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I’ve painted up about 600 points of Emperor’s Children for Legions Imperialis, and I have played five games now, all around 500 points. Despite my disgust at the way GW has drip fed the unit releases, feth’d up the rulebook layout, and clearly did little to no proofreading of the armies, or playtesting of the game with the army lists, I am forced to admit I am liking and enjoying the game. I kinda expected I might end up just playing EA ‘Age of Darkness’ if LI was a wet fart, but the core rules are very well designed, besides a handful of terrible decisions (legion traits, rend on infantry, warp missiles, non-independent terminators, etc). Full disclosure I haven’t played any Auxilia yet so don’t really have an opinion there, other than disgust at the rend on infantry models. It is hard to believe that the same team that wrote the core game did the army lists. The quality level and lack of playtesting are so obvious there, and yet a lot of development clearly went into the core game engine. Which is doubly strange given how awful the rule book’s layout is. Makes me think the game was developed very slowly, but that the army lists were done (or redone?) in a much shorter space of time. Maybe the book layout was not done until the starter box contents were settled on and as a result, it got all jacked up?

So, after playing those first few games, I think the 3000 points is a full game is probably nonsense. There is a lot going on at just 500 and I’m sure at 1,500 it will be a pretty challenging table state. At 2000 points, Warlord can hit the table, and that range is what I’d consider a ‘full’ game. Now, EPIC being what it is (aka 30k as God intended) there is really no upper limit on points it could support. The issue will become time and table size. But, I will be surprised if 3k becomes ‘pick up normal’ for this game.

To sum up my rambling. I think when in a few years time this game gets a cleaned up rulebook that rolls in all the drip fed units and such (like necromunda and titanicus did eventually) it will probably be a very nice game. It is too bad, that GW refused to release the core army rules with the core game, as we are really just playing a beta at the moment and it will be at least a year before we see what the baseline game is actually like. And with a predatory release plan like that, I just worry that interest will fade away before that baseline game even emerges.

Is the THawk an original GW one? Because it would seem the very single one that would be xDDD.

Army looks really pretty so far, congrats! As to the game itself, well... as you say, it will probably be a nice game when they finish it, so I'll just gonna wait until it is, instead of being a paying alpha tester as I was with Necromunda.

Fool me once and all that.

 Rivetbull wrote:
It is hard to believe that the same team that wrote the core game did the army lists. The quality level and lack of playtesting are so obvious there, and yet a lot of development clearly went into the core game engine. Which is doubly strange given how awful the rule book’s layout is. Makes me think the game was developed very slowly, but that the army lists were done (or redone?) in a much shorter space of time. Maybe the book layout was not done until the starter box contents were settled on and as a result, it got all jacked up?

Because it wasn't the same team.

The core rules are a copy paste from the 80s/90s, a good core (Space Marine/NetEpic). The sh*tty rest (like army lists, special rules, extras that are not in the original SM, total lack of proofreadig/playtesting...) were made by the current useless designers (you can see their faces in the WD battle report).

No man. I played the poopy out of EPIC Space Marine. I’m old. There is some structural similarity to that game but it is very different. Activation timing, scale rules for pinning, structures, these are all very different concepts from old EPIC Space Marine, and clearly had to be developed in their own right to make a coherent game system. Yet, rules in the army lists like the warp missile and the legion traits show that they were scarcely proofread, let alone playtested.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Albertorius wrote:
Is the THawk an original GW one? Because it would seem the very single one that would be xDDD.

Army looks really pretty so far, congrats! As to the game itself, well... as you say, it will probably be a nice game when they finish it, so I'll just gonna wait until it is, instead of being a paying alpha tester as I was with Necromunda.

Fool me once and all that.

I printed everything but the flyers. The Thunderhawk is a GW plastic kit, unchanged except for the basing. The Storm Eagle is a conversion of a Vanguard resin kit. I bought the rulebook off ebay where it is priced surprisingly reasonably, $30-$40 for a big hardback, although they should be giving it away with all the corrections it needs. I am unlikely to return to GW for EPIC infantry models because the limits of HIPs in this scale mean the 3d prints arent just orders of magnitude cheaper, but also have way more pose options and more detail. I think this situation might be a first for GW. They will not be like the new world I think…

I think, but grain of salt, that rules for models are developed as the model is designed while rules for the game is developed all at once, so there just isn't a lot of overlap

A lovely little army you have there, Rivetbull, and also a fair assessment of the game.

That is a beautiful looking army there Rivetbull.

