[Epic] Epic 40K--I played it

From: Andy Skinner <askinner_at_...>
Date: Mon, 19 May 1997 08:50:29 -0500

My wife and I played the Sulfur river battle last night. First time
to really use my Geohex stuff--looked pretty good, though the river
was narrow. I used two HO scale train bridges. They are Warren
truss bridges, by Atlas, and seemed about right size to me. I have
to do something to their surfaces to make them not look like rail
road tracks. They included some metal rails that I used as supports
across the top.

The game took a long time, but we were looking up a lot of stuff.
It is definitely true that you can get in more turns in this game
than the old one. I think this is good, and I wonder if it is
mostly the ranges that affect this, or what.

I wasn't crazy about the rules, though. It was very hard to explain
Assaults and Firefights to my wife, and what effect the Whirlwind
barrages had, and the difference between Anti-tank and normal FP
shots. I think that lumping all the shots into FP was kinda boring--
I don't think that was the main thing that slowed down the game
before, and we enjoyed shooting at specific things more. Especially
barrages--I would put a barrage over something in the back of the
target detachment, it would add up that much FP, and then none of
the hits would get to the barrage, because hits come off the front.

I agree with making some things simpler. I think a lot of things
getting lumped into groups, and having less exceptions is better.
I just missed some things in that game.

I didn't like firefights or assaults. For assaults, if being in
base-to-base contact should be important, there should be more rules
for applying hits, like each unit in contact rolling a die against
one of the units in contact with it (the latter part being what is
not in Epic 40K). But I wish Assaults and Firefights were lumped
into one action, really, with base-to-base contact irrelevant. Also,
the dice really overwhelmed the combat bonuses, I thought.

War engines seemed very fast, being able to move twice. They get
to move in the assault phase, even when not moving into close
combat, right?

I think Space Marine could have used some ideas from here. I like
having movement, then shooting, then assault, with a second move
(normal rates) in the assault phase. I'm not sure what I'd do
for First Fire, but maybe just have two shooting phases and have
them shoot first, maybe allow them to hold shooting until the
assault phase.

So my choices now are:
* to give Epic 40K another chance, having the advantage of being a
  current GW game, increasing my chances of finding players;
* go back to Space Marine, though I would like some changes;
* hack my own rules up (probably Space Marine with the change of
  turn sequence mentioned above, maybe alternate implementations of
  units with exceptional rules), though finding players is hard;
* try NetEpic (I'd like to see how that project is going,
  specifically what do they want to be different than Space Marine);
* and Dirtside II. I've been threatening to go to that game for a
  long time, and have just postponed it because there are a few
  things that put me off. I find some things about infantry
  confusing, for instance.

Oh, our game ended in a draw. We both really shot up each other's
armies, and I think the battle might have ended either way had we
continued. By the end of the 6th turn, neither of us had any units
on either bridge (I had a blast marker and rolled a 1 twice in a row,
so couldn't move to my bridge), she had a Revenant with one hit and
some bikes, I had a bunch of Marines, their Rhinos, a Land Raider,
and some Vindicators, but was on the wrong side of the river to
bring that FP against her. We forgot a lot of stuff--placing blast
markers in close assaults and firefights, using Fate cards (I could
have used one to cancel hers, but forgot about it until we had already
rerolled the close assault), etc. The main rules are IMO more
complicated, so I might be happiest if we could get rid of the
exceptions in the old rules and could tweak the sequence. If my
wife continues to be my main opponent, we could use whatever rules
I want to.

I did like designing my army in more detail. I thought that was
a lot of fun.

andy
askinner_at_...
Received on Mon May 19 1997 - 13:50:29 UTC