|
Al-Saqr posted:Why corsairs and not the harlequin troupe? I liked their Aesthetic more atm. Though last I recall Harlequins are a top tier kill team and may consider them instead. Annointed fucked around with this message at 05:39 on Dec 13, 2022 |
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 05:35
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 09:03 |
|
|
Annointed posted:I liked their Aesthetic more atm. Though last I recall Harlequins are a top tier kill team and may consider them instead. It’s ok pick the team you want the most I’m just a little bit of an artsy fartsy so the harlequins are appealing to me visually.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 05:51
|
|
|
Gorkamorka History In 1997, Warhammer 40,000 was going strong in its second edition. At the time, Games Workshop was going through something of an experimental phase with its approach to marketing and IP. They were licensing 40k and Epic out for video games, White Dwarf regularly had free games printed in it, and the Black Library was about to kickoff in a major way. At the same time, someone must have really loving liked Mad Max because out of nowhere, Andy Chambers was directed to throw together another skirmish game for the 40k universe to compliment Necromunda. This came as a complete shock to Andy because he was under the impression that he would be working on Epic Fantasy next. However, 3rd Edition Epic 40,000 was basically dead on arrival and GW developed serious cold feet on producing anything else outside of their 28mm scale. Gorkamorka's development time, according to Chambers, was notoriously fast. In a retrospective, he went through all of the areas where he felt he had to compromise just to get the box out by Christmas. This included the quality of sculpts (especially the trukks), the coherency of the rules, the factions available at launch, and just the overall state of the product in general. One area where it was not lacking, however, was theme. Setting Thematically, Gorkamorka gets everything right, and may be the single most entertaining game that GW has ever produced. In Gorkamorka, you play a gang of orks flying around in dune buggies in a wasteland hunting down the scrap of a crashed space hulk and battling it out with other gangs looking to do the same. The name "Gorkamorka" refers to whatever the heck it is the mekboyz are building back in Mektown. Is it a gargant? A teleportation pad? A ship? No one knows, but everyone wants their space on it secured when the mekboyz turn it on. Gorkamorka is set on the planet of Angelis. Angelis was a backwater world with a small imperial outpost whose mission was to explore some weird ruins, but wasn't otherwise of note. One day, an ork space hulk dropped out of the warp while on its way to the Waaaagh (they're not really sure which one) and smashed into Angelis, wiping out all life on the planet and reducing the once temperate world to a desert wasteland. It's possible some orks survived the initial crash, but ultimately it's irrelevant. Gorkamorka is basically where the modern lore of the orks, including their biology, originates and one thing the game established is that orks are fungus and even if no living orks made it to the surface of Angelis, their spores survived the crash and began to grow in the badlands. Soon, the planet was teeming with orks and orks are going to ork, in this case very literally as ork spores contain the DNA of the entire ork ecosystem, from the lowly squig up to much more complex beasts of burden. The new crop of boyz got together and started sorting out the wreckage and from the scrap came Mektown. Everyone wanted to get back to the Waaagh, so the mekboyz got to tinkering and building... something. No one is quite sure what it was they were building and the Mekboyz who started it are long dead. All that was known is that one day, someone realized that the thing looked an awful lot like the ork god Gork. This was immediately corrected by another ork because clearly it looked like the other ork god Mork. This difference of opinion led to Mektown being burned to the ground. The orks realized that arguing over what the thing was wasn't very productive, though it was a good scrap. So they agreed to refer to it as "Gorkamorka" and to keep the fighting outside of Mektown to prevent any future accidents. Now, orks spend their time battling in the wasteland finding more chunks of the space hulk to bring back to the mekboyz to be incorporated into Gorkamorka. The most successful boyz are then awarded their tags and