One(ish) year in – your assessment of Legions Imperialis

[Crablezworth]

 

I have to admit I'm borderline to giving up on the concept of playing LI, I'll just collect a force so I'm good to go when we get a coherent rules release with a second edition.

 

It can be frustrating finding opponents. Another frustration is stores that already don't do much support wise with their own terrain really don't do much for small scale. 

[Sherrypie]

 

I've only skim read the previous rules, and get myself mixed up between all the versions, but can someone nutshell the firefight rules from whichever edition that was?

I have a vague memory that firefight was the melee system?

You're probably thinking about either the 3rd (Epic 40000) or 4th (Epic: Armageddon) editions. Both use far more abstract and faster mechanics to resolve close range fighting compared to the repeated 2d6+mods that 2nd (Space Marine) and thus 5th (Legions Imperialis) use.

 

In E40k, units mostly boil down to their Firepower value, which is summed up and looked up in a table with some interactions but an individual formation vs. formation is a quick roll that can then cause further casualties.

 

In E:A, only big guns shoot far away like you'd traditionally expect. Rifles and similar small arms do nothing meaningful at range. Their use is in engagements, where formations take ground by assaulting positions in the proper military meaning of the word. Models that connect base to base use their Close Combat value and models that get within 15 cm of the enemy use their Firefight value as each model rolls a die, both sides see how many die and there is a resolution roll to see who loses the engagement. This roll is not solely dependent on kills, but also factors things like outnumbering and troop freshness into it. These are bloody affairs that cannot end in stalemates, one side will always either die or break off and yield the field. They also escalate, as friendly formations within 15 cm can throw supporting fire into the battle as well, making it rather suicidal to barge headlong into a strongly held enemy line full of mutual support. Some upkeep like consolidation moves and blast markers for casualties follows.

 

In short: formations collide, both players roll a handful of dice in a pool, support joins the fray, results are tallied and something major always happens. It's great and fits the scale of the game perfectly.

[Deschenus Maximus]

My overall take is that GW botched the release of LI badly.

 

Aside from the obvious hype-killing delayed release, the difficulties with model availability for a good while, the limited pool of available units at launch*, the nickel-and-diming of the new units’ rules (thank God for Legion Builder/Battlescribe/games-workshop!) and the farcical FAQ support ALMOST A YEAR IN has led to a pretty limited pool of players in my area (basically, only the few people who already played Titanicus are playing LI, or intend to at some point).

 

The momentum has been lost. I don’t know if there’s anything they can do to salvage the situation, bar rereleasing the game already.

 

As far as the game itself is concerned, I still like it in spite of all its warts. I broadly agree with the issues that have already been outlined. Triple March for infantry needs to go – being slow is one of the defining characteristics of foot infantry IRL and therefore it makes no sense they’d be the fastest (relatively speaking) unit type in LI. Beyond that there needs to be a serious points rebalance across the breadth of the available Detachments. I am personally fine with Infantry being deadly to vehicles in melee (my assumption is that they all carry krak grenades/melta bombs) – the problem is that this deadliness is not valued properly in terms of points. The fact that you could just bring in 300-400 infiltrating Infantry bodies, do nothing but sit on the objectives all game and STILL have a pretty good chance of winning vs a more balanced, combined arms list is just infuriating/demoralizing.

 

In terms of immersion, it’s also jarring that Solar Aux is broadly far more effective as a melee-heavy force than Marines are. The fact that unaugmented humans with power axes can wipe the floor with power fist-wielding supersoldiers clad in the heaviest personal protection known to man is just feelsbad all around. Terminators vs Ogryns should also be a way closer match than they are currently.

 

The melee rules in general are just bad. I cannot fathom why they went with this clunky mess of a system.

 

So yeah… kind of not a super rosy situation overall, and it doesn’t look like GW really cares. I’ll keep plugging along because I absolutely love the game when both opponents show some self-restraint in terms of army-building but I might investigate other rulesets like Imperius Dominatus.

