Re: [NetEpic ML] Fw: JANUARY FANATIC NEWSLETTER (late!)

From: Peter Ramos <primarch_at_...>
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 18:41:57 -0400

Hi!

> -->you know, it's times like these that I depsair of ever having the
> presumptive arrogance of GW ever coming back to Earth. As with most GW
> products, E40K rewards the best rules lawyer, and not "carefully thought
> out strategy and tactics." I've played about 10 games of E40K, and three
> ended with no "casulaties" (ie models removed from the board), but were
> "won" solely on Blast Markers and morale depletion. It's not much fun
> when your opponent sits at his end of the board and just pounds you with
> disrupts and blast markers so that your morale runs out before you reach
> thgem to engage. I've lost 2 games, and "won" one in this manner. Not
> very satisfying at all. Warmaster I will say is probably the best game
> from GW I have ever played. Simple, straight forward, with enough flavor
> and dpeth from the WFB world to see the correlations. Orks are
> distinctly different from Imperials or Bretonians, or Chaos, or Elves.
> The price is good, the rules solid, and it's a fun and satifying game.
> Warmaster tells me that they did learn from the mistakes of E40K, but for
> whatever reason, still refuse to see them as such for E40K. I don't get
> this.

GW would say you don't have the right "attitude", so go off to a corner and chastize yourself for a "bad" attitude <chuckle>

> -->As Peter said, I could have told them this two days after I got the
> game. The biggest draw to WH40K, and Epic was the universe in which it
> was set, and not the rules per se. It was the fluff and minis that
> attracted people originally. This is where they miss big time. The
> rules themselves to most players are inconsequential. they will use
> whatever it is they prefer. But the minis and fluff are what grabbed
> people, and kept people. Just look at the "fluff" arguments we've had on
> this list alone. part of GW's problem here is consistency. The fluff
> keeps changing to fit whatever "kewl neato idea" they have at the moment,
> and don't bother usually with reconcilling it to the existing fluff, as
> well as playability with in the rules. But, I hold hope in that instead
> of moving from extreme to extreme, as happened with SM2/TL to E40K, they
> opt to find that "happy shiny middle ground" that attracts peopel from
> both ends, and brings the Epic community back more into a whole, rather
> than two amred camps.

Fluff and the representation of it on the battle board is of paramount importance in a GW game. They seem to not get this at all. Go figure.

> -->Oh the arrogance and self martyrdom is disgusting. E40K was a nice
> set of generaic scifi ground comabt rules, but was not Epic. But, at
> least they see that marketing and release schedules helped deter many
> people from trying out Epic. And failed to keep them because of the lack
> of support. "No, we won't be carrying the Epic line anymore. Don't you
> want this nice $150 Leman Russ model for 40K?" But do they apply this
> lesson? No. "We will initially be releasing only the Orks and
> Imperials, with a 'get you by' army lists for the others." Big mistake.
> Sure, just alienate and keep from investing in the game, everyone who
> plays Chaos, Eldar, or Bugs (not to mention Squats). Good way to kill a
> good portion of your market potential. But what really gets me is the ad
> nauseam self pitying whine and martyred "no one appreciates my game
> design genius" bit. If it was so elegant, and so perfect, and so
> wonderful, it would be GW's biggest seller, because evryone would be
> falling over themselves to get it and play it. Get over it, and yourself
> Jervis. Mechanics aren't everything. You need something to grab and
> hold teh interest of the players. Previous incarnations of Epic did
> exactly that. The image of massive armies of Space Marines, Titans,
> mobile fortresses going up against teh swarthy hordes of Eldar, Bugs,
> Chaos, and Orks was cool. It still is to me. But it's not there in
> E40K. Let's face it. If Jervis wants the new edition of Epic to take
> off better than E40K, it needs a reworking from the ground up. the basic
> design is fine, but needs some severe changes to the victory
> determination, morale, differentiation between units, Titan integration,
> fluff, and army structures.

You touch upon an important GW dogma. More so than denial and self pity. Everything revolves around 40k and warhammer. No game beyond these two is designed or even intended to stand alone. everything is a gimmick to get you to buy that 150 dollar Leman russ <chuckle>. I agree that some ties to 40k should be there, but when it becomes making epic into a "smaller 40k version" as sometimes mentioned by GW, thats when I have a problem. Epic had a following when it was the thrid partner in a trio of core supported games. It may have been a minor partner, but partner nonetheless. On hurdle any rules will have to jump over is the perception that epic is just that, another one of "those" side games. Tough job ahead.

