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MarkNorfolk wrote:
Epic: Armageddon was a great system, and I was there (when 'there' means online) in those heady days of playtesting and discussion, as it developed.

But I played huge games of 2nd ed (and 3rd too) where large numbers of infantry gave their lives in a futile cause and a lot of god-engines crashed to the earth. E;A didn't really scratch that itch.

Yeah that was always my problem with EA. Good game, but really just felt like it was made to handle pocket sized 40k games. Sure, I've seen some really big mega games using EA rules, but its not as common.

Random thought.

In the Olden Days, a Predator was a Predator, and a Leman Russ was a Leman Russ. Single profile with identical weapons.

Now of course, those units can receive fine tuning via weapon options. And naturally that directly affects their potential impact on a game.


So far we’ve seen some of new kits offer in-built flexibility, such as Marine tanks coming with additional turrets, so we can freely switch up between games. But that doesn’t really expand to Sponsons.


That makes me wonder how Epic Players might view WYSIWYG, as before now that’s only really been a concern about Titans.

I’m very much of the opinion of “it’ll depend”. If you’ve got a 9 strong unit of Predators, and you declare them to all have Lascannon Sponsons regardless of what’s modelled? That’s easy enough for me to keep track of, so I’d most likely be game. But, if you have multiple squadrons, some where they are Heavy Bolters, others modeled as Heavy Bolters but actually Lascannon? Not so much for me.

And in either case? I’d want that declared in your army list, before we start deployment. Not that I don’t trust folk, but I’d rather remove the temptation of waiting to see what I’m fielding before deciding what might be most beneficial to you.

Epic has had differentiation between units for a long time even without WYSIWYG rules. Heck, the first marines in the first expansion for AT88 only had one model but multiple rules requiring different coloured bases or flags to keep track of who's who. Later for example in E:A, Leman Russ battletanks are different than Leman Russ Demolishers just as much as Predator Annihilators are different than Predator Destructors. Even regular dreadnoughts could choose to go for a fist or two guns.

This has never been a problem.

Kind of.


You’re right about now the humble MkVII Epic Marine would serve for multiple units, and so some kind of identifier was needed.

But, the difference there was a lack of choice. Something we can’t necessarily is the case with the new stuff.

I`m firmly in a camp of "if the entire unit is equipped the same, then I don`t care if the actual models have different loadout, but I need to know this before game". But if my oppontent wants to have mixed loadout in a unit, then I expect the models to represent that, because I`m for sure forgetting what they are armed with the second after game starts.

 RexHavoc wrote:

MarkNorfolk wrote:
Epic: Armageddon was a great system, and I was there (when 'there' means online) in those heady days of playtesting and discussion, as it developed.

But I played huge games of 2nd ed (and 3rd too) where large numbers of infantry gave their lives in a futile cause and a lot of god-engines crashed to the earth. E;A didn't really scratch that itch.

Yeah that was always my problem with EA. Good game, but really just felt like it was made to handle pocket sized 40k games. Sure, I've seen some really big mega games using EA rules, but its not as common.

After so many years of playing EA, IMO the only solution to play bigger battles without a serious activations problem, is to greatly increase the size of formations (i.e. lots of upgrades), instead of increasing the number of them. This should be agreed amongst players, otherwise having double the activations or so is going to be a huge advantage...


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I wonder if a huge advantage in number of activations (detachments) is also going to be a huge advantage in LI.

Having more activations is somewhat beneficial, but not a huge deal in LI as it works in phases unlike E:A. Everybody moves before anyone fights, thus making it very hard to kite the enemy out of any meaningful choices when it's violence time.

Titanicus does the same and activation economy is pretty huge there, but that's due to the much more pronounced maneuvering game with restricted firing arcs that are not present in LI (and in Titanicus, you can hurt the other guy in the movement phase through First Fire and Charges, which you can't really do in LI).

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on the rules to have a good study of them. However as I'm strictly a non competitive player, as is my group, then anything we don't like we'll houserule same as we do with every other game. The most important thing for me is more toys to play with and paint.

I remember having to add flags to stands of Eldar Guardians to denote Aspect Warrior and Farseer stands! As we just had the one sculpt initially and we got some serious mileage from that starter set

I think as long as people explain what things are before the game then that's fine, but agree it has added a level of complexity that did not exist before - one of the reasons it may have been a bit better to keep at least a bit of abstraction for the sake of people's eyesight at this scale..

Just looking through some previews of the rules and one thing that is standing out is that they seem to have gone through the AoD-route of making the books, graphic design, artwork as dull as possible. I know these games are possibly being marketed at more mature gamers, but please GW do you not think we have any imaginations any more?

