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Tsagualsa wrote:

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

On the one hand, that's something not everybody is going to need, on the other, nobody is getting excited over a bunch of rhinos

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.

Leaving transports out is still a pretty big omission from a tactics and 'How is this played' point of view, but they may be relatively ubiquituous in the force-specific boxes, we don't know that yet.

I'd get excited over a bunch of Rhinos.

I think the more likely thing is they know people will need more tanks so they don't want to include them in the starter set, they want people to spend more money on buying them separately.

It's the old game of upping the monetary value of the starter set while minimising the value of it and minimising the impact on the sales of other kits, and it's that sort of nickel and diming attitude that pushes people away.

2x Warhounds are probably close to a quarter of a medium sized army, and maybe people do want Titans but want a Reaver, or a Warlord, or maybe they don't want Titans at all, and many people are already going to own Warhounds from their inclusion in the AT starter set.

The way the Epic40k boxed set got around it was to include the Mega Gargant cardboard cut out, and have a scenario written around a Mega Gargant so people could try it out. But modern GW would never do something like that.

leopard wrote:
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

Depending on the edition you could put aspect warriors in grav tanks or wave serpents, you just had to buy them as a separate attachment. Thats how it worked in 2nd ed anyway, I don't think aspect warriors existed yet in first edition. I think possibly eldar with wings came out in a white dwarf supplement, but this was far before the aspect warriors as we know them came out.

Codex Titanicus included Swooping Hawks, the rest came later

though Guardians were called "Avenging Warriors"

oh yes and "Banshees" were actually dreadnaughts

the weird and wacky world of 1st edition 40k in full swing

also had orks, with bolters and heavy plasma guns

As a person interested in trying this game out, and with all the talk of rhinos, is troop movement a really important part of the game?
I've played a few games of Dropzone Commander with my wife and we enjoyed it - does 'epic' in all it's incarnations have a similar feel?
Most of the other GW games we play still always feel as we're "pushing stuff to the middle to roll lots of dice"

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
As a person interested in trying this game out, and with all the talk of rhinos, is troop movement a really important part of the game?
I've played a few games of Dropzone Commander with my wife and we enjoyed it - does 'epic' in all it's incarnations have a similar feel?
Most of the other GW games we play still always feel as we're "pushing stuff to the middle to roll lots of dice"

it presumably will be important, it has been in previous editions.

Rhinos and similar provide both protection and mobility, and from the last time I played (many years back) mobile units really mattered as its more than the push to the centre and roll dice stuff - starts to feel more like combined arms as the board is a lot larger than weapon ranges and done right you have some terrain areas that really need infantry to deal with

not played DZC but have seen it, like other games in smaller scales movement tends to matter - it was the thing that crippled the Eldar aspect warriors, a lot of other infantry came with transports, they didn't (similar for the Imperial guard who when I was playing didn't have infantry transports other than the Gorgon)

I can't speak for Epic Space Marine 1st edition or Epic 40k (3rd edition) but certainly for Epic Space Marine 2nd and Armageddon it's important. For SM 2nd (and NetEpic) especially, as you had the objective system and games often rested on controlling as many of the 8 of them that you could. You could win by destroying enemy units, but there was a good points-swing system whereby even a depleted army could wrest control of objectives late in a game.

This is why Marines (who were probably one of the worst armies if you just looked at their stats on paper) could often win games, as they all came with a rhino per 10 man unit (even devastators!) and units like Terminators came with Land Raiders. The Rhinos, even though pretty useless in combat, could move your units to advantageous positions early on and then also redeploy to capture objectives later in the game. Some of the 'foot slogging' armies (most Orks, chaos, Imperial guard) could mass a lot more fire, but were less capable in that regard. Usually those armies could buy transports, but because they were separate it then used up their support unit allocation (which had a limit of 5 cards per company) forcing those armies to lose out on other things if they wanted to fully mechanise.