are guaranteed a spot on Gorkamorka on the faithful day when the mekboyz decide that it's finished. Digganob An expansion to Gorkamorka was released called Digganob. As it turns out, the orks weren't alone on Angelis. When the hulk came down, there were survivors, two different factions of them in fact. A group of fairly advanced humanoids, utilizing laser based technology, survived the apocalypse in the wasteland, but were exposed to significant amounts of radiation and over the years degenerated into conscious horrors, called "Muties" by the orks. The Muties stand apart from the other gangs because they ride mutated beasts instead of vehicles. Potentially weirder than the Muties are the Diggas. The Diggas are another group of humans, but unlike the Muties, they survived by being deep underground, literally "diggers", and tend to live in settlements in the shadow of the ruins, which seem to offer them some sort of protection. The Diggas are likely survivors of the Imperial outpost, or maybe they were indigenous to Angelis to begin with, but now they're an ork cargo-cult. They paint themselves green, speak in an ork dialect, and refer to their leaders as "nobs" (hence "Digganob"). The orks find this amusing and tolerate their presence in Mektown when they come to trade, but have no desire to let them on Gorkamorka proper. They also have no mercy for them in the wasteland, but will not go near the Digga settlements. Strange things happen to orks who get too close. Every now and then, an ork boy will decide to seek his fortune and prove his courage by traveling out to the ruins, but most are never heard from again. Those that manage to come back speak of horrors untold, great tombs buried in the sand, and skeletal machines haunting the shadows. Perhaps the ruins are of an older and greater civilization than even the Imperium. Remnants of an Eldar maiden world? A webway portal to Eldar corsairs? Or perhaps something more sinister, perhaps the embodiment of death itself. We'll never know for sure! It's obviously Necrons, but there was never a second expansion or new edition to introduce them into the game proper. Oh, and one other thing I forgot to mention is that the orks have all agreed that while grots are useful slaves, they're not really people, and of course have no business on Gorkamorka. Any grot who serves his gang well can expect payment in the form of slightly less abuse from his masters, but no more, and certainly no tags of his own. The grots aren't particularly big fans of this policy and so have started talking to one another about "organizing" and "seizing the means of producing Gorkamorka" for themselves. Enter Da Red Gobbo and his Rebel Grots.  The Rebel Grots are the final faction in Gorkamorka and they're there to fight for the little guy, literally. They ride around the wasteland on wind powered vehicles and prove that you don't have to be big to be green. Mechanics Mechanically, Gorkamorka is built on 40k 2e, which means a lot of charts, modifiers, and opposed melee roles. It has a lot of similarity to old Necromunda, especially in the campaign system, but it has rules for vehicles tacked on as every scenario starts with your boyz piled high on vehicles to get to the scrap. You can run down models on foot, ram other vehicles, leap from trukk to trak to strap stickbombs to the engine, and even lay siege to an ork fort that looks suspiciously like an oil refinery. The game is concentrated madness with enough orkish tomfoolery to make anyone fall in love with it. Orks can get injured, lose limbs, and even strap a pneumatic peg to their knee stump to fight another day. It's glorious. It's also dated and the mechanics were clunky even when it was new. It does exactly what it says on the tin, but you might find yourself having to creatively interpret gaps in the rules when you run into a circumstance that isn't explicitly covered. But that's not really the point of the game. Gorkamorka is all about crazy conversions and going wild with the theme. You can make an all biker gang or you can convert models from other games into monstrosities that would make George Miller blush or build things from scratch out of the scrap you have at your hobby table like the mekboyz would. It's up to you and it's great. Legacy This is the game that killed the Specialist Games studio at Games Workshop. Oops. As I said, Games Workshop was sort of all over the place with their brand and IP management at the time and didn't have a good grasp of things like "market research". I guess the executives