Legions Imperialis Legions Imperialis

[Darnok]

8 hours ago, Petitioner's City said:

those Xenos and Chaos planes will vanish as miniatures once AI is put to pasture.

 

There were only ever Chaos flyers for the older resin-only version of AI (done strictly by FW back then).

 

Is it dumb to never have made them for current AI? Yes. Was it mildly infuriating and also dumb to reprint "Double Eagle", without any chance to replay any of the plot due to the complete lack of Chaos planes? Also yes. But hey, Chaos clearly is no relevant faction in the 40K setting...

 

Either way, how things are going we will not get anything "proper Chaos" for AI, nor most likely for LI either.

 

And whoever thinks that GW would remake Epic in its past form - that is with full ranges for Imperium, Chaos and Xenos - is downright delusional. GW is neither willing nor able to dedicate the amount of ressources this would require to such a niche game.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

3 hours ago, DuskRaider said:

 

A little off topic but is it all but confirmed that AT is basically defunct?

Alternatively, AT is in the best place it's been for years. If everyone who buys the LI box gets two titans, there'll be a temptation to buy more. You have two warhounds, if you buy the At starter set, you'll have enough models for more than a full light Maniple, and you'll have the rules to play the full game as well.

LI probably won't let you field full titan forces, if a rumour from an alleged playtester is true, but the AT ruleset will let you do that in a more fun way anyway.

On the pure AT front, we've just been given two new plastic weapons, the transfer of three more from resin to plastic, new plastic titan bases and new plastic terrain kits.

 

LI won't kill AT, it's the gateway drug!

[Petitioner's City]

53 minutes ago, Darnok said:

 

There were only ever Chaos flyers for the older resin-only version of AI (done strictly by FW back then).

 

Is it dumb to never have made them for current AI? Yes. Was it mildly infuriating and also dumb to reprint "Double Eagle", without any chance to replay any of the plot due to the complete lack of Chaos planes? Also yes. But hey, Chaos clearly is no relevant faction in the 40K setting...

 

Either way, how things are going we will not get anything "proper Chaos" for AI, nor most likely for LI either.

 

And whoever thinks that GW would remake Epic in its past form - that is with full ranges for Imperium, Chaos and Xenos - is downright delusional. GW is neither willing nor able to dedicate the amount of ressources this would require to such a niche game.

 

Curses, I thought they had shown off hell talons or hell bombers, but you are right, it was someone converting the older minis and/or 3d printing - thank you for the correction.

[Petitioner's City]

7 hours ago, Noserenda said:

Im pretty confident a full 40k Epic would sell well, marines were never as popular in that scale as they were in 40k for whatever reason (Thats probably a thread to itself) though id guess the spectacle of a Guard or ork army at smaller scale is so much more impressive and the minis so easy to paint en masse :D 

But it would require a consummate investment and thats something GW has been shy about doing with anything but the big two games for years, and i think rightfully now they are entering into an extensive and mature third party market, they cant wait around to do Eldar or Orks, they will be worrying about the bleeding sales the whole time.

Personally i feel like it would return on investment buy GW has been fairly conservative over the years with things like this, and it works for them, i doubt its going to change anytime soon.

 

I wonder if institutional memory of two small scale commercial failures also plays a role. John Wombat's longform.interview with Rick Priestley includes a significant section on Epic and Warmaster.

 

Quote

Against that background we had attempted to relaunch our ‘Epic’ scale range with a Titan combat game called Titan Legions. We had done quite well with the previous iteration of the ‘Epic system’ Space Marine (’91), so the plan fitted in with the general idea of relaunching our core systems every few years with new models, as we had for Warhammer and Warhammer 40K. The game was designed by Andy Chambers and new plastic Titans were created as centre-pieces. Sales were poor compared to previous years’ main releases. The sales companies were very quick to blame the product. Of course, sales numbers were targeted against previous years, so you were always comparing sales against Warhammer 40K re-launches, which would always outsell anything. It didn’t matter what you chose as your main annual release: sales numbers would always look poor compared to Warhammer 40K. There was also an issue with the French, Spanish, Italian and German markets being relatively ‘immature’, which meant the customer base for anything other than Warhammer wasn’t there in the same way it was for the English language product. Of course, we didn’t have to take account of such things in the ’80’s or until GW started to expand its sales arm beyond the English language market.

