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artific3r wrote:
The hex grid was always the biggest turnoff for AI. The game itself was pretty solid in how it captured the dynamics of aerial combat, but it did feel a little simplistic due to the lack of unit variety.

At this point it seems pretty safe to assume that AT and AI were always meant to be stepping stones along the way to LI. Long-term commitment to either game seems increasingly unlikely.

AT is a solid game on its own. Hopefully LI will mean more plastic releases for Titans- Dire Wolves and new Warhound weapons are great starts. Converting more of the Warlord and Reaver weapons over to plastic would be useful for both games as well, and hopefully will happen. And more terrain is always good.

semajnollissor wrote:
So, by that measure, LI will fail as well?

I can't honestly say, I didn't play Epic and I haven't seen enough of LI's rules to know how well it works. But the point about AI was less about failing to capture nostalgia being the reason for its failures and more that it was just an irredeemably bad game and "a worse in every way version of the game we already had" is the best way I can describe it. AI could have succeeded without being an improved version of its predecessor if it had been a good game on its own merits but we never got the chance to find out, GW published half-finished trash and then promptly dumped it when sales didn't immediately set a new record.

Similarly, I think LI can work fine without needing to rely on nostalgia if it is a good game. Will it be? Who knows. But like AI it's releasing in an obviously incomplete state and I really hope GW doesn't kill it off before they can bring it to its full potential.

And now even the buildings have stat lines ..

A post doing the rounds on the FB groups at the moment, apparently from the rules leaks/community page releases seen *so far* there are 56 keywords/rule reference terms used in the stats. Those of us who struggle to remember what we had for tea yesterday evening may struggle.. !

 Breotan wrote:
Aeronautica players didn't have to be wysiwyg, especially regarding the bombs and missiles. I wonder how much of an issue this will be in LI.

WYSIWYG at Epic scale? Mother of God we used to just put banner poles on Ork Boyz stands for Nobz and on Guardians for Warlocks, how times change..

Yeah, in my eyes, the rules for AI were way too abstract and really didn't capture the feeling of dogfighting very well.

That really limited my ability to support the line - not the existance or absence of xenos.

AT had fun rules that worked well, and thus my support. Nothing to do with xenos there either.

LI will likewise live or die by the quality of the ruleset. We'll see...

AI was... interesting, I've played one game, what it had going for it was the 40k background and some nice looking models

that was it basically

there are far better air combat games out there

the hex grid was ok, but the map is about a quarter the area is needed to be

Agree these side games live or die by the rules being decent

AT was a surprise to me, very different from the 1st edition, but still enjoyable to play

AI was terrible. No offense to anyone who liked it but I went all in expecting it to be GW X-wing and got... I dunno, maybe a ruleset for 9 year olds. And not the clever ones. Dreadfleet had way more game.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
AI was terrible. No offense to anyone who liked it but I went all in expecting it to be GW X-wing and got... I dunno, maybe a ruleset for 9 year olds. And not the clever ones. Dreadfleet had way more game.

Oooofffff

I was going to comment on GW's failings with Aeronautica, but that's a separate topic altogether.

What I will say is that we are comparing one of GW's most iconic wargames to one of it's lesser known spin-offs. Of course there is much more demand for a new Epic game that includes everything that can be possibly plopped onto the battlefield, than a game that only focuses on aircraft.

And while it was the game that introduced the Epic series, the same goes for Adeptus Titanicus as it only focuses on giant Imperial robots. Even when that was released in 2018..."When's Epic coming? Where's the little soliders and tanks?".

That said, I see Legions Imperialis being the game that The Horus Heresy should have been from the start. Its not only set in the 30K setting but also has both the correct model scale and ruleset to accomodate large scale battles.

SamusDrake wrote:
That said, I see Legions Imperialis being the game that The Horus Heresy should have been from the start. Its not only set in the 30K setting but also has both the correct model scale and ruleset to accomodate large scale battles.

+1 to this. I have some reservations about the level of granularity we've seen so far, but slightly embiggened micro armor is the perfect scale for the sorts of battles described in the 30K fluff. It's also just a generally convenient scale to paint, transport, and actually play with.

 Pacific wrote:
And now even the buildings have stat lines ..

A post doing the rounds on the FB groups at the moment, apparently from the rules leaks/community page releases seen *so far* there are 56 keywords/rule reference terms used in the stats. Those of us who struggle to remember what we had for tea yesterday evening may struggle.. !