 

*I get a lot of disagreement on this, but I am adamant that they should have just released Marines first and kept Solar Aux in their back pocket until the game had established solid roots. This would have allowed to launch with with a deeper unit pool for the most popular faction and it would have made things easier to balance. The Allies mechanic would have allowed them to introduce Solar Aux bit by bit without too much hassle.

[Crablezworth]

If by book 4 we still don't have artillery and super heavies for marines and light armour for aux, I think it will be hard to be an apologist for that. Light armour and arty are present in the rulebook formations as well, but typical gw they don't want to really comment on or highlight the delays so they just chop it up and go the necromunda route. It didn't feel great in AT and it doesn't feel great now. The game FEELS like no one's baby, like its been handed off from person to person or team to team, and perhaps in those poor souls defense I will say its not unlikely that their passions may have been trampled by heavy mandates from above/marketing. Like being honest or realistic about the average point size viable for an evening of gaming, selling a "weekend game" dishonestly didn't help when we all got to lay eyes on the white dwarf and like, as impressive as it all was, it was equally daunting and intimidating to new players who thought they'd need 3k just to have a game. 

 

What also feels odd is, with the folding of AT/AI into LI, there's been a remarkable lack of game support stuff like the fact that we're all expected I guess to use thin paper order token forever just seems like a missed opportunity at a minimum. But like even a small army box release for 30k/40k might see new dice and other stuff, li got nothing. AT even had the great loyalist and traitor dice set. 

 

I'm stoked for some of the stuff from the reviews of book 3, I'm quite optimistic about most of the fog of war rules, it seems like what the game needs currently if its not going to get a faq/errata/rebalancing of infantry. It makes absolute sense for tallarn as a setting, but also, I can't help but feel like it was birthed by someone on the design team or the designer seeing li events at warhammer world being like a sea of infantry and getting like barely past turn 1 or 2 and felt sort of embarrassed. That's how it feels anyway, but hats off to them for offering something to shake things up. I'm also tempering my expectations, there was a great part of the goonhammer review where they talk about what was assumed to be the tank focused game mode/scenarios and how not only are infantry allowed, there's like no real change on army construction, just how things score and, humorously even though the scenarios are more kill points and not objective focused, the scenario still mentions placing non existent objectives lol. So I'm expecting a bit of a throw everything at the wall and see what sticks approach. The battle honours I think are well written in that, rarely for li, they're quite limited, to just one detachment per formation. There is going to be a problem with one of the knight ones, as its basically blessed auto simulacra under a different name... but no limitations on giving to a unit with simulacra, so it stacks as written, which is... very strong. 

 

I'm still very much into the scale but if book 3 can't bring some sanity back on the balance front re infantry its going to be real hard to bring in new blood locally. Especially with old world. 

 

 

[vadersson]

I really want to write my thoughts but have been too busy.  But I will say the one thing that stands out and confuses me is that GW clearly spent a ton of capital on new molds to make all these new models.  Based on how many different sprues there are it had to be a bing investment.  But then to not invest anything in working out the rules is shocking.  1 short FAQ at launch and three rulebooks that are even inconsistent seems silly.  I just can’t understand the excellent support and investment in models but then the basic lack of basic support for good rules to use them with.  Totally baffling.

[Crablezworth]

 

I really want to write my thoughts but have been too busy.  But I will say the one thing that stands out and confuses me is that GW clearly spent a ton of capital on new molds to make all these new models.  Based on how many different sprues there are it had to be a bing investment.  But then to not invest anything in working out the rules is shocking.  1 short FAQ at launch and three rulebooks that are even inconsistent seems silly.  I just can’t understand the excellent support and investment in models but then the basic lack of basic support for good rules to use them with.  Totally baffling.

 

To add to your point, to never put out actual order tokens in plastic and let it all go to third party's is really weird considering how many kits they're putting out. No counters either which seems odd. No special dice either. There's obviously crossover with HH dice etc but it does seem really out of place.