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you can play any point size you want and given how GW rules work, about 2/3 of the suggested size still works well

but I doubt that a 2000 points game will be that much faster than a 3000 points game as the stuff that takes up time in GW games is usually not something that scales linear with points

that GW wants us to buy more kits than we need, this is already with the core box as there are to many models for a single player (30% Allies means you either can use the Titans or the other faction given, not both) but not enough for 2 players

Lets be fair the kind of player drawn to a game like LI is not someone looking for a skirmish game. It's the kind of game that people who want big blocks of tanks and troops come for because the scale allows it; and if they can throw down multiple titans then that's a huge plus too.

Overread - the references to points values relate to the fact that some people have done some rough demo lists and they are larger in volume (of miniatures) than any previous version, in terms of a 'standard' game size. This is more of an issue given that it looks like there is a fair amount of complexity to the game (if it is more complex and has more miniatures on the board than previous versions, which could already take an evening to play for example).
But the previous versions of the game had a perfectly fine 'mass combat' appeal at just standard point values, taking a 4000pt game of SM 2nd/Titan Legions for example, most of the old battle reports were played at that level, it gave an opportunity for a good mix of combined arms and looked pretty cool on the tabletop.

Zenithfleet wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Just looking at the amount of special rules/traits for the different weapons systems and loadouts on the Avenger sheet, - 9 different traits for a single unit. I have said it before and I will say it again now, I am *not* going to be able to sell this game to casuals. This makes the weapon loadout & lookups for something like a battleship in Victory at Sea look like utterly simple by comparison.
.

A while back there was a rumour going around that LI was the last game Jervis Johnson was involved in before retiring. But the fiddly rules we've seen so far seem to contradict that. Very much not his style.

Unless it's all part of his long-awaited revenge. "They laughed at me, the fools! They said I stripped out too much flavour for Epic 40K! They said players like chrome! Bah! Very well. I'll give them chrome all right. I'll give them more chrome than a Necron in a car shop! Mwahahaha!!!"

Haha.. I think what we have seen so far absolutely disproves that Jervis had involvement, or certainly not in the final product. I really don't want to be too critical until I've played some games, but what I have seen so far would suggest to me 'murder by committee' - where just a bunch of ideas around special rules have been added, but with no strong lead or project manager to rein those in and produce a coherent final vision. Hence why you can have 'armourbane' and 'armour-piercing' as two separate, special rules.

Is it a situation where you should just assume that GW will make the worst version of their idea for the game?

Honestly I do think it’s a few little things that seem odd.
Especially if they want to use it for some extra special rules after for each legion.

 kodos wrote:
you can play any point size you want and given how GW rules work, about 2/3 of the suggested size still works well

but I doubt that a 2000 points game will be that much faster than a 3000 points game as the stuff that takes up time in GW games is usually not something that scales linear with points

that GW wants us to buy more kits than we need, this is already with the core box as there are to many models for a single player (30% Allies means you either can use the Titans or the other faction given, not both) but not enough for 2 players

Well they did say that there was some special formation that made the box content game legal, I don't know if that's a good sign or not.

 Crablezworth wrote:

 kodos wrote:
you can play any point size you want and given how GW rules work, about 2/3 of the suggested size still works well

but I doubt that a 2000 points game will be that much faster than a 3000 points game as the stuff that takes up time in GW games is usually not something that scales linear with points

that GW wants us to buy more kits than we need, this is already with the core box as there are to many models for a single player (30% Allies means you either can use the Titans or the other faction given, not both) but not enough for 2 players

Well they did say that there was some special formation that made the box content game legal, I don't know if that's a good sign or not.

It would point to the regular formations not being very flexible, for one.

This is the game for older nostalgic players, who might get 1-2 games per month

Mass battle with large number of models/units but also more detailed rules than small scale games and possible prices like other manufacturers 28mm models

Depending on the price I get a small SW Formation for the shelf but this won't be a game I will ever play

Apple fox wrote:
Is it a situation where you should just assume that GW will make the worst version of their idea for the game?

Honestly I do think it’s a few little things that seem odd.
Especially if they want to use it for some extra special rules after for each legion.

Well, given that the game hasn't been released yet, it pays to keep an open mind until the reviews are in. And as always give the game a go first before buying in to it, if you can.