 Breotan wrote:
Aeronautica players didn't have to be wysiwyg, especially regarding the bombs and missiles. I wonder how much of an issue this will be in LI.

WYSIWYG at Epic scale? Mother of God we used to just put banner poles on Ork Boyz stands for Nobz and on Guardians for Warlocks, how times change..

Well when 40k leaned heavily on usr's it had a lot, the point was they didn't change and that was the beauty of the concept, a player's reward for really internalizing them was being able to pick up a new codex on release and understand a lot of it because although it was new it still used the core usr's.

When 8th ed dropped an GW started doing the muh bespoke crap it all fell apart. But assuming those 56 words get referenced again and again with future releases, that certainly better than bloating that number more and more. This may be the benefit of few factions, its more difficult to bloat it up like necromunda or 40k.

 Crablezworth wrote:
I feel like I want several, with that said, I'm not sure if they're fun to build or more of chore. I've also seen third party kits that add details like interior detail to the front for modelling with front hatch open.

I think they’re great fun to build, did another couple in August after not having built any for a long time and remembered how much I enjoyed it.

I have been very tempted by those custom interiors.

Im increasingly wary of the LI ruleset, but I'll buy the hell out of the range anyway. Worst case scenario is I find another ruleset to use them with or write my own. At that scale, its not actually that hard to do as WYSIWYG is of lesser importance (with regards to all the fiddly little secondary weapons, etc.) and you tend to want less detailed rulsets for such small minis anyway.

I have questions about rules that were leaked, but I don't think we've seen enough yet to become concerned.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Im increasingly wary of the LI ruleset, but I'll buy the hell out of the range anyway. Worst case scenario is I find another ruleset to use them with or write my own. At that scale, its not actually that hard to do as WYSIWYG is of lesser importance (with regards to all the fiddly little secondary weapons, etc.) and you tend to want less detailed rulsets for such small minis anyway.

I think for sanity you definitely want some kind of rule like the whole squad has to have the same loadout. At the same time, the people that want to throw the baby out with the bathwater on wysiwyg can be very entitled the other way if its too laisez fair. It's one thing to be asked to remember "this squad has lascannons and not heavy bolters. That sort of thing can get just as taxing, again depending how laise fair the whole thing is, you have to draw a line somewhere though, before "these leman russes are really malcadors".

If its also a case of people modelling before reading the rules, again I'm less sympathetic with "every heavy bolter you see is a lascannon" at that point.

 Breotan wrote:
I have questions about rules that were leaked, but I don't think we've seen enough yet to become concerned.

I think it is more 2nd ed than 4th ed, which I think is probably the right move for GW players, if not wargamers.

 Crablezworth wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Im increasingly wary of the LI ruleset, but I'll buy the hell out of the range anyway. Worst case scenario is I find another ruleset to use them with or write my own. At that scale, its not actually that hard to do as WYSIWYG is of lesser importance (with regards to all the fiddly little secondary weapons, etc.) and you tend to want less detailed rulsets for such small minis anyway.

I think for sanity you definitely want some kind of rule like the whole squad has to have the same loadout. At the same time, the people that want to throw the baby out with the bathwater on wysiwyg can be very entitled the other way if its too laisez fair. It's one thing to be asked to remember "this squad has lascannons and not heavy bolters. That sort of thing can get just as taxing, again depending how laise fair the whole thing is, you have to draw a line somewhere though, before "these leman russes are really malcadors".

If its also a case of people modelling before reading the rules, again I'm less sympathetic with "every heavy bolter you see is a lascannon" at that point.

At Epic scale I'm not noticing what small arms the infantry dudes are equipped with and quite frankly it really shouldn't matter.

If you do wanna get specific on infantry weapons just split it in “small arms” (rifles and pistols), “heavy anti infantry” (heavy bolters, stubbers, autocannon, rotary cannon), and “heavy anti vehicle” (lascannon, plasma, melta)

I think another bit of unnecessary detail in LI that has already been shown off has to do with the ranges of the different weapons available to a given unit. Couldn’t they have just used 6” increments like they do in 40K? I mean, how much is added to the gaming experience by having a 12” gun, a 16” gun, a 22” gun, etc?

semajnollissor wrote:
I mean, how much is added to the gaming experience by having a 12” gun, a 16” gun, a 22” gun, etc?

