Sure, I think it was "planned" to be big - hence the obviously huge production values - but the plug got pulled and it all got dumped on shelves in one huge glut and two months later it was not spoken of in WD. The armies book comprising of all the units for all the lists with absolutely no structure always seemed like a last min rush job to me.

Yeah they produced new marine, guard, eldar and ork ranges, but then the steam ran out, years later and far too late they re-released some of the old chaos and nid stuff, with no updating.

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Hi!

For me, epic40k's release was the showcase for how GW would run the company from that moment on.

Simply put, they wanted it to generate more revenues. That was the guiding concern.

As a retailer at the tail end of SM2/TL, epic generated around 10% of GW sales in the US alone. It was higher in the UK close to 15%. We used to get information like this from the retailer newsletters they sent out back in the day.

Granted, it was a far cry from the combined sales of 40k and fantasy, but it had its niche as a solid number 3.

But that wasn't enough. Epic 40k was made with the sole purpose of INCREASING the amount of revenues that line could generate. Thus, it had to be totally different from second edition and of course, new models would be added.

What they underestimated was was the overwhelming "dislike" of the ruleset. It was never the fault of the new models. Those where better than the old ones in almost every way. But the rule set was another matter.

GW DID push to sell the game. By this time GW had gone direct, so retailers got the "hard sell" from their GW reps to stock the line. Stores that sold GW stocked it. Unfortunately for them, a lot of those boxed sets just sat there. My then local GW friendly store stocked 12 boxes anticipating them going fast since epic was a thing at that store back then. They sold 4. The had to "eat" the rest.

I had more contacts in several US distributors back then and the story was the same all around. Epic 40k wasn't moving. Since the main game wasn't moving the blisters of new epic models suffered the same fate.

Six months from the day of release it was clear the game had flopped commercially. Then WD support dried up. 2 years and one month after its release epic 40k was officially discontinued and for the first time in its history epic was an OOP game.

In a nutshell, they took a product that "sold" and basically killed it due to their desire that it should have made more revenue than it did under SM2/TL.

In the end, it wasn't the models or any perceived lack of marketing the product by GW, but the simple fact the rule set was not favored by the player base.

As would be their trend for years to come (to this day), they misread their customer base.... badly.

Primarch

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Primarch


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Or E40k just happened to be a first attempt at streamlining, something that took a while to accept?
Going back to the interview, I can clearly see an honest attempt at reforming clunkiness into elegance, only to find out that the brand was associated with clunk. New minis were mostly very much nicer than the old ones...

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Nitpicks Knapsack (Scratchbuilding and 3D designing and printing and painting)

I agree, and I think andy chambers has nailed it really - it wasn't the ruleset (which IS elegant and Epic 40k IS a good game), it was the change in the ruleset. People are naturally entrenched, and if they like something already it stands to reason they are going to be resistant if that gets changed drastically all at once. It happens with almost any significant change to GW games - including 40k and fantasy. These days the changes between editions are less drastic and focused on small tweaks that will result in differently models being "in favour".

I do have to wonder what would have happened if 3rd edition was Epic Armageddon - would it have been accepted, or is it only in the context of Epic 40k that it is appreciated?

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In my opinion it was a combination of two issues that caused problems with Epic.

Firstly, the rules were radically different. They were not bad, just different. But the problem was that the Epic players didnt want the new rules, and the players who WOULD like the new rules had been put off playing Epic by previous editions and the Epic banner. On top of that, the rules set did de-emphasise the biggest selling point that Epic really does have, and thats the rich 40K background at a different scale. The way in which the game functions and the way that you bought companies sidelined that a lot more than any other edition, previous or since. Again, thats not a bad rules set, but its not what Epic players were looking for in Epic.

