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MarkNorfolk wrote:

leopard wrote:
hopefully with transports they do "do a Battlefront" and decide they play no part in the game so omit them, providing mobility with what amounts to a "strategem card"

serious face desk if they do that

What utter madness is this? The idea that 'Epic' does not have Rhinos, Land Raiders, Spartans, Gorgons, or the Thunderhawk Gunship, for Pete's sake, is incomprehensible!

it makes about as much sense as a WW2 game without softskin trucks, jeeps etc or a WW3 game without stuff like mortars or again transports

given GW want to flog models though I'd suspect if they could not only would you have the rhinos but you will be required to also have (and thus buy) models for fuel trucks, recovery vehicles, mobile canteens etc

leopard wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
Oh boy, please do not

BF did it so as to avoid having to make plastic transport models they knew not everyone would buy to replace resin ones

GW will include them, specifically because they will flog a box with Rhinos inside, it will also include other stuff you won't want a silly number of.

personally a box with a number of rhino scaled to be one or two models over what a typical detachment would require works (so you can expand slightly), the sort of thing someone with a combine arms force wants one or two of and an infantry heavy wants maybe double that

nice would be having the rear hatch as a drop on part with options for a whirlwind, razorback and command rhino (and yes I know the razorback isn't in HH yet)

GW surely will be releasing rhinos because almost every other SM tank is a Rhino with stuff stuck to it. There's literally no reason not to sell barebones rhinos as a result, and since we all know that models make rules, not the other way around, at GW, there will be Rhino rules, and once you got these, you can do other transports as well because why wouldn't you.

I've got some Rhino printed, and heck even painted, in anticipation

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 schoon wrote:
AT had (and I would argue still has) solid sales despite a lack of variety. That's partially because it's a solid set of rules and fun to play.

I would say AT was a full game experience when it had 3 titan chassis at the latest. Epic might take a while getting there if, for example, there are profiles for core elements such as transport vehicles and artillery in the book already and no models for them forthcoming for what could be a year or more at the usual specialist games pace. People will definitely feel like they're not getting to play the full game if they can't field everything in the book.

They have a stock of releases they are gonna feed out for probably around a year. I guarantee they have already a large stock of rhinos, land raider types, and a few baneblade variants. They'll release these in drips because they always need to be releasing something and, frankly, we would all lose our gak if GW actually sold everything they were planning to release at once and then we had to wait 2 years before the designed products hit production.

The game might go fallow after they finish releasing everything they already planned to.

LI news next week according to https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/07/13/heresy-thursday-this-loyalist-champion-is-ready-to-collect-traitor-heads/

 Shadow Walker wrote:
LI news next week according to https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/07/13/heresy-thursday-this-loyalist-champion-is-ready-to-collect-traitor-heads/

Oh poo. All keyed up for nothing.

guessing it will ramp up in say the fortnight ahead of pre-orders going live

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Vorian wrote:
The are 2 Warhounds in this one, to be fair.

Which is going to bump up the price unnecessarily, would much rather see more tanks/infantry in the main boxed set and buy Warhounds separately than the other way around (especially since I, and I imagine many others, already have Warhounds from AT anyway ).

Same. I'd rather buy a single box of warhounds (though I already have a couple) and be able to buy the starter 2+ times to get basic infantry and rhinos. They way they are doing it, I'm going to end up with a box full of unbuilt warhounds and have to pay a fortune to buy a chapters worth of rhinos.

Epic isn't Epic with out hundreds of rhinos on the table top. I'd also rather paint 200 rhinos than 4 warhounds.

The way they have put together the starter is just going to encourage me to keep buying 3rd party alternatives, or I'll finally just get around to buying a 3d printer. (Then chances are I'll have even less use for the releases)


I didn't expect there to be a legions article today, though I'd been hoping they were going to show off the terrain and confirm the tiles are plastic and see some of the new building sprues.

leopard wrote:
guessing it will ramp up in say the fortnight ahead of pre-orders going live

It's possible they're keeping some of the juicier Epic stuff back for Gencon / NOVA in August. FW resin characters don't have the same appeal there.

 xttz wrote:

leopard wrote:
guessing it will ramp up in say the fortnight ahead of pre-orders going live

It's possible they're keeping some of the juicier Epic stuff back for Gencon / NOVA in August. FW resin characters don't have the same appeal there.

