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 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.

Weapon traits are 45 individual rules on 9 pages
Special rules are 51 individual rules on 12 pages

But that includes everything so even one sentence rules like unique (no more than one of this unit) or arcs (can only target in arc)

 Matrindur wrote:

 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.

Weapon traits are 45 individual rules on 9 pages
Special rules are 51 individual rules on 12 pages

But that includes everything so even one sentence rules like unique (no more than one of this unit) or arcs (can only target in arc)

Well, that'd be 21 pages, so seems legit? So... 96 USRs total then, right?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 tauist wrote:
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

Oh I do ^^

 tauist wrote:
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

Maybe the list is really well abridged and the stuff on the pages is big font or written like its trying to fill a box of space. So far so good with the list.

or some illustrations, related to the rules, or totally unrelated

keep in mind how the Age of Darkness book has a good few pages with nice illustrations and photographs.

have to get the book to feel like its a "premium" product (and to be fair the AoD one manages that for the most part, I expect this one will be similar)

 Matrindur wrote:

 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.

Weapon traits are 45 individual rules on 9 pages
Special rules are 51 individual rules on 12 pages

But that includes everything so even one sentence rules like unique (no more than one of this unit) or arcs (can only target in arc)

The usr's seem decent if its 51. The weapons are where I sorta got a bit irritated. I think it's one thing to have a few iterations of largely the same base weapon with different usr's attached, but it starts to get a ltitle silly at times when they randomly decide to tack on a unit's name to a weapon. Sir this is no mere lascannon, oh no, it's a kratos lascannon, elephant, elephant seal, totally different animal you see. This is also expressed in some of the titan weapons being different seemingly for the sake of it from one titan to another. The dire wolf in titanicus had a hit buff in short range band to its weapons, though this was never tied explicitly to wargear/upgrades or anything the fluff had dire wolves being sorta lone hunter/snipers/lurkers waiting to land a shot, For some reason though the volcano cannon on the reaver arms are better, and you can take two of them. I guess its the one area they could maybe trim/consolidate or develop a mount system to account for the different types of similar weapons.

I'm a bit worried that with weapons not having any related point cost with a few exceptions consideredd "upgrades", there will be some loadouts that are just far and away better than others. Everyone has taken notice of how powerful/broken warp missiles are. That's a good starting point too because something like a one use only weapon isn't common in AT but one could at least in theroy FAQ/ERRATA the point costs at a minimum, here the system doesn't really account for it. If any weapon stands out as maybe at least make it an upgrade for x points, warp missile is at the front of that list. Good on gw for at least honouring the weapon models they've made for AT and giving them rules in LI, but man, titans really stand out from other units. Not just the ever growing lists of weapons as you go up in scale but, the ability to mount 3+ of them. I get that if weapons all had costs it would mess with the 30% allies thing, constantly sorta dancing across the threshold from list to list. And granted the 30% rule all but ensures titans remain a rarity in most games in terms of numbers, even running a couple warhounds adds up pretty quickly and requires games over 2000pts.

I think some of the usr's that deal with how AP is applied to different targets could have also just maybe been visualized with an extra column in unit listing dividing vehicles and infantry. Someone had posted and example of that a few months back in the rumours thread and it immediately helped navigate some of the usr's with less than straightfoward sounding names like light AT, anti tank ect. Overall though what I'm immediately liking more than titanicus is just how much easier its going to be to come up with home brew rules for new units, I also feel like this is going to be a game that is much easier to recruit/bring new players into over titanicus. Just not needing terminals is a big bonus, those always scared the crap out of people I showed the game to, a little unit card with pertinent info seems a lit more straightfoward.

I liked how the first edition of AT, and then Codex Titanicus handled Titan weapons

a las-cannon is a las-cannon, but different titans carried different "grades" of them, same rules, ranges etc, but larger ones rolled more dice for a more powerful attack

I suspect the pages for weapons are again like the AoD ones, grouped into general types, with a bit of fluff text then a table, then some space, and spaced out so the tables don't span page gaps

a bit like how a university "project document" goes from five or six pages to about 20 once the "format standards" are applied

 Crablezworth wrote:

 tauist wrote:
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

Maybe the list is really well abridged and the stuff on the pages is big font or written like its trying to fill a box of space. So far so good with the list.

