How to fix LI

[Deschenus Maximus]

The thing is... can the game really be fixed? Melee is just a mess, and fixing it would make the game version 2.0 without actually calling it that.

[Interrogator Stobz]

I guess what he's saying is extensive free changes would help with trust, a commodity which is rapidly wearing out.

Then, once they have the game sorted they could ask for our money for books.

[LameBeard]

 Probably the answer here is:

 

A new core set of rules for using your Legions Imperialis models that actually pretends to be parallel not a replacement. A bit like the Blood Bowl Sevens or whatever. Let’s call it:

Horus Heresy Epic Scale for now.

 

Face-saving reason for new rules is to allow you to play games quicker (hence will speed up melee).

 

Tournaments need quicker games. Hence it becomes the standard for “competitive” games. Hence it effectively becomes the official rules people care about. “Pick up” games also get timed out so adopt them.

 

Part 2 of the plan: the rules are released as an experiment through Warhammer+ subscription, a bit like the WD vault.  It’s not free but not paid for either - somewhere in between. Rules and balance need such a rewrite that new army lists will also be needed and they can release month by month, start with marine and finish with titans because by definition less immediate need in what might be slightly smaller games.

 

Then a hardback “compendium” at the end of the year a bit like Kill Team and guess what the people who liked it on the app will buy the book too and so will a few new ones.

 

 

[Hallas]

I also don't think that a rules set created without game-centered concept (there was probably a concept about selling plastic, but that's a different topic) can be savaged.

 

People are complaining on the close combat rules, but fixing those would only expose how the firing rules are messed up. For example, If someone has a time to spare I'll suggest checking when Ion Shields or Explorator Adaptation trigger (last time I've checked it was 'rarely' and 'never'). The game is riddled with such rules, which exist only to waste your time to process that they actually change nothing (Quake left this honorable group recently).

 

When I've picked up the game I've concluded the way weapons are presented give nothing to the player. They look like designers notes and a base for creating what actually is important during the game, that is answer to the question 'how many dice I roll and what are the chances to hit'? Having said that, I've spent some time to create a tool to help during firing, this is an example of the effect:

With this I can quickly gather the dice (you select a row based on target, gather dice being in the range to the target and the colors correspond to the AP of the dice).

The point I would like to make -- I would expect to have such tool provided from the game publisher, especially one which already has the means to deliver such content to the players and gather some additional money.

Edited April 14 by Hallas
Change file link

[Brother Tyler]

3 minutes ago, Hallas said:

 

The link comes up as private. You can directly upload an image into a post by simply copying/pasting. Even better, you can create your own free gallery here at the B&C so that you can host images for use here (and unlike the copy/paste method, those images won't disappear from your content).

[Mandragola]

Ultimately I do think a change equivalent to a second edition is required. I don’t want there to be 35 activations and melee is awful. Fixing those things would require a pretty fundamental rewrite, to the point that the current rulebook would be obsolete. 
 

Epic should be about combined arms and the sweep of big combats. It shouldn’t be about hyper detail of whether this vehicle’s pintle multimelta is in range or whatever. Combat should be fought between detachments, not between models. 
 

Nostalgia is weird and I’m probably forgetting problems that used to exist but I’m sure the older versions of the game were better. It’s crazy they threw all that out for this. They could have done what they did with ToW and just refreshed the old rules. 

[Nagashsnee]

18 hours ago, Interrogator Stobz said:

I guess what he's saying is extensive free changes would help with trust, a commodity which is rapidly wearing out.

Then, once they have the game sorted they could ask for our money for books.

 

This. Why should we trust (and hence buy) anything from the people who made this current edition, AND never fixed it ( s much as it can be)? 

 

2 ed is needed, but in the say 2 years it will take to get out they NEED to get the game to a point where people can believe that the 2edition will be worth something. 

 

Faqs and erratas for days, fix the points, fix melee, fix anything you CAN fix in this editions framework. Show us you now have a grip on things BEFORE asking us to spend more money on rules you wrote. Sure it wont be perfect and will be constrained by the realities of this edition. But something needs to be done with what was sold to us before trying to sell us anything else.

 

Or if they really want to go the distance, drop 2ed free as a pdf (and still sell books). Be upfront about it, say look we know 1st had issues so feel free to test out 2ed for free. Let GW show they have faith in their product before asking me to have faith in them, cause in the case of LI i dont have any. 

