RE: [Epic] SM Chaos

From: Miller, Chris <CMiller_at_...>
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 1998 11:58:57 -0600

> > SM/TL was a good
> > game that was fairly popular in the U.S. - maybe not as much as
> Fantasy or
> > 40K, but sold a lot better than many other companies flagship
> products. E40K
> > is a good game also, but it was presented as an evolution of SM/TL
> which it
> > is not -
>
> I didn't have that impression at all. "It's war on a whole new
> scale!"
> New? I thought they made a big point of ignoring that there had been
> a
> previous game.
>
--------> In the prerelease comments, store info, and some of the WD
intro articles - "all your figures will be compatible" etc.

> >if they'd revised the existing system, people would have groused
> > but not quit. Froma gamer's point of view, many people would say
> they mad a
> > mistake.
>
> I wonder what they could have done. I like suppression being added to
> the game, and I like the parts that seem to play faster. Would adding
> those
> in to the old game work? (In other words, make them feel like a real
> part
> of the game, not a hack added in.)
-------> I think the blast marker thing would have had some potential,
and would be worth doing.
> I like the chance to shoot midway through a charge. I'd have been
> happy for them to make detachments on Charge
> orders move one regular move in the movement phase and again in the
> close combat phase, allowing First Fire units to whack 'em in between.
> (Or even to move the close combat phase after Advanced fire, but
> that's because I'm not
> that partial to close combat.) I'm sure they could have added new
> army creation rules, but it isn't clear that they could have done that
> well and still have the old army cards come out with the right points.
> I think they needed to fix the problem with initiative, maybe
> alternating detachments during the movement phase.
        --> The sequence of play changes could have been made farily
easily, I think. Army creation could have been tweaked, even going so
far as to make the detachment cards, say "1-6 predators" instead of "3
predators" but the you'd have to change the VP set up also, probably
going with a per-model VP count. That way you keep some kind of company
core with add-ons but without the fixed unit sizes of before.
> But the biggest question for me is could it have been made faster?
> Maybe abstracting out a bit the rules for declaring targets. To say
> "this
> detachment shoots at that detachment" only really works if the guns
> have similar
> effects (like FP), but I think something maybe could have worked out.
> With the
> variation in to-hit numbers and damage mods, it complicates it. Just
> one or the
> other, and maybe you could use different color dice for each kind of
> shot, and
> stillrolled them all as one.
>
> andy
        ----------> I don't know if the game would've been any faster,
but was that the big complaint? A bit of standardization would've fit
into a new system better than the different rules for every gun thing we
had, and a little more checking of cross-effects of different systems
(like the wave serpents vs void shields thing) would've certainly
helped, though.

        Chris Miller
Received on Fri Feb 13 1998 - 17:58:57 UTC