Re: [Epic] The return of Looney Rants!

From: David Lado <lado_at_...>
Date: Thu, 8 May 1997 12:37:32 -0400 (EDT)

>>> 1. Great gargant- the cannon ball round from the gutbuster
>>>would kill any titan it could get a bead on DEAD. No ifs ands or buts.
>>
>>What about IF it doesn't scatter or IF it actually hits the titan after
>>taking down all of its shields (50/50 on that hit...) and IF the titan
>>fails its save (quite likely at -4) and IF you roll a 6 on the
>>damage - well THEN it kills the titan stone motherless dead.
>
> -----> Ball rounds roll to hit, they don't scatter first, and if you do
>hit the shields are gone.

Check page 58 of the TL rules (or 48 of warlords):

"Place the template over your target and then roll for scatter as you would
for a barrage. Anything under the template takes a hit and makes a saving
throw with a -4 modifier."

So, when shooting at a titan or squat SHV, you must either hit it bang on
on land in front so that it rolls in.

I would put the odds at 1/2 of hitting (that's optimistic)
Then a 2/3 of damaging (almost all lower leg locations have a 1+ save)
Then a 1/6 chance of destroying the titan.

So the odds of killing a titan are 2/36 or 5.5%. In my experience, the
gutbuster was the most over-rated weapon in the game. Many players
lived in fear of what the ball-round *might* do, when in fact, half
the time it did nothing.

<snip dragstas>

>>And to make it worse your shots at it bounce back at you most the time.
>
>Well, that's 50/50 in my experience... Probably more like 70/30 since
>I'm probably not very close to the dragsters and he (the orcs) is.
>
> ----> never had a huge problem with this

I fielded the Renegade Meks in most of my games, with 2 dragstas in the
unit. My experience was that most reflected shots hit nothing. Those
that did hit something were *much* more likely to hit an ork unit. In
all the games I've played, I've only seen a couple of reflected shots
hit enemy units, other wise they hit nearby orks. Generally, shots
fired at dragstas in my games travel at least half their range to get
to the dragsta, making it impossible for them to bounce back unless
there are some fast moving troops nearby. It could be a result of
the fact I generally keep the RMs to the back or off to the side of
my main force (so the dragstas don't block my own shots).


> -----> The problem with Epic wasn't too bad for those of us who rode
>along with it as it grew, but trying to explain it to someone new was
>tough - it wasn't played with rules so much as exceptions.

Amen to that! That is exactly how I felt. The game has 20 rules
and 200 exceptions, each different from the other in some random way.
The only way to solve many of the weird rules interactions was to
create whole new rules (which were, of course, new exceptions).

David
Received on Thu May 08 1997 - 16:37:32 UTC