I'm still hoping they're preparing to flash everybody with an Imperator-class titan as the centerpiece model - even if it was impractical to play, many would buy it just to paint, and it would not be that much larger than what they do for 40k-scale Knights nowadays.

Tsagualsa wrote:
IMHO it's an attempt to have most major 'foodgroups' of the game in the starter box: light infantry, heavy infantry, some specialists, walkers, tanks, titans. Only thing missing would be lynchpin characters like Primarchs (understandable not to put in the starter, as it locks you into a legion), air power and non-titan superheavies, so essentially it's a complete-ish overview of the system.

Pretty much this.

They had to start somewhere with the main box, and they decided that Marines, Auxilia, and Warhounds were the "food groups" they wanted to showcase.

I would expect to start seeing the "other food groups" much closer to the release date.

I must say that I'm looking forward to deploying Marines from a Thunderhawk...

A mass-produced Imperator at or just after launch would draw flack from players due to the other stuff that would be displaced from the production schedule to make room for it.

Eumerin wrote:
A mass-produced Imperator at or just after launch would draw flack from players due to the other stuff that would be displaced from the production schedule to make room for it.

It would take up a single knight-sized production slot in plastic (or resin, shudder...), and they seem to have room for stuff like the Acastus Knight variants for big-Heresy, so i'm not sure how much of a foundation that would have. And there is obviously demand for something like that, judging from scratchbuilds and 3rd-party products. And on top of that, literally everything is drawing flack today, some of it justified and some of it not so much

leopard wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
Oh boy, please do not

BF did it so as to avoid having to make plastic transport models they knew not everyone would buy to replace resin ones

GW will include them, specifically because they will flog a box with Rhinos inside, it will also include other stuff you won't want a silly number of.

personally a box with a number of rhino scaled to be one or two models over what a typical detachment would require works (so you can expand slightly), the sort of thing someone with a combine arms force wants one or two of and an infantry heavy wants maybe double that

nice would be having the rear hatch as a drop on part with options for a whirlwind, razorback and command rhino (and yes I know the razorback isn't in HH yet)

BF didn't eliminate transports at all, they are very much still part of Flames of War (in all its variants) and Team Yankee, and they continue to release new ones. What they did eliminate were unarmed softskins and logistics vehicles, which are things that have never existed in 40k or epic in any form. SDKFZs, M3s, Universal Carriers, M113s, BMD's, BMP's, BTR's, and every other form of APC and armored transport imaginable are still very much present, even Jeeps and Humvees.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tsagualsa wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
A mass-produced Imperator at or just after launch would draw flack from players due to the other stuff that would be displaced from the production schedule to make room for it.

It would take up a single knight-sized production slot in plastic (or resin, shudder...), and they seem to have room for stuff like the Acastus Knight variants for big-Heresy, so i'm not sure how much of a foundation that would have. And there is obviously demand for something like that, judging from scratchbuilds and 3rd-party products. And on top of that, literally everything is drawing flack today, some of it justified and some of it not so much

How appropriate would an Imperator be for Epic though? Its really more a titan meant for fighting other titans than it is one meant for engaging massed infantry and tanks. Doesn't mean that an Imperator *can't* do that, mind you, but its more an Adeptus Titanicus release than a Legions Imperialis release.

I would rather have the 20 odd new regular units that would take up the same production capacity as an Imperator, myself. Would certainly make for a healthier game.

chaos0xomega wrote:
How appropriate would an Imperator be for Epic though? Its really more a titan meant for fighting other titans than it is one meant for engaging massed infantry and tanks. Doesn't mean that an Imperator *can't* do that, mind you, but its more an Adeptus Titanicus release than a Legions Imperialis release.

It's not even a good AT release. The Warmaster is only barely useable in AT, and I have to think it'd dominate your average LI game (unless Titans are nerfed to hell in LI). An Imperator should be a full step beyond that. I don't know what good it would be other than a hobby project and display piece. Having said that, it could still happen as a FW resin piece for collectors with FW Titan pricing. FW loves a good whale hunt.

