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How do!

So Epic is on its way back to us. Joy and sing hosannas. Yes I know it never really went away, but being back on the shelves is objectively a good thing, even if you don’t buy it, happy as you are with previous rules set and model collection. Because more people in your orbit means cross feeding fun of potential players.

Of course, like its origins? It’s Heresy. Imperium vs Imperium. Which is disappointing, even though canonically the various Xenos species were not in a good state due to Whoops Slaanesh or A Good Kicking on Ullanor.

But…Glorious Plan? Stick to the historical settings. Don’t just jump to 40K as it is now straight off the bat. Oh no. You go historical, and pick the right time? You can start introducing and expanding with Xenos.

See I mentioned Ullanor? Use that to introduce Orks. Then, the designers need only worry about….popping out Orks. Hurrah and joy, Orks on the table.

Of course, Solar Auxilia aren’t Imperial Guard. So…to do Modern Imperial Guard? Well….Second War for Armageddonouttahere. You’ve already got the Marines and Orks, yeah?

Tau? Damocles Gulf crusade.

Tyranids? Behemoth

Necrons? Pariah Nexus.

And the others I’m sure will have some kind of historical “ooh, just right” conflict kicking off. I mean, Craftworld Eldar? Do them after Behemoth, so you have both sides well represented.

Boom. One project at a time, and plenty of opportunity for tasty campaign books. And before too long? A fully populated Epic Game System, with some wiggle room for What If type battles. Like “How Quickly Would All The Silly Tau Get Dedded If They Ran Into A Proper Crusade Fleet”.

Personally, I think I’m a genius, but you might think I’m an arse. So what do you reckon, Dakka?

I reckon yes, but it will a) depend on sales and b) take time.

I am happy with the GC/HH setting, but for those who want to expand with Xenos before GW does so, the print scene is strong and we as a community can cook up decent rules.

I have faith we can do with this game just what we want. Just as with the current Epic.

Depends on the system at its core. Currently I am somewhat disappointed, but it might be a more GW player friendly system so get more players that way? There does seem to be an effort to 'forget' 4th edition in the comms so far, so far more or a 2nd ed reboot which will appeal to some.

Then it comes down to how fiddly will the units and models be. Will we get different rules for each flavour of marine armour for example... The more models released for one army and the more granular the rules, the more releasing another race becomes a big thing in terms of required investment and testing.

Yeah, its sales after initial release box hype will of course also depend on how well the rules are received. But I suspect a lot of us will prefer other Epic30k rulesets but still buy the models. So hopefully they sell enough to earn money and release more. Big HH sold way better than expected when it was rebooted in plastic so the setting may not be a turnoff in general as it targets more experienced players.

Its a 2nd ed reboot for sure, with a hybrid of turn based and activation based. But waaaay more granular.

The good news for anyone who wants to play with Xenos or the 40k setting and prefers modern alternating activations is that 4th ed (Epic Armageddon) is already available and has it all. So just buy old models or print new ones and go play! Its great imo, GWs best rule set by a country mile.

I think it's a wonderful idea, and I would love to see it. Firstly, Legions would need to be a success and everything sells out, GW gets the message and an 'alien' factions book starts soon after (I think a lot of people would be happy with just that).

Do I think it will realisticially happen? Probably not. You have to think of all those guys sat waiting with their *something* in their hands waiting for official Gargants to arrive in Adeptus Titanicus - the people who wanted to do this waited for a few years and then ended up fan/house-ruling stuff and 3D printing.
I can see the same thing happening with this game. There is a *lot* of terrain to cover even with things just restricted to the Heresy setting, so many SKUs for just those l, and you have to think how many that would be expanded to if you were to do the alien races any justice and represent them fully.

The other thing that makes me think it's not likely is the level of granularity we have seen in the rules, which gives some variety when we essentially have all of the same types of troops and tanks fighting each other. Can you imagine page-long rules showing 19 different battlewagon variants? (Actually, I hope no developer is reading this and thinks that is a good idea )

Finally, I suspect the rules writers doing Legions will move onto the next shiny thing eventually, be it BFG, Man-o-War or whatever. There is only so much development and production capacity to go around, and even though GW is now a giant compared to its status in the early 90s, would they want to make Legions/Epic one of their 'main' games again with stock covering one third of their store walls?

I hope I am wrong - after all Epic started itself with the Horus Heresy setting and then expanded into all races and 40k, so there is a precedent!

I doubt xeno races will happen. AT didn't even see chaos tainted titans and now they've moved on to a new game. If AT does ever get them now, they will just be an after thought to expand sales for a new kit for this game.