I agree with your assessment of the game and am probably in the same boat. Will this be the game that ushers in a new dawn of Epic and makes it one of the main GW games again? No way. Is it a crunchy mess of combination special rules that quite obviously has not been properly play tested and has some quite hilarious imbalance issues? Absolutely. But do I have fun playing it? Yes very much so.

That final part is the key one for me really. There are some beautiful little minis, even if they are probably too expensive and hard to get hold of. And we're playing an unfinished beta-version of the game. I suspect the design team, whoever they might be, probably did the best they could with limited resources. The miniature designers have knocked it out of the park with a lot of it, and probably judged (quite rightly) that they would sell even if the rules were a rather eclectic mix of elements of previous versions.

this is the main point, could the game be better? obviously, will it get better? one can be hope

but its fun, don't take it too seriously, embrace the insanity, the game can look spectacular, seeing locally a distinctly lower level of "grey legion" than 40k suffers too, and people are producing terrain for it, in several styles, its looks good

leopard wrote:
this is the main point, could the game be better? obviously, will it get better? one can be hope

but its fun, don't take it too seriously, embrace the insanity, the game can look spectacular, seeing locally a distinctly lower level of "grey legion" than 40k suffers too, and people are producing terrain for it, in several styles, its looks good

Maybe I'm just a terrible salesman, but I have never been able to convince friends to get into a new game by saying "It's not good, but it can be fun if you don't take it seriously!"

I'm really having fun with this game. Admittedly there's parts of the rules that could be written better, however whatever we don't like in my group we change.
For example overwatch only done by units on first fire. Ours is a closed group of like minded players who play just for the joy of it.
I can see problems arising for the competition scene but as none of us do that we don't see a problem.
Get toys on table, play game and have fun!

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

leopard wrote:
this is the main point, could the game be better? obviously, will it get better? one can be hope

but its fun, don't take it too seriously, embrace the insanity, the game can look spectacular, seeing locally a distinctly lower level of "grey legion" than 40k suffers too, and people are producing terrain for it, in several styles, its looks good

Maybe I'm just a terrible salesman, but I have never been able to convince friends to get into a new game by saying "It's not good, but it can be fun if you don't take it seriously!"

its weird, but there have been any number of games locally sold on exactly that, rules are so-so but it looks good and is fun to play, just not a "competitive" game, not everything needs to be tournament capable, though it would be nicer if even more casual type games got that level of proof reading it has to be said

indeed with some of the games the frustrations are entirely intentional and its how you work around them that makes it a game

then you have GW games where the frustration is, you hope, unintentional, because if they mean it they really take the whole Slaneesh thing a bit too far

examples locally
- Judge Dredd
- Victory at Sea
- 02hundred hours
- DBN, heck the entire DBx series, tightly written but very abstract rules

 Rivetbull wrote:
And with a predatory release plan like that

If only predators were on the release schedule

I payed only a couple of games, and i like it it's differend then epic armagedon. and the only problem is "I WANT MORE STUFF"

 skeleton wrote:
I payed only a couple of games, and i like it it's differend then epic armagedon. and the only problem is "I WANT MORE STUFF"

^^^^ this, there is a never ending need for more, the staggered release likely leads to overbuying models, e.g. building a 2k-3k force with just wave one is viable, but then new toys come out.. so maybe a further 1k is added, then another wave etc

I'm sure that's totally unintended /s

While I am myself yet to go all in on LI, I already know I'm going to be playing it and having fun. The rules are good enough for casual play, horribly broken for comp play, but that's not a concern for me personally as I'm all about the casuals and fluffy armies

I'm just waiting for more models and rules for them, I don't like the idea of blowing a big chink of money into the current offerings, as they do not represent the type of army I want to going for. Once we have all the old Epic game staples, Land Raiders, Land Speeders, Drop Pods and the like, I'll start collecting an army

The models are the highlight for me as well. Once I have a decent collection of them, I can start digging into the old Editions of Epic I missed back in the day (stopped playing Epic after Space Marine 2nd ed). In fact, I'm currently toying with the idea of playing 28mm game rules systems with these models, just converting all distances to centimeters instead of inches. Would make even a 4 x 4 foot table look like a decent sized battlefield all of a sudden! Units of five models can just become a single model with X wounds, and boom, no more messing with unit coherency. I could even build "unit below half strenght" bases to swap out with a full base once battleshock kicks in..

was interested in the beginning, simply to finally get my heresy Space Wolves Army without doing another one in 28mm, but it is not there yet
will see how the game develops but some good looking small scale tanks are not doing it for me to start that game for now

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Maybe I'm just a terrible salesman, but I have never been able to convince friends to get into a new game by saying "It's not good, but it can be fun if you don't take it seriously!"

