The conversation about Epic 40,000 resources in the magazine thread got me thinking. Like SM2 and EA, E40k also has a persistently loyal following (albeit perhaps a bit smaller). Like those games, E40k also suffers from being scattered far and wide across numerous publications, many of which are extremely difficult to find today. To access all of the official rules, gaming resources, errata, army lists, FAQs and optional rules, you must go to four print publications (White Dwarf, Firepower, Epic 40,000 Magazine and the Citadel Journal) and countless websites.

So why hasn't E40k enjoyed the reorganization and republication as a living rulebook that we see in it's cousins, SM2 and EA? Not only have the Net-editions been able to gather all the disparate rules and errata in one convenient place, they have arguably grown the hobby—I've read more than a few posts by players claiming that their only exposure to Epic has been NetEA (not EA, when it was still around). That is a rather remarkable thing. E40k certainly needs to be collected and properly edited (something which the original game designers realized almost immediately after the game was first released and which remains no less true today). Growing gamers, however, is even more reason to undertake this task. Does E40k deserve to be forgotten to time, or should new would-be fans have the chance to find another game they love? I was one of those would-be players a month ago, and now I am extremely happy I found E40k (after writing it off for decades for no other reason than it seemed obscure).

So what would be needed to publish a living rulebook to organize the fanbase? There would have to be some basic material needs—professional layout (I can do this: see my Sisters of Battle list for a very simple example), a website (I can't do that!), editors and writers, a small handful of steady playtesters and so on. There are also some design goals that we must establish. I intend this to be a fully open conversation, but here are my thoughts on those:

Design Goals
1) Stick to the original game. Much of the success of NetEpic and NetEA, I feel, is how much they cleave to the original games that they seek to revitalize. To that extent, I think we should conceive of our core mission with NetE40k (NetE3?) as being primarily focused on troubleshooting the rules (at least for now). That means no new additions or alterations to the core mechanics, options or army lists, except where the original game seems to have accidental discrepancies (for example, a vehicle with the Close Support special ability and Firepower 1, so that the special ability is meaningless).

2) Along the same lines, no changes to point values or unit profiles. There are many, many problems on this front, but all of those changes will need serious playtesting, time and discussion and are thus not part of our immediate goals (which is publication).

3) And in general, any changes to the wording of the rules (or tweaks and fixes to resolve contradictions) should always maintain the spirit, balance and design ethic of the original game.

Developing the Game
That said, I fully believe the game deserves to be truly "living." It deserves to be developed into the future by a smart and passionate community. Thus, I recommend a platform for this development: an occasional webzine. Ideas can be bandied about in gaming clubs, on blogs or on forums. They can be passed around as playtest documents. Eventually, however, broadly supported rules additions should be published in an occasional webzine in an "official" form (at least official in terms of community support). This is actually the exact same method that GW used with Firepower and other magazines. It works great, it allows players to add in new elements at their leisure and preference and gives influential weight to new ideas that really fix or add to the game. In honour of Firepower, I suggest we title this webzine "Assault"!

If you support this idea, then please chip in. If you have some involvement with NetEpic or NetEA, then please lend your advice!

Brainstorming
To get the ball rolling, here are some things I believe we should examine:

• Weird unit descriptions. The Shadowsword seems to get a free secondary weapon in comparison to the Baneblade. I am pretty sure this is a typo, and the Shadowsword is meant to have the Volcano Cannon main weapon, while the Baneblade has the Turret Guns (and thus doesn't need the secondary weapon). Also, several Titans have a Close Combat Weapon that shoots 30cm in the shooting phase with FP4... this is probably meant to represent smaller gun batteries alongside the Close Combat Weapon, but it deserves clarification.

• Stubborn only works if the entire detachment is stubborn, but this leads to several extremely limited detachment builds (for example, the Thousand Sons Chaos Space Marine detachment that can't have... a Tzeentch Sorcerer, Silver Towers or any Rhinos???). I recommend we use Gav's advice in the designer notes and count a detachment as Stubborn if at least half of the surviving units have the special ability. If that still feels a little like a zero-sum game, then perhaps we can talk about adding a clause that individual units with Stubborn never halve their Firepower or Assault when broken?

• Leadership tests and orders need to be clarified... if you fail a leadership test when taking an Overwatch order with blast markers, can you still move your full distance (over 5cm, since you are technically not Overwatching)? Do you test again to move? My sense of the rules is that any failed leadership test when taking an order means you can only shoot normally for the round, but cannot move at all. That way you aren't taking multiple leadership tests to resolve the same basic issue.

