and forth between the players.
- A unique and intuitive morale system
Using ‘Blast Markers’ instead of ‘Leadership Tests’, the more Blast Markers a formation has, the more its Morale is shaken. Take too many blast markers too quickly and the formation becomes broken, easy eh?
- Complex gameplay
Many wargames are Complicated, but few are Complex.
- Simple rules
Many wargames have complicated rules, few genuinely need them.
- Vast armies
See the boxout for my typical standard-sized Imperial Guard army list:
Very roughly, that’s an army that would be eight or nine thousands points in Warhammer 40k.
To put it another way, a standard game of Epic is at 3000pts, and the entire Epic Deathwing (100 Terminators) is 1625pts. A Warlord Titan is 850pts, and a Chimera is 25pts. Yes you can fit the entire Deathwing into a game of Epic and take a Warlord Titan too, and still have 525pts left over to spend on other formations, or maybe add Librarians and Chaplains etc to your Terminators....
- Razor-sharp balance
It is nigh-impossible to write a ‘Beardy’ army
list in Epic... the game system is so balanced that games are decided by the Tactics you and your opponent use
(Modified somewhat by the dice!) not by the army list you bring to the table.
- Varying movement speeds.
Not just different movement speeds for
different units (Although that does exist, Tactical Marines move at 15cm per move, whilst Land Raiders move 25cm and Rhinos move 30cm...), but also different types of movement style, so that you can move a formation once and shoot, or move it twice and shoot with a -1 modifier to-hit, or not move at all and receive a +1 modifier to-hit.
- Overwatch
Overwatch is cool.
- A thriving Tournament Scene.
If you live in the UK, there are ~15 Epic Tournaments per year, most near Nottingham but some down South too, so if you’re into Tournaments you’ll find that the best of the best are more than willing to show you how to play the game.
- The rulebook is free.
You can download the rulebook for free from the Specialist Games section of the Games Workshop website.
- Tiny, tiny tanks.
Standard Guard 3000pt List
1 Baneblade SHT •
1 Stormsword SHT •
9 Leman Russ Tanks •
1 Leman Russ Vanquisher Tank •
1 Hydra Anti-Aircraft Flak Tank •
2 Thunderbolt Fighter Aircraft • 1 Warhound Titan • 3 Hellhound Tanks • 40 Storm Troopers •
130 Guardsmen (Including a few •
officers in there somewhere) 4 Sentinels
•
14 Chimeras (To carry the •
Guardsmen)
4 Valkyrie Transports (To carry the 40 •
Storm Troopers) 6 Commissars •
6mm tanks are not uncool.
Nothing is cooler than 6mm scale Land Raiders. Not even Tony Stark.
let’s ask, ‘what armies are available?’
Multiple army lists are available for each army type, so that a ‘Steel Legion’ army list (Mechanized infantry in chimeras with many tank types as backup) will look very different to a Baran Siegemasters (Low-tech Siege army with trenchworks and static gun platforms) army list, even though they’re ostensibly the same army type (Imperial Guard). This is an approach that GW has flirted with Warhammer 40,000 over the years, but has never been able to achieve. Here’s a brief listing:
Space Marines (Both Codex Marines and •
a whole swathe of variant Chapter army lists)
Imperial Guard (Steel Legion, Cadians, •
Death Korps of Krieg, Elysian Drop Troopers, Baran Siegemasters, etc..) Orks (Ork Waaghs, Feral Orks, Gargant •
Bigmobs, etc...)
Chaos Space Marines (The Black Legion, •
Red Corsairs, World Eaters, Thousand Sons, Death Guard, etc...)
Chaos Lost & The Damned •
Eldar (Pretty much every craftworld you •
can think of has an army list)
Tau (Currently only a ‘generic’ army list is •
available, but more Septs will doubtless come online in time)
Adeptus Mechanicus Titan Legion & •
Skitarii Army
Inquisitorial army (Including awesome •
6mm Grey Knight models from Forgeworld)
let’s ask, ‘what’s missinG?’
Sadly, there are still a couple of armies not readily available at Epic scale.
Dark Eldar • Tyranids • Necrons •
Games Workshop doesn’t currently have the resources available to have a team dedicated to expanding the Epic range.