 

After the poorly received Titan Legions release the sales companies became very antagonistic towards any ‘Epic’ based game. Insisting that all future products had to be 28mm

 

Quote

Meantime, I had the design work for the ‘fantasy epic’ game Warmaster, originally planned to take that ’97 slot. It was imagined to use 8mm models (like Epic 40K) arranged in ranked strips. The game would be a ‘big box set’ of the standard size, complete with plastic armies, siege equipment and fortifications. I’d already come up with the concept model for the plastic fortifications, and we’d designed some armies in metal to trial out the system. The game itself was partly inspired by the turn-over mechanic in Blood Bowl, and was based on the idea that you’d dice for movement whilst combat resolution would be relatively breezy. The core of the game was in the command element, the manoeuvre of armies rather than individual combat, as suggested by the scale. Although by this time I had moved away from a design role, the fact that I’d already designed the game meant that I was keen to see it published. It was eventually published in 2000, but very much in the teeth of opposition from the sales companies. All the plastic was dropped and the game was released as a book in a secondary release slot at Easter. The models were no longer ‘Epic’ scale but larger at 10mm to distance them from the taint of the 40K Epic range. 

 

Something of a last gasp from that phase of creativity in the late ’80’s to early ’90’s, Warmaster is still occasionally cited as the best game I’ve ever written. It was certainly the only game I played regularly at that time, and which I continued to play to some extent even when I left GW, although I must admit it’s now been a few years since I did so. Black Powder (published by Warlord Games) was derived from Warmaster and, like WAB, was another project initiated by Jervis Johnson that I developed and completed. I did a version for ancients, published as a stablemate to WAB, which was well-received by ancient players and helped to establish the ’10mm’ size of figure in historical gaming.

 

You can read the whole thing starting in part 1 here - https://johnwombat.wordpress.com/2020/03/30/the-wargaming-wizard-a-talk-with-rick-priestley-part-1/

[Darnok]

47 minutes ago, Sword Brother Adelard said:

Alternatively, AT is in the best place it's been for years. If everyone who buys the LI box gets two titans, there'll be a temptation to buy more. You have two warhounds, if you buy the At starter set, you'll have enough models for more than a full light Maniple, and you'll have the rules to play the full game as well.

LI probably won't let you field full titan forces, if a rumour from an alleged playtester is true, but the AT ruleset will let you do that in a more fun way anyway.

On the pure AT front, we've just been given two new plastic weapons, the transfer of three more from resin to plastic, new plastic titan bases and new plastic terrain kits.

 

LI won't kill AT, it's the gateway drug!

 

I hope you are right! You make a lot of sense with all of this - it is just GW often does not follow simple logic or common sense. So chances are AT might end up unsupported anyway. We will see how it turns out...

 

 

12 minutes ago, Petitioner's City said:

Curses, I thought they had shown off hell talons or hell bombers, but you are right, it was someone converting the older minis and/or 3d printing - thank you for the correction.

 

We might have seen the same images, there were some pretty good 3D prints done by a couple of people! It is just a shame  - and honestly utterly incomprehensible to me - why GW never did anything Chaos with the new AI. That ship has sailed some time ago though... and yes, I am bitter about it.

 

 

1 minute ago, Petitioner's City said:

I wonder if institutional memory of two small scale commercial failures also plays a role. John Wombat's longform.interview with Rick Priestley includes a significant section on Epic and Warmaster.

 

You can read the whole thing starting in part 1 here - https://johnwombat.wordpress.com/2020/03/30/the-wargaming-wizard-a-talk-with-rick-priestley-part-1/

 

I am 100% sure it had at least some impact on the decision. Having said that: I am equally 100% sure GW would not do a full/40K version of Epic these days for reasons already discussed (too big an investment, too little production capacity, etc.).

 

Thanks for linking that interview! Together with that two-part article on Goonhammer about "Gorkamorka" you get a pretty good idea how GW was run back then and what conclusions still play a role in todays affairs.

[Petitioner's City]

28 minutes ago, Darnok said:

 

 

Thanks for linking that interview! Together with that two-part article on Goonhammer about "Gorkamorka" you get a pretty good idea how GW was run back then and what conclusions still play a role in todays affairs.

 

I must admit (with a former academic historian hat on) I don't like the goonhammer article as it's trying to paint a big mega picture without providing substantial evidence beyond a few small, contextual, elements. I think the second part especially is not good journalism, and I wish it was more clear about what comes from its sources versus the grand narrative the author is putting forward and arguably onto his sources. It felt like a familiar 'student' way of writing of the "one thing that explains all", which may be unfair, but felt like it.