expected this to be a way bigger hit than it was and as a result, they poured a ton of money into filling a warehouse with starter boxes. Supposedly this included a massive order of a French version that just didn't sell at all as well. Eventually, GW decided that Gorkamorka had to go so they literally gave away the $75 starter set with White Dwarf subscriptions. This was how I got my set in the late 90s. Best $50 I ever spent. The Specialist range would survive for a few more years and in different forms, but GW was terrified of any more of these self-contained games and by the mid-00s or so after lingering in web only status, Mordheim, Necromunda, BFG, Blood Bowl, Gorkamorka, and Epic Armageddon were all scrubbed from GW's website. More importantly though, Gorkamorka completely changed how orks were presented in 40k. The ork faction in Rogue Trader and 2e were a mishmash of different design choices with a greater emphasis on ork subfactions (klans), such as savage orks and goffs. Gorkamorka was the birth of a single ork design language that persists to this day. A lot of the fluff and artwork were ported wholesale from Gorkamorka books and White Dwarf articles to modern 40k codexes. Basically every extant ork model is an evolution of something that came from Gorkamorka, and for a long time they were literally the same models. This also means that you can easily start collecting Gorkamorka today just by buying ork kits that are currently available. Resources While out of production, Yaktribe has most everything you need. There's also an active Facebook group where people post items for sale and trade and discuss the rules. There's also a community rulebook available, but I haven't read that myself. It's also just a fun modeling project and for that you don't really need to have any rules or official models. Just make something cool and fun and appropriately orkish. https://yaktribe.games/community/vault/categories/gorkamorka.11/ https://www.facebook.com/groups/Gorkamorka Random Gorkamorka Stuff of Mine    
Atlas Hugged fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Dec 13, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 07:42
|
|
|
Al-Saqr posted:It’s ok pick the team you want the most I’m just a little bit of an artsy fartsy so the harlequins are appealing to me visually. Playin g harlequins makes you a bit of That Guy so voidscarred are good choice if you still want space elves
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 08:13
|
|
|
Atlas Hugged posted:Gorkamorka I loving LOVE Gorkamorka
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 10:23
|
|
|
Atlas Hugged posted:Gorkamorka This is an amazing post, and in a Just World, it would be the first post of a new GorkaMorka thread 
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 10:32
|
|
|
I was only sort of aware of Gorkamorka but man that write up had me literally laughing out loud. Ork=best faction. Does anyone in here actually play MESBG? I really dig the game and want to do more with it. I know that AoS is the better supported game and all that, but Middle Earth has this sort of "quaint" aesthetic that really calls to me.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 11:25
|
|
|
Claiming First Kill Team! Edit: Goddamn iPad Professor Shark fucked around with this message at 11:30 on Dec 18, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 12:21
|
|
|
Professor Shark posted:Claiming First Kill Team! Lol awesome! It’s been a while since I saw those classic scouts
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 12:24
|
|
|
I'm glad my little write-up of Gorkamorka was so well-received. I have a desert themed mat on order, so I'll make sure to get some more thematic photos of my poo poo taken down the road. I'll also do a MESBG post later tonight or tomorrow, but I'm in Southeast Asia so adjust your clocks accordingly.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 12:42
|
|
|