 

 

[Sherrypie]

4 hours ago, Mandragola said:

Epic should be about combined arms and the sweep of big combats. It shouldn’t be about hyper detail of whether this vehicle’s pintle multimelta is in range or whatever. Combat should be fought between detachments, not between models. 
 

Nostalgia is weird and I’m probably forgetting problems that used to exist but I’m sure the older versions of the game were better. It’s crazy they threw all that out for this. They could have done what they did with ToW and just refreshed the old rules. 

 

LI is about 90% based on Space Marine 2 (second edition of Epic, although all four pre-LI editions are really fundamentally separate games) covered in glue and rolled in a bucket of special rules on top. 2nd had its share of retro jankiness, with all sorts of unique quirky unit rules like different Ork clan behaviors and the same 2d6+CAF comparison system for melee, but had otherwise cleaner mechanics in places. 3rd (E40k) and 4th (E:A) in comparison are much smoother and elegant as wargames that deserve attention even without the "great for a GW system" -caveat. All of them are still played, E:A in particular has active tournament scenes and has endured over twenty years for that purpose without any need for nostalgia goggles. The games still remain great on their own merits.

 

As for why 2nd was chosen as the baseline for this fifth iteration of Epic (or sixth, if we count the 40k 8th ed Apocalypse in the same family, given that it was thoroughly inspired by a potpourri of various Epic mechanics), I would hazard a few reasons for it. 2nd was the longest and best selling edition of Epic, attaining almost main game status over its nearly a decade long shelf-life in the nineties, which is the internal metric a soulless corporate suit would ask when approving projects. Conveniently, they can just ignore *why* those later editions didn't last as long when the company killed their sales on their own. It is also very much the beer & pretzels edition of the three, where you can laugh at wacky special rules and roll buckets of dice to forge the narrative as an individual unit of guardsmen beats back a terminator company due to hot rolls. Compared to the abstracted nature of 3rd's "everything is just firepower" or 4th's "you actually need to coordinate preparatory fires, supporting maneuvers and decisive assaults to win" gameplay, both of which care more about C&C questions than 2nd, it's a more natural fit for the design brief that for LI appears to have focused on shovelling off dead models and rivet-counting every variation of pistol written about in FW's black books.

 

The comparison with ToW is one of slightly bitter remorse. That game really does look to be written by people who actually understood and loved the reasons that made WHFB's 6th-7th editions fondly remembered and played. With LI, the writers seem to have lacked a similar vision and rushed out a product with some cosmetic lessons of the last 40 years of game design slapped on top of brazen nostalgia bait. Especially with some of the launch period WarCom and WD articles, I got an almost infuriating sense of cultural illiteracy with a hint of historical revisionism from them. The situation is something of an extension of the general trend we're seeing as GW's veteran designers are starting to fully retire or move on: where classic Warhammer games and lore were written by people who had read history and countercultural art, their current generation of writers have read Warhammer.

Edited April 15 by Sherrypie

[Deschenus Maximus]

4 hours ago, Mandragola said:

Epic should be about combined arms and the sweep of big combats. It shouldn’t be about hyper detail of whether this vehicle’s pintle multimelta is in range or whatever. Combat should be fought between detachments, not between models. 

 

Tangential thought but I could see scope for multiple different version of the game with scaling rules granularity depending on the number of models you want to play with - kind of like 40k has Kill Team, Combat Patrol, regular 40k and then Apocalypse (now defunct but used to exist).

[Hallas]

I've finally found the time to read Epic: Armageddon rules on NetEA...

I was strongly influenced by animated recreations of WWII air battles on Pacific one can find on Youtube which in turn are based on books describing particular battles. When I was reading LI rules I was disappointed with aircraft rules: those looked nothing like the stuff presented int those animations/books. No roles assigned to particular models (bomber, interceptor, etc) no orders specific to aircraft like Combat Air Patrol. Yesterday I've spent an hour to read the NetEA rules to get the feeling of the game and the aircraft has those aircraft specific orders and the rules feel thematic... People behind E:A rules  were actually reading something,

 

This is just an example from an hour long reading, but this brings hope cause I've finally found a possible answer to 'how to fix LI' questions: take E:A rules, prepare data sheets for units not present there, at least to be able to use most of the models, create some army rules just to start playing and have fun.

I have to read more of E:A rules but my hopes are high.... I can still buy the plastic and not feel bad about not being able to have fun from all those plastic models.