I haven't checked this, but I'd guess that they're trying for some specific fraction of the 40K ranges.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Im increasingly wary of the LI ruleset, but I'll buy the hell out of the range anyway. Worst case scenario is I find another ruleset to use them with or write my own. At that scale, its not actually that hard to do as WYSIWYG is of lesser importance (with regards to all the fiddly little secondary weapons, etc.) and you tend to want less detailed rulsets for such small minis anyway.

For massive battles I recommend Epic 3rd ed. (Epic 40k).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The_Real_Chris wrote:

 Breotan wrote:
I have questions about rules that were leaked, but I don't think we've seen enough yet to become concerned.

I think it is more 2nd ed than 4th ed, which I think is probably the right move for GW players, if not wargamers.

Agreed.

GW blatantly lied about this game having the best elements of previous editions of Epic. It has ABSOLUTELY nothing from Epic 40k (3rd ed) and from Epic Armageddon (4th ed.).

Not a single rule, not a single reference, not a single design style, nothing.

But rules bloat (like in 40k) is very present.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
Im increasingly wary of the LI ruleset, but I'll buy the hell out of the range anyway. Worst case scenario is I find another ruleset to use them with or write my own. At that scale, its not actually that hard to do as WYSIWYG is of lesser importance (with regards to all the fiddly little secondary weapons, etc.) and you tend to want less detailed rulsets for such small minis anyway.

I think for sanity you definitely want some kind of rule like the whole squad has to have the same loadout. At the same time, the people that want to throw the baby out with the bathwater on wysiwyg can be very entitled the other way if its too laisez fair. It's one thing to be asked to remember "this squad has lascannons and not heavy bolters. That sort of thing can get just as taxing, again depending how laise fair the whole thing is, you have to draw a line somewhere though, before "these leman russes are really malcadors".

If its also a case of people modelling before reading the rules, again I'm less sympathetic with "every heavy bolter you see is a lascannon" at that point.

At Epic scale I'm not noticing what small arms the infantry dudes are equipped with and quite frankly it really shouldn't matter.

Oh but they do matter. Pistols are used!! at this scale such small weapongs shouldn't matter indeed.

 Crablezworth wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
And now even the buildings have stat lines ..

A post doing the rounds on the FB groups at the moment, apparently from the rules leaks/community page releases seen *so far* there are 56 keywords/rule reference terms used in the stats. Those of us who struggle to remember what we had for tea yesterday evening may struggle.. !

 Breotan wrote:
Aeronautica players didn't have to be wysiwyg, especially regarding the bombs and missiles. I wonder how much of an issue this will be in LI.

WYSIWYG at Epic scale? Mother of God we used to just put banner poles on Ork Boyz stands for Nobz and on Guardians for Warlocks, how times change..

Well when 40k leaned heavily on usr's it had a lot, the point was they didn't change and that was the beauty of the concept, a player's reward for really internalizing them was being able to pick up a new codex on release and understand a lot of it because although it was new it still used the core usr's.

When 8th ed dropped an GW started doing the muh bespoke crap it all fell apart. But assuming those 56 words get referenced again and again with future releases, that certainly better than bloating that number more and more. This may be the benefit of few factions, its more difficult to bloat it up like necromunda or 40k.

I hated universal special rules in 40k.

Special rules should be, ya know, special. When every unit has one or two or three they become burdensome and slow the game down, and slow down learning the game.

I don't want to be rewarded for "internalising" the rules, I want a game where I don't have to be intimately familiar with page after page of exceptions to the regular rules.

Some people might like it in 40k because it adds "character", I dislike it in 40k and I'm going to dislike it even more in a game like Epic where the focus should be on armies not individuals anyway.

As much as is possible, I like to see "special" units represented within the framework of the core rules (of course without making the core rules as dense as lead).

So rather than have 1 rule to remember in 10 units you prefer 10 units with same but maybe different rule...

Imagine fun when transport rule, teleports etc have to read from every unit to make sure it's same as on other unit

It's very important that Furious Charge, Furious Assault, and Berserk Charge all exist simultaneously! No I can't remember the differences.

These 56 rules presumably include such things as Transport X, Invulnerable save X+?

I think we might be overselling the complexity somewhat.