It was a really interesting and I think characterful balancing mechanism in the games, and forced Marine (I think also Eldar) to try and box clever, using their mobility to strike more vulnerable parts of enemy forces.

that objective system in 2nd worked very well, they tried it in WD towards the end of 1st as well. seriously good way to score a game.

they also did siege type games where the defender placed only four, and then presumably defended them - and could buy static defences as part of their force, bunkers etc. but normal units cost double.

that was a fun game too

but as you note organic mobility was huge then, 1st you could just buy the transports but 2nd had a quite clever army building system

the 1st edition WD lists usually placed limits, IIRC an Imperial Guard Battalion could buy a transport pool option, but it only provided enough for two of the four detachments

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
As a person interested in trying this game out, and with all the talk of rhinos, is troop movement a really important part of the game?
I've played a few games of Dropzone Commander with my wife and we enjoyed it - does 'epic' in all it's incarnations have a similar feel?
Most of the other GW games we play still always feel as we're "pushing stuff to the middle to roll lots of dice"

We don't really know. We know it has the same models as Epic but we know almost nothing about the mechanics. And we have the example of Aeronautica Imperialis where GW dumbed down a maneuvering-heavy game to focus on "meet in the middle and roll dice until someone runs out of models" gameplay and published it under the same title. The new not-Epic game could do the same kind of thing.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
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?

Essentially, yes.

That said, I don't think they'd do one. "More payable" is not "good idea."

For those that really want one, there is the Battle Bling "not-Imperator," which ought to be available again after that finish printing all the ones sold to their pre-order campaign.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
As a person interested in trying this game out, and with all the talk of rhinos, is troop movement a really important part of the game?
I've played a few games of Dropzone Commander with my wife and we enjoyed it - does 'epic' in all it's incarnations have a similar feel?
Most of the other GW games we play still always feel as we're "pushing stuff to the middle to roll lots of dice"

DZC is absolutely superior to every iteration of Epic when it comes to the correct representation of combined arms. But it is much smaller in "scope" for an average game. It does not feel like any edition of Epic.

Epic has usually been about large sweeping movement and massive ground combat engagements. Though this has decreased with every edition of Epic, with E:A overall having the smallest force composition for a normal game.

I enjoy and play DZC and Epic 3rd because they have completely different feels and accomplish different things.

 judgedoug wrote:
I enjoy and play DZC and Epic 3rd because they have completely different feels and accomplish different things.

Agreed, both are great games that do pretty different things.

Oh yeah. Now you may very well call me slow. But….

This game will have one significant improvement over Epics 40K and Armageddon.

A. Choice. Of. Warlord. Titan. Weapons.

I might even hope that extends to non-paired carapace weapons. Like the old the days. The good days. The all or nothing days wait maybe not that one.

I agree completely, for me it was one of the big strength of 2nd edition, and lost a lot of flavour afterwards just having cookie-cutter Titans and HP bar-style damage. You also had that ability to really customise the Titan and what you wanted to achieve with it on the battlefield.

And I don't think it really slowed the game down that much (certainly if you stayed away from Imperators and Mega Gargants). In my last game had some really characterful stuff happen: a Gargant belly gun shot, went straight through the shields of a Warhound, hit the leg, max damage (taking it off at the knee), the Warhound came crashing down and the shot continued straight through a building and destroyed a unit on the other side! I know it's a few extra dice rolls, but love stuff like that happening in games..

Though….with modern sensibilities?

I’d be happy for individual Titan weapons to have points values. Or at a bare minimum? The load out to be declared when I’m writing my army list. There’s little more irritating to my mind than a list with an open “wait and find out who you’re facing then pick the guns most likely to be useful” option.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh yeah. Now you may very well call me slow. But….

This game will have one significant improvement over Epics 40K and Armageddon.

A. Choice. Of. Warlord. Titan. Weapons.

I might even hope that extends to non-paired carapace weapons. Like the old the days. The good days. The all or nothing days wait maybe not that one.

...I feel like you haven't checked Epic 40k in a long while , because the Warlord has a number of choices for titan weapons: 2 for the carapace (non- paired) to choose from Death Ray, Megacannon, Vortex Missile, Multiple Rocket Launcher and Heavy Weapon Battery, and two arm weapons (again, non-paired) to choose from Death Ray, Megacannon, Multiple Rocket Launcher, Heavy Weapon Battery and Close Combat Weapon.

And that's on the core box. The Adeptus Titanicus expansion had many, many more.