but this is basically the selling point of all GW games
it is not good but fun (with the right people) and looks really good if everyone does a good paint job and someone is building/painting awesome terrain

 tauist wrote:
While I am myself yet to go all in on LI, I already know I'm going to be playing it and having fun. The rules are good enough for casual play, horribly broken for comp play, but that's not a concern for me personally as I'm all about the casuals and fluffy armies

I'm just waiting for more models and rules for them, I don't like the idea of blowing a big chink of money into the current offerings, as they do not represent the type of army I want to going for. Once we have all the old Epic game staples, Land Raiders, Land Speeders, Drop Pods and the like, I'll start collecting an army

The models are the highlight for me as well. Once I have a decent collection of them, I can start digging into the old Editions of Epic I missed back in the day (stopped playing Epic after Space Marine 2nd ed). In fact, I'm currently toying with the idea of playing 28mm game rules systems with these models, just converting all distances to centimeters instead of inches. Would make even a 4 x 4 foot table look like a decent sized battlefield all of a sudden! Units of five models can just become a single model with X wounds, and boom, no more messing with unit coherency. I could even build "unit below half strenght" bases to swap out with a full base once battleshock kicks in..

Genuinely curious as to why you'd do that, when 40k as a rules framework is notoriously mediocre and creaking at the seams already with the number of models you have on the table in 28 mm, being a platoon level skirmish game that's stretched torturously towards company level engagements for which it's very much unsuited for. Unless you meant similar systems generally?

Trying out E:A or E40k with the new models is of course a good idea. Same models, many games, some of them even very well designed.

 kodos wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Maybe I'm just a terrible salesman, but I have never been able to convince friends to get into a new game by saying "It's not good, but it can be fun if you don't take it seriously!"

but this is basically the selling point of all GW games
it is not good but fun (with the right people) and looks really good if everyone does a good paint job and someone is building/painting awesome terrain

Maybe that's why we don't play many GW games any more

The only GW game I play regularly now is Aeronautica Imperialis, which as much as I think it was missed potential and have posted about it being a downgrade from the original AI, is still actually an okay game.

Every game can be fun if you just don't take it seriously, might as well play monopoly or something (though no one can not take that seriously ).

I have to ask, what game at this scale is competitive?

Old epic, despite the nostalgia, had its own balance issues, quite blatently.

Historic game at this scale deliberately eschew being competive in my experience.

Honestly I think as games get more models, making them competitively balanced is just very hard.

It’s hard to say right now, because we don’t have a whole lot of units to choose from.

Marines for instance don’t have their Drop Pods, or the rules for them. They’re also lacking much in the way of their rapid assault toys, with the sole exception of Stuff In A Thunderhawk.

Start adding that in? And we may start to see stuff like the Leman Russ Vanquisher meet hard counters. As in stuff fast enough to close the range and start popping them early in the game, negating their range and impact against our own armour.

Same with Landraiders and Spartans. Both are (presumably!) well armoured and well armed. So when combined with the troop contents of your choice, can form a mobile bastion which can tackle most things short of a Titan.

It’s disappointing we still await those units and their rules, but the fact remains we’re yet to see each forces full capabilities and options.

stratigo wrote:
I have to ask, what game at this scale is competitive?

Old epic, despite the nostalgia, had its own balance issues, quite blatently.

Historic game at this scale deliberately eschew being competive in my experience.

Honestly I think as games get more models, making them competitively balanced is just very hard.

Epic Armageddon's balance is top notch. It has regular tournaments too.

Legions is a gong show on balance without some kind of limitations on formations, especially after the new book.


Some formations are pretty cynical imo.

balance went out the window they decided upgrades are virtually all at no cost

GW decided this game is about fun and not balance

 kodos wrote:
GW decided this game is about fun and not balance

Because as we all know those are mutually exclusive concepts

SU-152 wrote:

stratigo wrote:
I have to ask, what game at this scale is competitive?

Old epic, despite the nostalgia, had its own balance issues, quite blatently.

Historic game at this scale deliberately eschew being competive in my experience.

Honestly I think as games get more models, making them competitively balanced is just very hard.

Epic Armageddon's balance is top notch. It has regular tournaments too.

I disagree

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 kodos wrote:
GW decided this game is about fun and not balance

Because as we all know those are mutually exclusive concepts

they are for GW, who understand neither

Fun is subjective, this is why dominatrix exist, for example, some people really can be sadists



At least the mostly all leman russ vanquisher army can be replaced as the boogieman with the almost all basilisk army

Look, as peer modern conflicts are showing us, they really are dominated by heavy artillery