Alien races take a deal of effort to design and add to the game. New flavours of space marine models can be knocked up from the existing 3d files as simply as plonking a new legion symbol on them. GW know how to take the easy route to make money and I don't see them straying from this sales tactic anymore. We would have seen mega gargants in AT by now if that was the case. (AT sold out and was popular enough to swap resin kits for plastic). If they wanted to show the possibility of xenos if the game sold well, they would have kept the full AI range along side further support for the HH stuff.

I will not buy into the new game in hopes that it improves sales that we might see orks one day. I also don't see the point in buying into a new ruleset to play xenos with fan made rules, when old edition exist and already have all the races (and there are plenty enough flavours of old rules to suit most tastes). Fan rules/3d prints won't be playable in the places that have to enforce the new rules anyway, so might as well save money on rules and play at home.

I will buy into the new model line for backwards compatibility, but I've yet to see a good reason to want to see the game expanded outside of an official capacity.

Epic/6mm is my favourite game/scale. If it came to it, I'd probably sell all my WFB before even considering parting with epic. But I just can't get excited about the future of this game. I'm happy enough being able to expand my existing collection with some new plastic kits and thats about it. I do look forward to the old minis crashing in price as people swap over to the more 'popular' new version of the game though! I'm going to hoover up those deals!

That said, I'd have gone all in with the game had it been marine vs orks, or IG vs orks, or chaos vs orks, or even orks vs orks.

First fan made LI Xenos supplement is out, with Eldar & Ork rules
https://www.reddit.com/r/LegionsImperialis/comments/18epwu1/legions_xenos_eldar_orks/?rdt=43793

Bloody hell that is impressive! And not some quick dirty MS word job either, all looks properly formatted.

I did see the same chap had done a Tyranid one as well, which I did think was an awful lot to chew on straight away (the rules for that army had a lot more faction-specific elements in previous editions). Would love to give these a playtest but haven't even given Legions itself a go yet, think it might take a few months until I get on to this!

Orks and Eldar would be enough for me personally, in addition to typical HH factions, to consider LI a "complete" version of Epic. And you could still keep things in the 30K setting, since both of those factions did exist back then

Brave of people to write new factions for games they haven't played yet.

 Pacific wrote:
Bloody hell that is impressive! And not some quick dirty MS word job either, all looks properly formatted.

I did see the same chap had done a Tyranid one as well

Same Swedish guy afaik.

Personally Orks and Eldar would be the enough for me too.

The one thing that could possibly draw me from the main HH setting the the Eldar Phantom Titan. That thing is/was glorious.

The minute GW or some talented designer releases a good looking Phantom Titan, many people would be on board.

Loving those Orks!!

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Brave of people to write new factions for games they haven't played yet.

Yes. But it doesn't matter much as the detachements in the core book are quite unbalanced... and suitable for almost only Narrative play.

have to agree on the stuff in the book not exactly being balanced

I mean when a humble Rhino pays points for a weapon upgrade and yet a main battle tank has a free choice of weapons, indeed as does a Titan, at no extra cost "balance" is somewhat subjective

that said, locally there are a few with older Epic armies including disgusting Xenos scum, who also have a few armies for the game

will point this stuff out and see if they fancy a try

Rhinos are plentiful though. Tanks are more limited, as per slot we can only have so many.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Rhinos are plentiful though. Tanks are more limited, as per slot we can only have so many.

while this is true to a level, and you don't want units overly large otherwise you are just getting overkill and wasting points...

its not that hard to just tag on another armoured formation, 380 points for 2x3 predators and a pair of Kratos for example, 360 for the Sicaran version with fewer hulls

not that bad for 8 or 6 tanks, that don't pay for weapons and can have whatever

I can't see adding weapons to Rhinos, their job is to move stuff and to do so cheaply, the Havoc launcher looks nice and looks useful, but its +40% to the cost, though obviously you could just run one or two with them in a unit

I'm thinking weapons on Rhinos is a way to burn the last bit of the points budget when you don't need another cheap unit or lack a slot for one, the bolter they carry doesn't seem too bad either as an irritant

guess one or two melta armed ones could be "oh you utter git" inducing

leopard wrote:


I can't see adding weapons to Rhinos, their job is to move stuff and to do so cheaply

Dedicated Transport Rhinos seem handy to have as an extra 10+ hulls as bubblewrap that don't effect break point, but I also wouldn't be surprised if we aren't playing something wrong.