[apologist]

I agree with @Sherrypie's post so much that I had to quietly check that my mem-banks and opinion-generating circuits hadn't been hijacked! :D

 

@Hallas – Epic: Armageddon is the best wargame GW has ever written. Deep and involving while remaining accessible engaging – and more importantly, fun – it also does a better job of reflecting the lore differences between factions than anything. I have absolutely no hesitation whatsoever in encouraging you to dive right in. As you'll find, there's an active and enthusiastic player base and lots of support in terms of developing and refining new material, as well as plenty of events.

 

It's Jervis Johnson at his absolute peak, and once you've played one or two games, you'll absolutely understand why people like me get so frothily enthused by it :D

[Mandragola]

It does look like playing NetEA, ideally with new rules for all our fancy new tanks, is the way to go. Personally I don't know the game well but I imagine it shouldn't be too difficult to produce datasheets. Sherrypie's post makes a lot of good points.

 

I'm a heresy fan but I think, on top of all the issues with the game itself, the delays to release and initial problems sourcing models, it was a mistake to set the game in the 30k timeline. Heresy has its own set of fans, many of whom are "hobby first" and enjoy conversions and personalisation that is far harder to do at 8mm scale. In any case 30k already caters for quite big battles - indeed I quite often field a titan.

 

On the other hand Epic has always previously been set in the 40k timeline. We're used to seeing massed Ork clans, Eldar stuff zooming about and so on. The epic community might have returned to GW for a revamped Epic Armageddon with great new models but why would they come back for a far worse game in a setting they aren't necessarily invested in?

 

Another appeal of Epic was that you could field big stuff that you wouldn't see on a 40k table: Titans, super-heavies and so on. But again, Heresy players are kind of used to this at 32mm. A 32mm Kratos is cooler than an 8mm one, and for most people there isn't going to be a huge appeal to owning four of them. Even then, LI would be stealing 30k's support (or trying to) without offering them anything all that new.

 

So GW is left trying to persuade Heresy players to play in a new scale and Epic players to play in a new timeline. Neither can carry on using their existing toys, except perhaps some stuff from AT and AI. And the game isn't actually good, so why would you bother?

 

Ultimately I think a good game with good models could have done well. Currently we have a bad game with good models. That just leads to annoyed customers, who spend ages painting armies only to have a bad gaming experience.

Edited April 24 by Mandragola

[Deschenus Maximus]

For those interested, someone had put a lot of time and effort into making E:A rules for Heresy already - but its missing many of the newer units like the Kratos. A couple of people have tried to restart the effort but nothing as come of it so far.

[Sherrypie]

8 hours ago, apologist said:

I agree with @Sherrypie's post so much that I had to quietly check that my mem-banks and opinion-generating circuits hadn't been hijacked! :D

 

They could still be, if I'm already too inseparably deep in there :D

But yeah, unsurprisingly we share a desire for good games that create good stories *and* importantly aren't vapid about their subject matter. The death spiral begins at the moment a wargame designer starts emulating games rather than war.

 

7 hours ago, Mandragola said:

It does look like playing NetEA, ideally with new rules for all our fancy new tanks, is the way to go. Personally I don't know the game well but I imagine it shouldn't be too difficult to produce datasheets. Sherrypie's post makes a lot of good points.

 

...

 

So GW is left trying to persuade Heresy players to play in a new scale and Epic players to play in a new timeline. Neither can carry on using their existing toys, except perhaps some stuff from AT and AI. And the game isn't actually good, so why would you ...

 

Making new unit stats is very much in spirit of the game. E:A lists are not like 40k faction codicies to begin with, each represents a particular theme or an aspect of a faction rather than its entirety. Creating new stuff on the go by the players for the players was explicitly Jervis' idea from the beginning and is what list packs like NetEA or EpicUK do to this day.

 

Also existing toys work just fine alongside new stuff, the scale wars are mainly an internet phenomenon. Tableside, people have played new and old side by side since the first day of AT18.

 

6 hours ago, Deschenus Maximus said:

For those interested, someone had put a lot of time and effort into making E:A rules for Heresy already - but its missing many of the newer units like the Kratos. A couple of people have tried to restart the effort but nothing as come of it so far.

 

That was EpicAU from down under. There are some spinoff projects to incorporate new stuff and then there is Glyn's legion list made in the NetEA mindset.