Warcry effort post! Warcry  Warcry started out as an Age of Sigmar boxed skirmish game where a small group of specific chaos god agnostic, but very flavourful chaos teams fought over the attention of the Chaos gods in the Eightpoints (an island that exists between all 8 mortal realms, and is one of the most coveted locations in the Cosmos). Official site - https://ageofsigmar.com/games/warcry/ Original How to Play Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViibcFMTQRU  This was the original box (now OOP and hard to find) which came with 2 warbands and a beautiful terrain set. It was followed by 6 specific box releases of groups like the pictured Splintered Fang, Cypher Lords etc (pictured below), along with some of the Kill Team style 'mat and themed terrain' boxes that were often great deals. It includes some of the coolest squads sculpts the studio have put out.    It has recently had a new edition which added things like reactions, unlike most (non Kill Team) GW games the entire core rules of the Revised edition are free - along with the rules for all of the warbands in various 'compendiums' grouped by Grand Alliance. Free Core Rules and Compendiums - https://www.warhammer-community.com/downloads/#warcry The excellent WarCom Warcry Warband Builder - https://www.warhammer-community.com/warband-builder/ Previously GW had a series of books and card packs, and themed boxes that added most of the smaller units that would be eligible for the game across all of the existing Grand Alliances (and some specific cool mercenary monsters like the Mindstealer Sphiranx pictured) but these are now slightly out of data and superseded by the new free rules. Also worthy of note the rules for almost all of the Warcry Underworlds warbands were added as a group called 'Bladeborn' late in the first edition, but haven't quite got full updated rules for the revised edition yet. Like Kill Team GW has recently committed to support this one for a while with a new big box of terrain and 2 warbands every quarter. We've seen 2 so far. Heart of Ghur and Sundered Fate, where action has moved out of the Eightpoints (and Chaos specific warbands) and into the Gnarlwood fighting around the ruins of a crashed Seraphon spaceship and what can only be described as a Meat Forest. if you have any AOS models you likely have enough to put together a Warband to give it a try - I tried it off the back of someone on the forums say it was the funnest game GW have put out and I don't think they're wrong!    The rules for each fighter are simple and also clearly were designed to sell cards without having to localise into each language. You can see points cost at top right (games typically play at around 1000 points), range, number of attacks, strength and damage/crit damage all listed fairly obviously on each weapon. Bottom right has speed, toughness and wounds. Each fighter also has 'runemarks' (the bearded faces on those cards), that map to generic and team specific abilities each team can activate using the dice resources. Essentially you roll a pool of dice each round and group them up by results, singles (which determine initiative), doubles, triples etc., with quads (four dice with the same result) activating some of the more powerful abilities you'll have access to. Sometimes the value will matter, 4x6s will be more powerful than 4x2s. It has all the usual modern stuff, alternating activations, you divide your warband up into 3 groups for deployment and dynamic missions can be generated on the fly with terrain, objective, deployment, twist decks, and they've recently added some decent 'competitive' scenarios.   Some pictures of my Warband, and some actions shots on my magnetized Warcry board -   
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 13:39
|
|
|
Al-Saqr posted:Lol awesome! Thanks- I’ll try to upload some better ones later, I was just testing out my lighting system. It made the lighter skinned models look better than they are and the darker skinned ones considerably darker, for some reason. I really wanted to buy Scouts when I was in Jr High but couldn’t afford them, so this was a great opportunity to put a squad together! I’m considering buying the remaining four ccw models to make its complete set (ignoring the super skinny Space Wolf Scouts), but I’m all zapped out on the paint scheme for now.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 13:51
|
|
|
Atlas Hugged posted:Gorkamorka I was saying to my LGS friends, There needs to be a necromunda ash wastes expansion thats just GorkaMorka. Sorta like a stand alone expansion. The expansion could basically be the story of GorkaMorka, your fighting orks and collecting scrap on Angelis, but it could also put in there that "If you want, you can play as orks in a Necromunda campaign too! heres how that works" then go about inserting them into a Necro Orks have attacked Necromunda at some point so theyre probably still bopping around somewhere so its not impossible lore wise to play as them. I love Orks so much and i just want GorkaMorka. Hihohe fucked around with this message at 14:24 on Dec 13, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 14:18
|
|
|
