Epic in 2022: Horus Heresy &c.

[The Other Dave]

Well, heck! Looks like some screw-up somewhere means they're not releasing next month - the most-reliable rumor seems to be a noticed-too-late catastrophic misprint in the rulebook. They're still saying "this year" though!

At least that gives me time to play more 40K / work my little hype machine / save money for the release.

Speaking of, they did tease the Auxilia support box coming out, and while it's not as sexy as the Marine one (no Leviathans) it has a very satisfying number of rapiers, tarantulas, and cyclops demolition vehicles.

[The Other Dave]

They've been dribbling out rules hints, and there've been a couple of big aligning-with-official-hints leaks, and I'm coming around a bit (World Eaters legion rule notwithstanding ). All told, it looks like we're looking at:

List building from Space Marine v1
Core unit statlines from Space Marine v2
Core rules for orders / shooting / combat from Space Marine v2
War engines with hitpoints from Epic Armageddon (although on the surface they look slightly weird - leaks say a questoris knight has 3 damage while a warlord has 6...)
Aircraft rules from Epic Armageddon
Concepts of USRs, unit types, and weapon traits from Epic 40K & Epic Armageddon

Also we've got leaks of legion rules and they make me think I'll definitely go with Ultramarines, as theirs is a nice simple shooting buff for targets that have already been shot at by a formation from the same detachment, while the Salamanders (who I was also briefly thinking about as another loyalist legion I haven't collected before that actually has colors) get morale boosts, which are generally dependable but boring.

[The Other Dave]

Just tossing this picture of the artillery company in a box you'll be able to get for your Solar Auxilia to tempt a certain tank-loving forum member with the joys of Epic...


(You can assemble them as all basilisks or all medusas too, of course.)

https://www.warhammer-community.com/202 ... mperialis/

[Primarch]

Those do look very cool!

[The Other Dave]

Huh, I guess I wrote a reply but didn't post it.

Looks like they're leaning in to "encouraging really big games of LI" as well as "encourage people to use the stuff they need for big games of LI to also play AT" and rereleasing a couple of very good dollar-value boxes of (for Epic anyway) very points-expensive models: https://www.warhammer-community.com/202 ... nd-titans/

If I was a little more of a perfectionist than I admittedly already am, I'd consider getting one or both of those boxes, for a third Legio (using the Epic style thin basing, as I don't want to mix and match within the same legio) to build on the warhounds in the LI starter box, and/or a traitor knight household to lore-appropriately field alongside my Mordaxis titans. But I really don't have anywhere to keep a third legio, and mordaxis lore allows you to sort of work in any old knight household as they just take 'em over with their technovirus.

Really, they're odd boxes to sell for Epic when apparently there won't be full army rules for knight households or titan legions in the core rulebook*, and just a single warlord will eat up almost your full allies allowance. I'm sure their army rules will be along sooner or later (if they follow the AT pattern, I imagine they'd release a campaign book with Mechanicum along with full armies for knights and titans), of course.

*But who knows, Community has been wrong before!

[The Other Dave]

Looks like they are continuing the trend of releasing plastic Heresy models for the objectively better scale first:



More seriously, I'm wondering how they're going to manage releases what with the delay - I imagine they originally planned a drip-feed release of support boxes after the core set release, and if the game had launched on schedule we'd by now be moving into that stage. On the one hand, dumping everything on us at once doesn't make a lot of sense, but on the other they'll want to recoup costs for the 3-4 month delay...

[The Other Dave]

It's happening dot gif! Epic is up for preorder next Saturday.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/202 ... -darkness/

Looks like they're launching with:
-Core box
-Rulebook separately if you don't want the core box
-Packs for Marines and Solar Aux with all the infantry from the core box
-Rhinos
-Kratos tanks for Marines and Baneblades for SA
-Army cards
-Plus repackaged fliers and titans

Selling everything separately makes me kind of tempted just to go all in with Solar Aux and use the marines I had jus print up for me last year as an opposition force, but it'll depend a bit on how the prices shake out, plus I'd have to improvise orders markers and such.

Anybody else tempted by tiny tonks?

[The Other Dave]

Some kind soul has put together an army builder with all the current formations, detachments, and units: https://legionbuilder.vercel.app/

And another kind soul has put together a google doc with all the special rules and such: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... 1762587084

(This is mostly so I've got the links in one place, but if anyone's interested in seeing how armies go together / how very little really you'd need to spend if you wanted to get 1500 points or so together... )

[The Other Dave]

A bit more detail than my "game's good!" post in the December games day thread:

Game's good!

Kondo-san and I had a 750-point game the other day, about the minimum size you'd want to play, and it was still good fun and an exciting game with lots of back and forth (he won, 53 to 47 points, based on a single squad of Ogryns refusing to flee off an objective I was trying to contest after a couple bases got heavy bolter'd by Predators).

The solar auxilia had a sub-cohort with a couple big lasrifle tercios, with flamers and power axe-weilding Veletarii attached; a unit of Charonite Ogryns and a unit of sentinels; a squadron of 4 Leman Russes and a squadron of 2 Malcadors; and a Knight Paladin in support.

The death guard had a demi-company with a couple tactical detachments (one in a storm eagle and one in rhinos), a unit of terminators teleporting in, a squadron of 4 Predators and a talon of 6 Contemptors, and a Knight Warden in support.

Pros:

• Generally (but see comments below), the game plays quickly and smoothly, and aside from a couple edge cases we hardly had to consult the book once the game got rolling.

• Scoring is progressive (or whatever you call it when you score every turn and not just at game end), and it's 100% based on objectives (there are some secondaries for killing stuff). Objective control is sticky, but you only get points for holding one if you control it with double the amount of OC in the area (and different kinds of units have different levels of OC). Which means there's a real impetus to move up and cap objectives early, and keep a solid guard of infantry around any you think someone might be eyeing, while also moving speedier units around in enemy territory to threaten or capture loosely-guarded ones. Basically, movement is important and interesting, and rapid redeployment is something you want to keep an eye on. Marines already having access to rhinos and storm eagles / thunderhawks could give them an early meta advantage until Aux get their transports.

• Morale and command and control are, while not as "frictiony" as Epic Armageddon, in the game and interesting. Morale is basically figured at the formation level (the "army level" in 40K), and when a formation is reduced to half strength the units in it have a reduced selection of orders and a morale penalty. It's not super complex, is easy to keep track of, and (especially late game when you lose access to the "go grab that objective" March order) potentially quite punishing.

• Solar Auxilia have it even worse, as most of their units have to be in command range of an HQ unit to do anything interesting at all.

Cons:

• As expected, combat is a bit fiddly, as you have to roll for individual pairs of units fighting one at a time. Can't be helped, etc., and it does at least add some excitement and ebb and flow to combats.

• Buildings have some tension between being very good protection for infantry inside them and kind of just being deathtraps if the enemy has any weapons that can target them (and the solar aux are pretty well equipped with such weapons). But we'll see, there's definitely a cost/performance choice between having a good chance of killing one or two units in a building or having a small chance of killing all of them, but the fact that you can potentially do the latter with a single volley of shooting to bring the building down could be feels-bad.

• This is more a fluff thing, but at the level of granularity the game provides, marines aren't that much better than solar auxilia. They get a slightly better armor save, are better at shooting at very close range, and while their line troops have a slightly better close combat factor than the SA's, the SA assault troops knock marine assault troops out of the park. Which is to be expected for, y'know, ogryns, the power axe dudes being straight-up better than assault marines is a bit of a shock. (On the other hand, see morale above.)