There are no images per se, just the background and the font is the same as everywhere else in the book but the pages also aren't full of text and the rules are written pretty wordy so if you simplify some of what they have written it should cut the pages in half
For example look at flyer here which takes up a full page by itself:

Jesus wept. That is so dry I've seen more spunk in legal document disclaimers for household insurance.
And so much for my hope for a game 'for the masses'. I could get someone to start rolling dice in 10 minutes with SM2, a little more than that for Armageddon, but I guess this is going to be the one that everyone wants to play now. Good luck to you guys running the demo tables and reading out these rules sequences.

EDIT: Apologies for moaning! I do still genuinely want to play this game. And I want Epic to succeed, so get dispirited when these un-necessary barriers to that have been added to the new game.

Seems fine to me. And when you run demos you're not reading the rules out verbatim.

Although for quick play/demos' sake I'd have liked a summary sheet or cards for the units in the box.

I find it remarkable that they've written a page of rules like that, in 2023, is more excessively verbose than the rulebook it is based on from the early 90s. It actually reminds me of reading incredibly dry home-published rulesets of historical gaming of stuff from the 80s, I'm not sure if it's just the lack of colour, illustration or just me imagining that it must be read in nasaly tones.

It's completely at odds with what the rest of the industry is doing, and with good reason (I'm not familiar with the new 40k, but they seem to be cognisant of that with the AoS quick starter rules as those are much more effeciently written?) Take Infinity for example, a game which has 10 times the depth/complexity of this game, and is translated (often poorly) from Spanish and yet still doesn't make my sphincter constrict in the same way as reading these screen grabs did they have a word/page count that they needed to hit, or to use text in place of artwork/illustration?

I will stop there!

The sad reality of it is that with large flagship games, be they Warhammer 40k or WotC D&D, they attract a large following from people who do not want to diverge from the written word yet are also very vocal about any problems within it. To avoid that, many developers choose to overwrite their rules in legalese and crowd their FAQ's with utterly idiotic timewasters like defining an inch.

On one hand, clarity is nice, but on the other, 95% clarity in intent with one tenth the verbiage is also nice when played with sensible people.

It's comical how well the summation of the usr's did a good job of like hitting the bullet points. Reminds me a bit of titanicus when a rule would jus throw a math equation at you, this upgrade is 2x the base cost of the weapon x (I've gone cross-eyed).

Jaxmeister wrote:
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.

Here we DID get delay...

GW can't get new releases reliably, they go 2 week. Still no reliability. This isn't even rare these days but almost weekly.

Extra "fun" if your store is 50km away and would like to arrange game alongside to make it more sensible. Good luck doing THAT when you don't even know what day the delivery might be...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Pacific wrote:
I find it remarkable that they've written a page of rules like that, in 2023, is more excessively verbose than the rulebook it is based on from the early 90s. It actually reminds me of reading incredibly dry home-published rulesets of historical gaming of stuff from the 80s, I'm not sure if it's just the lack of colour, illustration or just me imagining that it must be read in nasaly tones.

It's completely at odds with what the rest of the industry is doing, and with good reason (I'm not familiar with the new 40k, but they seem to be cognisant of that with the AoS quick starter rules as those are much more effeciently written?) Take Infinity for example, a game which has 10 times the depth/complexity of this game, and is translated (often poorly) from Spanish and yet still doesn't make my sphincter constrict in the same way as reading these screen grabs did they have a word/page count that they needed to hit, or to use text in place of artwork/illustration?

I will stop there!

So how do you suggest they could shrink down word count while not exposing rule arguments seeing GW games are riddled with players who dead seriously claim they could shoot infinite amount of times their unit resulting in GW having to FAQ it "no you CAN'T!"?

If GW doesn't write water proof rules they are going to get complains how their rules don't work and are badly written as well. They need to be written so there's literally no loop hole whatsoever left.

tneva82 wrote:
So how do you suggest they could shrink down word count while not exposing rule arguments seeing GW games are riddled with players who dead seriously claim they could shoot infinite amount of times their unit resulting in GW having to FAQ it "no you CAN'T!"?

If GW doesn't write water proof rules they are going to get complains how their rules don't work and are badly written as well. They need to be written so there's literally no loop hole whatsoever left.

GW writes rules like crap, they walk around the rule in a conversational tone instead of getting to the point. It results in rules that deserve 2 sentences taking up 3 paragraphs.

Esoteric Gamer in his review gave some examples (admittedly some that weren't great examples, lol), like there's a whole faff intro into the "core principles" section of the rulebook explaining what core principles are and why it's important to learn them when literally the title "core principles" is all that was needed.

But I noticed it in Kill Team also, I found the rules painful to read.

In some cases, yes, they are trying to cover off different scenarios, but 90% of the time they're just being excessively verbose and conversational in tone that leads to something that takes ages to read, ages to find the information you need, and isn't quick to scan.

