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stratigo wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
Nope, not really. It absolutely can take six hours, with not much of a problem.

Indecisiveness, too much stuff, reassessing each and every one it's your turn to activate a detachment, fussing over what's what, fussing over what is it that stuff does beause you don't remember and it has a feth ton of special rules, not knowing the game by heart... yeah, I can see it perfectly well, without needing to go watch the superbowl while you're at it.

Assuming that if a game takes six hours "is a real concern and you should get a check up" is, simply put, stupid, insulting and overblown. And worst of all, wildly unrealistic.

If you are a particularly slow player, I can see maybe an entire game taking 6 hours.

I do not see a turn taking six hours. Sorry, this is just people trying to hyperbolize to make the game look worse.

I play Alpha Strike regularly with some friends, and people can take A REALLY LONG WHILE faffing about specifically what to do, and how much to move, etc, etc. Alternate activation makes it harder for them, because they want to re evaluate everything beforehand so as not to "make mistakes".

In the case of AS, we're talking about 12-20 activations per side, with each activation being a single miniature.

Does it irk me from time to time? Well, yeah. Do I think they're particularly dense or something? Quite the opposite. They simply want to play in a different way you (or me, for that matter) seem to.

And I don't think anyone said a turn taking six hours, but a GAME. If someone did say that, it didn't register, and I was talking about a full game.


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leopard wrote:
e.g. if as a marine player you want two armoured companies, unless you have a good reason not to, pick a tank chassis and standardise on it

The game seems to want you to do the opposite, given how lists work, or at least doesn't really make it clear the pitfalls inherent to that approach.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I'm not jumping in on the "how long does a turn take" discussion, but without having played any big games, the rules just don't seem like they'd scale well to big games.

It doesn't seem like they do, that isn't to say they can't it's just we can all agree there's a massive gulf in expectation too from a game with like 6-7 activations, but larger detachments, or a game with like 60 or 70 activations but very small detachments.

I think people just need to realize that, ya, you really can bog the game down in a number of ways. You can get like 400 infantry bases into 3k if you really want to for example, at the opposite end you could have a 3k army that's essentially just all tanks and likely under 65 models.

Fair to say as well that most of the examples I've given are extremes and most people will have armies that may not push on any boundary or extreme all that much. But even still the game really doesn't scale up gracefully, even if both sides say have only like 20 activations in a large game, that's 20 per side, times 2 because of movement and combat phases, (not to mention order but that's usually fairly quick for everyone as there's no rolling). So 20 activations becomes 80 overall activations for the a turn. Again goin to extremes, I can make about a 77 activation list at 3k, want to see the math explode? If both sides had 77 activations (I get this is absurd, but possible) that would be 308 activations in a turn or 1540 activations over 5 game turns. Even at a zippy 30 second per activation, you're looking at like a 13 hour game, and we know activations won't average 30 seconds, if its just a movement maybe. My only point in showing that is that it's possible and legal, because the games army construction outside of formations themselves has like no limits.

I don't think the typical game will take 6 hours, but I do think people are trying to defend a game that is so variable pretty much any timescale is believable because one game could be a total of 800 bases of infantry and another could be like a total of 100-120 tanks facing off in the same points level and you'll get drastically different game lengths on account of those extremes. Not to mention expensive units like planes or knights or titans. So sure the game could be a good pace, assuming players are on a bit of the same page perhaps and or the lists are built with speed of play taken into account.

leopard wrote:
e.g. if as a marine player you want two armoured companies, unless you have a good reason not to, pick a tank chassis and standardise on it

The game seems to want you to do the opposite, given how lists work, or at least doesn't really make it clear the pitfalls inherent to that approach.

That said, you can totally make a game that can work better with wildly varying stuff on the same detachment/order. Epic 40k does, for example, but it's always a give or take situation.

It's kind of like the old adage: Fast, Cheap, Good: choose two, but with "detailed profiles", "fast gameplay" and "choice within a detachment" instead ^^

oh you can do it, the rules don't change its down to the player effort and concentration required, a common tank chassis even with alternate weapons means it all at least moves the same distance

mental workload management matters, ditto on table traffic management

and yes always give/take, I prefer the detail of weapon profiles over some sort of generic "firepower rating" or "attack factor" v "defence factor" system

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I'm not jumping in on the "how long does a turn take" discussion, but without having played any big games, the rules just don't seem like they'd scale well to big games.