This was posted on the Epic discord I'm on:



Splitting the AP profile would do so much to remove extraneous traits.

Yep, we discussed that a few pages back (or maybe that was the other thread). That's more or less how apoc or one of the older editions of epic worked, weapons had a profile vs infantry and another vs vehicles. That alone probably eliminates like a half dozen USRs

I think the good news it won't be difficult in theory to edit unit cards to only have the relevant weapons, and in addition one could add the updated AP / stats shown above to again help make things easier.



What's nice as well is making rules/stats for new units shouldn't be too difficult.

 infinite_array wrote:
This was posted on the Epic discord I'm on:



Splitting the AP profile would do so much to remove extraneous traits.

Amazing idea.

It's how a competent game designer would have handled it, for sure

chaos0xomega wrote:
It's how a competent game designer would have handled it, for sure

One of the ways, at any rate.

One, would we add, that the previous designers already used.

As well as the above, a couple of other effeciencies that spring to mind, based on either other versions of Epic or other games:
- Display all of the weapons for a vehicle variant in one clearly demarcated area, even if it means reprinting the same weapon profiles. Means you can just move your finger down the profiles until you find the one you need, no confusion and reliance on someone knowing a tank doesn't use the whole list of weapons.
- Fire arcs not needed, just have 180 degrees front-facing for every vehicle. This isn't some sort of naval warfare game with only a dozen ships where you need that granular detail, Lords of War or Titans could have arcs if necessary.
- Point Defence: just allow weapons to fire if the vehicle is on first fire and is charged. You could limit this to not allow barrage or 'main' guns if you wanted.
-ArmourBane: why the need for causing armour save re-rolls here and making people roll more dice for *some* of the hits? Just make it -3 or -4 for the same statistical effect.
- Anti-tank: The AP0 against infantry is just un-necessary granular detail. People don't generally use powerful guns against infantry as it's a waste of firepower, as those guns should be used against armour. We all have a laugh when a volcano cannon is used on an infantry stand, but really it's a waste of that units potential if that is all it is firing at. That sort of granular detail is what you would see in something like Flames of War, a platoon-level game, not a company level game with vastly more miniatures on the board.

To me it feels like the game will do better with a smaller model count than even something like Armageddon, as you are going to spend so much time looking up weapons profiles, checking which guns can fire in melee etc. It's going to be quite a stop-start affair.

 infinite_array wrote:
This was posted on the Epic discord I'm on:



Splitting the AP profile would do so much to remove extraneous traits.

Simple ideas are often the best. That indeed removes a lot of trait/USR mental look-ups for light, light AT, AT at least.

I also hope there will be a simple way to get simplified detachment cards with only the weapons you choose, to print. Simpler than photoediting I mean. Maybe even adding the weapon trait rules to the bottom of the card?

Play time is the major thing that has me worried, with all these traits, rules, terrain charts etc. So I am thinking everything that can help the game run in an evening will be valuable given preview indications of more models AND more complexity than previous editions.

Epic:Armageddon HH is so fast this game has a challenge the size of a mountain to climb in my opinion.

Again, my interest in LI is for what I can use in AT and the base decoration potential. But IMO what you see here is a studio that's still gunshy (going on what, 30 years later?) about introducing a stripped-down Epic game to its customer base. I realize that E:A is still more streamlined than LI appears to be. But this is a larger, more mainstream release closer to Epic 40K's, and I'm gonna guess they felt pressure to bake 30K/40K-style fiddliness into the game. Basically focusing on familiarity ("yes, you get to shoot each individual weapon on your Leman Russ just like in 40K") instead of challenging the players with new concepts.

 gorgon wrote:
Again, my interest in LI is for what I can use in AT and the base decoration potential. But IMO what you see here is a studio that's still gunshy (going on what, 30 years later?) about introducing a stripped-down Epic game to its customer base. I realize that E:A is still more streamlined than LI appears to be. But this is a larger, more mainstream release closer to Epic 40K's, and I'm gonna guess they felt pressure to bake 30K/40K-style fiddliness into the game. Basically focusing on familiarity ("yes, you get to shoot each individual weapon on your Leman Russ just like in 40K") instead of challenging the players with new concepts.

Which IMHO, is the absolutely worst way to go about it. Would have been nice if they learned something from CGL and the Battletech/Alpha Strike divide.