> -->Apples and Kumquats Jervis old boy. Two different settings, and two
> different purposes in the rules. Comparing the two is like rying to use
> Spearhead to fight teh Battle of Leyete Gulf, or fighting the Marne using
> Cordite and Steel. Not gonna happen. The design philosophy was better
> behind BFG, than it was E40K. BFg started with all the little stuff that
> can be added into a star ship combat game, and boild it down to the stat
> lines. Take SFB for example, as a game with a large ammount of detail,
> or even Bab5Wars as one of middling detail, and BFg is a simplistic game
> by comparison. But in BFG, unlike Epic, there were fewer unit types, and
> with star ships, unlike ground units, they tend to be more generic than
> their ground pounder counterparts. The real worl dcomparisons are also
> poiugnant here. While, for example the US Navy, has 4-5 different
> classes of destroyers, they all preety much fall into the same general
> structure and set up (specialist ships not with standing). While say the
> US Army and Marine Corps has a much wider variety of specialized units,
> and each unit varies in purpose and TO&E from each other. The engine
> itself is not at issue, but the purpose of teh engine, and the desired
> result from said engine. Just beacuse it works for one type of game,
> doesn't mean it will for all types of games. That's just bad game
> design.

Yup. As the saying goes, "whats good for the goose is not good for the gander. Systems need be matched with what it should represent. Mismatches as we have seen lead to big failures.

> -->what was that? Another death knoll tolling for Epic? this is a real
> bad idea. Focusing on a single campaign is great for scenarios and
> campaigns, but not for a general game release. as I said before, this
> alienates, and effectively drives away initially, all those who don't
> play either Orks or Imps. And guess what, presentation was only part of
> the problem. The other part was that the "presentation" didn't translate
> into game play. So, while he talks about improving teh presentation, the
> question remains, will it translate into the game play itself, or will it
> just be a prettier version of E40K? And will I want to invest another
> $50 for this, only to get better fluff and art work?

If anything I hope Jervis can see this is a bad idea. He can make a stupendous game, but a bad release schedule will kill it as it did epic 40k.

> -->Well, yes and no. It will only be a boulder if the existing players
> sign on, and promote it. If they don't do that, it'll be just another
> pebble. But this current plan threatens to drive more players away than
> draw in. Simply keeping the line around, keeps the existing community
> active, and working. If Epic finally goes teh way of the Dodo, then we
> won't have the ability to get new models, and to support the Epic line.
> Fanatic should be very careful not to kill off potential market while
> redoing this. I don't see Armageddon drawing in any new players really.
> Not enough variety for it to do so. When, oh when will they ever learn?

New is better than old to them. Their economic strategy is always to get new people, not building fan bases. Look at 40k for the success of the strategy and to epic for its failure.

> >snip rules possibilities<
>
> -->OK, most of these I agree with in principal, if not application. The
> new stat lines are better than the old. I mean, a heavy bolter is as
> different from a battle canon as a GPMG is from a 120mm rifled canon.
> So, it's about time that such differentiations were made in teh game
> mechanics. The Axis of Attack is interesting. Some sort of command and
> control rule needs to be applied, and is better in a scifi game to be
> more liberal, in that the units action need only be dictated by the HQ
> unit. The command radius rule doesn't always work for me, especially for
> the high tech armies like IG, SM, Eldar, Squats, and even Bugs (but for a
> different reason). I mean, if a modern day army can take a division
> spread over 100 miles and effect a coordinated attack succesfully on a
> regular basis, why is it more difficult for such Epic armies to do so?
> Jervis has a good compromise here, and one perhaps we should look at for
> NetEpic. Now, what was that about stealing and copying? The changes in
> the phases/actions is interesting as well. Somebody finally recognized
> that troop quality does matter. And that troop quality makes a
> siginificant difference even on the scale of an Epic game. Huzzah! One
> thing that I do wonder about from this, is if Jervis has played a
> historical game at all in the past few years? i mean, I think he would
> benefit greatly by getting away from 40K, WFB, Warmaster, and even Epic
> for a while. Get back to the "roots" and play Battlefront, battleground,
> or Command Decision for a year or two. Play some Napoleonics too. I
> think he misjudges where much of the original support from Epic came
> from. Not so much from teh 40K community, but from teh historical
> players. People who played Micro-Armor, and the 15mm historicals took to
> Epic like ducks to water. Similar scales, the basics still applied, and
> it was "familiar" to them. Not a big jump there. So why does he see
> this all as a "closed community"? Shouldn't they be trying to attract
> those historical players again, as well as keeping the existing players?
> Does Jervis even have a clue as to what the historical players are using,
> and working on? I don't know, but I feel that he would benefit greatly
> from such experience.

Nah, no stealing and copying, just a comment on how now they focus on concepts we wanted for Heresy when Ken and I made the game. Its just funny to see them to be represented in their new game.

You touch an interesting point on what kind of audience epic attracts. I have always beleived it to be different from what their otehr games mostly attract, perhaps with more historical background. This requires GW to approach it differently than thier other games. We'll see

Peter
Received on Sun Feb 10 2002 - 22:41:57 UTC