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Mine had a full smallish army of space marines and a full smallish army of orks. Plus a cardboard gargant ^^. Plus half a board's worth of ruined buildings.

 Flinty wrote:
I think the forces are a good balance. You get a taster for each in a reasonably efficient package. You can then choose one of the forces to add a couple of expansion packs to, and you automatically get a couple of thematic ally forces to use for flavour. The epic box version I got was the one with 50% marines, 30% Orks and 20% eldar. Now that was a mess

Sounds like the old 2nd Edition starter box, which also included a warlord titan.

My friends and I played that quite a bit, though none of them ever ended up getting any troops.

It's almost like this whole release has been a big mess of lack of communication between departments, ever-shifting customer expectation, reveals and hype for things that aren't going to be here for another year in an effort to retain scattered attention of customer base, and potentially a major feth-up of the original book that may or may not have been due to political commentary or huge rules/points inconsistencies depending on which rumor source you trust.

Starter set is starter set. It has a way to play out the box. If you like playing the game with that, you can expand into the rest of the game. If you don't, you weren't going to buy anything additional anyway.

Could it be better? Sure. But at this point I just want the products in my hands so I can make my little army of tanks. I'm not going to sit here and commiserate about the parts of the box I'm not even planning on using and neither should you.

Possible, that we get an extra Decal Sheet for more Space Marine Legions.

There is a picture with an Emperors Children Dreadnought, showing a white Legion Symbol, which is not part of the large EC Decal Sheet with golden Symbols.

The points & rules are still exactly what was on the paste bin from before the delay - so that's not the reason.

Aside from the delay obviously messing up their schedule the release has seemed fine to me.

The first expansion must be pretty imminent too, given the white dwarf article talking about it was pretty soon after the release should have been.

 Overread wrote:

leopard wrote:
pity they have "all orders in secret, then all flipped" and not "all orders in secret and flipped one at a time as they activate"

so all you know is "that unit hasn't yet activated" not what it will do (and flipped counters show which units have and have not gone)

My guess is that as the game can scale up to larger and larger armies, the more models you add the more difficult it would be to remember what you've secretly set all your models too once you're a few activations in and the game state has changed. Much easier to flip them all at once than have to constantly keep trying to sneaky-flip your activation coins to remind yourself what you set each unit too. So I feel like its a practical element for a physical game in that it just helps larger games not get bogged down with confusion or players constantly miss-remembering what units were set too and making bad choices based on that.

Hidden orders likely would work fine in skirmisher games and games that don't scale up to larger and larger battles.

IIRC there was nothing preventing you picking up and checking your own sides orders counters at any time, and having played several 10k games of 1st edition this was never a problem that delayed the game

Vorian wrote:
Aside from the delay obviously messing up their schedule the release has seemed fine to me.

The first expansion must be pretty imminent too, given the white dwarf article talking about it was pretty soon after the release should have been.

I suspect the original schedule was to have the launch in August, followup waves in Sept/October, then have the expansion drop just before or after new year.

Now we have at two distinct groups of pending releases:

Predators / Sicarans / Russ / Malcador / two support boxes, plus the new plastic Dire Wolves. This rounds out anything in the core rulebook.
Re-releases for Warhounds, missing flyers, and separate terrain kits.
Knight & titan discount boxes

Post expansion products: fast attack, land raiders, drop pods, stormhammers, etc, plus the book. Potentially there are other units in this wave still to be revealed.

There's more than enough stuff here that each group may well be further split up. The first could plausibly cover both Jan and Feb, meaning now we might not get the expansion until Spring.

Sarouan wrote:
You mean, putting the infantry models individually on custom bases and play with Horus Heresy rules ? There's indeed a crowd for that but I'm afraid my big fingers will make them slip out of my hands more often than I'd like...

Big battles are ok once I have gathered enough to fill one, but I feel like I'd play more often with these "small skirmishes" that'll help to keep my motivation during the journey.

Yea that's what they're doing, literally regular Heresy with everything scaled down.

Small forces should be perfectly fine for Legions Imperialis (if army size scales down well) I just think you should avoid scaling down the table as having room to maneuver is probably the most meaningful advantage of Epic scale vs 28mm+

Yeah, I would expect Q1 is when we'll see the core box stuff and first expansion.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

Sarouan wrote:
You mean, putting the infantry models individually on custom bases and play with Horus Heresy rules ? There's indeed a crowd for that but I'm afraid my big fingers will make them slip out of my hands more often than I'd like...

Big battles are ok once I have gathered enough to fill one, but I feel like I'd play more often with these "small skirmishes" that'll help to keep my motivation during the journey.

Yea that's what they're doing, literally regular Heresy with everything scaled down.

Small forces should be perfectly fine for Legions Imperialis (if army size scales down well) I just think you should avoid scaling down the table as having room to maneuver is probably the most meaningful advantage of Epic scale vs 28mm+

Use 5×1mm disc magnets as the bases and a sheet of rubber steel for the table. Travelhammer for the car on long trips.

 Mr_Rose wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:

Sarouan wrote:
You mean, putting the infantry models individually on custom bases and play with Horus Heresy rules ? There's indeed a crowd for that but I'm afraid my big fingers will make them slip out of my hands more often than I'd like...

Big battles are ok once I have gathered enough to fill one, but I feel like I'd play more often with these "small skirmishes" that'll help to keep my motivation during the journey.