SU-152 wrote:
Loving those Orks!!

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Brave of people to write new factions for games they haven't played yet.

Yes. But it doesn't matter much as the detachements in the core book are quite unbalanced... and suitable for almost only Narrative play.

Oh yeah there's glaring balance issues in LI. Some units obviously undercosted, internal balance is also off in each list, not just vs other lists. Even within each detachment as weapon options are not always even near equality.

Interested to see if they will do points Erratas or leave it like that.

Anyway even if they strive to improve point balance they can't take it all the way due to inherent design choices - weapon options not costing points is the big one. Subfaction Traits not costing points & being vastly different in power another.

I agree this will be a good narrative & friendly game. Wouldn't want to try to play such a game with so bad balance mechanisms competitively. Just spam the best stuff, and the strongest Legions. :/

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Rhinos are plentiful though. Tanks are more limited, as per slot we can only have so many.

That's just not true though, I managed to make a list with 1 armoured formation, its 3015pts, contains 42 tanks, 12 of which are baneblades, the other 30 are all malcadors. Fun fact, the malcador has so many weapon options that the totality for different weapons loadouts is 36 permutations, so of my30 malcadors, I could arm every one differently and not have to repeat a single loadout


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 westiebestie wrote:

SU-152 wrote:
Loving those Orks!!

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Brave of people to write new factions for games they haven't played yet.

Yes. But it doesn't matter much as the detachements in the core book are quite unbalanced... and suitable for almost only Narrative play.

Oh yeah there's glaring balance issues in LI. Some units obviously undercosted, internal balance is also off in each list, not just vs other lists. Even within each detachment as weapon options are not always even near equality.

Interested to see if they will do points Erratas or leave it like that.

Anyway even if they strive to improve point balance they can't take it all the way due to inherent design choices - weapon options not costing points is the big one. Subfaction Traits not costing points & being vastly different in power another.

I agree this will be a good narrative & friendly game. Wouldn't want to try to play such a game with so bad balance mechanisms competitively. Just spam the best stuff, and the strongest Legions. :/

I think they bent themselves into pretzels trying to make thing not increase in points, affecting the 30/70 for allies. If you look at it from the other end you really see how absurd it is, what you get for points doesn't scale linearly, it's like a massive curve where at the end the differences between just a warlord and psi titan for 75pts are pretty nuts, but then you see the difference beween a warmaster and a warlord at only 150pts and realize they're going out of their way to discount more and more just to make the units viabile inside certain point levels. But it is a totally fair thing to recognize the absusrdity of nickle an diming rhinos for weapons while having us pretend titan weapons are all created equal, especially difficult to believe for me coming from titanicus where its problem arguably being they didn't leave enough breathing room for weapons point costs and are forced to contend with 5pt integers, LI seems to have no rpoblem dropping under 5pt integers but you do get weird stuff like 2pts for this, 4pts for this, 3pts for this in terms of upgrades.

 Crablezworth wrote:




I think they bent themselves into pretzels trying to make thing not increase in points, affecting the 30/70 for allies. If you look at it from the other end you really see how absurd it is, what you get for points doesn't scale linearly, it's like a massive curve where at the end the differences between just a warlord and psi titan for 75pts are pretty nuts, but then you see the difference beween a warmaster and a warlord at only 150pts and realize they're going out of their way to discount more and more just to make the units viabile inside certain point levels.

For sure. The bigger the points you can spend on a Titan the better they are per point as they grow a lot more powerful for each step but points don't follow that scale at all.

It will probably end up like big 30k where we have to agree how many Contemptors are fair to bring as they are so OP.. and GW still haven't Erratad them or changed points in 1.5 years so I don't think we shall expect that for LI either.

It's early days for LI but anyone who wants to play balanced-ish probably have to limit Titans. Lets say maximum a Reaver at 2000 even though you could fit a Warlord in the 30%.

And no friggin Warp missiles as they are broken AF even after the Errata (pick a Detachment, roll a 2+ for each model to remove them, no counters, bye bye Baneblades/Kratos/Fellblades etc).

All of these reasons can be handled between friends but you kind of have to agree how you want to play, which is also the reason I don't foresee LI as a Tournament game. But that's for another thread.

I think the additional Rhino weapons are there just for blowing a few points in order to reach a rounder points number.

There are only 2 Havoc launchers and 2 multimeltas to a box of 10 Rhinos anyway.. You'd need to buy 5 Rhino kits to equip 10 Rhinos with either, I'm sure GW wont mind

(yes, GW still pretends 3D printing doesn't exist..)