Secondly, it was marketed as a big game but there was no contingency for 'what if'. Essentially, GW tried to push it in the same way that they pushed 40K (and continue to do so today) but the Epic infrastructure was radically different. With 40K, when you upgrade, you CAN have the previous edition armies hanging around. With Epic, there had been a big gap and that didnt work. So, players were left with only some of the forces that they wanted to play, and thats always going to slow down the players acceptance of the system. Couple this with a rapid decline relatively shortly after launch and it was always going to be difficult to grow the player base for it. Putting it to online only really hurt the game too. Shelf displays attract impulse purchases. Online stock simply doesnt. I dont go to a web store and 'look around'. I go there, click on what I want and get out. But, when I wander into my gaming store, I look around the shelves at the minis, even for games that I dont play. Hell, I have just been persuaded to play Dust, and that wouldnt happen if the store only said 'you can buy it only online'. Last Friday, Dust wasnt even on my radar. By Monday I had spent 80GBP and had the core rules and a supplement book, and my first pack of minis.

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https://www.net-armageddon.org - The official NetEA (Epic Armageddon) site and resource.

True dat. I was one of those people.

Heh. That was one of the things I liked the most. But then again. I am probably not an "Epic player".



I was a red shirt at the time of the launch. All the nostalgic references to the good old Epic=core game era simply did not translate to the competencies of the local stores. It is not that we did not like the new rules. None of us played the old ones! We were the top shop in terms of sales at this point in time and I do not think that my experiences are unique. Epic is and was a (very) distant third to most gamers and GW emloyees and that coupled with a rather hurried introduction meant it was truly a challenge to attract new players via the usual scripted in store scenario.

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Nitpicks Knapsack (Scratchbuilding and 3D designing and printing and painting)

I think a big problem with the reboot of the rules that was epic40k was how scared of new things GW customers can be.... I suspect that if GW released another new version of 40k and completely rebooted the rules, from the ground up, changing them in a very fundamental way, even if they were objectively better than before, 40k players would leave in droves because they fear the unknown

I heard rumours about why Andy C left GW involving him being tasked with writing a new edition of 40k (maybe 3/4th) and rather than the usual 'rehash the 30-year old ruleset just enough to invalidate all the current codexes' he did a ground-up re-write of the rules which of course didn't sit well with GW

I think E40k definitely sounded the death knell for epic, but not because it was a terrible game or ruleset, simply that GW pushed it incorrectly, expecting it to sell as well as the other core games, then dropped it very quickly when it failed. Also the old SM2/TL players turned their noses up in droves, rightly or wrongly, mostly in my experience because the game was different rather than objectively bad.... as a lover of all things 2nd edition epic myself, even I felt that the game as it was had become excessively bloated, requiring as it did two rulebooks from two separate boxed games, 3 separate expansions and a bunch of rules only available in white dwarf, as well as sheafs of army cards, and bags of order and objective tokens, tokens representing plasma and shields and lots of various templates.... I'll admit I turned my nose up at Epic 40000, but the fact that within weeks of its release, you couldn't even get an intro game in my local GW store to see how much fun it really was hardly helped.....

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Just some guy

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And those 40K rules rewritten from the ground up went on to be Starship Troopers from Mongoose.

I do think that the shock of the change would have upset the entire 40K apple cart.... for better or worse is another question.

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https://www.cybershadow.ninja - A brief look into my twisted world, including wargames and beyond.
https://www.net-armageddon.org - The official NetEA (Epic Armageddon) site and resource.

If true then yes it would have been a terrible move for GW and they were right to intervene given Epic had just flopped for the exact same reason. It's a company.

Sadly they've not resolved to achieve anything significant through incremental change either though.

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Sadly indeed. Sounds like a nice rules set though.

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Nitpicks Knapsack (Scratchbuilding and 3D designing and printing and painting)

I have to admit that I am not a massive fan of the Starship Trooper rules. They are a bit too abstract for my taste, although I get what Andy was trying to do with them. I think that going from 3rd ed (?) traditional 40K to those would have been asking a lot of the 40K player base.

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https://www.net-armageddon.org - The official NetEA (Epic Armageddon) site and resource.