Sadly that happpens with lots of alternate activation games. But in LI they did nothing to try and solve that problem.

leopard wrote:
oh you can do it, the rules don't change its down to the player effort and concentration required, a common tank chassis even with alternate weapons means it all at least moves the same distance

mental workload management matters, ditto on table traffic management

and yes always give/take, I prefer the detail of weapon profiles over some sort of generic "firepower rating" or "attack factor" v "defence factor" system

I'm on the other end myself, I find that I don't really want to micromanage unit loadouts in my general simulator game ^^. It's a good thing there's both options.


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SU-152 wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I'm not jumping in on the "how long does a turn take" discussion, but without having played any big games, the rules just don't seem like they'd scale well to big games.

Sadly that happpens with lots of alternate activation games. But in LI they did nothing to try and solve that problem.

Yeah, in BTech/AS there's always been a mitigation with the number of units you activate at the same time if you have more activations than the opponent.

Classic Btech games take generally longer than LI games. Particularly as you add rules cause classic has a lot of rules you can add on.

My experience of 1500pt games is generally 3+ hours. A couple of those didn't even get to the last turn as they were so one-sided, so it ended up with one side conceding. I'm possibly not the fastest player, but have been playing Epic since the 90s and fairly frequently over the last decade, so that hopefully compensates.

That's with a bit of rulebook page-flicking, but I would say the main time sinks are probably the alternating activations in each phases and looking through weapons profiles - although the Legion Builder app does help a great deal in that regard.
It's quite interesting that Epic Space Marine 2 had IGOUGO for movement which was then replaced by alternating activations when NetEpic revised the rules; although when I was playtesting for big demonstration games, I ended up using the SM2 IGOUGO simply because, when you reach a certain volume of miniatures, it just slows down too much.
Legions has also added an 'interrupt' mechanic, in the form of Overwatch, which has slowed things down even more. SM2 and NetEpic just used First Fire (with some specialist 'snap fire' units when flyers were introduced) which I think was a much more efficient and graceful mechanism for achieving the same thing.

I think Ian Wood (mainstay of the Epic community) made an interesting observation that the game can't decide if it wants to be a mass-combat game with a level of abstraction (and the game certainly has that visual appeal with dozens of units on the board) but then also a skirmish-like level of alternating activation and WYSIWYG and multiple weapon loadouts. So you've ended up with something that has loads of crunchy detail, which is great if you like that sort of thing, but it means it isn't the smoothest-running of games, and unless you live and breath it (remembering unit and weapon profiles to heart etc.) the game can slow down a great deal.

leopard wrote:
and yes always give/take, I prefer the detail of weapon profiles over some sort of generic "firepower rating" or "attack factor" v "defence factor" system

Epic 40k's firepower table was just a proxy for a to hit/to wound roll (instead of rolling to hit, you looked up the table, reduced the number of dice appropriately, and jumped to the to hit roll).

It didn't really contribute to Epic being fast, you could remove the firepower table and replace it with a dice roll and it'd still be a fast game to play.

 Pacific wrote:
My experience of 1500pt games is generally 3+ hours. A couple of those didn't even get to the last turn as they were so one-sided, so it ended up with one side conceding. I'm possibly not the fastest player, but have been playing Epic since the 90s and fairly frequently over the last decade, so that hopefully compensates.

For how small a 1500pt game is, that just seems too long to me.

We all have our preferences I guess, my preference is for a game like "Epic" to scale well to big games and play fast, focusing on the macro rather than the micro to speed up games.

The people I play with are time poor, it's rare we get together for long enough to play a long game and even when we do get together for long session we gravitate towards multiple fast games rather than one long game.

