Hey guys, I thought I would make my first post here to ask a question on here about a project of mine.

I really want to get into playing Epic: Armageddon, but I never got around to it in all the years I have been with GW projects, unfortunately. I have literally played every single Specialist Game set in the 40K universe from the time they were released- even Gorkamorka. And now, it's just hugely unfortunate about Epic, because the situation with everything being so far OOP has created a huge seller's market on secondhand figures that it would be extremely limiting because of the costs involved to have much more than a single Epic army, which is not something I can do because not only do I have gamer ADD, but I typically have to have several armies on-hand to get anyone to play games with me, as I live in a pretty huge dead-spot for gaming.

But I digress. I have found an option. It's not as great as painting a bunch of awesome looking minis and moving them around on the table, but it's the next best thing. What I have done is taken all the sprites I could dredge off the internet that were created for Vassal gaming, and I have, through organizing and extensive kitbashing of the images, made it so that a player could simply print out their armies on flat tokens, much like the torpedo/squadron tokens for Battlefleet Gothic.

For example, I am using sprites like this for the basis of a Space Marine force, though I have since added a Thunderhawk. The resolution of these pics might be horrible, but when printed out at Epic scale (which incidentally is 100% print scale for these images) you can actually easily distinguish shoulder pad markings on Tactical/Assault/Devastator stands, and can actually see things like bionic eyes and rangefinders as single colored pixels:


With the exception of Nids, Squats and Dark Eldar (and even Dark Eldar is still possible- though only in the early stages right now), I have an analog for nearly every single option for all the main races of Epic 40K (even the variant armies of this community's Tournament Pack), and organized them into accurate-scale flats for Epic. You can print out a 1,000pt force on one sheet of label paper, and then stick them to a base and play (I use thick craft foam). Thus enables a player to have a sizeable Epic force for just the cost of ink and paper.

Not all the options will look like GW-official models, but things are close enough to be a good analogy. For example, Orks are my most converted, but Gunwagon looks like the old Leadbelcha tanks from Epic, and you can pick out the difference at a glance of an Oddboy's Soopagun vs. Soopa Zzap-Gun.

And yes, even though they lack the visual impact of actual minis, I also have all the main titans for Imperial, Ork, and Eldar available, though I personally use actual minis for my Titans.

Like I said before, this is not as good as minis, but I would like to do my part to help keep the game from dying out, and I think it'd be great to be able to disseminate these images to anyone who wants to play Epic with them. I'm not that internet savvy, so what's the best way to do this? Start a blog with download links? Simply put them on an image hosting site?

Good idea to play on the cheap.

I wouldn't recommend hosting them publicly though, you'd likely receive a notice requiring you to take them down from GW's lawyers. They're pretty keen on hunting out this sort of thing and have gotten similar closed elsewhere.

Hrm, I wasn't sure if that was still going around, because all of the sprites I found for my project, other than some Titans, were found publicly using Google Images. I thought all the hubbub was because they were being used to run with Vassal, which GW clamped down on because it was a way to play 40K without paying.

I was wondering if I would be able to at least host them on an image-hosting site, with threads on sites like this and Dakkadakka allowing me a way to show off what I have been doing.

Definitely thanks for the input, though.

That's what links in your signature are for

_________________
He's a lawyer and a super-villian. That's like having a shark with a bazooka!

-I HAVE NO POINT
-Penal Legion-Fan list
-Help me make Whitescars not suck!

I think GW actually included printable counters in previous versions of epic, and that was when the models were IN production.

I wouldn't worry about GW. If they happen to find them and want you to take them down, let them tell you that.

_________________
Kyrt's Battle Result Tracker (forum post is here)
Kyrt's trade list

Heck IIRC there was even a Necron proxy file way back when.

_________________
He's a lawyer and a super-villian. That's like having a shark with a bazooka!

-I HAVE NO POINT
-Penal Legion-Fan list
-Help me make Whitescars not suck!

Actually, the files I started from were the sprites like pictured above, which people were using for Vassal. I actually took the existing minis and used MSpaint (with a bit of GIMP for color changes) to copy/paste them together on rectangles of a green background (think old-style Goblin green bases, lol) in as close as I could get to the appropriately-sized bases for each unit type.

Funny enough, when you print the sprites out at 100% with MSPaint, they are exact Epic scale, other than a small amount of vehicles that need to be printed separately on a different paper at a slightly smaller % to get the correct scale compared to other units (a downside of working with models where a boltgun is two pixels wide is that they distort horribly if you simply try to rescale them on the PC, so you have to alter the print size in Paint before printing- it's Neanderthal, but works perfectly, though).

So for example a Space Marine Tactical unit is a green base nearly the exact dimensions of an Epic 5-infantry strip, with 4 bolter-marines and a missile launcher-marine. All vehicles/bikes/walkers are done in a similar fashion, and I am actually trying to include on eqach page all the character upgrades with each unit so there is not even a need for personal copy/pasting.

I actually got the entire idea from the training counters on the NetEpic site, so this is a perfect visual:

http://www.net-armageddon.org/sites/default/files/compilations/epictrainingscenario.pdf

but imagine the units having this amount of detail, even printed at Epic scale:

Actually the way I was setting up each army file is with one of every option available for that army, assuming then that a person could open the main army file for their selected army in MSPaint, and then copy and paste all the units they want for an army into a new Paint file until they have most of a page full, and then print on adhesive paper to sticker onto some sort of sturdy base of their choice (card, craft foam, etc).

That way, while it's putting some of the work on the player (and it's work that any computer literate person could do), they are only printing exactly what they want and how many of each for their army formations. Plus then they can always use the main files to create any new units they might want to "kitbash" out of the main files as they please.