• Additional Fate cards. Gav et al. standardized these as official rules, so there should be a single way to incorporate them into the base game. I think Method 2 is the simplest (mentioned in Firepower 2 and elsewhere): shuffle each army's Fate cards and the base game Fate cards together in a big deck, draw your cards and leave aside cards for the opponent's faction, shuffle those back into the deck before the opponent draws.

• Hit allocation rules from E40k Magazine #5. These rules were made official and solve several other issues, including the Jervis Johnson's director's cut rules in FP1 about hiding infantry behind tanks, as well as the overpowered status of AT weapons.

• Almost everything from the FP1 Errata article, aside from a few added rules. With the hit allocation system that came out later, I don't think you need to touch the AT rules (point values or targeting). The "walkers as infantry" seems intuitive, but it allows Dreadnoughts to assault 45cm... so no to that. Finally, I personally feel the war engine rules get too far away from the way war engines are described in the base game (where the designers specifically chose to not allow them to use orders and even built an entire phase of the game around it). All of these rules, however, are perfect candidates for the webzine.

• Clarify language of shots and hits for non-standard attacks (particularly whether you make to-Hit rolls or saves). It's clear once you wrap your head around it, but it can be confusing for a new player when they read an ability causes two "shots" or two "hits" (the difference between the two is extremely important!).

• Disrupt. This seems spam-able in a way that was clearly not intended by the game designers, as it can sink a player's army morale extraordinarily quickly. We could talk about limiting blast markers caused by disruption to one per detachment per round.

• Alternative Guard list from Firepower 3. This seems more like a list-fix or errata than an additional army list, so we can talk about making it standard. Honestly, I prefer the 2nd Guard list more than the 3rd, which I believe became official (despite it not actually fixing the problem of command units). Option 2 and 3 seem to be ridiculously easy to combine, however (just add infantry squads to the support list and you're done). This would also model the 2e Imperial Guard codex perfectly (covering both lieutenants and infantry as support).

To keep the original scope of the game as pristine as possible, I would recommend republishing the following articles as "official, optional rules" in the webzine:

• Air Superiority (FP1)
• Flak Whirlwinds etc (FP1)
• War engine orders (FP1)
• Everything we come up with! One idea that came to mind was to include EA-style crossfire rules to boost the utility of infiltrators and surrounding the enemy (crossfire would give you a left-shift on the firepower table)

There are also a number of really great articles that unfortunately go too far in the direction of list modification (which is not our goal right now) to include in the base game. These are perfect candidates for the webzine:

• Adeptus Mechanicus army list (FP1)
• Princes of Chaos (FP1) (Chaos daemon armies)
• Supreme Warriors & On the Wings of Death (FP2) (non-Codex Space Marine chapters)
• Children of the Kraken (FP3) (Genestealer armies)
• Imperial Tunnellers (FP4)

Hi,
I was a driven player and torchbearer for epic 40k some time ago and I feel the urge to comment on your request.
I even did a complete revision and a living rulebook, but it is In German and didn't attract much interest therefore.
I created an App to manage epic 40k armies, but couldn't promote it because ... GW

I stopped playing by the 40k rules for a few reasons:
- negative support by Games Workshop, not only are the minis no longer available from GW, but they actively hunt down and shut down people that copy these or the game. All work that went into a 40k project is futile if GW decides that their IP is violated.
- Some of the rules just didn't seem to work out.
- The whole range of minis was never released.
- Victory could easily be decided by a single bad die roll, instead of tactics or strategy.
- No support for necron.
- Obvious favorism of the empire of man. Fate cards, better Titans for example.
- The community is extremely small.

I turned towards another system last year, but sadly It died in the meantime.

I'm working on my own project right now, which is independent from any Games Workshop IP and is going to be released under Creative Commons.

So my answer is not included in your poll.

What i want to say is:
I had exactly your train of thoughts 7 years ago.
Think twice if you want to invest work into a system that is shunned by its own creators and was never really completed.

Well done sir i'm really pleased to see somebody championing this much derided but really quite brilliant game. Now i'm not blind to it's flaws but then again every game system has it's flaws but personally I just love this game. It does exactly what it was designed to do which is be a game that allows you to play literally EPIC sized battles within a reasonable time frame and (with a horde of toys on the table) to a satisfactory conclusion.

The game is simple to learn and play, easy to tinker with if you wish and is fairly robust if you do. This game I feel is the most complete game GW ever produced it was a real shame that GW was so quick to abandon it and it should have been given a chance to develop over time. It is a game that also in most cases is won by the better player which to me is a good thing. It contained some very clever systems that went on to feature in other games to such as blast markers for example and was also without much modification used for the puzzlingly very succesful Battlefleet Gothic game, so go figure.