As all-seeing skink says we all have our own preferences. I'm enjoying playing LI but I appreciate we all have our own ideas of how the game should play.
I've always started any new system with small forces to allow me to concentrate on getting things right in my head and then progressively scaled up as my familiarity with the system improves but each to their own I suppose.

was more meaning by the "firepower rating" stuff where you have an entire thing, with all its offensive and defensive abilities reduced to single numbers

so say you could have, for example, a United Federation of Planets Heavy Cruiser, commanded by some spoilt brat who seems to treat it as his personal taxi, with a factor of "8" for attack and defence, then a Klingon Empire D7 class Battlecruiser commanded by a hard noised no nonsense captain, that also has a faction of "8" for attack and defence.

never mind that both captains pass times are different and the ships operate totally differently, they just become interchangeable

its less about a look up table, heck a decent game will likely have them for weapon profiles in one central and easy to update location, but more about flavour

I gather the 3rd edition of Epic was very streamlined and quite a good game mechanically, but so bland it basically killed the system

which is why I suspect this edition has individual weapon profiles, though also has a team of designers who seem to have no clue how to distinguish them

leopard wrote:
I gather the 3rd edition of Epic was very streamlined and quite a good game mechanically, but so bland it basically killed the system

I think that's the main problem, that you, like many people, took a look at the rules and "gathered" that it was too bland, most of the time without actually bothering to play the game.

It's not. It's actually the single Epic game where the factions play the most to the actual fluff of the setting.

Epic Armageddon was written specifically to address that "lack of flavour" though, and the game plays much more like a more tactical version of the regular Warhammer 40k game.

I played 1st, I played 2nd, by the time 3rd came about I wasn't gaming, when I got back into it, Epic was long gone.

I've read the rules, never had an army or opponent to play against, I have however played a range of games that have been "simplified" to streamline the game, in virtually all cases the actual flavour of the game has gone and it may as well have been a card counters game.

it may well play like the fluff, however it reads like grey soup, Epic at its best felt like you were playing the then rules of 40k, on a much larger field of battle, and the current iteration feels like me quite like playing HH, though with only a small fraction of the models, it has that brutality and sense of get on with it, while still having the sense that individual models matters.

its also worth saying I have picked up a few sets of rules that could be a near perfect game but the way they are written gives little to any reason to try it, and a few that when tried are not tried again (looking at you Cruel Seas) - this is something the current iteration suffers from, the rulebook is terrible for not drawing you in

leopard wrote:
I gather the 3rd edition of Epic was very streamlined and quite a good game mechanically, but so bland it basically killed the system

At the time 3rd edition came out, Epic had an established community and the community liked the complexity.

I think given times have changed, and there isn't an established Epic community, a game like Epic 40k could have worked well, I think it's a much more modern game in how it plays and it's fun.

For me, who started with 3rd, it's my favourite edition, because it lets you play big games in no time. I'd rather play 2 fast games in an afternoon than 1 slow game (where I probably know half way through who's going to win anyway).

I found I can and did put a lot of love and attention into the army building side of Epic 40k, it mattered to me that my dudes were armed slightly different, or that they were one chapter instead of a different chapter, I put effort into squad leaders, and converted tanks.... that was all the stuff in my imagination during the army building stage and I carried that imagination into the game.... BUT the game itself didn't need that level of complexity, because the game wasn't on the scale of individual troops.

Things like facings weren't important, because the supreme commander doesn't tell individual troops which direction they need to point, the soldier on the ground or his sergeant deals with that. Though admittedly, Epic 40k could have used some cross fire rules or something to give more benefit to flanking.

Things where it did start to matter, like the weapons on a superheavy tank or a titan, they had more granularity and special rules, because that's where you want it on a game where a large force is under your command.

Ultimately, things still need to be simplified, a Sicaran and a Predator have the same armour in LI when they don't in 40k, likewise Kratos and Baneblades are basically the same endurance with a 2+ and 2 wounds.

Also, 40k is still a thing, I don't need LI to tell me these dudes are equipped with Bolters but those dudes are equipped with Storm Bolters, I already know that because of 40k.

leopard wrote:
it may well play like the fluff, however it reads like grey soup, Epic at its best felt like you were playing the then rules of 40k, on a much larger field of battle, and the current iteration feels like me quite like playing HH, though with only a small fraction of the models, it has that brutality and sense of get on with it, while still having the sense that individual models matters.

I would say it is very much a matter of opinion, because I kinda hate the way modern 40k plays

And I OTOH feel that Epic is at its best when it plays like the fluff read, instead

 Albertorius wrote:

leopard wrote:
it may well play like the fluff, however it reads like grey soup, Epic at its best felt like you were playing the then rules of 40k, on a much larger field of battle, and the current iteration feels like me quite like playing HH, though with only a small fraction of the models, it has that brutality and sense of get on with it, while still having the sense that individual models matters.