 RexHavoc wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Vorian wrote:
The are 2 Warhounds in this one, to be fair.

Which is going to bump up the price unnecessarily, would much rather see more tanks/infantry in the main boxed set and buy Warhounds separately than the other way around (especially since I, and I imagine many others, already have Warhounds from AT anyway ).

Same. I'd rather buy a single box of warhounds (though I already have a couple) and be able to buy the starter 2+ times to get basic infantry and rhinos. They way they are doing it, I'm going to end up with a box full of unbuilt warhounds and have to pay a fortune to buy a chapters worth of rhinos.

Epic isn't Epic with out hundreds of rhinos on the table top. I'd also rather paint 200 rhinos than 4 warhounds.

The way they have put together the starter is just going to encourage me to keep buying 3rd party alternatives, or I'll finally just get around to buying a 3d printer. (Then chances are I'll have even less use for the releases)


I didn't expect there to be a legions article today, though I'd been hoping they were going to show off the terrain and confirm the tiles are plastic and see some of the new building sprues.

GW tries to make their discount boxes so that you don't want to spam them too much. Goal is after all send kits at full price as well and not just discount boxes.

At least maybe this way few don't hog up every discount box leaving most without even single.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:

How appropriate would an Imperator be for Epic though? Its really more a titan meant for fighting other titans than it is one meant for engaging massed infantry and tanks. Doesn't mean that an Imperator *can't* do that, mind you, but its more an Adeptus Titanicus release than a Legions Imperialis release.

To not break game resulting it either being OP or auto lose it is not even appropriate for AT...There's only so big single ruleset can reasonably work. Imperator is so big that it would be either silly OP or auto lose(generally due to not being able to score enough objectives) in that scale.

You would need game that's what epic is vs AT. Scale up. Maniples of titans fighting each other.

So basically Imperator would be more playable in Epic than in Titanicus because the less detailed rules allow for huger armies so that it doesn't warp the whole battle?

chaos0xomega wrote:

How appropriate would an Imperator be for Epic though? Its really more a titan meant for fighting other titans than it is one meant for engaging massed infantry and tanks. Doesn't mean that an Imperator *can't* do that, mind you, but its more an Adeptus Titanicus release than a Legions Imperialis release.

Given it was specifically designed for Epic, the Imperator is meant for fighting anything & everything. It possesses weaponry at all scales, from anti-infantry and anti-aircraft point defense, to multiple anti-armour options, up to being able to vaporise most opposing titans in one volley. It was not only designed with a transport capacity, but the original rules even allowed for infantry combat inside the titan.

I'd argue it's more appropriate for Epic than AT, where half of that flavour and functionality would be lost.

Tsagualsa wrote:

Eumerin wrote:
A mass-produced Imperator at or just after launch would draw flack from players due to the other stuff that would be displaced from the production schedule to make room for it.

It would take up a single knight-sized production slot in plastic (or resin, shudder...), and they seem to have room for stuff like the Acastus Knight variants for big-Heresy, so i'm not sure how much of a foundation that would have. And there is obviously demand for something like that, judging from scratchbuilds and 3rd-party products. And on top of that, literally everything is drawing flack today, some of it justified and some of it not so much

Keep in mind that this sized production slot was the entirety of plastic releases for AT in 2021. I highly doubt they would want to invest in an Imperator anywhere near the early stages of an Epic reboot. It would make more sense to focus on smaller AT kits like Dire Wolves, Rapiers, Knights, and extra titan weapon options which can all be sold as impulse bought add-ons to an Epic army.

If we ever do get an Imperator release it'll happen at the tail end of the production cycle like the Warmaster, or as a centrepiece for a new cycle (Titan Legions reprint anyone?).

In Epic SM (the Titan Legions release) the Imperator was great - I remember friends and I playing a game I think with three of them and six mega gargants on the other side, I think about 20,000pts all in. The game took about an entire weekend to play because there were just so many special rules! When you are messing about moving plasma between engines and guns (or repair crews around the Gargants) it was a level of granular detail that was almost a game in itself, and I think more suited to Adeptus Titanicus than Epic.

