RE: house rules (was Re: [Epic] General Enquiry)

From: Miller, Chris <CMiller_at_...>
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 11:54:51 -0600

-------> I'll restrain my comments to the parts I've dealt with...

> 4. Line of sight and terrain: Although I like the overall simplified
> game of Epic 40K, I think they went a bit overboard here. I like
> determining LOS from looking from a certain angle, as opposed to
> saying
> you can see over any terrain that is lower than you. I also think the
> rules for woods and such are weird, being able to see all the way into
> woods but not through them.
        --------> I actually kinda like this part. We always had
problems before where one guy was in the woods and the question was
"edge or not" - you could usually clarify by who shot/wanted to
shoot/etc. but this way the question doesn't even come up.

> Line of sight is determined by looking from the firer to the
> target (or vice-versa). This is easily "common-sensed",
> especially with detachment fire. Units do not block LOS.
------> Is this a change?

> Units just inside the edge of woods (and such) are in cover.
> Units further inside the terrain or behind it are out of LOS.
>
---------> It got to the point where we just defined a distance of ,say,
1" in was "edge", anything deeper was out of LOS but even then it can
get weird.
> I'd also consider:
> War Engines and Vehicles block LOS, not infantry.
>
--------> WE's I like, vehicles, well, it can work but you're going to
end up nitpicking which elements of a detachment are blocking other
elements from firing. I just assume they're all moving around and
everyone gets a chance to get off a shot.

> 5. Skimmers: I've never liked the bit about skimmers being able to
> pop-up to an infinite height and see everything on the board. I've
> found the following very easy to implement.
>
> Skimmers pop-up 25 cm (I'd prefer 15) from the ground, and
> line of sight is determined from that point.
>
----------> We went with "Skimmers pop-up to a height equal to their
move stat" for a while under SM/TL. Worked real well, except when
playing as Eldar : )
        We reasoned that if you can only move "x" distance horizontally,
you can't move x*10 vertically in the same period of time. It was always
very frustrating to have a tank pressed up against a building 4" high 3
feet away from a skimmer and have them say pop-up and nuke the tank,
even though given the angle they'd have to be higher than the ceiling in
the room to even have a chance to see it. We dropped it after a while as
it really only changed things vs the Eldar, and we didn;t play them all
the time.

> 6. Vortex Missiles/death strikes: d6 death rays under the template is
> just too much. I like the suggestion to make that d6 AT shots. On
> the
> other hand, isn't this just a one-shot pulsar? For big things, you'll
> only get one under the template, and for small things, you won't
> really
> need the d6 AT. Maybe 1DR and d6-1 AT? I'd also like to have one
> that
> is just d6 heavy barrages. This doesn't make sense with the official
> barrage rules, but if you place separate barrage templates, it's
> better.
        If players can control themselves this problem largely goes
away, just like the Land Raider thing. One good measure is that given
the same points value, if the force was being pointed your way, how
would you feel? Cheesed? Playing people you don't know can be a problem,
but then again they may not like the house rule either, so I don;t know
how to solve that one. d6 megacannon shots might be interesting
too.seperate barrages would make it different as well.


> Slightly different topic, inspired by house rule to lessen power of a
> weapon:
> Is use of an Ordinatus automatically assumed to be cheesy by people
> here? The thing is in the rules, after all. I've got two (don't
> remember which kind), just because they looked cool, though I haven't
> put them together yet. (Not sure whether I want to paint them first
> or
> put them together first.) I've never seen the White Dwarf rules for
> them in 2nd edition, so I certainly wasn't motivated by the
> possibility
> of blowing my opponent off the board with one.
>
> One of anything should never be called "cheesy", in my opinion,
> including the unadjusted vortex missile (though I'd prefer to adjust
> it). But it seems odd that people build it (ordinatus) up as
> something
> people are trying to cheese with, and then (maybe other people) point
> out how vulnerable it is to suppression. I'm looking forward to using
> mine someday.
>
> andy
--------> One of anything is great. It's when someone decides a unit is
great and takes a huge number of them that the points system starts to
break down. Vortexes are less expensive than war engines, so if I have
an idea of how many war engines my opponent will take, I can just take a
roughly equivalent number of V-missiles to neutralize them and I have a
net point gain. Problem is all the background material indicates
vortexes are rare, expensive, hard to produce, etc even though the point
value doesn't really reflect this. They're supposed to be _special_, not
_standard_, and going by that I'd start to get annoyed if I saw more
than say, 1 per 500 points in the force, and really about 1 per 1000
points is probably what I would consider "right" -YMMV. In SM/TL, I took
one battery(3) of deathstrikes, period, and that was usually only in
5000+ point battles. Theres no rule about this, I just felt it was
powergaming to take 3 batteries of deathstrikes regardless of game size,
unlike another guy I knew.
        The big titans tend to be limited by models and points. Though I
admit to now owning 5 mega-gargants (3 painted) it would have to be a
truly "epic" battle for me to field all 5 , much less the assorted
greats and slashers that go with them. The points values actually help
limit this.
        Leviathans are supposed to be command centers, so if someone
throws 6 of them out in one battle, I want to know what the hell his
force is supposed to represent - the planetary HQ? Points-wise they
aren't that bad, but fluff-wise, 1 or 2 is probably the most you would
see in one fight.Wanna use 3? Give me a reason - might help start a
campaign!
        The Ordinati (?) looked pretty special to me in the fluff, so ,
sure, 1 could turn up - no big deal. 2 or 3 in one fight should be
damned special (again, JMO), and that's why I'd tend to look at "how
many points are we using" as a reasonable guide. 3 of the ordinatus in a
2000 point game seems way off base. 3 in a 4-5000 point game is better,
and some kind of epic 8000-10000 point battle would be great- throw in
an Imperator and a pair of leviathans too! 3 warlord titan groups!
bunches of warhounds! It's the conclusion of an entire
campaign/siege/whatever so go for it.
        And really, I wish there was a better name for it than"cheese",
as it's more a violation of fluff than anything else, and I usually
apply "cheese" to exploiting game holes/wrinkles. Assuming the points
value is supposed to reflect the in-game effectiveness of a unit, it
would be nice if there was some other measure involved to reflect the
rarity of the unit as well, kind of like the WH40K lists where you get
"0-3 Chaplains" etc. SFB had some version of this where there was "real
cost" and "economic cost" which wasn't used that much except for certain
units. Carriers had an economic cost higher than their game
effectiveness cost as they are special, harder to produce, train their
crews, replace, require more supplies , etc. Certain attrition units
which were made to fight and not expected to last long actually had a
higher combat value than economic value, as that's what they were meant
to do. Cheese I would reserve for extreme things like Ork armies with
no boyz - just nobz and skarboyz, IG armies with no normal infantry,
Chaos which is entirely marines and imperial equipment but no daemons,
that kind of thing.

        Chris Miller
        <fan>
Received on Thu Mar 26 1998 - 17:54:51 UTC