 

Also the manner in which it is written (the metaphorical construction running through out) just grates for me (it feels like a poor pratchett impersonation) - it gets in the way of the evidence underneath, and I think again covers over what should be clear, namely what the interviewees said, the evidence they presented, what counter evidence exists, etc. The overall argument may have from the sources, but it's not clear. They are quoted in tiny fragments through the text, but the text doenst make clear how often it relates to the interviews and research the author did.

 

Jumping from GM to the little red/black book also is troubling as it was something affecting everything, not just GM, and existed at various points in various refreshes of its text - a chronology not made clear in the article but glossed over. I think the negativity it represents is potentially overstated in the article, as it doesn't touch on the role of the Citadel Journal at first, nor Fanatic and Specialist Games existing subsequently for years (and supporting failures including Epic and Warmaster, with new rules and new models). Or indeed FW and its corner of the company from the late 90s on, not quite fitting either. Or that period of GW producing its RPGs under BL publishing in the early to mid 2000s, etc.

 

Sorry to critique it quite harshly, it just felt poor versus what it could have been which was a clear, level-headed account of the game's creation, support and community. The grand narrative just gets in the way, creates something a bit too sexy, and I think needed a lot more challenge to it at an editorial stage to make chronology, causality and relationships clearer :) 

 

And I do struggle with goonhammer sometimes when it comes to their content. They occasionally publish quite problematic things, either comments or full articles, which speaks to a need for more criticality by its editorial team sometimes. E.g.

 

Spoiler

Quote

Some people also like Thousand Sons by Graham McNeill. I think he’s a misogynist and bad writer so I haven’t read it but it will give you a look at the legion pre-heresy as well as the burning of Prospero from the Thousand Sons’ perspective.

 

 

Edited July 4, 2023 by Petitioner's City

[Cyrox]

I think the 'Epic Scale' logo in the bottom corner of the Legions Imperialis box will have more significance than we realise.

 

All the AT and AI kits will likely be re-boxed with that 'Epic Scale' logo on the corner. I think both AT and AI will stay on the website under 'Boxed Games' for now and continue as is - no further releases but still a current game. To be fair the rules for Titanicus are solid, so they could repackage all the Titans and knights and have them for both Game Systems.

 

Not sure on AI, I'm sure they will eventually roll it into a future Epic system, but for now I can't see them pulling it given the amount of non Heresy kits, unless they are running down stock.

 

I just hope that LI is successful and paves the way for more Epic

 

 

[Petitioner's City]

19 minutes ago, Cyrox said:

I think the 'Epic Scale' logo in the bottom corner of the Legions Imperialis box will have more significance than we realise.

 

All the AT and AI kits will likely be re-boxed with that 'Epic Scale' logo on the corner. I think both AT and AI will stay on the website under 'Boxed Games' for now and continue as is - no further releases but still a current game. To be fair the rules for Titanicus are solid, so they could repackage all the Titans and knights and have them for both Game Systems.

 

Not sure on AI, I'm sure they will eventually roll it into a future Epic system, but for now I can't see them pulling it given the amount of non Heresy kits, unless they are running down stock.

 

I just hope that LI is successful and paves the way for more Epic

 

 

 

If they continue to sell AI models with the flight stand, and AT models with two base types, that would be good for sure :)

[Valkyrion]

I had zero interest in playing AT or AI, but the release of LI has made me order a titan and fire raptors to see if I like building and painting them, and if I do I will get more of them to use in LI, so in that sense at least, both AT and AI have a new customer in the short term and potentially in the long term. 

[Sword Brother Adelard]

53 minutes ago, Valkyrion said:

I had zero interest in playing AT or AI, but the release of LI has made me order a titan and fire raptors to see if I like building and painting them, and if I do I will get more of them to use in LI, so in that sense at least, both AT and AI have a new customer in the short term and potentially in the long term. 

Which Titan? Because if it's a Reaver, that's a baptism of fire!

[apologist]

Anecdotally, sales of the Titans have been affected by an inability to get the card terminals printed and included in the boxes – a seemingly minor logistical issue, but one that has caused cascading problems, as card is supposedly all done out-of-house.

 

Repackaging the Titans as 'Epic Scale' without the Terminals will ease production, and hopefully make things a bit easier to get hold of; with the Terminals for Titanicus perhaps going Direct Only.

[Nova-V]

Managed to finally catch up on the stream so I'm sorry I've not been able to read the whole thread since then.  My first thought is I'm highly excited for this. I got into 40K mid-8th and whilst I have enjoyed it I must admit I was a little disappointed with the smaller scale of the battles.  This was just a misperception on my part but with Apocalypse too expensive to consider 40K didn't quite scratch the itch.  As such in the intervening years I have looked at getting into previous editions of Epic but a lack of local players has always deterred me.  So I am very excited to see the return of small scale big battles.  Particularly if the models are to the standard of the AI aircraft which I have used as painting projects.