The previous games got around it by having rules built into the profile of the weaponry or the unit. So you didn't have to say something was especially deadly against vehicles by giving it a special rule, you just gave it a -3 save modifier which would have the same effect. Very occasionally you wanted something to be a titan killer, so it has a special rule of +3 to damage rolls or similar. And of course you did have sheets with key words, but even for something like Armageddon they were vastly smaller in number than those we have seen so far for LI. I think we can also expect various 'combination' rules to add further complication, I expect each of the Legions will have special rules to go along with the ones we have seen for the SA already.

This is from one of the FB groups

Ah yes. Shock horror spending 30mln to read rules once.

If you can read through, say, the HH2.0 rules exactly once and then remember every single USR on every unit and weapon and what they do, you must be a savant. Good quick-reference material is a must and even then it's a lot to keep track of.

I'm really not sold on LI's granular representation of weapons and avalanche of special rules, particularly in contrast to more abstract/functional mechanics like just rolling off and adding your CAF.

E:A had what I consider an ideal level of detail- differences between units mostly baked into the profile, with a limited number of special rules used mostly at the army level rather than individual units.

But I'm content to wait and see how this turns out.

I doubt it will be half the issue some people think it will be, firstly you will have an army and likely work through the rules that apply to it in a few games, your opponent likewise

and you don't need to bother initially with special rules that do not apply to models neither of you are using.

hopefully it will be set out a bit like the first edition, it probably won't, but that started you off with vehicle on vehicle combat only, brings in movement, shooting saves, cover etc without the assault phase stuff, transport etc really being a thing. a few short scenarios for tanks fighting tanks

then you added some infantry, not much initially for infantry v infantry games, with just tactical bods shooting alone isn't enough so you learn the melee stuff

wasn't hard to pick up and it had more weapon profiles than we have seen here, different stats based on target types, short & long ranges with different profiles etc

a lot of it flowed nicely, if they have gone back to 2nd that was pretty similar

tneva82 wrote:
So rather than have 1 rule to remember in 10 units you prefer 10 units with same but maybe different rule...

Imagine fun when transport rule, teleports etc have to read from every unit to make sure it's same as on other unit

For one, no, I think most things don't need to be "special rules" at all and can fit within the framework of the core rules.

Exception based rules systems I just find cumbersome to play and cumbersome to learn/teach.

For two, it's not like there was "1 rule to remember", there were dozens of the bastards. As for 10 units having 10 different rules, I mean kinda, if the special rule can fit within a single line of text on the unit card then why not just put it on the unit card instead of putting the name of the rule and having to recall what that rule was. But more than anything, special rules should be special, rather than just the norm for damned near every unit.

But we'll see what it's like in Epic, maybe it'll all be fine, my point was just "but 40k...." is a terrible argument to me because 40k sucked

I don't hold high hopes for Epic, as much as I'm an enthusiast for Epic, 3D printing is what brought Epic back to life for me, not GW remaking it.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

leopard wrote:
I doubt it will be half the issue some people think it will be, firstly you will have an army and likely work through the rules that apply to it in a few games, your opponent likewise

and you don't need to bother initially with special rules that do not apply to models neither of you are using.

hopefully it will be set out a bit like the first edition, it probably won't, but that started you off with vehicle on vehicle combat only, brings in movement, shooting saves, cover etc without the assault phase stuff, transport etc really being a thing. a few short scenarios for tanks fighting tanks

then you added some infantry, not much initially for infantry v infantry games, with just tactical bods shooting alone isn't enough so you learn the melee stuff

wasn't hard to pick up and it had more weapon profiles than we have seen here, different stats based on target types, short & long ranges with different profiles etc

a lot of it flowed nicely, if they have gone back to 2nd that was pretty similar

I just want a simple set of rules that I can learn in a couple of games and scales from small games to massive games nicely But then I'm a fan of Epic 40k (3rd edition) where you could go from not knowing the game at all to competently playing in an afternoon, and play a truly massive game also in an afternoon (maybe not the same afternoon ). I know for many people they found it to be an oversimplification though... but I think for me the narrative happens in my head and I just want the game to function well as a game.

But we'll see, maybe it'll be awesome, I haven't really been following the announcements beyond a casual glance, so maybe I'm a mile off in how it'll work.

tneva82 wrote:
Ah yes. Shock horror spending 30mln to read rules once.

you are looking at the wrong rules
this is GWs Legions Imperialis, not MGs Warpath

if you managed to get thru everything within 30 minutes, put whatever pdf you are reading aside and take the hardcover book with the GW logo on the front