Boosykes wrote:
Doesn't seem like they are hyping this enough. I thought we would have daily articles leading up to its launch

I was surprised when the first Heresy Thursday after the big Epic reveal had nothing about Epic. Just a line in the end about bringing your magnifying glass next week.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gimgamgoo wrote:

Toofast 809458 11565090 wrote:
I'm friends with a few people that own gaming stores in a couple different states. I've heard the same and noticed it myself. When 30k launched, there were people lining up on release day outside my FLGS. One of my warhammer stores presold like 40 copies of the starter box. Individual squads would sell the day they hit the shelf. Now every store in my area has all the 30k releases going back about the last 8-10 months just sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

I figure that's down to GW's conditioning of its customer base. Their fomo sales technique. GW customers are conditioned to buy it on release, or don't buy it at all, as they expect it to be gone for good anyway.

They certainly don't fear missing out on any of the 30k releases of the past year...

I'm just back from the FLGS and I can confirm at least that they have all of the HH stuff (released to stores), and that is in the deepest corner of the store, and seems to have at least one of everything.

Which proves exactly nothing, OTOH. Also, some guy came like five minutes before me and bought five AT knight boxes.

 Albertorius wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh yeah. Now you may very well call me slow. But….

This game will have one significant improvement over Epics 40K and Armageddon.

A. Choice. Of. Warlord. Titan. Weapons.

I might even hope that extends to non-paired carapace weapons. Like the old the days. The good days. The all or nothing days wait maybe not that one.

...I feel like you haven't checked Epic 40k in a long while , because the Warlord has a number of choices for titan weapons: 2 for the carapace (non- paired) to choose from Death Ray, Megacannon, Vortex Missile, Multiple Rocket Launcher and Heavy Weapon Battery, and two arm weapons (again, non-paired) to choose from Death Ray, Megacannon, Multiple Rocket Launcher, Heavy Weapon Battery and Close Combat Weapon.

And that's on the core box. The Adeptus Titanicus expansion had many, many more.

It’s not my fault I scrubbed all knowledge of that abomination from my mind

But I accept and welcome your cited correction!

I have to say that for the kind of game I want to play when playing Epic, titans in Epic 40k used to hit a sweet spot in terms of complexity, but they were a bit too fragile against massed fire.

 Albertorius wrote:
I'm just back from the FLGS and I can confirm at least that they have all of the HH stuff (released to stores), and that is in the deepest corner of the store, and seems to have at least one of everything.

Which proves exactly nothing, OTOH. Also, some guy came like five minutes before me and bought five AT knight boxes.

When every store you go to in multiple states/countries looks like that for HH but has trouble keeping anything 40k in stock, it proves that HH isn't as popular as it was on release. Lack of options in plastic, lack of rules errata and contemptors being super OP probably have some part in that.

 Albertorius wrote:
I have to say that for the kind of game I want to play when playing Epic, titans in Epic 40k used to hit a sweet spot in terms of complexity, but they were a bit too fragile against massed fire.

Titan legions fixed that I think. Shields could only be taken down by weapons that had at least a -1 modifier. Bolters and small arms could no longer take down a Titians shields.

One of the things I really liked about the titans, which I think has disappeared was the placement of the vital plasma reactor. The Warlords reactor was dead center in the front, heavily armored but still targetable, which really made you want to sit back a bit with it, use it more as a support platform, once your shields were down one lucky shot could blow you to kingdom come. The reaver however being designed more for assault/Urban combat did not have reactor access in the front, it had to be shot in the sides or back to get that crit on the plasma reactor. I always thought that that was just a very cool little piece of design and made the reaver more than just a smaller faster Warlord.

The flavor of Titans was really a major fun factor. Ork Titans felt Orky, could take tons of damage and really had to be taken apart piece by piece, and the different belly gun ammo, Eldar Titans felt well....Eldary with their holo field making them almost impossible to hit, but pretty fragile once stripped of it. Those holo shields didn't help though if I took a Deathstrike center fire cannon and the landspeeder scout pad. So much fun with titans. The problem was that really the Empire was spoiled with Titans and weapons, the other races really didn't have nearly as much variety.