 

I do have a couple of reservations though.  First is a possible lack of scale, in the stream they talk about squadrons of tanks roaming the battle field.  However the starter box each side has numbers that would be high for a 30/40K game but not the leap in numbers the smaller scale suggests.  Admittedly a lot of the points value might be taken up by the Titan for each side but looking at the promo vid the tactical display would suggest much bigger formations.

 

I'm interested to see costs.  In AI 6 basic fighters costs £30 (2 duplicate 3 plane sprues).  Translating this to tanks if we get 6 Leman Russ (2 troops worth) for £30 filling out a squadron (smallest massed tank formation) will cost £90.  However from the boxset we can assume 2 tanks per sprue leading to 4 in a box and the cost of a squadron shoots up to £150.  If this is the case it's probably a non-starter for me due to cost.

 

I'm also not a big fan of the more steam punk look of the Solar Auxilia (those Heavy Sentinels look awful) compared to the WWI/II hybrid of Guard, but that is personal preference.

 

In the end I am still cautiously optimistic, I really love the idea of big battles on small tables.

 

[Captain Idaho]

Totally off subject to what you guys are discussing (still new epic) is the army building... I really like the idea of army cards. Take a couple Tactical Companies, add support squad cards to them for firepower, add an Assault company...

 

That sort of thing reminds me of the old days reading Epic battle reports in White Dwarf and my nostalgia meter is strong.

 

Also, I like the easy structure of it for such a large scale game. Lots of custom formations smacks of a cumbersome game, especially if Firepower isn't being used like the Epic40K rules.

[SkimaskMohawk]

5 hours ago, Sword Brother Adelard said:

Alternatively, AT is in the best place it's been for years. If everyone who buys the LI box gets two titans, there'll be a temptation to buy more. You have two warhounds, if you buy the At starter set, you'll have enough models for more than a full light Maniple, and you'll have the rules to play the full game as well.

LI probably won't let you field full titan forces, if a rumour from an alleged playtester is true, but the AT ruleset will let you do that in a more fun way anyway.

On the pure AT front, we've just been given two new plastic weapons, the transfer of three more from resin to plastic, new plastic titan bases and new plastic terrain kits.

 

LI won't kill AT, it's the gateway drug!

 

I'd agree with this, but it depends on whether the insane value of the starter box is still around. And the rest of the rules for AT. I can just see them chopping the actual rules for AT going all in on epic. 

[Sword Brother Adelard]

20 minutes ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

 

I'd agree with this, but it depends on whether the insane value of the starter box is still around. And the rest of the rules for AT. I can just see them chopping the actual rules for AT going all in on epic. 

I just don't understand the pessimism. GW haven't axed a full game for years now, and they often have the same models useable in multiple games. You don't see people who play Kill Team saying 10th will be the death knell of that.

And even if GW does stop putting out new AT releases, well then the AT player can go join the cool ranks of the other games who were cast out into the cold and survived, like BFG, BloodBowl and well, Epic. 

[Redcomet]

8 minutes ago, Sword Brother Adelard said:

I just don't understand the pessimism. GW haven't axed a full game for years now, and they often have the same models useable in multiple games. You don't see people who play Kill Team saying 10th will be the death knell of that.

And even if GW does stop putting out new AT releases, well then the AT player can go join the cool ranks of the other games who were cast out into the cold and survived, like BFG, BloodBowl and well, Epic. 

And AI soon too. I don’t expect that game to survive post Leggings Imperials, or whatever it is called

[apologist]

Epic: Space Marine (SM2) army cards (like the example below) were a lot of fun to use (I remember making far more potential armies than I ever played with!), and a big improvement over the complexities of SM1 army building. There was a satisfying modularity to working out which support cards would go with which companies; and the idea expanded really creatively for the Tyranids.

 

 

The downsides were that it took up quite a bit of space, and there wasn't much flexibility.

 

Epic: 40,000 (E40k) threw all that out and used the paradigm of each formation being its own 40k army – this was more complicated to make initially, but felt really connected to 40k. There was something really cool about having your 40k army fighting alongside half a dozen others. 

 

As with its rules, Epic: Armageddon tried to find a neat synthesis between SM2 and E:40k army building approaches, with bolt-together options. It worked nicely, but wasn't particularly stand-out.