However, the Tyranids were available during Epic’s 2nd and 3rd editions and a determined Epic player can source an army from Ebay (Albeit at a premium). Likewise a few Necron models were released by GW in the ancient mists of time, and Ebay is again your friend. Both the Dark Eldar and the Necrons are featured in the Epic : Raiders supplement book, which is available alongside this issue of Firebase. I suggest you read it as it’s 130 pages of awesome, and it’ll tell you in-depth the easiest ways to proxy / obtain good Dark Eldar and Necron models.
let’s ask, ‘so what’s the best way to Get started
If you decide to dip your foot in the Epic ocean, I recommend you download the Epic rulebook... you’ll find that if you put together a typical 3000pt army list, it’ll tend to cost around £80 (It’s an oft-repeated fact that a company and a half of Epic Marines costs less £££ than a single tactical squad for 40k... and in Epic they’re worth 1500pts!). Anyways, I don’t recommend you buy a whole army all at once. Probably the best way to check if you’re likely to enjoy playing Epic is to buy a £12 plastic infantry boxed set. Either a Marine, Chaos/L&TD, Imperial Guard, Eldar or Ork boxed set will give you hundreds of models (The £12 Ork boxed set contains 244 greenskins of various types I believe, for example) and a good variety of unit types to have a few playtest games with your mates at small points values, say
around 1000pts (Equivalent to playing a 500pt game of 40k before jumping in and buying a full 1500pt army).
If you enjoy it, grab yourself a Thunderhawk Gunship, or some Titans, or a whatever else takes your fancy, and discover the full tactical complexity of Epic.
If you don’t enjoy it, flog the box on Ebay, there are plenty of people out there who’ll want your 6mm warriors.
Personally, I kickstarted Epic in my area two
“a determined Epic player can
source a Tyranid army from Ebay “
Specialist Game Focus : EPICyears ago by buying a small Marine army and a small Imperial Guard Army, and simply offered games to my mates ; Two years after I started trying to find Epic opponents in my area I now have dozens of local opponents, and more are starting up Epic all the time.
conclusion
I hope this article has proved useful in helping you understand what Epic is all about, and why it fully deserves to wear the
label ‘Warhammer 40,000’s big brother’. May your dice always roll 6’s, although if you’re rolling dice in Warhammer 40,000, you’ll probably be rolling ten times as many dice as an Epic player, because ultimately, Warhammer 40,000 and Epic are completely different games, offering completely different gameplay experiences.
Check it out, because Epic: Armageddon is awesome.
“Epic- A version of the game with tiny models that is dominated by titans, which are robots the size of a large building and have the ability to pwn... everything...
...There is also infantry, whose only function in Epic is to provide valuable traction to Titans walking across snowy paths.”
Last time the wrong version of my article was put into the Firebase. So some term explanations and painting guides are added to this article that should have been in last edition. First the term explanations. I mentioned popcorn armies. This is a term used to describe armies with a lot of activations. In Epic: Armageddon, each formation activated during turn. Activations are commands on what the formation can do (for example command ‘Advance’ means that formation may move and then fire). Activations are done in alternating order during turn (meaning that first one side activates one and then other side activates one and so on). So armies with lot of activations can get multiple actions in the end of turn as other side has run out. I also mentioned BTS. This means ‘Break Their Spirit’. Most Epic: Armageddon games use a Grand Tournament scenario. In that scenario there is five different victory conditions. To win you must score at least 2 of these and more than opponent at the end of turn 3 or later. ‘Break Their Spirit’ is one of the five conditions. Player can get it by destroying completely the most expensive formation of the opponent. So in this Feral Ork army my Warlord is in the formation that is BTS condition for
enemy. This is bad as Warlord is Supreme Commander. Supreme Commander allows re-rolling one failed activation and that is quite important. So the destruction of the formation gives two bonuses for the enemy.
Then there was garrisoning. In the GT scenario normal deployment area is 15cm from your table edge (regular table being 120cm by 180cm or 4’ by 6’). Before deployment though both players put three objective markers in the table with certain restrictions. Garrisoning means that you can deploy some formations (there are three rules which allow garrisoning and at least one the formation must fulfil) near one of those objectives. One restriction is that all but one unit must move 15cm or less and none of the units can be a War Machine. Both Normal Warbands with Squig Katapults fulfil this.
Last was DC. This stands for Damage Capacity. Normal units are killed when
they take damage (eg. fail their save). War Engines have can withstand up to DC amount of damage. Also it means that one War Engine is counted as being DC amount of units when unit sizes are needed. This has several effects in game. Orkeosaur is 6DC War Engine while Steam Gargant has 4DC. For reference Baneblade has 3DC, Warhound titan has 3DC, Reaver titan has 6DC and Warlord titan 8DC. Titans of course have void shields so Reaver is tougher than Orkeosaur.
The missing painting guide from last article is added in to the end. Then one more explanation of Orks special rules in Epic: Armageddon. The reason I go for bigger mobs with Orks is the ‘Mob rule’. This special rule gives +1 or +2 to rally roll if the formation is large enough (+1 for more than 5 units and +2 for more than 10 units). So most formations in my army qualify for +2, which would more likely be +1 when they are broken though. Without these bonuses, Orks rally quite badly.
Now after a lot of looking at the models I ended with starting to paint Junka Trukks. So this lead me to look at the list and coming to terms with painting job of Big Junka Brigade. Out come 14 Trukks (12 for Big Brigade and 2 for the Nobz) and 14