Hihohe posted:I was saying to my LGS friends, There needs to be a necromunda ash wastes expansion thats just GorkaMorka. Sorta like a stand alone expansion. There was a lot of talk about this back during the last time Necromunda was supported, probably somewhere between 03-05, but it obviously never came to fruition. It's the easiest way to do it if they were going to.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 14:26
|
|
|
Hihohe posted:I was saying to my LGS friends, There needs to be a necromunda ash wastes expansion thats just GorkaMorka. Sorta like a stand alone expansion. There was a whole hive that was infested with Orks. That's why the Imperial Fists have a garrison on the planet now. I'd love a GM game, but I feel like GW wants to keep the streams separated and we're unlikely to see them in NM. Also, GM was a colossal failure when it was released, and the last time GW released an Ork-centric game (Speed Freeks,) people pretty much threw away the game and kept the vehicles. They've got plenty of reason to avoid a GM reboot, as cool as it would be. IMO, GM should be like Dark Future/Gaslands, and allow you to
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 14:34
|
|
|
berzerkmonkey posted:There was a whole hive that was infested with Orks. That's why the Imperial Fists have a garrison on the planet now. I'd love a GM game, but I feel like GW wants to keep the streams separated and we're unlikely to see them in NM. Also, GM was a colossal failure when it was released, and the last time GW released an Ork-centric game (Speed Freeks,) people pretty much threw away the game and kept the vehicles. They've got plenty of reason to avoid a GM reboot, as cool as it would be. I agree with a lot of this, but Speed Freeks also came out at the end of GW's period where basically every new release got a boxed game of its own. There were half a dozen or so of these things floating around at the time. It was more or less how GW justified a bundle without admitting there was a discount. I think Speed Freeks sold for cheaper than the cost of the vehicles combined and that was more or less true for all of those boxed games they had. I don't think a lot of people were playing Lost Patrol or Betrayal at Calth either. To your final suggestion, I don't hate the idea of a Gorkamorka that was just the car combat, but I think it overlooks a lot of the appeal of the game. There are very few skirmish games that mix vehicles and models on foot with meaningful interaction between the two. Deadzone for instance has loads of vehicles in it, but they're not set apart from infantry. They just have a more robust statline. It's not like you can scale an enemy walker or sabotage the engine of a goblin guntrack. Gameplay is faster sure because they don't have unique mechanics that work differently than models on foot do, but the whole point of a skirmish game is that you can include those hard distinctions and granularity because you're only juggling a dozen models a side. That's really what made Gorkamorka shine.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 14:47
|
|
|
Gorka Morka at AT scale would give the vehicles the same 40mm footprint as imperial knights, and open the door to AT scale stompas and extremely satisfying gargants.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 15:23
|
|
|
moths posted:Gorka Morka at AT scale would give the vehicles the same 40mm footprint as imperial knights, and open the door to AT scale stompas and extremely satisfying gargants. While cool, that would be the opposite of the vibe of GorkaMorka
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 15:25
|
|
|
James Workshop here! Working hard to bring you only the best in everything we do here at Games Workshop. The OP has been updated, go take a look and see what you think. Cheers!
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 16:22
|
|
|
Why does james workshop look like hes trying to poo poo his pants?
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 16:26
|
|
|
Squibsy posted:While cool, that would be the opposite of the vibe of GorkaMorka Yeah focusing on the vehicles would be cool but GM really relies on individuals to give you a sense of scale and context.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 16:27
|
|
|
The Gorkamorka fucks up are still insane to me. Electronics had been printing multi-language instruction booklets for like 30 years by that point. Why on earth would you print French, Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese copies of the entire box in equal amounts?