I would say it is very much a matter of opinion, because I kinda hate the way modern 40k plays

And I OTOH feel that Epic is at its best when it plays like the fluff read, instead

totally down to opinion, and I meant how 40k played back in 1st edition, when Epic was how to play a larger game, not the modern version where they are trying to put more 28mm on the table than 6mm used to

everyone's after something different, its compromises all the way down or a lot of fragmented games, and the best bit is there is space for both and the models, when you can get them, can suit many versions of the rules nicely

As the comments mentioned above, everyone has their own personal preferences for the game and what they want to get out of it. Though time constraints is a very real consideration.

Having played the original space marine and adeptus titanicus I found the later editions of the systems and the blurring together of the games not to my liking. Things became bland.

In the last couple of years I invested heavily into Titanicus and like a madman was playing HH in 8mm. So I had plenty of heresy era stuff printed for me and all the legion specific units.
Macro or Micro? I suppose for me I prefer the different troop types to matter as I really wish to capture the Horus Heresy in this scale.

Yes I could use my World Eater Red Butchers as basic terminators but where’s the flavour. So their stats are different to basic terminators. Core detachments aren’t just tac marines with bolters, they can be Despoilers as well. Then I can have Rampagers as a support detachment option. It just means playing around with rules.
We know troops are coming with different weapon load outs from the Imperial Fist list. Hopefully also units like Breachers, Despoilers etc.

Some may not like that level of detail in an Epic size game but I think it is coming, we just have a long wait for it.

People will complain it’s a lot of book keeping and I don’t disagree, you find what’s comfortable for you. The new info on the preorder Saturday has what they class as a simplified/fast paced mass titan/knight warfare. Again people may really dig a simplified, quicker way to have loads of titans on the table or some may see it as dumbed down titanicus.
Having spent years lurking on forums where people complain about having more than a handful of titans because they have to make room for all the bloody terminals. This will be for them.
Me, I’ll try it but I don’t use the terminals anyway, I use tokens next to the titans so I know what state they’re in. Is it quicker than a terminal? maybe. Do I need less room with 20 titans on the table, definitely.

Apologies for the swing into titanicus at the end.

 Octoshark wrote:
As the comments mentioned above, everyone has their own personal preferences for the game and what they want to get out of it. Though time constraints is a very real consideration.

Having played the original space marine and adeptus titanicus I found the later editions of the systems and the blurring together of the games not to my liking. Things became bland.

In the last couple of years I invested heavily into Titanicus and like a madman was playing HH in 8mm. So I had plenty of heresy era stuff printed for me and all the legion specific units.
Macro or Micro? I suppose for me I prefer the different troop types to matter as I really wish to capture the Horus Heresy in this scale.

Yes I could use my World Eater Red Butchers as basic terminators but where’s the flavour. So their stats are different to basic terminators. Core detachments aren’t just tac marines with bolters, they can be Despoilers as well. Then I can have Rampagers as a support detachment option. It just means playing around with rules.
We know troops are coming with different weapon load outs from the Imperial Fist list. Hopefully also units like Breachers, Despoilers etc.

Some may not like that level of detail in an Epic size game but I think it is coming, we just have a long wait for it.

People will complain it’s a lot of book keeping and I don’t disagree, you find what’s comfortable for you. The new info on the preorder Saturday has what they class as a simplified/fast paced mass titan/knight warfare. Again people may really dig a simplified, quicker way to have loads of titans on the table or some may see it as dumbed down titanicus.
Having spent years lurking on forums where people complain about having more than a handful of titans because they have to make room for all the bloody terminals. This will be for them.
Me, I’ll try it but I don’t use the terminals anyway, I use tokens next to the titans so I know what state they’re in. Is it quicker than a terminal? maybe. Do I need less room with 20 titans on the table, definitely.

Apologies for the swing into titanicus at the end.

Your opinion must be respected, but for me it is not logical that a 8mm game has the same level of detail as a skirmish/small battles game (28mm). I expect a 8mm game to be "bland" in profiles and focus on the grand tactical aspect of things (Epic 40k 3rd ed.).

But that's how things are now so... rules bloat.

Note that is you wander to printed models there are despoilers, breachers etc available. they are perfectly usable as tactical marine proxies, though as you note they lose a chunk of the flavour.

most of the specialist units would essentially be the base unit with a slightly higher CAF and maybe a slightly different ranged profile

one one side its probably not different enough to care about, but the flip side of that is that its also not really enough to complain about if its added either.