The little official support GW gave it, the four firepower mags and the ten E40k magazines certainly helped but really the E40k magazines had very little actual E40k specific stuff in them and were really a platform for developing the ATII rules and eventually EA as well. Both these other systems are great games in there own right but not what I was looking for. Once Jervis announced that he was going to develop E40k by adding some detail to units and a few tweaks to the game I was initially very interested but very quickly things started taking a turn for the worst as sweeping changes were made that turned it into a completely different game (EA) as it happens and not an updated E40k as was originally stated so interest wained for me. I did write an email to Jervis at the begining of the project and he assured me that he would not be making any major fundamental changes to the game but just tweaking it a little and adding some extra detail to units but of course this didn't turn out to be the case and we ended up with EA instead.

I'd like to refer you to a thread started by yorkie titled Epic (fan edition) which was an attempt to do just exactly what you are proposing which was gathering together all the official rules amendments and additions and getting them all put together in a updated rule book. Unfortunately yorkie had a major family crisis at that time and had to withdraw his participation and I have had very little time to continue the project myself so having your good self step up to champion the cause is wonderful. We did end up changing the game quit a bit in the end trying to introduce more modern playing styles into it such as alternating activations for example but this never progressed beyond a certain stage due to a lack of play testing.

I started the E40k sticky to at least have a permanent resource thread that players could go to to find those articles/rules they are looking for and with an open invitation for anyone to post any useful E40k links, rules, articles, resources, house rules etc they may have.

Anyway I whole heartedly support you in this venture and will help in anyway that I can.

Cheers

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Well the pole so far is in favour of getting this project of the ground even if only a few people have voted so far.

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I voted YES!
Not sure to be able to help, but it would be a good thing to have a NetE40K.

That's great, thank you for the support so far. At this stage, we also need ideas! What are the things/assumptions about the Epic hobby that have changed in the last two decades? For starters, I was thinking that there should be some language about basing models. Basing has never been a critical feature of E40k, but it would be nice to give a nod to the many options people use now (round, square, rectangular). E40k allowed square and rectangle bases and I think NetE40k should carry on that flexibility.

In general, I would suggest that infantry bases should be five models per base and cavalry (and some large infantry, like trolls and minotaurs) should be three. The FAQ's on barrages in the back of the Battles Book (page 111) indicate that a multi-model based unit is under a template (and thus presumably in range etc) if at least half of the models are under the template. It seems like an important idea and should probably be included in the main rules discussion. To support this, I would recommend bases can be in any shape desired, but base sizes should generally not go much above 500 square millimeters (so 25mm round, 40x10mm, 20x20mm etc), unless a cavalry base needs more depth (the Getting Started pamphlet recommends 40x20mm for cavalry).

As far as material needs, does anyone have any thoughts about a hosting website? At this stage, we also need editors, writers and art-finders. There is a ton of non-GW 40k art on DeviantArt which is perfectly safe to use in a non-commercial product (for the art pieces that do not have an open license, I recommend we just credit the artist and if we get a specific request to remove a piece then we can cross that bridge when we come to it). Hint, stick to the fanart section. We are generally looking for sweeping images of mass battle (fewer individual character studies or portraits). If you wish to help gather some art for us, please be very careful to make sure the art is not commission work for GW. Sometimes artists on DeviantArt are just showing off the work they did for GW and more often than not, they are very clear that it is GW copyrighted material. In case it is not mentioned, I would love to have some fact-checkers who are familiar with a lot of recent GW products to look over the collected art and make sure none of it seems familiar.

Some art examples of what we're looking for: this image has some pretty kickin' gender-inclusivity and a great scope, this image is nice and moody and eases off the full-action of other pictures, this image shows some Titans in action and doesn't feature Space Marines (I think we will end up getting too many Space Marine images!). We could even use photography of painted GW miniatures, as long as GW did not take the photo, so feel free to scour your favorite painting threads for inspirational images.

If you would like to help in writing, then we will need transcribers to start producing sections of the rules. Please use your own words when writing the sections. You can start anywhere and do any amount of the writing that you'd like—in fact, I recommend doing small chunks that can be completed in one sitting to be sure that you can submit it right away without others doubling up the work on that section. Once we have a few sections together, I will produce a draft layout and we can go through it editorially, making sure there are no errors and the rules are clear and concise.

I think you need to be very flexible with basing these days especially where size is concerned. Many players use their favourite base style, sizes and shapes for that matter so a lot of room should be built in to such a guide. I myself use whatever takes my fancy at the time I do the army and vehicles get whatever base size suits the size of the model.