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 16:41
|
|
|
EdsTeioh posted:I was only sort of aware of Gorkamorka but man that write up had me literally laughing out loud. Ork=best faction. I have never played a game, but with the new box I am interested in trying to drum up interest at my lgs. I watched a couple battle reports and it seemed like a good time! I'll post if anything comes out of it, but I am definitely going to paint at least. AoS is really cool, but I appreciate the simpler tolkien fantasy style.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 18:12
|
|
|
For the new thread here are two of my kill teams Nurgle aligned Chaos Legionnaires, aka the Florida Men  And the saturday morning cartoon ork kommandos, complete with a grot who procured his equipment on sight  
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 18:24
|
|
|
Oh nice, did that masked head fit your Snipa Boy without any messing about? I've been finding the filter coils on a lot of the masks have been screwing the fit up, so it's nice to see that at least one works.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 19:34
|
|
|
I believe that one fit well, they weren't like the novitiates where the faces didn't fit every cowl. Not a big fan of the novitiate kit. The kroot and breacher ones are awesome though. Plenty of options for creativity there
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 19:41
|
|
|
Yeah, that Kroot's a beaut. I've got Kommandos to get through and then Corsairs and Guard still on sprue, but there's something about those awful cannibal scavengers that's so appealing to me. Maybe when they're released seperately.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 19:43
|
|
|
EdsTeioh posted:I was only sort of aware of Gorkamorka but man that write up had me literally laughing out loud. Ork=best faction. MESBG is my main game at the moment, and I really like it a lot. "Better supported" is perhaps subjective, as MESBG gets regular FAQs and erratas, and a new supplement every two years, without the sweeping changes to rules and balance that invalidate entire armies. The core rules have been fairly stable for years, and the balance is solid enough that you can mostly bring what you want and have a good game. Also, as with some other specialist games, MESBG has strong 'COOL DAD' energy, where player are generally a bit older and just want to have a fun game instead of trying to pubstomp at the local GW. As for the 'quaint' aesthetic, the majority of basic troops are old enough to drink, but hold up fairly well and are actually very fun to paint. They're low on excessive details and pouches, so painting a bunch of them in an evening is totally doable. Some images, for flavour.  My Moria gobs moving in for the kill on some Uruk-Hai scouts.  My friend playing my gobs against my Rivendell elves.    Literally me irl.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 19:44
|
|
|
Bad Decision Dino posted:MESBG is my main game at the moment, and I really like it a lot. "Better supported" is perhaps subjective, as MESBG gets regular FAQs and erratas, and a new supplement every two years, without the sweeping changes to rules and balance that invalidate entire armies. The core rules have been fairly stable for years, and the balance is solid enough that you can mostly bring what you want and have a good game. Also, as with some other specialist games, MESBG has strong 'COOL DAD' energy, where player are generally a bit older and just want to have a fun game instead of trying to pubstomp at the local GW. As for the 'quaint' aesthetic, the majority of basic troops are old enough to drink, but hold up fairly well and are actually very fun to paint. They're low on excessive details and pouches, so painting a bunch of them in an evening is totally doable. Do a writeup for the OP, do it, dooooooooo eet.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 20:32
|
|
|
Indolent Bastard posted:Do a writeup for the OP, do it, dooooooooo eet. Atlas Hugged said he'd write one, but if he doesn't get around to it, I'll do one later in the week.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 21:02
|
|
|
I love Lord of the Rings as a setting, and "COOL DAD" energy is exactly my brand. Specifically, I have fond memories of going to the Metreon in San Francisco and seeing all the Middle Earth models in the GW store there when they first came out. If I knew anyone around here who played it, I'd get into it, but for now it's Underworlds and Warcry and maybe Kill Team instead.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 21:04
|
|
|
Muir posted:I love Lord of the Rings as a setting, and "COOL DAD" energy is exactly my brand. Specifically, I have fond memories of going to the Metreon in San Francisco and seeing all the Middle Earth models in the GW store there when they first came out. If I knew anyone around here who played it, I'd get into it, but for now it's Underworlds and Warcry and maybe Kill Team instead. Well, the new two-player starter box Battle for Osgiliath just dropped, and it has everything you need to get started for two players (2 decent size forces, full size new rule book and terrain) and comes with a cool little mini-campaign. You could probably get it and just trick people into playing it as a cool wargame in a box. EDIT: Also, there's a stripped down version of the rules available for free online now, which is both cool, and good: https://www.warhammer-community.com/downloads/#middle-earth-strategy-battle-game Bad Decision Dino fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Dec 13, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 21:30