I like the idea that say breachers could have a slightly better save and CAF, but only when assaulting buildings or defended positions for example, but maybe only be able to bring support marines and more breachers plus maybe terminators and not the heavy support guys or something

I don't think having specific units by itself adds too much bloat - something like bording units or destroyers for example, which are distinct units with a specific profile. But where Legions has an issue, and which did not apply to SM2 or Armageddon, is that it's not a simple one line unit profile - it will be three or four weapons load outs, each of which have special rules that need to be referred to and interact in different ways. Referencing those and determining rules is what adds the bloat and most importantly slows down the game, which is why you need the level of abstraction at this scale.

And the quite basic problem is for my middle-aged eyes struggling to make out what an 8mm infantry or tank is armed with from across the table, which I think is what makes WYSIWYG ludicrous at 8mm.

 Pacific wrote:
I don't think having specific units by itself adds too much bloat - something like bording units or destroyers for example, which are distinct units with a specific profile. But where Legions has an issue, and which did not apply to SM2 or Armageddon, is that it's not a simple one line unit profile - it will be three or four weapons load outs, each of which have special rules that need to be referred to and interact in different ways. Referencing those and determining rules is what adds the bloat and most importantly slows down the game, which is why you need the level of abstraction at this scale.

And the quite basic problem is for my middle-aged eyes struggling to make out what an 8mm infantry or tank is armed with from across the table, which I think is what makes WYSIWYG ludicrous at 8mm.

Yeah, I agree.

I started writing rules for HH in Epic 40k before LI ever came out.... I only got a first draft shown below, but I really like that the entire army rules that you need while playing fit on one page (rules for building the army do come from a separate sheet, but you make up detachment cards for each detachment before the game, so don't need that section of the rulebook when actually playing the game).

I think if you wanted to get rid of Firepower and instead add a separate "to hit" roll based on unit efficiency, you could do that, it'd only add another column, but you'd now be rolling dice for individual units, which isn't a problem in a game where every model in the unit is identically equipped, but Epic 40k had mixed detachments so it'd slow things down a bit. Having a base 4+ to hit would be fine though, since then you would just collect a number of dice equal to the firepower and then roll to hit.

Ah, I despised Epic 3rd edition but again thats’s personal taste.
There is no right and wrong in this matter. These different units and weapon profiles are coming down the line, I’m just choosing to tinker with the stats in the meantime.
Ha, suddenly needing glasses was a shock but I can still differentiate the different troop types even from a distance.

We’re not playing the full game at present which has been frustrating. Within a month we’ll have drop pods, javelins, Spartans etc. That will open things up.
Then it’s waiting for further expansions, Light armour with sabres, artillery with arquitors etc.
Hopefully it’s not too long until everyone can put together a formation where they have all the elements available.
I just hope with all the delays they have put more time into play testing.

 Octoshark wrote:
Ah, I despised Epic 3rd edition but again thats’s personal taste.

That's fair enough, I was just pointing out that even in Epic 40k 3rd edition, Despoilers can be different to Tacticals and World Eater Red Butchers could be different to your average Imperial Fist Terminator.

That level of detail didn't exist in Epic 40k 3rd edition because many of those units didn't exist in 40k back then and/or the authors wanted to simplify games down to the general feel of an army versus individual units being special, but it doesn't mean the rules can't accommodate it.

Where I drew the line was that I don't care whether a tactical support squad has plasma guns or if the heavy support squad has missile launchers... they are simply "tactical support squads" and "heavy support squads".

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
I don't think having specific units by itself adds too much bloat - something like bording units or destroyers for example, which are distinct units with a specific profile. But where Legions has an issue, and which did not apply to SM2 or Armageddon, is that it's not a simple one line unit profile - it will be three or four weapons load outs, each of which have special rules that need to be referred to and interact in different ways. Referencing those and determining rules is what adds the bloat and most importantly slows down the game, which is why you need the level of abstraction at this scale.

And the quite basic problem is for my middle-aged eyes struggling to make out what an 8mm infantry or tank is armed with from across the table, which I think is what makes WYSIWYG ludicrous at 8mm.

Yeah, I agree.

I started writing rules for HH in Epic 40k before LI ever came out.... I only got a first draft shown below, but I really like that the entire army rules that you need while playing fit on one page (rules for building the army do come from a separate sheet, but you make up detachment cards for each detachment before the game, so don't need that section of the rulebook when actually playing the game).

