Re: [Epic] New to list . . . want some opinions.

From: Thane Morgan <thane_at_...>
Date: Fri, 05 Dec 1997 18:53:28 -0700

Two responses to these problems; some answers good, some pretty crappy.
actually, I went ahead and added more response below the main section as
I went through the responses from other people.

> > 1) Close Combat and firefights -We've seen way too many instances of where a detat of 20 assault stands has attacked a detat of 8 -10
tactical stands, and the tactical stands have won.
> Nobody ever said "War is fair" :-]
> Sometimes a good ambush works against superior forces.
> >> Yeah, but these are not ambushes. And its really easy to make one bad die roll, instead of neeading to make lots of bad die rolls as in
the old system.

> > 2) We've seen 5 stands of orks boyz run up to a 30 strong detat of marines for a firefight at extreme range with a couple of troops,
putting the whole detat to flight, and thus preventing stands, who
were nowhere near the firefight but were stuck in the same detat, from
making ork patte.
> Large dets have some disadvantages. Use smaller ones.
> Serves them right for being out on a limb. It's not just things within15cm that can fight, IIRC, it's things in range.
>> Actually, only units within 15 cm of enemy can participate. So these were not stands out on a limb; just a few cm closer. This affected units
from the detat 15 cm and more from the firefight, though they did not
participate. "Look, plattons A and B are taking fire; RUN AWAY!!!" is
not something I'd imagine a space marine saying.

>
> > 3)We've seen many games come down to who pulled the initiative chit for the assault phase; the guy who won initiative crushed the guy who
didn't, even when the forces seemed equal.
> It needs a skilled commander to prevent this.
>> Thats a cop-out answer. Both of us are regarded highly for our wargaming skills, so if you could be a little more specific and less
condescending, that would be cool...
>
> > 4) Antitank weapons - seem absurdly powerfull. I have yet to see anyone stand up to my landraider Detats; they usually kill 2-3 times
their point value. Frankly, I don't enjoy doing it.
> Do they ever get charged by Swooping Hawks?
>>No, but they have been charged by assault marines. The infantry and vindicators we keep in the detat have handled them nicely.
> LR's are very powerful. If you don't enjoy it, only take them assupport, in 1's and 2's.
>>Yeah, but the point is that if you have to put artificial limitations on your forces to keep a game playable, there is probably something
wrong with the game. Look at Warzone ...

>
> > 5) Imposible to defend against flyers; We've found that keeping one artillery detat on your edge of the board allows you to bring on flyers
over top of them so that any interceptors take absurd amounts of snap
shots.
> Intercepting takes place before either flyer enters the table. No snap fire allowed. Intercepts are worked out before you put fliers on the
board.

>> Not true! The flyers on ground missions are placed on the table, then opponent places interceptors next to them. Maybe they meant to say that
 intercepting occurs off table, but thats not what they wrote. I would
be much happier playing that way.

> > 6) On the matter of snap shots, we've seen two stands of troops prevent the movement of a twelve land raider detat (pinned up against
cliffs); he tried to move 5 of them, losing 4, then gave up. Doesn't
this seem a little un-fun and ridiculous? Shouldn't their be a limit on
the number of snap shots a detat can pull?
> Those two troop stands stood up to the Land Raiders. See 4)
> If you move anything within 10 cm of your opponent in the movement phase
> you did not do a very sensible thing. That's what the assault phase is there for. In my games snap fire hardly occurs.
> Not really. Put the LR's on Assault, kill the 2 stands in the shootingphase, move in the assault phase.
>>No, two troops moved first to trap the LRs, who needed to be elsewhere, not firing at two crappy stands. It was a very clever move,
just stupid in game terms.(yes those troops died, but saved a warlord
who was around the corner from certain anighilation.)
Maybe you're not seeing the absurdity. In the firing phase, those two
stands would have got off one die roll against the whole detat. Yet they
got a 4 firepower equivalent against every LR which came by, though an
LR should have been able to squish them like bugs.
Now, don't give me any crap about tanks being vulnerable to infantry in
close quarters; I know this is somewhat true, which is why we have
combined arms (and each LR carries a tac squad). However, the presence
of such troops did not in any way improve my ability to move 450 points
through those 30 points of troops.