Just my thoughts on the matter.

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I have of course thought of something similar and have been reading the e40k rules again in the last couple of weeks. The one thing I would say, which I think you already picked up on, is that it is important to start with a baseline that is identical to the "official" rules. It is always possible to move on from there, but I think it is really important not to be tempted to let your opinion (even if it's several of you who agree) make little tweaks as you will lose that critical anchor for future players that is so important for NetEA. Once you have a pure rewrite of the official rules with zero changes, you can start to build upon it with fixes, FAQs, optional rules, rebalancing tweaks etc.

This is because, down the line, others who want the same thing (all the rules in one place) might think of your version of the rules as just house rules, and people tend to have a very low threshold for trusting anyone else's interpretation of what is "improvement". It would therefore be better if they find instead a convenient compilation of the official rules - it is the lowest common denominator. Once they are "in" they might then get interested in your "fixes", at which point they are familiar with the reasons for them. And then the additional armies, and so on and so on.

It will be quite hard to resist the temptation to "fix" the rules as you go along (which I guess is what happened for yorkie and moredakka), but I think it's really important to in the first iteration. One man's fix is another man's house rule. Of course, working out what is official and what is not is perhaps not 100% clear, but so long as you can make that claim I think it is OK - so perhaps best to set the bar high. That is, only things declared to be official and the errata and FAQs. But also to include them all, rather than make any sort of judgment about which official changes "deserve" to be made. Even if they don't make sense (to you...). There is an index of the firepower and epic magazine changes that includes what is official and what is not, do you have this? Not sure where it came from but it looks quite comprehensive as I recall. It is probably worth trying to map out what kinds of changes there were in total, eg official replacement rules, optional additions, fan rules, suggestions from the designers (which for example could be presented as defaults that players can choose to override if they both agree).

In terms of writing them, I would treat them as layers. For example the base layer is just the rules as they were in the books (in your own words of course), with the explanations from FAQs etc. Then patch them with official rules in the order they were incorporated. At the end of this you will have a "final official" set of rules that anyone who comes to the project will unequivocally identify as the "official" unamended rules. It's ok if that set of rules has some issues (eg walkers) it just has to be how GW left the game. After that you can create a "community fixes" branch, and from that a series of "optional rules modules".

In terms of writing, why not use google docs? It saves people unintentionally writing the same section of the rules in parallel. So long as everyone is clear with the editorial goal (ie what to include, and the layering process I mentioned should make this obvious) it should work fine, if someone goes over it at the end to make sure it is written clearly, terminology is consistent etc.

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Hi Kyrt some sound advice sir it is probably the best way to approach this project.

I personally have many ideas how I think the rules can be updated, improved, expanded whatever but I can tinker with those myself until we start an official project thread on such things.

Thanks for the input.

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Agreed, agreed and agreed. You are very right, of course. We will need to be very vigilant about this. In the case of the base size question, then, let's leave the language on that as general as it is in E40k. In any case, it seems that AC and JJ were actually entirely ambivalent about the question of basing!



I do have that index of official changes. I agree here as well, but I would note two things which we should perhaps discuss a little more. The first is that a few official rules appear to make earlier official rules obsolete. The second is that many, many of the "official" rules still explicitly required the consent of your opponent (for instance, the entire Daemon Armies list). I would tentatively argue that this along makes them ineligible for inclusion in the main rulebook (although they should retain their weight as official rules in the supplemental webzine). What do you think?



That sounds like an excellent plan. Here's a quick Doc for us to share. Please send me a PM with your email and I will add you to the editing permissions as a writer. I'll try to make a hardrive save whenever there are new additions (but if you add something, please post here or send me a message so I know). Once we have a good deal of text, I'll put it into InDesign for initial layout (I'll also design the example diagrams and include the recommended art at this stage).

I love the idea of the rules being a living game where rules get refined and clarified as well as continuing Toco's tradition of keeping new units and races available. I think we should also expand on the battles books with new scenarios, etc.

Hiya and welcome to the debate, yes the armies book is a little dated regarding the current 40k miniatures range so plenty of new units that could be added to numerous forces in time.

The main task at the moment however would be the rulebook revision with all the official amendments and clarifications added. Anyway any help you can provide regarding this project would be gratefully received.

Cheers and thanks for the interest.

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Vanguard Miniatures

Link, http://vanguardminiatures.co.uk/

Stockist of:

Vanguard Miniatures
BattleGroup Helios
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Gregster's Lab
Microworld Games
Troublemaker Games

Please guys don't let this project sink!