Maybe he was in the wrong. I know we all have a love hate relationship with GW, but he has kind of a legendary status with things being the way they are. If it comes out that he was the @sshole, then who knows maybe peeps would think less of him if you would have fired him too.

Hi!

That's a good point. Stories always have two sides and the "wrong" party is not always that easy to discern.

Primarch

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Primarch


The Primarchload
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I really liked that comparison of games to a tripod, with one leg being art, another being words, and the last being miniatures. I have said for a long time that there is more a game than the rules. Sometimes a system can have GREAT rules but suck at something else, like miniatures and art, and no one wants to play that either. I believe all of us, regardless how much you game, you spend far more time reading the rules and painting miniatures than you do playing. Look at my recent activity - all the Space Marine v2 games I have been getting in. I would say for every one hour I have spent actually playing, maybe 5 were spent on building and painting minis (if not stripping and restoring if buying them second hand). So there has to be something in the game, the rulebook, the universe, that inspires you to want to be a part of it. For me, it was the Horus Heresy that sucked me in. I just loved the brother vs brother aspect to the story.

Wow lots of Epic 40k discussion here I can talk about Epic 40k all day.

Anyway, that being said, it really seems like Epic 40k was a labor of love for Jervis and Andy. I have heard Epic 40k is the game Jervis is most proud of, and I can see why. The Warhammer Epic 40,000 is an AMAZING box set. Within it, you have the best plastic miniatures ever given to an Epic scale game, a smallish Rulebook, an unbelievable comprehensive Armies book, and a pretty nice Battles book. Thrown in some awesome ruins (not just the big ones, but the small ones that were attached to the infantry stands), and your assortment of counters and such, and its by far the one of the best game boxes ever released. There is a lot to chew on in that box set.

But even I rejected it when it first came out.

Hell, I had to be brought kicking and screaming to move to SM2/TL because I loved AT/SM1 so much. I still played it when Epc40k came out. But instead of playing Epic 40k, I was selling my 40k 2nd Edition minis to buy Epic 40k ones to use for my AT/SM1 armies. I rejected the initial stat changes, hated the focus on the detachment, the loss of individual characters, and the mob like structures to detachments. But the minis, they were amazing.

So a few years later during the mass firesale of Epic from everywhere from GW to Ebay, I eventually picked up the three rulebooks by themselves just to see what it was about. I hadnt played Epic at all in years at this point. I found the newer rules a pretty interesting take on things, and liked the idea of supressing fire. Its a little quirky, and I hate the Firefight rules, but love the War Engine ones, so whatever. All the SM2 games I am playing right now? Guess what? I hate the titan Aiming Dice. So every system has its pros and cons.

I do think Epic 40k was ahead of its time. And at the same time, if it wasnt what gamers wanted at the time, then it deserved to fail when it did. I feel though, that I am very fortunate and lucky I was able to later get the Epic 40k set (multiple sets actually) when I did. Still happy I have it although I am not playing it right now.

Actually, lets compare the contents...

Adeptus Titanics - 6 Warlord Titans, not a terrible start, but its limiting.
Space Marine v1 - All Space Marines, Land Raiders, and Rhinos. Rules cover Whirwinds but no minis. Still, comes with a lot of stuff. Additional rules in WD and Codex Titanicus.
Space Marine v2 - Three armies, but a lopsided affair, and really not much you can do with the Eldar and Orks that come in the box. You HAVE to spend more to make a playable game.
Titan Legions - Minis are cool, but wait, counters for infantry and crew?!?!?! COME ON!! A real step backwards.
Epic 40k - Two huge armies with tons of flexibility on how you organize them.
Epic A - No box set, just a freakin rulebook. HATE. THAT.

So for those that have pushed away Epic 40k, or decided on it long ago, I recommend taking another look at it by todays standards. Yeah, it has its problems but all the versions of Epic do. It is however, a great game box.