Hello Folks.
Just trying to familiarise myself with EA rules, mostly in the hope of finding a few players. What on earth has happened with the armies though?

I have loads of classic units that seem to have been reduced to the simplest terms:
eg: "boarboyz= treat as bikes"
   "skull hamma/giblet grinda= treat as battle wagon" (!!!)
   "weirdboy tower= treat as battle wagon"

I thought I'd heard the worst of it until I saw: "Squiggoth= treat as battle wagon"

Jeeez. Seriously- I am keen to give the system a chance, but why such a lack of detail? Or are there alternative lists? Or have Peter Andre and Jordan requested a set of rules suitable for their intellect? If I wanted a bare bones only, no frills strategy game, I'd be looking elsewhere. Worse still, no targetting system for titans and my favourite gargant weapon, The Snapper, is another "treat as bog standard".
Somebody please tell me what I'm missing- or is NetEpic the only system worth playing?

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Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

Calm down, there are alternate lists available which treat such units in more detail. The Feral Ork list from the Swordwind book deals with Boarboyz, Squigoths etc.

EA has a system of army lists being representative of specific forces rather than entire races, so not everything comes under the same list.

Some units/weapons have been made more generic for ease of playability, that's true, but there's always a trade off between detail and playability, especially at 6mm. Personally I think EA hits this balance a lot better than any other version of Epic has.

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http://www.troublemakergames.co.uk/
Epic: Hive Development Thread

Especially compared to Epic 40K. Now that was a system that reduced things to its simplest terms.

-Malakai

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-Malakai

"You'll never understand how much watching other people's pain gets me off, hearing their screams and knowing that I have the power of a god." -Velvet Acid Christ

Boarboyz are now detailed in the Feral Orks list... and could make an appearance in other lists.

Despite the "recommendation", most people use Skullhammaz and Gibletgrindaz as Fortresses of varios types.

Personally, I use the Weirdboy tower to represent a Gunwagon with a Soopagun or Supa-Zzap and it does just fine.

Not sure if it's in the online version, but in the printed book, Jervis explains things about this in one of the appendicies.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

The Snapper is in the Ormkimedes Gargant Big Mob list,so everything you had worries about is in other lists of some kind.

This means that instead of 1 generic ork army from an earlier edition you now have the base for 4 different army lists in EA.

This also makes the new edition much better in my view as where you could select the best of everything for your style of play from a list that included everything produced,you now have 4 more limited choice lists each with it's own playing style and each one having individual units/formations specific to that list and trying to represent different campaigns/settings etc..

The "count as rule" is there so that players can use older models as stand ins in each of the different lists and means none of the older models are unusable even in tournaments(surely that's a good thing from GW ).

http://www.players.tacticalwargames.net ... ...y+Lists

here's a link to the armies page at WikiWikiWar so you can see the variety that is growing with the army lists in EA and hopefully find that it's not quite as Bog Standard as you thought.

Pretty much everyone I know of treats the "counts as" list in the rulebook as a rough guideline.  As long as your opponent is informed and the units aren't easily confused, you can call them anything you want.  Personally, I stick close to Chroma's suggestions, with Wyrdboy Towers as Zzaps and Pulsa Rokkits as infantry Soopagunz and so on.

There are feral ork units (squiggoths, wildboyz, etc.) in the feral ork list in Swordwind.  You can take a feral army or, with the consent of your opponent, mix the formations from the feral and regular armies.  I've never really tried to min-max them, but I don't think you'd run into major balance problems pulling formations from the feral and "core" ork lists for the same army.

Same for the Speed Freeks list, but it does have more potential for abuse if you mix it with the normal Ork list.

There was a Gargant army list that was in semi-official development long ago.  It's available at the wiki (wikiwikiwar) file section here at TacComms.  It has variant gargant weapons, but I think they still need a bit of work.  I have been heading the fan development and I'd love to hear any feedback you have.

Also, I wrote up a Blood Axe list that has looted vehicles.  For the most part Orks will "kustomize" looted vehicles so they are more or less in line with non-looted standards but the list adds several new categories.  I'd appreciate any feedback on that as well.

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Neal

Phew!
Thanks for all the additional info folks. Very much appreciated. Like the rest of you I'm guressing, I'm quite inistent on being able to field a nice range of troops- including some of the more weird and wonderful. The thought of stuff just becoming extinct or omitted doesn't half get my goat.

One other thing though- how does it all hang together, ie official and fan based stuff? Is GW still updating lists periodically? Would be great to see rules for chaos troops too- but you do worry that various competing fan lists might not all agree...

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Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.

Both Chaos Marine (Black Legion, but usable for any) and Chaos Cultist list were officially released... but GW hasn't posted them on their website "upgrade" yet...

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

Still I think you have sort of a point here. The ork list does seem to me to be the one that presents the greatest problems for an old 2 ed player. One thing you didnt mention was the grot-problem. I have 100 stands of infantry in my netepic army, but only 4 of them are gretchin. As every warband has grots in them now, Im gonna need loads of them if I wanna use my old army (that has taken me years to paint!).

Other than that I feel that E:A is great in that it lets you play with what youve got, regardless of whether you started playing 1st ed, 2d ed or epic40k. In fact looking at my eldar army, I can use all the minis I used w 2 ed rules, plus some odd stands or vehicles that I had no use of before. So my eldar army has grown, without me buying any thing new...

Good luck finding players btw, I have the problem myself. Getting more and more eager to try the new game out...

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"We are the sword of fire with which the Traitors shall be cut down."

Hi

Same problem in Gloucester. Couple years since my last game. About 10 since my last regular game (Space Marine). Still got loads of kit though.........

Cheers
Paul H

Do you guys live/work near a GW store? It was the way I found my current epic crowd. Sure I had to play a bit of 40K to get some to try epic but I've ended up with 6 opponents of varying reliability  

Your other option is to attend one of the UK tournaments and I'd recommend one of the Open Wars as you best introduction to tournaments. No fixed dates for 2009 but watch this space.