Ok the other hand, I found the 'HP bar' of Titans in Armageddon really underwhelming. Hopefully they keep some of the granular detail (you want your titans taking fire or perhaps going down to a lucky reactor shot) but without going 'full Titan Legions'

 Pacific wrote:
In Epic SM (the Titan Legions release) the Imperator was great - I remember friends and I playing a game I think with three of them and six mega gargants on the other side, I think about 20,000pts all in. The game took about an entire weekend to play because there were just so many special rules! When you are messing about moving plasma between engines and guns (or repair crews around the Gargants) it was a level of granular detail that was almost a game in itself, and I think more suited to Adeptus Titanicus than Epic.

Ok the other hand, I found the 'HP bar' of Titans in Armageddon really underwhelming. Hopefully they keep some of the granular detail (you want your titans taking fire or perhaps going down to a lucky reactor shot) but without going 'full Titan Legions'

I think something like the degrading profiles for vehicles in 9th could work well for Titans at an Epic scale, it would be a bit more complicated than just having a 'health bar', but simple enough to not overly complicate larger engagements. Add in something like Hazardous for the most potent weapons or especially taxing orders, or perhaps degrading shield regeneration etc., and you have a simple, yet serviceable system. You could also dial it up and down by having fewer degradation levels for the lighter engines, and more for the heavier ones. It would also have the benefit of fitting neatly on a unit card, and not require rolling on too many tables.

BFG critical hits offer some streamlined degradation too

To be fair though, the 2nd Ed system for Titans only went on the wonk with the advent of the Imperator and Mega Gargants.

The more traditional Titans could take a kicking and still be up and about, with any locations which could lead to insta-gib typically being harder to hit and pretty well armoured to the front.

For those unfamiliar, every Titan had a body chart. For every hit, the attacker chose a location from the relevant facing, then rolled the Titan Location Dice. Those dice could do nothing, or shift the location hit Up, Down, Left or Right. If the direction took the hit off the chart, the attack missed.

The bigger the Titan, the bigger the chart. This made tiny Titans like Warhounds and latterly Revenants surprisingly tricky to damage.

The location hit then took a save in the usual way. If it failed, you rolled on the damage chart.

And it honestly takes longer to explain that it does to do it 😂😂

But it added an extra level of interest to Titans compared to everything else in the game.

Back in 2nd/Titan Legions, an Imperator was 2250 points. Typical games were 3000-4000 points. So, yeah, you had to specifically play a BIG game to effectively have the support required (you know, to take objective and whatnot). I'd love to see an Imperator eventually but not right away.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
To be fair though, the 2nd Ed system for Titans only went on the wonk with the advent of the Imperator and Mega Gargants.

The more traditional Titans could take a kicking and still be up and about, with any locations which could lead to insta-gib typically being harder to hit and pretty well armoured to the front.

For those unfamiliar, every Titan had a body chart. For every hit, the attacker chose a location from the relevant facing, then rolled the Titan Location Dice. Those dice could do nothing, or shift the location hit Up, Down, Left or Right. If the direction took the hit off the chart, the attack missed.

The bigger the Titan, the bigger the chart. This made tiny Titans like Warhounds and latterly Revenants surprisingly tricky to damage.

The location hit then took a save in the usual way. If it failed, you rolled on the damage chart.

And it honestly takes longer to explain that it does to do it 😂😂

But it added an extra level of interest to Titans compared to everything else in the game.

I think we need a look at the actual rules of the game first before we start theorizing about any of that If it uses something like E:A's AT/AP/AA/MW profiles, it will be fundamentally different than a firepower-table system, or some sort of hybrid thingy, and that directly informs what 'resilience' even means. Also, morale, suppression, objectives etc. all directly impact the use and viability of large warmachines, and as of now we know diddly-squat about anything.

 xttz wrote:


Given it was specifically designed for Epic, the Imperator is meant for fighting anything & everything. It possesses weaponry at all scales, from anti-infantry and anti-aircraft point defense, to multiple anti-armour options, up to being able to vaporise most opposing titans in one volley. It was not only designed with a transport capacity, but the original rules even allowed for infantry combat inside the titan.