> > 7) We've also seen titans unable to move because of three leftover
> > stands from a previous close combat/ firefight sequence.
> Units moving away are not snap fired at.
> If a War Engines is snap fired at, is it not able to advance further? (Am
> not sure now. Got to check the rules.)

>> Good point, the rules don't say.

more stuff:
> I've seen even more games of Space Marines come down towho won the initiative for 2 out of the 3 turns in a game.
Winning initiative for the assault phase is important, but
nowhere near as important as winning initiative is in Space
Marines.

>>Actually, as a player who won ~ %90 of my space marine games, I can tell you that while losing initiative sucked, it was not especially
devasting. It meant that you had to take a more defensive than offensive
posture.

(And actually, I've only lost one of ~ 30 games of the new epic; it just
hasn't been as much fun. And no, It was adult vs. adult for most of
them, not adult vs. kid or expert vs. beginner)

       Uh, snap-fire is there so that you won't move that
close to an enemy detachment in the movement phase. If you
want to get that close, go on assault orders. The game
designers could have simply said, "You may never get within
10cm of an enemy unit during the movement phase," but
instead allowed for it, as long as you're willing to take
the risk. In your example above, the LRs should have either
gone on assault orders or overwatch and wiped up the troops;
moving forward like that knowing about the snap-fire shots
is either desperate or stupid. The point is that the tanks
are not going to expose their backside to enemy soldiers.

>>OK, I hadn't made the situation clear. The LR's needed to move to kill a warlord around the corner. They had infantry which in real terms could
have "protected their backs". See above for further absurdities with
snap fire.

> As far as the movement stuff goes, it seems like
you were expecting something similar to how it was in Space
Marines, where you could run around wherever you wanted to
willy-nilly. I think the new movement rules are really good;
I like that you can't move your troops past the enemy until
you've taken care of them. Makes more sense to me than
having my CC guys charge past and ignore hordes of troops to
pin themselves against their target, thus making themselves
totally immune to being shot at by anyone else for that turn.
And, if I had won initiative and was moving second, I
wouldn't even have to worry about counter-charges.

>> I agree that the old system had problems, but just making the rule about not being able to pass a closer Detat on the way to someone else
could have fixed a lot of them. And you could still have to worry about
advance fire after you had crushed your opponents in CC. That part
balanced out pretty well in our games.

> (initiative problem) Yeah, this is a bit of a problem. But can you honestly say that this is a bigger problem than it was in SM/TL? I
think it's improved, myself. I had a rough go with the Eldar, since I
never seemed to win initiative on the turns I wanted to CC.

I sort of like checking initiative each phase; but I don't think the
SM/TL was as bad as that (see above). Especially Eldar, who could choose
their orders after initiative was drawn. Plus the speed of their assualt
bikes ...


(Flyers)-
> Keeping your arty on the edge will prevent enemy fliers from
just coming up your rear, but interceptors happen before fliers reach
the board. Just use your interceptors without fear of snap-fire from
ground forces, and realize that flak is overrated (you may have
already).

>>Why is everyone saying this, was there a white dwarf I missed? Is the english version different from the american? I can't see anything on
P.47 of the rule book that says interception happens before the planes
reach the table (though I agree it would be better if it did). It says
to place the non-interceptors on the table edge, then place the
interceptors next to them, in my book. Was there an errata page I
missed?!

(Snap fire)
> Snap Fire shouldn't be used when moving away from the enemy.
It's buried somewhere not in the description of Snap Fire,
unfortunately. If there are leftover stands from a CC/FF, that means
that the titan lost the engagement. In a situation like that, I can
easily see the titan being forced to stop its forward advance.

But the enemy was in front, and war engines can't go backwards! And have
you ever seen a 40K scale titan next to a 40 K squad? That titan may
feel squeemish about cleaning guts off his feet afterwards, but I think
it laughs as stomps forward at the time (playing Vaugner (?)).


Thanks to everyone who responded. Please tell me why interception occurs
off of the table.

Thane
Received on Sat Dec 06 1997 - 01:53:28 UTC