I think if you wanted to get rid of Firepower and instead add a separate "to hit" roll based on unit efficiency, you could do that, it'd only add another column, but you'd now be rolling dice for individual units, which isn't a problem in a game where every model in the unit is identically equipped, but Epic 40k had mixed detachments so it'd slow things down a bit. Having a base 4+ to hit would be fine though, since then you would just collect a number of dice equal to the firepower and then roll to hit.

This is brilliant. What a game for this scale should look like (Epic 40k). Shame it went in the opposite direction.

 Octoshark wrote:
Ah, I despised Epic 3rd edition but again thats’s personal taste.
There is no right and wrong in this matter. These different units and weapon profiles are coming down the line, I’m just choosing to tinker with the stats in the meantime.
Ha, suddenly needing glasses was a shock but I can still differentiate the different troop types even from a distance.

We’re not playing the full game at present which has been frustrating. Within a month we’ll have drop pods, javelins, Spartans etc. That will open things up.
Then it’s waiting for further expansions, Light armour with sabres, artillery with arquitors etc.
Hopefully it’s not too long until everyone can put together a formation where they have all the elements available.
I just hope with all the delays they have put more time into play testing.

There is indeed no right or wrong, but preferences ^^. I'm just happy there's an option for everyone that wants to play with smol 40k minis.

 Albertorius wrote:

leopard wrote:
I gather the 3rd edition of Epic was very streamlined and quite a good game mechanically, but so bland it basically killed the system

I think that's the main problem, that you, like many people, took a look at the rules and "gathered" that it was too bland, most of the time without actually bothering to play the game.

It's not. It's actually the single Epic game where the factions play the most to the actual fluff of the setting.

Epic Armageddon was written specifically to address that "lack of flavour" though, and the game plays much more like a more tactical version of the regular Warhammer 40k game.

Not a place for debating past game systems, but that quest of replicating a fluff or feel is an interesting one. Presumably the game to emulate is HH, which to me often looks like a mass of marines covering a table. (And I can't resist - I liked 3rd ed, but Epic:A for me captured the fluff better than another other game bar Man O War, BFG, well and bloodbowl - for the first time I could use a small elite marine army and rout larger companies in an SF way, deploy from orbit, extract by thunderhawk, air assault elsewhere, etc. All those things I had imagined for years. Epic 40k was a good game but some things like the intended varied formations in practice got dropped.)


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AllSeeingSkink wrote:

leopard wrote:
I gather the 3rd edition of Epic was very streamlined and quite a good game mechanically, but so bland it basically killed the system

At the time 3rd edition came out, Epic had an established community and the community liked the complexity.

I think a bunch of things combined to kill it off. It didn't come across as bland to begin with because you would make these varied detachments. It was only after people started to optimise that I think legitimately you could say they were a bit bland.


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leopard wrote:
Note that is you wander to printed models there are despoilers, breachers etc available. they are perfectly usable as tactical marine proxies, though as you note they lose a chunk of the flavour.

Being from a mostly historicals 6mm background, plenty of games handle differentiating infantry from different era and nations. It is always striking how clunky GW can be. (I want to say something like they try and make everyone as special as the Germans to knock one frequent game design problem ). I do wonder what the wider experience of GW designers is now. Given the pay they must be a young bunch, but their designs seem to be curiously uninspired or fail to copy other good ideas.

play a lot of historical stuff here, Flames 3 did nicely in making the different factions feel different - e.g. the Germans ability to always nominate a new unit leader, while other factions needed the CiC to come over and sort it out.

Napoleonic stuff also manages to make the armies feel different, even in 6mm

think the problem is a lot of the special rules are either utterly dominating "ignores cover" or essentially don't do anything most of the time

I would tend to agree, yes. I would say that Epic 40k managed (IMHO) to do that a lot. The orks feel much different than the IG or the SMs, which in turn felt really different from the eldars or the nids, with just a couple of army rules and a good selection of unit profiles. E:A did this too, with much more focused lists.

I'm actually pretty interested on seeing what Epic Warpath has to offer in that regards, now.

was interesting in 1st edition with the army lists from White Dwarf, where different factions were just plain different, e.g. marines having a very rigid "power of three" structure, IG more flexible, Orks having the "mobs"