Re: [Epic] game scale

From: Peter Ramos <pramos1_at_...>
Date: Wed, 26 Feb 1997 21:25:58 +0000

> a difference in how players accept the game. The whole scale issue is one
> of my biggest beefs with GW, especially in 40K, and I'm interested to hear
> what you (all) think about including this discussion in the rules.
>

Thank you for the reply. Since I started playing GW games I have always
been bothered by GW's lack of fully understanding what the scale and
scope of a game means. Rick Priestly is also a historical gamer and
actually published rules on the English Civil war(quite good by the
way), but it seems Priestly has less to do with designing the games
nowadays and I dont know what gaming background AC and JJ have.

40k is a skirmish game, technically this is the smallest scope of any
wargame. It deals with the mam to man aspect of warfare so, the rule
should enphasize individual model stats and preformance(like 40k). The
smaller the scope of a game the larger the figs since the tabletop
represents at most several hundred meters of ground. Epic is clasified
as a grand tactical game in scope, therefore figs are small to capture
the realism of battling armies and the battlefield represent a score of
miles. GW has done well with the skirmish game, but unfortunately epic
being of grander scope (grand tactical) continuosly suffers from
inclusion of skimmish type mechanics. What I have heard of e40k and its
focus on the assault and infantry is another return to make a grand
tactical game look and feel like a skirmish game (which it is not!). The
real scope of epic the basic unit of movement is the detachment a large
body of men, therefore present method of resolving close combat is
detailed enough for this scale( 2 d6 + CAF), getting in to more details
of smaller scale in epic will invariably lead to problems, thus the more
it looks like 40k-the less epic it will be, different scopes and scales
do not mix!!

On your opinion of including a small explanation of this for net epic,
sure, I think its important people know WHY a game is played in a
certain way and WHAT matters for good play at the scope and scale.

Peter
Received on Wed Feb 26 1997 - 21:25:58 UTC