Ah well.

 Albertorius wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
Again, my interest in LI is for what I can use in AT and the base decoration potential. But IMO what you see here is a studio that's still gunshy (going on what, 30 years later?) about introducing a stripped-down Epic game to its customer base. I realize that E:A is still more streamlined than LI appears to be. But this is a larger, more mainstream release closer to Epic 40K's, and I'm gonna guess they felt pressure to bake 30K/40K-style fiddliness into the game. Basically focusing on familiarity ("yes, you get to shoot each individual weapon on your Leman Russ just like in 40K") instead of challenging the players with new concepts.

Which IMHO, is the absolutely worst way to go about it.

Agreed. :/

 gorgon wrote:
Again, my interest in LI is for what I can use in AT and the base decoration potential. But IMO what you see here is a studio that's still gunshy (going on what, 30 years later?) about introducing a stripped-down Epic game to its customer base. I realize that E:A is still more streamlined than LI appears to be. But this is a larger, more mainstream release closer to Epic 40K's, and I'm gonna guess they felt pressure to bake 30K/40K-style fiddliness into the game. Basically focusing on familiarity ("yes, you get to shoot each individual weapon on your Leman Russ just like in 40K") instead of challenging the players with new concepts.

I wonder how much of this comes from the rules writers / designers themselves, and how much from marketing and management.

People tend to blame 'the designers' for everything--much as they blame 'the writers' for everything wrong with a TV show or film. Some of that is happening in this very thread. But sometimes the designers can see a better way to do something, yet are told by Higher Powers they must do it the less-than-ideal way, in order to appeal to a perceived sales demographic. Then the designers cop all the blame for something they didn't want to do in the first place.

As for using LI minis for AT - yep, it's amazing how much it adds to the visual scale of the Titans when you have a few vehicles and men scattered around the board. Buildings alone don't seem to show off the size of the giant robots as well as the occasional abandoned car or tank does. At least to me.

Zenithfleet wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
Again, my interest in LI is for what I can use in AT and the base decoration potential. But IMO what you see here is a studio that's still gunshy (going on what, 30 years later?) about introducing a stripped-down Epic game to its customer base. I realize that E:A is still more streamlined than LI appears to be. But this is a larger, more mainstream release closer to Epic 40K's, and I'm gonna guess they felt pressure to bake 30K/40K-style fiddliness into the game. Basically focusing on familiarity ("yes, you get to shoot each individual weapon on your Leman Russ just like in 40K") instead of challenging the players with new concepts.

I wonder how much of this comes from the rules writers / designers themselves, and how much from marketing and management.

People tend to blame 'the designers' for everything--much as they blame 'the writers' for everything wrong with a TV show or film. Some of that is happening in this very thread. But sometimes the designers can see a better way to do something, yet are told by Higher Powers they must do it the less-than-ideal way, in order to appeal to a perceived sales demographic. Then the designers cop all the blame for something they didn't want to do in the first place.

As for using LI minis for AT - yep, it's amazing how much it adds to the visual scale of the Titans when you have a few vehicles and men scattered around the board. Buildings alone don't seem to show off the size of the giant robots as well as the occasional abandoned car or tank does. At least to me.

In the case of AT, the debacle with the warmaster seems more about marketing making everyone's life worse. It's already apparent with things like knights in AT that they were sorta shoehorned in as they almost just function to be the games eternal whipping boys, and the fact that players are expected to get terminals for them as well just to keep track of wounds on a tiny track, that felt and feels more like marketing than the design department, Back to warmaster, a big titan like that is already a niche within a niche in terms of making it work in game, but to make believe its two distinct titans to try and bait double purchase is so nakedly a marketing move by someone who clearly doesn't play the game. It already took people raising a stink for them to sell he warlord weapon sprues separately and they never even had that on offer for the iconoclast sprue. All this in a game that's core feature is modularity, so much so you need weapons cards to go with your titan terminal, to try and go 180 mid stream like that with the iconoclast was a bridge too far.

