Re: [Epic] Couple Questions

From: Mark A Shieh <SHODAN+_at_...>
Date: Tue, 16 Sep 1997 11:42:56 -0400 (EDT)

Aaron P Teske <Mithramuse+_at_...> writes:
> As for bikes vs. tanks, yeah, it was a bit silly. But then, from what
> I've seen of WH40K, there were often guys riding bikes with power
> swords/axes/whatever, or hefty grenades. Of course, that doesn't mean
> that ordinary troopers should've been so powerful....

        Yeah. The Eldar Jetbikes were just about the only balanced
ones. You could actually shoot them on the way in with everything you
had.

> Yes, but is that the norm? I've had games where my rad bombs (12 cm
> template, 3+ to hit) covered eight units and I only hit one (!), and
> then a game where an Overlord hit with all 10 (5+) shots in one turn.
> You've got to average those occurances... usually I find the arty to be
> pretty good.

        Maybe you just shoot worse when you have Eldar allies. All
that animosity.

> > 4)Broken units (in the CCG sense) -Wave Serpents, Weirdboy BT's, and half the
> > damn Tyranid army list...
>
> Wave Serpents I thought were pretty well clarified towards the end,
> though if you mean their power level yes, they could be annoying.

        It didn't seem *horrible*. I mean, you can get a 4+ shot with
a ridiculously large template on turn 2 or 3, but Overlords just laugh
at them (and open fire). The only really nasty combo involved a turn
of setup with Doomweavers. I saw them mainly as a way to keep the
barrages away from my Titans for a turn.

> Fortuantely, we talked our Eldar player out of abusing the shield
> firing... and the WS became a *very* nice transport.

        It always was. It was also a really nice transport as far as
the enemy is concerned. (<BLAM> "Hey, 3VP!") I started using Falcons
sometimes just for that reason.

> The bugs are aonther question, but I'm still
> of the opinion that they weren't areound long enough for any solid
> tactics to get worked up against them, so people still consider then
> overly powerful.

        I dunno. I'd trade my Titans in for theirs 9 times out of 10.
I guess I've got Titan envy. They don't die after being barraged a
couple times. If they didn't have so many regenerators, it wouldn't
be quite so bad.

> It's actually a home-brew system that's only around on the web, but
> there have been people using the system who aren't at CMU. See
> http://www.contrib.andrew.cmu.edu/~mc7f/SC/stellae.html if you have some
> spare time. Mike's a brilliant, if somewhat insane, GM and the
> background he's worked up is incredible.

        Somewhat erratic GM, too. And it's still hard to get a proper
feel of the world without actually playing in a campaign.

> Hmm, I suppose you could get Codex: Knights and/or Codex: Exodites for
> WH40K....

        Please, no. Armorcast would have a field day, but apart from
that... Besides, the dragon Exodites are in WH40k. The small ones,
anyway.

> > I liked knights because they played the way I thought tanks should...
>
> Oh? How so?

        You actually get an armor save for being, well, armor.

> > Wow... I'm impressed. I have to say, though, that about half the
> > weapons in SM/TL seemed underpowered...

        True, and complete agreement. But unlike the Eldar selection,
this still left you with over a dozen decent weapons to pick from,
plus (grr) one-shots.

> Well, with your comment and Sauron's request to see my stuff, I think
> it's getting dusted off, polished up a little, and put onto the web.
> (For one thing, I should probably explain where some of the names came
> from....)

        You should put it up without explaining the references first.
I remember last year you put up the Titan names and people started
guessing where they came from. Some were trivially easy (Do you have
Excalibur? I forget.), and some were a real PITA and even I could
only guess because I figured that the original name wasn't in English.

> > I honestly think that your army would work great in E40k - I find
> > that Titans working in groups are very difficult to stop.

        His army didn't look all that effective before (Titans' weak
point was CC, it's not as bad any more), and does now. But now he's
fielding four troop types. Before, each individual Titan had a very
distinct personality based on the loadout, which was based on themes.
Except the Imperators, of course. :) Those were fixed loadout before
E40k. It always seemed odd to me that the biggest Titans had no
options.

> > You might be surprised how much
> > variety can be achieved using the available Titan weapons,

        You can still customize for medium-range bombardment, or FF/CC,
but that seems to be about it these days.

Mark
Received on Tue Sep 16 1997 - 15:42:56 UTC

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