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Title explains it for me. The rules sets for the 20mm war games by games workshop are both things of eminence beauty. There signature 35mm games are often a mess with contradictory rules.

The question here is really twofold. First why didn't the larger scale wargames hold on longer because of the quality of the game. Second since GW can make games of high quality why are the core games such a mess?

Note I like both 40k and fantasy quite a lot. It's just that every time I read the rule book for epic or warmaster I can't help but think how much tighter clearer and more strategically driven those games are.

40k is 28mm Heroic scale, Epic was 5mm scale, and Warmaster was 10mm scale. If it was 20mm scale, it wouldn't look that different from 40k. If 40k was 35mm scale, it would take up more room than it already does!

The larger scale translates to better sales. The models have much more customization available, have a lot more personality by nature of scale alone, and are easier to pick out on the tabletop. Years ago when I was going through game stores or flea markets at conventions, I'd see Epic stuff and 40k stuff. I never picked up any of the Epic stuff because the 40k models had a lot more character and looked cooler. Titans were cool, but your average infantry model in Epic looks like a bump on a log, as opposed to a fully-realized 28mm miniature.

IthinkIbrokeit wrote:
First why didn't the larger scale wargames hold on longer because of the quality of the game.

Lack of support from GW, lack of hobby options. GW's core market is people who value the models first and the rules as a way of using their cool models, and Epic scale just isn't as nice as 28mm for that. And since Epic offered a way to play the game without spending $500-1000 to start an army GW dropped support for it and let models go OOP until sales declined enough that they could kill it completely.

Second since GW can make games of high quality why are the core games such a mess?

GW can't make good games. Anyone who worked on Epic is long gone. Their current game designers are hopeless incompetents working under a company policy that encourages lazy unprofessional "work". Really, it's a small miracle their core games aren't much worse than they are.

I agree with everything in the above two posts.

Epic is ugly as sin, especially the infantry. 40k's rules are as bad as Epic is ugly. Wish they'd combine the best of both, but they won't. And if its not GW's most recent official rules, most people won't play it (even LotR for instance where new rules are apparantly garbage), so theres little chance of a fan solution

 Peregrine wrote:
GW's core market is people who value the models first and the rules as a way of using their cool models.

This. Since Rogue Trader days ended selling plastic kits is the main strategy, having some rules tacked on is secondary at best.

I enjoy 40k's rules enough that I can keep playing with these toys for the foreseeable future. Epic might have a tighter ruleset, but the scale just doesn't inspire me.

I never had a problem with the epic models, Yeah the infantry wasn't stellar, but the vehicles were pretty detailed. Who wants to spend hours painting 300 super detailed 6mm space marines.

Individually the miniatures were not super-impressive, but on a full game table, epic was EPIC! The game tables were beautiful full of buildings, infantry and vehicles.

Epic had a lot of rules issues though too.

I used to love Epic back in high school, but its rules could also be a bit unbalanced. I remember my favourite tactic of overwhelming titans with space marine scouts dropped from three thunderhawk gunships. That never, ever failed me, so it wasn't always perfect.

 Jihadnik wrote:
I used to love Epic back in high school, but its rules could also be a bit unbalanced. I remember my favourite tactic of overwhelming titans with space marine scouts dropped from three thunderhawk gunships. That never, ever failed me, so it wasn't always perfect.

Wait so you used 18 stands of scouts against a titan? How would you get them all into base to base contact? Who let you get that close with three thunderhawks, they only had a 4+ save?

Ah, I think I just used three of them, and I'd get as many scouts around it as I could, sorry, it was twenty years ago. All I really remember is that the rule was that you could add an extra dice for each stand or something so by the fourth of fifth attack you were almost guaranteed to damage it. Plus, the thunderhawks could drop almost next to them from orbit so you weren't racing up the field.

It was a long time ago and I am a bit hazy on how it all actually worked, but yeah, you're right, it wasn't eighteen stands.

 Jihadnik wrote:
Ah, I think I just used three of them, and I'd get as many scouts around it as I could, sorry, it was twenty years ago. All I really remember is that the rule was that you could add an extra dice for each stand or something so by the fourth of fifth attack you were almost guaranteed to damage it. Plus, the thunderhawks could drop almost next to them from orbit so you weren't racing up the field.

It was a long time ago and I am a bit hazy on how it all actually worked, but yeah, you're right, it wasn't eighteen stands.

Yeah, just thinking.Three thunderhawks holds 18 stands. Plus infantry could not pin superheavies in close combat. Not saying it couldn't happen, but it seams far from a never fail. It has been awhile but I don't think you could just drop thunderhawks from the sky either. Just about anything with first fire orders was going to tear epic thunderhawks a new one, they had the same armor save a rhinos.

I used to use swarms of rough riders to take down big nasty critters, they were pretty cheap and the pile on assault rule meant they would eventually take out whatever they were assaulting.

Yeah, like I said, twenty years ago now, I was fifteen as were my opponents, so, maybe I misread rules etc, but it always worked when I did it...it just might not have been legal!

Its two different rulesets being talked here - twenty years ago would have been Space Marine, which is a much different game from E:A

1, Chess - Easy to learn, hard to master - I guess it's the holy grail of game design. Very few rules that open endless tactical challenges. Doesn't sell a lot of minis though.
2. Epic 40K - Easy to learn, easy to master - clear and concise rules, but their simplicity makes their appeal limited. Hard-core players will "hack" them fairly quickly.
3. WH 40K - Hard to learn, easy to master - If you can't make truly "chess-level" rules, you can fake "depth" with lots of rules that make it seem complex (even though it's mostly a challenge in unit/stat/ability/rules memorization, rather than true game-play challenge). It's better than 2. because the game feels more like a 1.-style challenge, even if it isn't.

Latest version of Epic was designed by Jervis, who's definitely still there. Great game.

Having played epic scale since Adeptus Titanticus first came out, I have to say it is still one of my favorite GW games next to Bloodbowl. It got significantly better after 2nd edition Space Marine/Titan Legions tried to turn the game effectively into 40k with way too many models. The day I realized I was rolling 39 dice each turn just to fire the weapons on a *single squad* of stormhammer tanks was the day I realized the game needed to change. Once they added the level of abstraction to the next version we were totally addicted again. To go from taking 4 hours to play a single game to being about to play almost 3 whole games in the same time frame made us thrilled. The game really tanked after that, though, because too many people wanted the game to be 40k with lots more minis and got upset that their cool and unique tanks and vehicles, especially for orks who had so many variants, were now "all pretty much the same". Even though the minis were still unique and interesting. That helped severely limit the player base and then GW completely pulling the mini line to redo it for the Epic 40k release pretty much killed the game because only space marines and orks had full options to choose from miniwise. It was just dumb because the line was huge with options for so many different armies up to that point.

The other reason the 28mm games are more popular is because they have a more solid modeling aspect. It was annoying painting 5/6mm minis for Epic armies. The infantry models were barely discernable from each other and were pretty much impossible to convert or even worth converting. The level of painting detail just wasn't the same. The large scale figs are much cooler to paint and model. Conversions are possible and fun to do as well.

I still have Chaos, Space Marine and Ork armies for the Epic system including original warhound, warlord and reaver titans. Also have some original great gargants and a megagargant too.

Skriker