 

From what the WarCom says:

Each Formation is essentially an entire Horus Heresy – The Age of Darkness army, giving you lots of freedom in how you build your force.

 

... it sounds conceptually closer to E:40k, but I doubt they'll go as granular as that. I'm expecting something more akin to E:A; perhaps a hybrid of the Company/Support concept from SM2, with points for (say) six stands of Tactical Legionaries, to which you have a list of options like 'Add 3 Rhinos', 'Attach to Thunderhawk', 'Add 1–2 Vindicators for X pts'.

 

 

 

[Noserenda]

5 hours ago, Petitioner's City said:

 

I wonder if institutional memory of two small scale commercial failures also plays a role. John Wombat's longform.interview with Rick Priestley includes a significant section on Epic and Warmaster.

 

 

 

You can read the whole thing starting in part 1 here - https://johnwombat.wordpress.com/2020/03/30/the-wargaming-wizard-a-talk-with-rick-priestley-part-1/

I definitely think that affected thinking prior to the rebirth of specialist games in its modern form, and the mad sales that ensued when they got a hint of proper resourcing. Cost is no small factor too, i remember Warmaster being an odd fit as a Warhammer game (Its great in hindsight, just not very warhammer) and it was extremely expensive thanks to being all metal and in comparison to Epic, i guess due to the larger scale which reeeeally hurt it with the teen market i was in at the time.

Similarly Epic Armageddon, probably the best commercial version of Epic but it suffered from the new models being a damn sight worse than the Epic 40k versions by the legendary Tim Adcock and also being horrifically expensive, to the extent that i worked for GW at the time and even with the huge staff discount it was too much, like, some of the releases might be considered expensive even today with 20 years of inflation...  

Fortunately i think the current state of Specialist games is in a good place to launch and support a game compared to previously, they are allowed to use plastic! I still think their customer support is a black mark compared to GW proper but thats more frustrating than game killing.

[SkimaskMohawk]

10 minutes ago, Sword Brother Adelard said:

I just don't understand the pessimism. GW haven't axed a full game for years now, and they often have the same models useable in multiple games. You don't see people who play Kill Team saying 10th will be the death knell of that.

And even if GW does stop putting out new AT releases, well then the AT player can go join the cool ranks of the other games who were cast out into the cold and survived, like BFG, BloodBowl and well, Epic. 

 

Well, AI totally got scrapped from what we can see, so I guess I'm just fearing the worst if the Titans get reboxed and come with new bases that don't fit the arc templates very well. 

 

Idk, call me sour from the years of LCTB mauling the heresy ranges while blood bowl, necromunda and middle earth got one-off purchase models. AT has a very high card-stock and accessory sprue baggage that would free up warehouse space for more high sales product.

 

I just don't have much trust in them doing stuff in a consumer friendly way.

[BolterZorro]

18 minutes ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

Well, AI totally got scrapped from what we can see, so I guess I'm just fearing the worst if the Titans get reboxed and come with new bases that don't fit the arc templates very well. 

Adding a blank base will cost almost nothing to GW, so, it is not a problem if GW goes double bases.

 

I have a question about (valid?) flying thinggies in IL : GW claims that the AI planes are playable in IL. What ar according to you the planes for :

- the space marines side

- the auxilia side 

 

(names and ref are welcome because I'm totally new to planes, here) thank you in advance.

 

[Petitioner's City]

11 minutes ago, BolterZorro said:

Adding a blank base will cost almost nothing to GW, so, it is not a problem if GW goes double bases.

 

I have a question about (valid?) flying thinggies in IL : GW claims that the AI planes are playable in IL. What ar according to you the planes for :

- the space marines side

- the auxilia side 

 

(names and ref are welcome because I'm totally new to planes, here) thank you in advance.

 

 

This is thankfully contained in the Heresy supplement for AI 

 

 

 

The list on the right should help you :)

[Lord Marshal]

Another article, this time on size.

 

Edited July 4, 2023 by Lord Marshal

[firestorm40k]

The article also suggests there'll be more models released for the game after this initial release 

Edited July 4, 2023 by firestorm40k
Ninja'd by Lord Marshall X-D

[Matcap86]

5 minutes ago, firestorm40k said:

The article also suggests there'll be more models released for the game after this initial release 

 

Yeah on the stream they said it will be widely supported and they're planning to port over alot of the options from regular size HH

[Burni]

What a pointless article! When it said a closer look at the minis, I thought we get a look at the models in detail, maybe see a sprue or two. But nope! A completely useless post about scale which doesn't even use the same model for comparison so makes no sense unless you have all those 28mm HH ones!