Here's an example from Aeronautica Imperialis since I was just reading that book...


Directly Overhead
It is important to note, whilst discussing Fire Arcs, that
it may sometimes happen that an aircraft occupies
the same hex as a Ground Defence or a ground
target. When this occurs, the aircraft is said to be
Directly Overhead.

When an aircraft is Directly Overhead a ground target,
it is still considered to be within the Ground Defence’s
All Round Fire Arc. Similarly, when an aircraft is
Directly Overhead a Ground Defence or ground target,
these are considered to be within the aircraft’s Rear
Fire Arc.

Let's rewrite that so it's not terrible:

Directly Overhead
An aircraft is Directly Overhead a Ground Target when they
both occupy the same hex. An aircraft which is Directly
Overhead is in the Ground Target's All Round Fire Arc,
while the Ground Target is in the aircraft's rear Fire Arc.

Happy day! Miniature Market just updated their preorders. 19 left.

If I opt to go for it(and there's some left at local store whenever it actually arrives to stores) how would you recommend buiding the big terrain box to get most impact for the bucks? What size of buildings looks like would be most useful? Height? More for ensuring infantry doesn't get annihilated too fast. Less worry about titan height.

Guess some 2 level buildings could go for?

tneva82 wrote:
If I opt to go for it(and there's some left at local store whenever it actually arrives to stores) how would you recommend buiding the big terrain box to get most impact for the bucks? What size of buildings looks like would be most useful? Height? More for ensuring infantry doesn't get annihilated too fast. Less worry about titan height.

Guess some 2 level buildings could go for?

Single storey is fine for infantry, as garrisons are abstracted. They don't particularly care about height as long as you can intuitively make a distinction between buildings that are small and buildings that are large enough to hold multiple detachments. You can make a whole lot of fist-sized blocks and flats from that box, especially if you're willing to expand a bit with plasticard flooring and scratchbuilt pieces on the walls. Single storey is also already tall enough to block LoS for tanks and walkers. I'd make a few rowhouse-style strips, as that gives you multiple LoS blocking pieces that can be arranged into interesting layouts and added to the sides of bigger buildings. Combine with some nice copses of trees or bigger industrial reactor bits and such for visual variety.

It is a very flexible kit, and as said beautifully scaled for the game.

How high you want to build may need to take into account Warlord and Warmaster Titans. If those are likely to be common, you may well want to Build High For Happiness, lest those giants of the game have near unfettered LoS.

And of course, that will in turn affect how many buildings you get out of each big kit.

Beyond that? Variety is the spice of life! Have some simple boxes, others of varied levels etc.

21 pages of verbose, conversations tone traits & USRs is going to be read at home, but when playing we will print summary reference tables.

And/or add them to custom unit reference cards of we play LI a lot.

 Crablezworth wrote:

 Matrindur wrote:

 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.

Weapon traits are 45 individual rules on 9 pages
Special rules are 51 individual rules on 12 pages

But that includes everything so even one sentence rules like unique (no more than one of this unit) or arcs (can only target in arc)

The usr's seem decent if its 51. The weapons are where I sorta got a bit irritated. I think it's one thing to have a few iterations of largely the same base weapon with different usr's attached, but it starts to get a ltitle silly at times when they randomly decide to tack on a unit's name to a weapon. Sir this is no mere lascannon, oh no, it's a kratos lascannon, elephant, elephant seal, totally different animal you see. This is also expressed in some of the titan weapons being different seemingly for the sake of it from one titan to another. The dire wolf in titanicus had a hit buff in short range band to its weapons, though this was never tied explicitly to wargear/upgrades or anything the fluff had dire wolves being sorta lone hunter/snipers/lurkers waiting to land a shot, For some reason though the volcano cannon on the reaver arms are better, and you can take two of them. I guess its the one area they could maybe trim/consolidate or develop a mount system to account for the different types of similar weapons.

I'm a bit worried that with weapons not having any related point cost with a few exceptions consideredd "upgrades", there will be some loadouts that are just far and away better than others. Everyone has taken notice of how powerful/broken warp missiles are. That's a good starting point too because something like a one use only weapon isn't common in AT but one could at least in theroy FAQ/ERRATA the point costs at a minimum, here the system doesn't really account for it. If any weapon stands out as maybe at least make it an upgrade for x points, warp missile is at the front of that list. Good on gw for at least honouring the weapon models they've made for AT and giving them rules in LI, but man, titans really stand out from other units. Not just the ever growing lists of weapons as you go up in scale but, the ability to mount 3+ of them. I get that if weapons all had costs it would mess with the 30% allies thing, constantly sorta dancing across the threshold from list to list. And granted the 30% rule all but ensures titans remain a rarity in most games in terms of numbers, even running a couple warhounds adds up pretty quickly and requires games over 2000pts.