Yea that's what they're doing, literally regular Heresy with everything scaled down.

Small forces should be perfectly fine for Legions Imperialis (if army size scales down well) I just think you should avoid scaling down the table as having room to maneuver is probably the most meaningful advantage of Epic scale vs 28mm+

Use 5×1mm disc magnets as the bases and a sheet of rubber steel for the table. Travelhammer for the car on long trips.

Instead of a full sheet over the whole table you could also use washers or metal plates for each unit. That way you already have movement trays for them

Could be intersting to play a 3000 point HH2 game on a 6 x 4' table using LI models, at least the board wouldn't look like a parking garage

You'd obviously need to divide all weapon and movement ranges by 4, and the game would need to last more than a couple turns but yeh

 tauist wrote:
Could be intersting to play a 3000 point HH2 game on a 6 x 4' table using LI models, at least the board wouldn't look like a parking garage

You'd obviously need to divide all weapon and movement ranges by 4, and the game would need to last more than a couple turns but yeh

Using cm instead of inches gets you a factor 2,54 and it's really convenient. Lots of 28mm-system-with-8/10mm-models gamers just do that.

Dracosan!





Boxes of six. Demolisher Cannon stated to reduce transport capacity. Seems it’s 4 stands each to begin with though, which is a decent amount!

Brutal!!!!

I was waiting for that for my SA.

And 6 per box is not bad at all (I was expecting 4/box).

Now just give me some Aurox and the SA are nearly finished

 Matrindur wrote:
Now just give me some Aurox and the SA are nearly finished

Add Carnodons to the list.

Aside from the niche Malcador variants, I think the would round off the current SA range:

Aurox
Carnodon
Valdor
Shadowsword / Stormblade

Valdor could be combo kit with the Infernus.

 xttz wrote:
Aside from the niche Malcador variants, I think the would round off the current SA range:

Aurox
Carnodon
Valdor
Shadowsword / Stormblade

The Carnodon is only in the expanded army lists for HH2.0 thats why I don't expect it for now same for the Shadowsword / Stormblade and we already got three Baneblade variants so I also don't expect two more for now.
The Valdor is the only one I can see in the near future but I really want the Aurox first

I'm not that au fait with the HH... is the Gorgon a Heresy era vehicle?

MarkNorfolk wrote:
I'm not that au fait with the HH... is the Gorgon a Heresy era vehicle?

It first appeared in the Imperial Armor Siege of Vraks books, I think, but it's old enough that you can use it in Heresy. It's a giant-ass WWII landing craft on treads that carries something like fifty Guardsmen, so more of an Epic-scale model anyway.

2nd Ed Epic, Armies of the Imperium 1991 supplement was the earliest reference I saw - open top, giant dozer blade, short range mine thrower in the turret and carries 5 stands of troops so 25 infantry altogether

 AnomanderRake wrote:

MarkNorfolk wrote:
I'm not that au fait with the HH... is the Gorgon a Heresy era vehicle?

It first appeared in the Imperial Armor Siege of Vraks books, I think, but it's old enough that you can use it in Heresy. It's a giant-ass WWII landing craft on treads that carries something like fifty Guardsmen, so more of an Epic-scale model anyway.

It was an Epic model first:

 Matrindur wrote:

The Carnodon is only in the expanded army lists for HH2.0 thats why I don't expect it for now same for the Shadowsword / Stormblade and we already got three Baneblade variants so I also don't expect two more for now.
The Valdor is the only one I can see in the near future but I really want the Aurox first

Conversely, I would point out that the Shadowsword is one of the signature Imperium super-heavies. It was originally released alongside the Baneblades, and is a very potent anti-titan vehicle. Given it's high profile within Epic, and it's very notable role, I would expect to see it in the game sooner, rather than later. Back when AT was released, there was even speculation that we might see the Shadowsword introduced into that game due to its importance against titans.

MarkNorfolk wrote:
I'm not that au fait with the HH... is the Gorgon a Heresy era vehicle?

I love Gorgons & Crassus (I have some for Epic: Armageddon), but with the Dracosan, the role of heavy infantry carrier is fulfilled I guess...

Is anyone looking forward to tiny Primarchs? I might give thought to an Emperor's Children / Devine collection...

 Matrindur wrote:

 xttz wrote:
Aside from the niche Malcador variants, I think the would round off the current SA range:

Aurox
Carnodon
Valdor
Shadowsword / Stormblade

The Carnodon is only in the expanded army lists for HH2.0 thats why I don't expect it for now same for the Shadowsword / Stormblade and we already got three Baneblade variants so I also don't expect two more for now.
The Valdor is the only one I can see in the near future but I really want the Aurox first

I was going to say that those should still be Heresy era appropriate, but then I remember that list includes rules for the Macharius variants, which wouldn't exist for another few thousand years or so.

SamusDrake wrote:
Is anyone looking forward to tiny Primarchs? I might give thought to an Emperor's Children / Devine collection...

Certainly would be scale more suitable for primarch to be fielded than paltry skirmishes 32mm scale has.

And wouldn't say no to affordable Sanquinus

Very happy to see the Dracosan.

There's also the 'Light Armor' slot that we haven't seen really anything for. Obvious solutions would be the Sabre for Space Marines and the Carnodon for Solar Auxilia. The Carnodon actually has a model from FW, so here's hoping it gets representation in LI.

I love tanks.