 40k army, but I'd suggest many of GW's customers don't build full on large 40k armies anyway.

Tsagualsa wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 tauist wrote:
I can only think of one thing going against Epic from a manufacturer's POV: Player's financial investment level. IIRC, getting into Epic was super cheap compared to getting into 40K or WFB of the time. You bought one (small) plastic kit, maybe two blisters of tanks/artillery, and one larger titan, and you would be set for a while. A lot of the game was about learning to "play your army", so it would be some time before you'd start to think you'd need more models. Such a framework doesn't encourage amassing a big pile of shame, and lets face it, those piles of shame are what keep GW happy.

Looking at Aeronautica frames I think GW has nothing to fear on that front this time round, with the... embiggening... of the scale and cranking up the detail level we-re getting just 2-3 multipart vehicle models per frame where they would previously be single 1-2 inch pieces.

Yeah, these days I think GW would make Epic as expensive as just collecting a 40k army, lol.

But yeah, maybe back in the day Epic was too cheap of a game for GW. But it was only really cheap to get into, if you wanted to expand your force a lot of it was metal, titans were pretty expensive also, you could certainly still spend a lot on a army, still not as much as a full 40k army, but I'd suggest many of GW's customers don't build full on large 40k armies anyway.

Even if Epic were cheaper than 40k in its reincarnation, that would offer a cheap route to get people 'in the loop' with the 40k universe and lead to further sales down the road, or even allow existing 40k players to have an Epic version of their army as a 'cheap' side project. I don't see it substituting 40k really, it's still a vastly different game and probably fun for a set of people with substantial, but not total overlap. Anyway, just getting more people near to the 'GW universe' has to be worth something, they make money by selling paints, magazines, novels, licensed games etc. too, not only with the main line games. Every wargamer who gets his 'fix' by playing a couple of games with his finished Epic army, but still picks up a novel now and then, a Necromunda gang for some quick skirmishes or a 40k character just for painting still is a net-positive and potentially a customer for Warhammer+ or even a mainstream game in the future.

Yep, I think more options are a good thing.

I've never really seen the logic in one GW game "cannibalising" another. If people want a 40k army, they'll build a 40k army, if they want an Epic army, they'll build an Epic army, if GW doesn't sell Epic, they'll buy it elsewhere or just not spend any money at all.

For years I spent nothing on GW games because I didn't like the last edition of WHFB and 40k doesn't appeal to me as a game (the models are cool, the game I haven't enjoyed since the 90's and early 00's). The only reason I've spent any money at GW the past few years is that they brought back BB, AI and AT... if they brought back Epic I'd have more reason to buy GW product, not less.

I recall multiple FLGS complaining they weren't getting stock in time long before covid made things worse. I don't think I ever preordered anything though the local official GW store to know if they are reliable, if I'm gonna preorder something at full price I'll just order direct and at least get it delivered to my door, lol.