I think some of the usr's that deal with how AP is applied to different targets could have also just maybe been visualized with an extra column in unit listing dividing vehicles and infantry. Someone had posted and example of that a few months back in the rumours thread and it immediately helped navigate some of the usr's with less than straightfoward sounding names like light AT, anti tank ect. Overall though what I'm immediately liking more than titanicus is just how much easier its going to be to come up with home brew rules for new units, I also feel like this is going to be a game that is much easier to recruit/bring new players into over titanicus. Just not needing terminals is a big bonus, those always scared the crap out of people I showed the game to, a little unit card with pertinent info seems a lit more straightfoward.

Agree fully with this. The Titans do seem very strong for their points in general, but the weapons aren't equally strong. So points for options there would make sense.

Large multi-wound models seem very strong by rules design per se, with no pinning and no degradation of stats/damage effects..

On the other hand, Titans don't contribute to holding objectives at all.

My first thought (as someone who never misses a chance to roll a one when the odds are 2+) that the warp missile wasn't so bad (you've got to take a Reaver and it's giving up a gun) but on re-reading the Warp trait it does pack quite a punch, and you only losing a 'warhound' scale weapon. Might get nerfed in the first FAQ/eratta (d6 attacks or something, rather that one per wound/model).

Titans also rapidly devour your ally points if I’m right in thinking?

Warp Missiles have pretty much always been able to one-shot most Titans. They’re described as skipping in and out of Warp Space, so they appear inside the enemy Titan then explode.

And as Mark Norfolk points out, they’re one and done, leaving the Reaver down a weapon system. Not to mention you’re painting a fat old target on Mr Reaver just by fielding it.


We’re also yet to really get a feel for the game, and how giving up a weapon system will affect a Reaver’s overall usefulness.

It`s also not that usefull if your opponent doesn`t bring any titans, no? So while probably very strong against other titans, a bit of a list-making gamble if you don`t know what to expect from an opponent.

It does get a good attack on ‘regular’ detachments, but what, if you’ve got one, should you fire it at? Blast a Titan or super heavy detachment and leave loads of pesky objective grabbing infantry unmolested. Shoot an infantry detachment (a big one if possible) and let the big guns shoot back at you? Or leave until the late game to clear the enemy off an objective so you can move in… and risk not getting to use it all?

And then you tell yourself “I wish I’d taken the Vulcan Mega-bolter!”

It would be good if that similar balance with the Warp Missile has been maintained from the previous game. I guess it's whether that 1 in 6 is the equivalent of the missile somehow scattering and going in-between the target titan's legs in SM2, which seemed to happen way to often!

 Pacific wrote:
It would be good if that similar balance with the Warp Missile has been maintained from the previous game. I guess it's whether that 1 in 6 is the equivalent of the missile somehow scattering and going in-between the target titan's legs in SM2, which seemed to happen way to often!

That Warlord Reactor square was too tempting to pass up!

Really it’s best suited to knocking out enemy Titans, in which case it’s going to punch its weight, even if it doesn’t finish the job on its own.

Titans and Knights should be pretty common. If only for the fact "everyone" now gets 2 Warhounds in the starter.

means decent sized games though, or house rules to let the titans be either more than 30% or have them as the primary force

I suspect having titans loaded to kill troops and tanks while having some tanks able to go titan hunting as well as heavy tank hunting works

otherwise you have a titan that may kill an enemy titan but is then not all that useful

The gatling blaster looks like a good all rounder with no 'negative' traits so it affects all things equally.

It’s almost time!

Bloody almost!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 westiebestie wrote:
Titans and Knights should be pretty common. If only for the fact "everyone" now gets 2 Warhounds in the starter.

From my experience of 2nd Ed? Warhounds don’t really [i]Titan[/b].

Oh they can do some serious damage, no argument there like. But they’re awfully squishy, so need to be used with genuine care, lest your not insignificant points investment be jumped on and beaten up by all and sundry!

Got to use them like ambush predators. Keep out of sight, don’t bite off more than you can chew, don’t get overwhelmed. Surgical precision on their own, or a solid line breaking back up for combined arms.

You wanna muscle your way to victory? Reaver or Warlord is what you need