I'd argue it's more appropriate for Epic than AT, where half of that flavour and functionality would be lost.

I'd argue thats nonsensical.

An Imperator is a land battleship of the super-dreadnought variety. Battleships were noted for their obscene firepower spanning the full gamut of calibers, sizes, ranges, and purposes - weapons designed to destroy other battleships, weapons designed to destroy smaller warships, weapons designed to destroy aircraft, weapons designed to destroy small watercraft or gun down personnel manning the decks of enemy ships and repel boarders, etc. Battleships were certainly very capable against other battleships and major surface combatants (i.e. other titans), but they were particularly ineffective against targets much smaller than themselves (aircraft and the smallest surface combatants such as destroyer escorts and motor torpedo boats), despite the large amounts of firepower they were equipped with specifically to counter those targets. Likewise, while battleships were effective in shore-bombardment against enemy fortifications, emplacements, and infrastructure, they weren't noted for being particularly effective against enemy infantry and tank forces on maneuver (and even though they could devastate enemy fortifications, the infantry occupying them often suffered comparatively light losses even after days of continuous bombardment), with the notable exception of the combined bombardment of 18 battleships and hundreds of strategic bombers to halt the advance of a counterattacking German Panzer Corps near Salerno (even then, they caused only minor losses, comparatively speaking - their effect was halting maneuver, not inflicting attrition). What did prove effective in a shore bombardment role against enemy ground formations (tanks, artillery, and infantry) were the much smaller, lighter, more responsive, and faster-firing guns of smaller, faster, and more maneuverable warships like cruisers - light cruisers in particular (i.e. warlord and reaver titans).

I would consider anything up to a Warlord to be an effective combatant against conventional forces, once you get beyond that, the titans and their weapons are overwhelmingly too large, slow, and unwieldy to effectively handle forces significantly smaller than themselves. Despite their massive weapons load, its all too densely concentrated in one platform that cannot be everywhere at once in order to maximize its utility against a variety of potential targets. Slow speed makes it hard to keep up with smaller, lighter, faster targets, its size makes it difficult to maneuver in order to bring its weapons to bear against small targets in an efficient and effective manner.

I find myself hopeful the game will be more than "this unit has firepower rating x" given they have shown that tanks have weapon options etc, it would be somewhat pointless if they then gave them all the same rating

may even be back to the glory days of different weapon profiles, hushed reverent whisper maybe even fire arcs

leopard wrote:
I find myself hopeful the game will be more than "this unit has firepower rating x" given they have shown that tanks have weapon options etc, it would be somewhat pointless if they then gave them all the same rating

may even be back to the glory days of different weapon profiles, hushed reverent whisper maybe even fire arcs

I think I’d be happiest with Epic Armageddon’s weapons, where your weapons had an Anti-Tank and/or Anti-Infantry ratings. This was a nice upgrade from 2nd Ed, and added some extra consideration.

So far we’ve seen some tanks will have a choice in Sponson and Turret guns. If we consider the venerable Predator? I’d like the choice to go all Lascannon, gaining solid Anti-Tank but no Anti-Infantry, Autocannon and Heavy Bolters for solid Anti-Infantry, or Lascannon Turret Heavy Bolter Sponsons for a bit of both.

This also differentiated Infantry between armies. Tactical Squad stands all had AT and AI shots. Imperial Guard were predominantly AI, with Every Other Stand having a heavy weapon for AT. At least from memory.

The latest Apocalypse game had AI/AT firepower stats too, didn't it?

well first edition was built around a weapon having one profile v armoured and another v unarmoured (with a fair few only working v unarmoured targets too) - it looked complicated but given your usual army didn't have all that many of the different guns it worked

IIRC tactical squads had bolters and also a melta gun, the profiles being written so bolters did nicely for anti infantry while the melta was very short ranged but made armour keep a respectful distance unless it had infantry support.

its the bit I miss from 1st, I've got the main rules and Codex Titanicus, but so much was in white dwarf which I sadly lack

I suspect the fact the predator seems to have a choice on both turret and sponsons tends to suggest either we get weapon profiles or there will be a few set loadouts with differing stats

never did get why Eldar couldn't get falcons to transport Aspect Warriors though