As far as LI goes, the fact that gw is delaying the game to re-print the books in the uk to fix all the errors/problems is a good sign that design might be able to win some arguments or that marketing is at least capable of shame, and leaks have been mostly positive, especially the terrain stuff. I think even with the granularity in terms of weapons/wysiwyg, titanicus isn't in a great state for that either given the prevalence of mutations/corruptions and titan upgrades, all of which move very far away from the core of AT which is about looking at a titan and knowing its stats/weapons, not having to accoiunt for a million invisible upgrades/abilities. At least with LI there doesn't appear to be a whole added layer of invisible wargear to account for.

as noted earlier editions had split profiles based on armoured/unarmoured target types

it would not be hard at all to expand that a bit

- unarmoured
- armoured
- heavy armour

Somewhat in response to WB above;

I find that the 3,000points amount they used for the battle report being too high. Going by the somewhat limited battlefield (loss of the 6' by 4'), I can see a 2,000pts per side being a more "realistic" size, expressly for more room to maneuver and placement, as well as not being bunched up/cluttered all around the table. Though I say this without having seen the rules yet and certainly not having played yet.

Further, Titans might become overly dominant as well, if players max out with their 30% allotment. (though again, I can appreciate allied rules/etc. having an effect as well)

Props for varied victory conditions and missions. These were sorely missing.

My preferred approach would be to play on a larger table - but then I did play 10k 2nd and 3rd edition games. Always go for a bigger table.

Much of the community chatter has followed a similar opinion. This version is going to have more miniatures on the tabletop than ever before, with a smaller table, and a granularity of rules that mean rule referencing and game pauses are going to be regular for anyone that doesn't live and breathe the game.

If a smaller game of SM or Armageddon, which were more straightforward to play, still take an evening to play then where will that leave Legions? You're right that it might be possible that 3000pts are too many, and the community swings to a lower score. Ultimately, tournament organisers will decide this, not GW.

The caveat here is that there are some time saving effeciencies in the rest of the mechanics that make the rest of the game faster to play. But TBH the fact that something like a terminator has eight special rules, there are tanks with profiles filling *an entire page* (!) does not fill me with hope. I wish I was, but I'm no longer a student and can sit with my mates playing for 5-6 hours at a time until 2am, which might be who this game has been made for.

LordBlunt wrote:
Somewhat in response to WB above;

I find that the 3,000points amount they used for the battle report being too high. Going by the somewhat limited battlefield (loss of the 6' by 4'), I can see a 2,000pts per side being a more "realistic" size, expressly for more room to maneuver and placement, as well as not being bunched up/cluttered all around the table. Though I say this without having seen the rules yet and certainly not having played yet.

Further, Titans might become overly dominant as well, if players max out with their 30% allotment. (though again, I can appreciate allied rules/etc. having an effect as well)

Props for varied victory conditions and missions. These were sorely missing.

Fully agreed, the battle rep looked like a terrible parking lot with no space for a war of manouver, outflanking etc. They even put all terrain along the sides so they could push their clumps towards eachother in the middle..

Most of us will play at a bigger table if we can, 6x4 will look better.

But 3000 is still too many miniatures so 2000 is my guess about where we will settle in.

Play time will decide though, how many pts can be played in an afternoon or evening.

Funny thing is I'm sitting here thinking there were not enough models on the table

I dunno, most depictions of HH combat is shown as being kinda... rank and file-ish. Like, large masses of troops in clusters which are in close proximity to other clusters. The density just feels appropriate to me

That's basically how the old epic games were - heck they even came on square/rectangular movement trays

 Pacific wrote:
Much of the community chatter has followed a similar opinion. This version is going to have more miniatures on the tabletop than ever before, with a smaller table, and a granularity of rules that mean rule referencing and game pauses are going to be regular for anyone that doesn't live and breathe the game.

If a smaller game of SM or Armageddon, which were more straightforward to play, still take an evening to play then where will that leave Legions? You're right that it might be possible that 3000pts are too many, and the community swings to a lower score. Ultimately, tournament organisers will decide this, not GW.

The caveat here is that there are some time saving effeciencies in the rest of the mechanics that make the rest of the game faster to play. But TBH the fact that something like a terminator has eight special rules, there are tanks with profiles filling *an entire page* (!) does not fill me with hope. I wish I was, but I'm no longer a student and can sit with my mates playing for 5-6 hours at a time until 2am, which might be who this game has been made for.

...conversely at the price tag games this size seem like they'll carry in models, I reckon that student better be running a 3d printer. It's weird. I'm still building stuff because I really hope it will work out after all, but... yeah.