|
|
|
Epic Epic, aka Epic Armageddon, aka Epic 40k, aka NetEA, is a 6mm-scale tabletop miniatures wargame set in the Warhammer 40k universe. At this scale, players can field huge armies with several hundred troops, tanks and other war machines, aircraft, titans, and even orbital bombardment. The standard game has players competing to capture several objectives on the table, and the rules emphasize intermixed player turns, suppression and morale effects, and battlefield maneuver. A typical game might last four to six full turns. During each turn, players mostly alternate activating formations, each of which comprise one or two titans, a handful of heavy vehicles, or several stands of small vehicles or troops. Players must declare general orders for each formation, roll to activate it, and then make movement and shooting actions. At long range, only heavy arms are fired; troops mostly exist to take casualties. But when formations crash into each other, a mini-battle of close combat is played out, with individual stands of troops exchanging fire or getting into direct melee - these skirmishes each somewhat resemble an entire game of Warhammer 40k at 28mm scale, but a full Epic match might have several of these take place. Players can push their luck and attempt to activate multiple formations in a row, but a failed leadership roll can leave a formation stuck in a defensive posture, refusing to move. Whenever formations take fire they take "blast counters" and when the number of counters equals or exceeds the number of surviving units in the formation, it automatically breaks. Broken units can rally, but are very vulnerable and tend to flee out of position. To win the game, players must hold objective markers with unbroken units: often the last turn of a game of Epic involves a desperate attempt to dislodge an enemy formation from an objective, or a final die roll to see if a broken unit can rally in time to claim one last marker. Close victories and near defeats are common, and even a game that starts off very badly for one side can be turned around. Epic rewards strategic and tactical thinking; few armies work well just pushed forward toward the enemy lines, and list building is an important aspect of the game. Each army list plays with a unique flavor: eldar are highly maneuverable and expert skirmishers, space marines are very tough and brutal in close combat, orks flood the field with massed low-quality troops, and imperial guard specialize in war machines and bombardment tactics. History In 1988, Games Workshop was experimenting with expanding its core brands and model ranges with self-contained box set games set in their fantasy and 40k universes. That year they released Adeptus Titanicus, a tabletop skirmish game between doofy looking beetle-backed "titans", giant war machines made by the Imperium and their eternal enemies, Chaos. In order to make these multi-story-tall robots fit on a reasonable tabletop, the scale was set to 6mm, in contrast with the usual 28mm+ scale of the rest of their minis. This set the minis at about the same size as battletech miniatures, and it seems GW was hoping to compete directly with that game, which was pretty popular at the time. The set proved sufficiently popular to continue to invest, and the immediately obvious way to do that was to add ground forces at the same scale: tanks and other vehicles, infantry, etc; and to add in more factions. Rules for infantry and vehicles were first published in White Dwarf 109, and a boxed set with opposed space marine factions called Space Marine came out the following year. Now players could merge the two sets, with plentiful plastic minis and styrofoam (AT) or card (SM) terrain provided in the boxes. The Codex Titanicus publication unified the two rulesets to enable official full-scale battles. A key feature of this 6mm game was that it was finally possible to field something resembling an actual army, in warhammer 40k. The 40k 28mm game typically featured a couple dozen models per side - these were all metal miniature armies, very expensive to collect, and the days of expanded forces and commonly cramming 50 or even 100 models per side were yet to come. 2nd edition Epic plus a new box called Titan Legions continued the game as a union of two standalones in 1994, but by then GW was already selling a large range of models for several factions including orks, eldar, imperial guard, space marines, chaos, squats, and tyranids. In 1997, GW finally unified the game with a third edition called Epic 40,000. Major revisions to the rules were made, which proved to be unpopular - current players suddenly found their existing forces suboptimal, many of the fiddly details of the earlier editions were eliminated, basically grognards were pissed off but the cost of