We know GW are still employing a bunch of talented artists as the new 40k and AoS releases are full of some really beautiful artwork, so why take this route with Heresy-era stuff? I mean even if you are trying to cut down costs you had several books-worth of art in the TCG artbook collections, much of which would have been perfect to use. And there are just empty half pages in the new rulebook, in between the grey and black. I guess they are going to try and go for an Imperial Armour books-type aesthetic, but it just looks ugly and does nothing to fire the imagination.

So we have gone from these....









To this. That dead marine about to be crushed by the tank pretty much sums up how I feel about that cover!

Welcome to the colour pallet of modern fantasy/scifi. Being grim, dark, gritty and realistic means having a muted colour pallet of greys, browns and mud.

Honestly GW are not that bad at it (yet). The worst are fantasy where everything is following the skyrim style of bleak colour pallets. Personally I think its mostly done on TV to let them under-expose a bit so they can hide the fact that its all fake set stuff. And likely to make the clothing budget cheaper.

There is a lot of grey, artwork on the pages as a background to the text, usually giving a smoky battlefield look, blurring the details. But I agree, the colour art is few and far between. There is also no 'margin art' at the sides of the pages, or those narrow horizontal banners to break up sections of text. more associated with the 'gothic' look for 40k, rather than the 'Romans in Space' look of the Heresy, but still....

I guess 'Age of Darkness' means gloomy art. It does make the colour plates of the titans in the back really stand out though.

I think the fact the order tokens are all the same shade of grey and lack text is some sort of crime

planning here for 3d printed order tokens, in silver, recess on one side that can be filled with a suitably bright colour and actual text

Activation advantage in LI should not be that big by prediction. You can't move after everything shoots, and you can't shoot before anything moves. It's a hybrid system.

I love the classic colour explosion artwork of the 90s era! Codex Eldar from 2nd Ed perhaps being the peak. But, there was a big discrepancy between this style and the grimdark universe in the lore. Exaggerated by the non-existance of weathering in the parade style painting and green grass battlefields and basing. Nowadays, the muted art is way more grimdark. That said, I'd be happy if they mixed styles more.

Re: order tokens I will for sure want to print & paint some.

 RexHavoc wrote:

MarkNorfolk wrote:
But I played huge games of 2nd ed (and 3rd too) where large numbers of infantry gave their lives in a futile cause and a lot of god-engines crashed to the earth. E;A didn't really scratch that itch.

Yeah that was always my problem with EA. Good game, but really just felt like it was made to handle pocket sized 40k games. Sure, I've seen some really big mega games using EA rules, but its not as common.

Yes it was very much more towards the wargame side of things. 2nd and GW in general is more towards the game side of things. Get the toys on the table, roll lots of dice and take things off in droves. E:A time to play scaled pretty much with the number of units, wonder if Legions will scale in the same way or be faster to play with more. It was also hard to make asymetric scenarios for, the balance was fairly fine so was hard to do balanced scenarios, wonder if Legions will be more forgiving in that aspect. 2nd certainly was for stuff like numberless hordes of regening Orks and sillyiness like that.

Can it be Saturday now?

Please?

I want to get my copy, nip home, spray the Marine Infantry, maybe thrash them out super quick, then grab the rule book and disappear up the pub for a pint and some reading.

I'm right there with you Doc, this week is going by so slowly. I'll be standing outside the store nose pressed to window looking like little orphan Annie waiting for them to open.
If there's any delay I'll be starting a one man riot.

I struck out on the pre-orders. It looks like I might have to wait until the online stores get restocked. Bummer.

In the meantime, however, I found some discount AI models that I snapped up for future grand battles.

I guess there’s no real rush. It’s too cold to prime anyway.

 Fugazi wrote:


In the meantime, however, I found some discount AI models that I snapped up for future grand battles.

I guess there’s no real rush. It’s too cold to prime anyway.

Can you please state which company you are getting your minis from?
I’m asking as I don’t have an minis right now and I wish to find some Eldar proxies… I’m trying to forecast ahead as I’m sure Xenos rules and minis are nowhere close to being released by GW.

Looks like one of the places near here has already had their delivery ready to ship out, or at least some of them given the stack of boxes I saw last night.

heard a few comments on some of the tanks along the lines of "how many parts?" from one or two who had seen inside the copy they got for the shop itself

and curiously both the guys at the shop who are getting it have gone for SA, this apparently is not in any way because they out point the marines and they are planning some escalation thingy starting with just the box contents..

Just got a notice I can pick up mypreorders from the local LG, so they are arriving to the stores. Might as well pick up the LI coin and a free Rhino while I'm at it

LordBlunt wrote:

 Fugazi wrote:


In the meantime, however, I found some discount AI models that I snapped up for future grand battles.

I guess there’s no real rush. It’s too cold to prime anyway.

