[Epic] Open Letter of appology, and rants about life.

From: J. Michael Looney <mlooney_at_...>
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 19:00:47 -0500

This is sort of weird. After reading AC's post here, I find my self in
the odd postion of needing to back down my retoric.

1) Looking over the older TO&E for Epic 1st ed, I am forced to state
that it appears that GW does have clues about how a military force is
laid out. The more I look at those, the more obvious this is. As far
as my rant about names of units, well, I am dyslexic telecom computer
programer who has wargaming and being an SCA herald as hobbies. The
exact correct name of a thing is important to me. Sort of like can a
tech marine carry a grav gun is to some people (see thread from hell in
the r.g.m.w newsgroup)

2) Epic 40K, despite not having my favorite army (Knights) is the best
set of rules that GW has ever made. Not "in a long time", not "after
"Snottling Revenge"", I mean ever. The lack of some items (Engineers,
ATGM, Med to Long range AA, smoke rounds, & infanty mortars) are, more
or less minor, and could be worked into the game with little work.

3) Re-reading some other sets of rules (Dirt Side II, Heavy Gear,
Mecha!) has lead me to the idea that no body like doing TO&E's
correctly, out side of hard core historical game designers. (If you
want to see some one that has a real bad case of my TO&E fetish, dig up
a copy of "Striker II" some time.) Why is this? My gut response is
"They don't have a clue", but I don't really think that is correct. My
next thought is that:

 <WARNING MAJOR RANT>
14 year olds (and that is a concept, not an age, if you follow me) that
REALLY care about how many points a "Tech Iron Priest with a
Mult-combo-melta-grav gun, Holo-Virba-electa field and a virus grenade"
is worth, and if using this thing is cheese or not, and that think that
a 5-20 man unit ever does any thing "strategic" vs "tactical" (and for
that matter does not understand strategic vs tactical thought) [calm
down, your doing it again...], don't have a clue about how the military
is laid out, and the game designers have found this out, and are dealing
with this as best as they can, which in the most part, means overlooking
the fine details. Epic 40K feels so much like what I think of as an
"operational" level (Bn, Bde, Div.) level game "normal" war game that I
forget that a good chunk of it's target buyers is the above 14 year
olds.
</RANT>
And I give my appology to any 14 year old out there that does know what
the major tactical differences were in the American, Russian, German and
British platoons of WWII and is offended by my rant. If you don't, well
your not a wargaming geek then ;-)

(Yes, I know they never made a game a called Snottling Revenge, but
think about it, some of the snots that got tossed into a SAG had to
been lost in the warp. They wiil be back some day....) (Ok, they won't)
(OK. maybe they will, they did give us rules for squig hopper racing)

Wait !!! I know what the problem is!

The "real and rational" rules were from the time of the Horus wars. As
time goes on, the boys at GW are reporting on the changes in the
Imperial forces, which are becoming less and less rational. The Lords
of Terra have been infiltrated by either Chaos or 'stealers. Or both!
That's it, Chaos and Trynids are destoying the Imperial military from
the inside, by attacking the nerve system, not the frame of the body.
It's a plot I tell you, a plot....
Received on Wed Apr 23 1997 - 00:00:47 UTC