RE: [Epic] Blast Markers

From: Miller, Chris <CMiller_at_...>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 16:37:28 -0600

> ----------
> From: e41k_at_...[SMTP:e41k@...]
>
-------> I swear, this man is developing more e-mail addresses...

> Ok, warning this is a rant.
--------> 'Bout damn time. Where ya been?


<snip>

> While I know that "realism" and "Games Workshop Game" should not be
> used
> at the same time, I think that the current blast marker rules are the
> best thing to happen to war gaming after the invention of the combat
> results table, as they tend to end a game way before you have needed
> to
> kill off 75+% of the enemy forces, some thing that only happens VERY
> rarely in real life. In fact no more that 10 or 15 "major" battles in
> all of history ended that way.
>
--------> Total agreement here. Blast markers are a genuine "innovation"
here, especially for miniature rules - simple to use, visually
appealing, and variable in implementation. Anything which adds
possibilities and depth to a game like this without requiring additional
paper record keeping is great. When they re-do WH40K I hope some version
of this finds it's way into the mix - you might see powercharacters
reduced affected similarly to the way titans are affected in E40K

> While obviously related to the Command Decision "hits" system, it is
> an
> improvement on that. It is a simple method, that with VERY small
> amounts
> of tweaking can be used to reflect a wide variety of battle field
> command
> and control problems, unit morale, fire suppression and other "fog of
> war" effects. When I finish "Imperial Space" (E41K is the start on
> that,
> BTW) blast markers will be a major part. While I am at it, there is
> very
> strong evidence that Space Marine, 1st ed, was based, in the main, on
> "Combined Arms" the "Modern" (i.e. post WW II) version of Command
> Decision. This bit came out on the CD mailing list where some one
> wanted help in translating WH40K stuff to Command Decision stats.
> E40K,
> it should be noted, is based more on AT/SM than SM/TL.
------> One great thing is that it's multi-faceted: What do BM's do to a
unit? How does this unit react to them? Maybe special units can pull
them off more quickly, while green units do it more slowly ; maybe
certain weapons inflict more or fewer of them...it's great.

    I'm not sure that I'd buy AT is closer than TL to what E40K is -
neither one of the earlier versions resembles it mechanically, and they
were both pretty focused on individual stands and individual weapon
systems, whereas E40K looks at things from a much different viewpoint. I
think BM's would be difficult to implement with either of them precisely
because of that - an infantry formation in the old rules might be 3
groups, each of 5 stands, and each stand takes it's shot on it's own -
do the BM's mean one stand loses it's shot, or are they a die modifier?
One of the best things about the new system is the way it's built, BM's
fit seamlessly into the whole thing.


> In my view, and I could be wrong, the persons that are whining about
> blast markers "end a game to soon", versus needing to "break" x amount
> of
> the enemy detachments or needing to play "capture the flag with
> bolters",
> have to much of a "GW only" game back ground. Epic 40K is, despite
> the
> dumb ass marketing that went into it, the first GW game done in a long
> time that feels like it was in fact written by a war gamer, not a
> figure
> painter. (example, command troops, even "Supreme Commanders" are not
> that
> big of a deal in E40K. Compare the results of loosing one to the
> results
> in ANY other current GW game).
>
-------> Don't jump on people too quick - there's quite a few of us who
spend more time playing other games, we just spend a disproportionate
amount of time thinking about Epic (good or bad). More realism does not
neccessarily a good _game_ make, though in this case (Blast Markers) I
think we have the best of both - a simple game mechanic which adds a
degree of realism, without complicating play or making us fill out
forms.
    I would still like to see more importance applied to objectives for
the battles in which they are used - right now they kind of turn up all
over the place without being worth the effort, thus adding little to
play. We could have the standard "meeting engagement", "bypass", and
"ambush" type battles without using objectives at all. For some battles
though, the objectives should outweigh most other considerations - I
_like_ the seize and hold type missions, especially if one side is
definitely on the defensive and one is on the attack. The "recovery"
type missions are fine too, though it can turn into a kind of football
game with high-mobility units - just assume they're fighting over the
body of a famed commander or something.
    In short I like objectives, I just don't like tossing them in
randomly to every scenario. The old "two armies blasting away at each
other just because" gets old after a while. Unless you're playing a
campaign, where you tend to come up with your own objectives...
    And I agree on the commander thing - though the commanders have
always been less important in Epic, even SM/TL I didn't see commander
types dominating the fights the way they do in the 28mm games. Partly
because they weren't that much better, partly because there was just too
much going on and they were too slow/shortranged. The exceptions for
this were Chaos & Tyranids, though that's more from the way the army
lists/cards are/were set up. It's nice to see "Commander" and "hero"
made into seperate abilities, and I'd say the "save" ability outweighs
the "doubled assault" component of "Hero", which makes sense as they are
supposed to have better equipment, especially defensive tech.

Chris Miller
(somewhat surprised at the lack of head-butting in this post)
Received on Mon Mar 30 1998 - 22:37:28 UTC

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