So I split the starter set with MikeT and picked up the works raptor helix (god I wish they wouldn't use that term, it's just plain incorrect!!)

had a wee unboxing last night at the club and generally quite impressed, you get a decent amount of kit in the box and the resin cast quality is pretty good, it's considerably worse than Hawk wargames quality, but definitely acceptable

I've had a flick through the rulebook and to be honest, I expect it to play very much like epic, but much more focused on shooting, the use of inches rather than cm angers me, but what can you do?

the one thing that bugs me is that the infantry, being cast to the base, have weird filler structures between their legs and occasionally end up looking a bit like they're stuck in a wall texture on some 3D shooter computer game....

the directorate tanks would definitely work well as IG superheavies or a leviathan, they would also make excellent minoris, and majoris models, just about the right size and they look like squat, evil and slow crawlers

will be playing a test game in a few weeks, anyone else picked this up yet? I'm looking forward to getting the stuff painted, I can't see myself picking up much more than a box or two of extra tanks and maybe one of the big leviathans, but it looks like they've done a great job!

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Is it the same Spartan exploding dice system?

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Having just got a few locals into epic I was simultaneously excited and gutted that they announced this (having waited 2 years.) It looks good. I think I might pick up the rule book and see how it plays using epic proxies at first.

Too big! Too big!...

Yes, exploding dice. A fun boardgame mechanic. I am not a fan in a wargame though...

it has the exploding dice but only on the heavy Red dice, black dice have no effect, blue dice get two successes on a 6, only red dice get two successes and roll again, so you're not going to have infantry or light recon buggies toppling a leviathan with a bit of stupidly good luck

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Thanks, saves me getting remotely interested as I think that mechanic, while fun, is too much at the random end of the game mechanic for me.

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meh I think it's no more random than lucky critical hits or random amounts of damage really.... more or less has the same effect and as I said, it appears to only apply to the heavier weaponry available (from a cursory scan of the book), so you're not going to have infantry blowing up war engines with freakish dice

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More dice rolled to produce a single result leads to a more even distribution of outcomes.

In general in Planetfall, Formation A shooting at Formation X will generate a dicepool, roll that and generate a number of successes. These successes are applied to Formation X roughly front to back, with enough to kill tank 1 being applied before moving onto tank b etc etc. After that, cover and shield saves can be rolled to try and reduce the number of hits to try and save some or all of the tanks.

The outcome of Planetfall tanks shooting at other tanks will be roughly the same as EpicA tanks shooting other tanks.

I didn't realise they were sticking with the 3 colours of dice... Interesting.

As for exploding 6's. One round I can live with, it's the exploding, exploding, exploding 6s which bug me. Fine in Dreadball where a bit of crazy action can be funny. Wouldn't like it in a tactical game.

So like just ok or an acceptable quality for modelers? Is it inline with the rest their lines? I wonder if we'll see a gradual increase? That seemed to be what happened with Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada.


Switch to centimeters? The units are nothing than pretty counters as much as we try and delude ourselves they're actually important to play, as long as the playing area is shrunk too, then 45cm for all intents and purposes just as good as 45inches.

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it's very good, just an order of magnitude lower than hawk, which is exceptional couldn't see any obvious miscasting or bubbling, bits of easily removed flash but nothing else, just doesn't seem as finely detailed as the hawk stuff



mostly will be playing tournaments so need to get into the inches mindset!

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Damn British with all our your awesome tournaments and ... make out parties

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Also, swapping from inches direct to centimeters would require a scale down of all bases as well to maintain balance. Course, you could just go the Flames of War way and quote every measurement in both inches and cm.

Aye if we needed to get super detailed and accurate but as long as both sides were based the same and used the conventions I expect that it wouldnt be that big a deal. Or yeah... we could just use inches

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I'm not too surprised they are lesser quality than DZC. Of course, they are also significantly cheaper than Hawks models ! :-)

I've been impressed by the casting on the Dystopian models I have (hundreds of tiny rivets everywhere ! ) but perhaps not so much by the "attention to detail" if that makes sense. Hawk does go to the N th level on detail though!