entry for new players had become somewhat daunting even for a minis game. The boxed set also included space marine and ork armies, which was perhaps a mistake too: players of those factions already had their core troops, and players of other factions didn't necessarily want to pay for forces they didn't intend to play with. Base sizes were also adjusted, although the old bases were still legal. Broadly this edition has been considered a failure, and GW withdrew it within six months or so. Some years later, GW produced its final version, with two sourcebooks: Epic: Armageddon, by which this edition is usually called, and Epic: Swordwind, which includes rules for additional factions. This game was actually playtested and revised before publication, and it provides army lists at a more granular level - for example, instead of a generic eldar lists, Swordwind provides a list for Biel-Tan, and instead of "orks" it's got a list for Warlord Snagga's orks. Since publication, fans have produced dozens more lists for the various factions, most of which have had significant model support either by GW or by other producers over the years. Support and resources GW long ago discontinued all support for Epic, but E:A has enjoyed worldwide fan support, including an organized "Net EA Rules Committee" maintaining and updating the rules with minor revisions to improve balance and gameplay. Net EA is available for free online and provides complete tournament rules for Epic, including lists for armies never produced by GW such as Tau and Adeptus Mechanicus. You can download all the rules here, and there's a fan-built online force builder here There is another online committee and playgroup, https://netepic.org/, which focuses on the earlier Space Marine (2nd edition epic) edition of the game. It's much less commonly played, though, and probably not the first spot for someone just now interested in playing Epic. Models for Epic are available at surprisingly reasonable prices on ebay, and many players purchase third party models as proxies or even 3d print their own forces. Leperflesh fucked around with this message at 21:38 on Dec 13, 2022 |
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 21:33
|
|
|
I should add that I have not been paying attention, I know there's been a recent adeptus titanicus game but I assume it's not really epic, right? If there's recent developments that should be added, feel free to edit that writeup as needed.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 21:39
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:I should add that I have not been paying attention, I know there's been a recent adeptus titanicus game but I assume it's not really epic, right? If there's recent developments that should be added, feel free to edit that writeup as needed.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 21:46
|
|
|
OK sounds like it should get its own writeup, then. 
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 22:35
|
|
|
Leperflesh posted:OK sounds like it should get its own writeup, then. It does. Fun fact, the OG Adeptus Titanicus (1988) game is the origin of the Horus Heresy. Basically they made titan molds, but both sides would have the same models. Why would identical models fight? CIVIL WAR!
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 22:51
|
|
|
The current AT is also not 6mm, more like 8mm so the two ranges are not compatible. Typical GW. I was a big fan of Space Marine. A buddy and I did two issues of an amateur zine, got picked up by a publisher, which folder before the second professional issue was published (although I do still have a draft print). I'll look for my PDFs. One of the cool things about Space Marine was that you could collect an entire space marine chapter, which some people did.
|
|
#
?
Dec 13, 2022 23:27
|
|
|
mllaneza posted:The current AT is also not 6mm, more like 8mm so the two ranges are not compatible. Typical GW. It's a little muddier than that. The scale used for new AT and new Aeronautica is exactly 25% of the size of the 40k version of the model. What scale are models in 40k you ask? Well, the answer to that is gently caress You. The original Epic was even looser. They were very limited by the metal & plastic casting technology of the time, so models like the original plastic Warlord or Imperator titans were made a fraction of their supposed height in the fluff, probably around 3mm scale. Meanwhile figurehead units like greater daemons, the eldar avatar, hive tyrants, and carnifexes were originally upscaled to be equal or larger than a knight model. Partly to help show enough details on the model but also to help make them stand out on the tabletop. As those units were updated in 40k scale they all shrunk to some degree but then started to grow again in later updates, because gently caress You.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 00:01
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 26, 2024 09:03 |
|
|
True, I was... abstracting it. Another one for the "forgotten" pile: Advanced Space Crusade. Space Marine Scouts explore a Tyrannid Bioship and somehow don't get instantly murdered. Very nice set of skirmish rules based on a d12.
|
|
#
?
Dec 14, 2022 00:07
|
|