Toofast wrote:

Boosykes wrote:
Doesn't seem like they are hyping this enough. I thought we would have daily articles leading up to its launch

I was surprised when the first Heresy Thursday after the big Epic reveal had nothing about Epic...

They're still at least a month away from release and I suspect they've got the frequency of sneak peaks scheduled to reach a pinnacle closer to that date.

I'm a little surprised at the frequency thus far, not that I'm complaining mind you.

Yeah the whole thing is some weeks away still, so expecting daily articles is a bit off. I feel like those expectation were set by the amount of stuff posted on WHC last week (ish) - but keep in mind this is not 40K 10th edition or even anywhere close. If we get no more than one weekly article for the rest of July I would not be surprised.

 Darnok wrote:
Yeah the whole thing is some weeks away still, so expecting daily articles is a bit off. I feel like those expectation were set by the amount of stuff posted on WHC last week (ish) - but keep in mind this is not 40K 10th edition or even anywhere close. If we get no more than one weekly article for the rest of July I would not be surprised.

I guess it's rules articles in July, and then demo games at GenCon if they want a mid-late August release (or preorder).

This week has been fairly light on WarCom content in general, probably due to them preparing stuff for the 40k preview today. The week of the WHF preview was similar, with lots of articles being kept back for the weekend.

Tsagualsa wrote:

 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.

I expect charts like 1st/2nd edition.

GW has already hinted "CAF", and you can see 1st edition orders in the box contents. There is no doubt.

 Andrew1975 wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
I have to say that for the kind of game I want to play when playing Epic, titans in Epic 40k used to hit a sweet spot in terms of complexity, but they were a bit too fragile against massed fire.

Titan legions fixed that I think. Shields could only be taken down by weapons that had at least a -1 modifier. Bolters and small arms could no longer take down a Titians shields.

One of the things I really liked about the titans, which I think has disappeared was the placement of the vital plasma reactor. The Warlords reactor was dead center in the front, heavily armored but still targetable, which really made you want to sit back a bit with it, use it more as a support platform, once your shields were down one lucky shot could blow you to kingdom come. The reaver however being designed more for assault/Urban combat did not have reactor access in the front, it had to be shot in the sides or back to get that crit on the plasma reactor. I always thought that that was just a very cool little piece of design and made the reaver more than just a smaller faster Warlord.

The flavor of Titans was really a major fun factor. Ork Titans felt Orky, could take tons of damage and really had to be taken apart piece by piece, and the different belly gun ammo, Eldar Titans felt well....Eldary with their holo field making them almost impossible to hit, but pretty fragile once stripped of it. Those holo shields didn't help though if I took a Deathstrike center fire cannon and the landspeeder scout pad. So much fun with titans. The problem was that really the Empire was spoiled with Titans and weapons, the other races really didn't have nearly as much variety.

Yes definitely the case with Warlords! Used to be something of a running joke with us that the Warlord used to go down almost every game to a reactor shot, just absolutely everything within range would be shooting straight for that spot as once you got through the armour, it was a pretty low damage role that would result in a big smoking crater (and another reason you didn't set it up next to loads of your own infantry!)

Loved the way Gargants could soak up damage too, although you quite often ended up where it became ineffective (either unable to move or shoot, or do so at reduced effectiveness) and they were just sat there smoking with grots firefighting, but the other side still trying to make them pop because they were worth so many VP!

 Pacific wrote:
Loved the way Gargants could soak up damage too, although you quite often ended up where it became ineffective (either unable to move or shoot, or do so at reduced effectiveness) and they were just sat there smoking with grots firefighting, but the other side still trying to make them pop because they were worth so many VP!

Used to love playing with and playing against Gargants. You'd unload everything into it, the head was blown off, fires raging, ammo exploding and it'd still be lurching towards you, a true Orky menace! So many fun games...

At the end of today's Sunday preview article on Warhammer Community:

"Next week we’re continuing our coverage of Legions Imperialis with a look at the all-new Aethon Heavy Sentinel, as well as a heaping of nostalgia for games featuring especially tiny Space Marines."

https://twitter.com/warhammer/status/1675565138521341953/photo/1

top right apparently the mentioned Aethon Heavy Sentinel, acc. to warhammer official themselves in the thread.