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So, I saw this game in an off hand comment and after a bit of Googling and looking into it, it looks pretty awesome. Rules seem simple enough, and fun enough to try out. Was just wondering if anyone else has any experience with this game and if they wouldn't mind sharing a little of insight into it.

Like, it seems that for making my retinue, no matter the race, I basically have the freedom to do whatever I can model...Is this correct? I understand that it may be a case of yeah, you kind of have to stick to the spirit of how things work, but I'm just curious as to where the hard limits exist.

Link for those who haven't seen this.

Basically a skirmish game focused around building up a retinue with a leader, heavily inspired by Eisenhorn, Ravenor and the like. A few interesting looking mission scenarios provided, and I'm sure it's not too difficult to think up a few more.

Played it a few times. I like it It plays really fast. Even faster than Song of Blades and Heroes, so each game could be considered an encounter and you could play several in one evening. It also has a remarkable scenario generator. One thing is that the new version hasn't quite kept up with the old version. So you have to enter the stats into their stat program to get the new point values. This is a very quick process though.

Also, it's great as a generic game for other genres as well as building units from scratch is easy. The rules could easily translate to post apoc, sci-fi, or even pulpy 20th century combat. Because of the flexibility it is easy to break the points system when building your own units, but that's inevitable with games that put alot of power in the hands of the players.

Lastly, if you want to try the game in a different genre but one that is ready-to-play, you can buy the game "In Her Magesty's Name" which is a steampunk version published by Osprey. A really great book that's well laid out with nice visuals, and quite inexpensive. I haven't played it yet, but I've been reading over it with some excitement.

A few of our club's experiences with the game.
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2012/11/in-emperors-name-6-games-in-one-night.html

http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2011/10/games-played-warengine-and-in-emperors.html

Thanks for that, and for the link to the other game! After having a look at your descriptions of your experience there, I think it's a must that I give this a try.

I'm gradually attempting to move my group of friends slightly outside our highly limited scope - we've played Warhammer 40k, and that's it...Hopefully this makes for a good start.

Interesting about the point of being able to play several games in one evening - me and another friend were attempting to make a slightly modified Kill Team campaign that would feature persistent HQs and the like. The problem we ran into was it felt like it would all still take too long, and the Kill Team rules didn't feel right for the brief encounterish feeling we were going for.

This seems like it might make up for that.

Cheers!

EDIT: We also wanted to include special rules and artifacts and weapons that you could pick up throughout the campaign...again, this seems to fit the bill, with a lot of wargear and special rules.

It has a decent groundwork, but its in real need of a lot of rules tweaking. My club ran a campaign which kind of amounted to an arms race between who take the most broken warband (nobody should be allowed Squigs... Such horrors), which eventually led to its cancellation. So its all right, but it could be simpler and do better to explain itself over certain rules (ie calculating points costs needs correct examples...).

You can pick whatever you want, as long as you choose within a race's given options. However it is feasible to run two races together, but this does leave to more brokeness than there already is. In general though rules tweaking is fine, and at times a necessity, but as long as everyone plays nice it should be an enjoyable game to play. It is a good jumping point from those that are trying to be weaned off of 40k onto other skirmish systems though, but that's also to say that enough companies use GW's rules as inspiration that they shouldn't be difficult to get into either.

 Wyrmalla wrote:
... My club ran a campaign which kind of amounted to an arms race between who take the most broken warband .... (ie calculating points costs needs correct examples...).

You can pick whatever you want, ..., but this does leave to more brokeness than there already is. In general though rules tweaking is fine, and at times a necessity, but as long as everyone plays nice it should be an enjoyable game to play.

All this is very true. (Double check the points of the factions as some of the lists are wrong. If you're going to run a campaign you really need a strong GM or some agreed to guidelines because like most games with unit creation mechanics, this one is really easy to break. Also, the points system is good, but it's such a simple formula that it doesn't really take into account that some combinations of stats are much more beneficial than others.

The key is playing nice with folks who want a flavorful campaign. If your players like to "break" a ruleset and are in a WAAC mindset, this is not the game for them.

In fairness a good bit of that will be fixed if/when they update to the V3 retinue lists to keep up with the new rules. Hopefully.

I agree with everything said above. I really like In the Emperor's Name, and found it back before the update to the 3.0 rules. After reading the newer rules, I like the things that got modified and/or clarified. You have to love a ruleset that is about 20 pages long while even including psyker powers and basic vehicles, but this is also it's obvous downfall.

WAAC players will always make games of ItEN horribly un-fun and exploitable. It's pretty much assumed, at least by myself, that each game of ItEN is starting by assuming that not only are the players playing expressly for the enjoyment of a rules-light game in the 40K setting, but they have also already decided that they are each going to be making fluffy warbands based on what each race would take to the field, not super-elite Kill-Teams of all the best stuff possible. Wargear is obviously restricted to what that race would have in the 40K universe.