Can you please state which company you are getting your minis from?
I’m asking as I don’t have an minis right now and I wish to find some Eldar proxies… I’m trying to forecast ahead as I’m sure Xenos rules and minis are nowhere close to being released by GW.

I was talking about leftover Aeronautica Imperialis stock. I haven’t found any Legions preorders. I asked a similar question about a month or two ago, and folks suggested Vanguard Miniatures and Onslaught Miniatures for Xenos and imperial proxies.

For those who’ve watched unboxing and rule book previews? Do we have a proper index to help us find the USRs?

Doc I *think* in one of the reviews they showed a rule reference sheet with page reference. Not sure if that was just the USR list in the book though (apparently there is a sequence of about 20 pages with them all listed)

leopard wrote:I think the fact the order tokens are all the same shade of grey and lack text is some sort of crime
planning here for 3d printed order tokens, in silver, recess on one side that can be filled with a suitably bright colour and actual text

Yes the grey order tokens are a bit of a disappointment. I used to have trouble remembering to do stuff even with the coloured ones so have no chance with those! Am probably just going to use my old 2nd edition ones..

LordBlunt wrote:

 Fugazi wrote:


In the meantime, however, I found some discount AI models that I snapped up for future grand battles.

I guess there’s no real rush. It’s too cold to prime anyway.

Can you please state which company you are getting your minis from?
I’m asking as I don’t have an minis right now and I wish to find some Eldar proxies… I’m trying to forecast ahead as I’m sure Xenos rules and minis are nowhere close to being released by GW.

If it's infantry you are after, yes it's Vanguard miniatures. They do a really nice proxy line called the 'Eloi', it's not comprehensive (there are a few aspects and some other bits missing) but it does cover most of it. They are nicely scaled for 'modern' Epic as well, I'm collecting them at the moment and supplementing with classic GW stuff.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For those who’ve watched unboxing and rule book previews? Do we have a proper index to help us find the USRs?

There's no index (boo!). Nor are they listed on a summary sheet (boo!). But the weapon traits and USR chapters are next to each other in the middle of the rule book, so quite easy to find. (er...hooray..ish).

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For those who’ve watched unboxing and rule book previews? Do we have a proper index to help us find the USRs?

how bout this one? (from Reddit)

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Random thought.

In the Olden Days, a Predator was a Predator, and a Leman Russ was a Leman Russ. Single profile with identical weapons.

Now of course, those units can receive fine tuning via weapon options. And naturally that directly affects their potential impact on a game.


So far we’ve seen some of new kits offer in-built flexibility, such as Marine tanks coming with additional turrets, so we can freely switch up between games. But that doesn’t really expand to Sponsons.


That makes me wonder how Epic Players might view WYSIWYG, as before now that’s only really been a concern about Titans.

I’m very much of the opinion of “it’ll depend”. If you’ve got a 9 strong unit of Predators, and you declare them to all have Lascannon Sponsons regardless of what’s modelled? That’s easy enough for me to keep track of, so I’d most likely be game. But, if you have multiple squadrons, some where they are Heavy Bolters, others modeled as Heavy Bolters but actually Lascannon? Not so much for me.

And in either case? I’d want that declared in your army list, before we start deployment. Not that I don’t trust folk, but I’d rather remove the temptation of waiting to see what I’m fielding before deciding what might be most beneficial to you.

WYSIWYG sorta has to be the name of the game, some units have no options like the sentinels, some units like the malcador or kratos have a lot of options. I'm already wanting to humbly put forth a house rules suggesting units arm the same for simplicity.

The malcador alone, 4 different hull weapons, 3 different turrets, 3 different sponsons i believe. The other reason for my suggested house rule, is also so if one is making or generating unit cards, the card could list just the relevant weapons and not have to list 2/3 that may not be relevant. But with or without that homerule idea, I'd probably want to be pretty strict on WYSIWYG.

And I mean, even more so without it if someone has a unit of 6 heavy tanks and each one is its own permutation of loadouts.


My own solutions have been, coming to terms with sponsons as i don't want to mag them, and just swapping turrets where possible. For me and retailers its sortof a good prolbem in that its probably what will get me to acquire more tanks/planes ect just like with titanicus.

I'm a bit confused with mixed detachments, I'd be clear I don't think those are as complicated as some of the heavy tanks/planes ect.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For those who’ve watched unboxing and rule book previews? Do we have a proper index to help us find the USRs?

I seem to remember a reviewer saying there were about 20 pages of USRs.

 Albertorius wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For those who’ve watched unboxing and rule book previews? Do we have a proper index to help us find the USRs?

I seem to remember a reviewer saying there were about 20 pages of USRs.

I've seen a 3 page list with only about 50 ish usr's, perhaps it was incomplete, but 20 pages seems like a lot.

The sheet I posted isn't even 2 full pages long, if GW manages to spread those out to 20 pages, I din't know what to tell you