Re: [Epic] squats and overlords(was space marine chapters)

From: Eugene E.W. <eug_at_...>
Date: Thu, 28 Aug 1997 18:37:46 -0400

> (Is there anyone out there who *doesn't* start from scracth building
> your army in every game of E40K?)
>
Not us... it's a new army every time...
> My biggest problem with the army cards in the last days of SM/TL was
> the effect of "bracket creep" in all the new units that were released.
> Each new unit had better armor save modifiers until it was really just
> as easy to kill a LR with a save of 2+ as it was to kill an infantryman
> with no save. Since LR's came in companies no bigger than 10, it was
> thus just 5 easy kills to get the victory points out of the company.
> I always thought tanks should be harder targets.

The thing that bugged me the most about SM/TL was exactly this.

> Tanks are a little harder to kill in E40K, but not by much. Those damn
> re-rolls are really beginning to bother me. (Especially when all six
> of those Overlord Airships start with 8 FP anyway.) I'm really beginning
> to think that only infantry on overwatch should get to reroll misses.
> I definitely suspect that those airships should be WE's.
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Allen (The Q&A guy)
> ---------------------------------------------------------------

Well, you can expect some play-balance problems with house rules such as
the squat army list. My advice to you, if the overlords are a problem, is
to utilise some ground-attack planes (Marauders, etc.) The poor squats have
no flyers, so they will be utterly helpless to prevent your strafing. Your
opponent might be upset by your taking advantage of this shortcoming (ahem)
in his army list, but it serves him right for using silly-looking mutants
as his army.

My personal opinion is that the old squat army list deserves a quick burial
in an unmarked grave: squats without Tanks are like battles without
explosions --somehow unsatisfying. It is also nearly impossible to depict
Overlord Airships correctly without introducing new rules, which the CJ
folks didn't wanna do. I'm looking forward to a complete overhaul of the
Squats in the 40k universe.

I would recommend, for the time being, the Squat List in CJ (which I assume
you are using, since you posted it to your site) over the other
alternatives. However, there are several specific problems I have with the
list; for the moment all I'm going to do is gripe about them, but I might
get around to offering changes at some point.

My first difficulty is that Squats have no flyers. This, in my humble
opinion, is a big handicap. I would recommend treating Gyrocopters as
flyers; this would obviously require some rejiggering.

The Colossus is also poorly done. It's primary advantage in the old system
was its many cool battlecannons; its new version has less firepower than a
Leviathan. It also only has 4 void shields. This is quite clearly goofy.

It also bugs me that basic squat infantry is identical to basic Ork
infantry. Admittedly, in WH40k terms they were pretty similar, but still,
it makes little sense to have two different races with the same core troop
type. I would probably just buy all the Squats as Vaterans; but I don't
think it should be 2 points to be stubborn (its only one for chaos
marines).

The Overlord Airship should almost definitely be treated as either a Flyer
or a War Engine. I prefer the idea of a War Engine; I would probably treat
it as if it was always making a pop-up attack; that is, it can always soot
and be shot regardless of intervening terrain that would otherwise block
LOS. I am tempted with the idea of the Critical Damage Table always
resulting in a roll on the Catastrophic damage table; players of the old
edition will probably recognize why this temptation is so strong. It's
probably a bad idea, however; being destroyed 7 times in twelve (a la
Baneblades) is probably fine. Overlords should probably be equivalent to
Battlefortresses/IG SH Tanks/Engines of Vaul.

Eugene
Received on Thu Aug 28 1997 - 22:37:46 UTC