I also like how it makes a much better go at showing how a Space marine compares to a Guardsman on the battlefield, even with such simple rules.

The game also allows for great experimentation. I have always wanted to play around with some Orks on the battlefield, and I love converting and painting them. But I certainly don't want to invest in a 40K army for any kind of Orks past 2nd edition. But with ItEN, I can assemble and paint a small number of boyz led by a warboss and go to town. Or spend 20 dollars on the Chosen and Chaos Lord from Dark Vengeance, and field a fully workable warband.

The formula for warriors is perfect, and the warband lists from 2.5 work perfectly fine, because they are just fluffy guidelines for what each race would field. And they aren't even that great sometimes, like in the case of Genestealer Cults, which can't even have heavy weapons (which I immediately ignored so i can use my old Delaque gangers and their heavy stubber). So they are really just a loose guideline which you can fudge a bit in the name of coolness.

Just ignore the sample warband points costs at the bottom of each page, as the prices are bit off with the new formula (especially taking Armour into account, which is much better balances- but much more expensive now). For lack of a good PDF of weapons for 3.0, I took some time and converted all the old 2.5 weapons over with the new math into a spreadsheet broken up by weapons type and race. But like a good masochist I wanted a bit more variation in big weapons (as well as other special weapons and more heavy weapons) so I tweaked the formula bit and found one that worked slightly better if you want powerful things like plasma cannons, lascannons, and the like to be balanced with boltguns and lasguns:

Weapon Price =
Combat Bonus +
+1pt for ranges under 18"
+2 pts for ranges under 24"
+3pts for ranges under 36"
+4pts for ranges under 48"
+5pts for ranges of 48" and over
+Grit modifier (x3)

I also changed blast weapons and flamers to use the standard templates, as they make the game "flow" better than the current rules in ItEN.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
snip.

The 3.0 weapons list is up

http://iten-game.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ItEN-3.0-Weapons-List.pdf

Cool! Thanks for pointing that out. I'll have to cross reference things with my homemade list to make sure my points costs are correct. I wish they would break down things into a more digestible list than one massive alphabetical spreadsheet, though.

My personal list has everything broken down by Race(Imperial/Chaos, Daemon, Orks, Necrons, Eldar, etc.) and then into Basic, Heavy and Close Combat weapon sections. So much faster to search through and add to.

Not sure if I like the ability for power armor to allow moving and shooting with heavy weapons, though. Seems a bit too powerful. But I admit I haven't played with the 3.0 rules yet, where the heavier armors have become more expensive (especially Terminator-level armor!). I find it much fluffier to let Space marines be one of the only types to be allowed to buy the suspensors wargear for 5pts, which then let them move and fire.

 AegisGrimm wrote:


Not sure if I like the ability for power armor to allow moving and shooting with heavy weapons, though. Seems a bit too powerful. But I admit I haven't played with the 3.0 rules yet, where the heavier armors have become more expensive (especially Terminator-level armor!). I find it much fluffier to let Space marines be one of the only types to be allowed to buy the suspensors wargear for 5pts, which then let them move and fire.

I agree that the 3.0 presentation isn't quite ready for primetime, I am glad that armor is more expensive. We found that heavier armors really lead the field in 2.0. As for Suspsensors, it's a very nice upgrade, though as you say, I can't think of many units that should have it fluff wise aside from marines and certain squats.

On second look a lot of the weapons on the 3.0 list don't correctly use the new formula for weapons' costs. Things like bolters and bolt pistols are a point too low, and some of the grit penalties got dropped for some reason (like the -2 on the plasma gun, which then drops about half the cost of what the old profile would be under 3.0 rules). So evidently it will still need intensive interpretation by the players involved.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
On second look a lot of the weapons on the 3.0 list don't correctly use the new formula for weapons' costs. Things like bolters and bolt pistols are a point too low, and some of the grit penalties got dropped for some reason (like the -2 on the plasma gun, which then drops about half the cost of what the old profile would be under 3.0 rules). So evidently it will still need intensive interpretation by the players involved.

To be fair thats to be expected, and likely welcomed. It gives a nice base value to go on, but games like this there will always be groups that think "x is too strong/weak" and change it. Baring in mind we don't know yet what changes are going to be made to the retinues, so some perspective could yet come.

Cheers for the additional tips people - and I don't see too much trouble with people trying to break the system (unless that's the idea we're going for) on account of the fact that anytime we do that with games in general, someone slaps someone round the back of the head.

Ridiculously busy week or so, but fingers crossed I'll manage a match this weekend...hopefully.