Why do we play board games? It’s a question I’ve rarely asked myself or group as it’s been so ingrained in my hobby time that it really needs no answer at this point other than “because we do.” Yet, I think the WHY is all about creating the dynamics of conflict within an explorable system that is outside the realm of any real conflict. Of course, Cormac McCarthy put it better in the words of the Judge:
“Men are born for games, nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself, but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents, and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principles and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth, all games aspire to the condition of war, for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all.”
Yet a lot of games these days aren’t about conflict at all, they are more like a knitting circle where people sit around for awhile and then show what they made (I did not make this up, there’s a meme around that I got this from). Root and other games like it pushed against this trend hard, but for a long time, there were tons of games with actual ‘dudes on a map’ conflict. With that, let’s talk about Derek Carver’s 1985 classic Warrior Knights, later redeveloped completely by Fantasy Flight into their version. Both are good representations of design ideals of their time (1980s, early 2000’s respectively), the 1985 game especially so.
To start with, I have huge respect for Carver who has given several telling interviews about his design process. He simply made games and played then every week at his house with friends. Games like the ones he wanted to play did not exist (1970’s and 1980’s), so he just went and made them, not to fill a gap in published games (like area-control deck builders after deck-builders were a thing) but just to play. People that came to his house spread the word about some of these games (like Durance Vile which later became GW’s Dr. Who and if I was to guess, influenced Dungeonquest and Talisman in no small way) and some of these folks were at Games Workshop and asked to publish them. Carver did not make games to shoot out the door for publishing and hit some market, he just invented games and played them– a lot. It wasn’t playtesting, it was just play. This is quite a difference from what happens when I go to protospeil events or playtest with friends to the point where personally I will never ask anyone again ‘do you want to playtest a game for me’ but rather ‘would you like to play a game I made?’
After a long time of owning the game (almost 8 years!) I was on a Warrior Knights kick (the Fantasy Flight version) and wanted to do a comparison, so I dragged out Carver’s Warrior Knights and I was shocked even while learning the rules: the game is the absolute antithesis of modern board game design with the following aspects that HORRIFY modern gamers:
very long (3+ hours) with an emphasis on the +.
potential player elimination (people can come back, but they are weakened badly)
insanely random events that can wreck not just the leader, but any of the players, which cannot be avoided when they happen
A political phase with tons of negotiation that is central to player advancement /victory in the game
Stealing cards from other players both via voting and on the battlefield
Requires pencil and paper for various things in the game
Has a combat CRT using a single D6
You can trade money and cards back and forth between players at any time
What was amazing is that despite everything listed above, everyone had a total blast. The rollercoaster this game generates is absolutely insane. For example, I sent my noble with the biggest army I had to Acre to do a little crusading for cash. All was going well and the siege of Acre was well underway. An event showed up that targeted my noble, but I though ho ho! he’s outside the normal map, but as it turns out, a peasant that noble had somehow offended had snuck onto one of the ships and murdered him in revenge, dissolving my biggest army in an instant. My only benefit was to be able to use that as a wedge to get people to attack someone other than me, or help me with votes in the Assemble. Broken-wing style players can constantly complain about bad events they got to get sympathy votes politically, and people to ease up on them in military conflict, people can sneak in stronghold attacks on unsuspecting players, players can be voted off the island in the Assembly phase and watch while their barony is schralped out by vulture players.
This version of the game accomplishes this with few rules, and what rules there are, are usually quite simple. It is absolutely possible to pick up the rules in the first turn of the game and have a decent chance of winning against experienced players because like few other games of this depth, the rules get out of the player’s way so they know what their choices mean.
A few weeks later, I got a 5 player game and while longer, it was also really quite excellent, though one of the players’ goals was to end the game as quickly as possible so went around and razed as many cities as possible to reduce the win conditions. This reduced incomes to a trickle, forcing the massive legions of the mid game to dwindle to shells of armies.
So this is definitely going into rotation and I am amazed there isn’t a modernized (components, cards, board) version out there of this.
I should have bought this in the late 1980’s or at the latest 1990’s and played, a lot. I blame the entire state of Florida for this oversight on my part.
I haven’t done one of these in a long while, mostly because there hasn’t been a deluge of insane films watched during a trip like THIS ONE back in ye olden days. This past week though, due to the beatings suffered on the mountains of Revelstoke, people did some lying about more than usual and watched amazing and terrible things.
Hearts and Armor Rating: B-
This is a strange Italian film about a woman who has her fortune told (showing the outcome of the film right at the beginning) who is then nearly gang-raped in a gorge by degenerate rogues– only saved at the last moment by an empty suit of armor which is then bequeathed to her. A scene later she (in the armor) saves another woman from being raped by the same gang of degenerates (now less able to rape after being mangled by the original suit of armor). The woman she saves turns out to be a princess of the Moors, who she then captures and brings to a group of Christian Knights. The remainder of the film is a love story between a Moorish knight and the woman in the armor, and the princess and some other knight– all the while the various knights are fighting each other. This could have been way better but basically when you see the stupid helmets and armor (to tell the knights apart rather than JUST USING LIVERY), you can tell what sort of film this really is: schlock. Despite that, I have a soft spot for this film, mostly because of the comical attempted rape scenes, three very hot chicks, and the one on one battles are actually not that bad. Apparently this film is a cut version of a 4 hour mini-series which explains the number of characters and strange plotlines that come out of nowhere. This has Tanya Roberts (from Beastmaster) and Barbara De Rossi (hot). This is watchable on VHS and Youtube– I would love to see this one restored at some point as the quality is obviously horrible.
Prisoners of the Lost Universe Rating: C
This film has John Saxon, Apollo from Battle Star Galactica and Kay Lenz (from Breezy and other movies). This is a VERY 1970’s style movie with the outdoor sets looking very much the same as something out of Buck Rogers or even some of the Kroft Supershow programs (dune buggy, etc.). This was not terrible, but seemed almost like a made for TV film from 1978/79– yet came out in 1983!!!! Was this filmed in the 70’s and only released many years later?
Phantom Empire Rating: D+
This is an insane Journey to the Center of the Earth style romp with extremely low budget effects likely filmed in the same areas as the movie above. This was painful to watch until suddenly a tesla-truck looking future vehicle shows up and the film’s space cleavage steps out. Despite the space-lady and savage women in animal skin bikinis, this was nearly unwatchable. What an incredible waste of an awesome film title though. How this came out in 1988 and not 1978 I have no idea.
Beastmaster Rating: A-
This is a fantastic movie with an odd choice for lead actor (Marc Singer) in the same way that the 80’s Flash Gordon remake had quite the non-Flash Gordon actor. Overall I feel this film is a timeless classic despite being incredibly cheesy and just slightly edging into the fantasy schlock region. I may watch the Deathstalker movies more often, but I won’t say no to this one. This was by far the best film we watched.
Conquest Rating: C-
I cannot recommend this film on a general level as it’s just to discordant and makes very little sense at times. The costumes are ridiculous, the battles preposterous and the main villain (who is naked in every scene) had so little screen time, I’m shocked she is always on the cover of the VHS box. However, it has a certain schlocky charm to it that if you are really hunting for a strange sword and sorcery film, this is probably a good choice.
Risque Rating: D+
This was the only modern film we watched on the trip, I have no idea who put it on but it was a nonsense larceny caper surrounding a strip club planned and pulled off by a bartender an…a group of strippers. There is a lot of nudity and it had some promise until a scene where the bartender was randomly killed on accident by one of the strippers while he was training them to wield guns. The entire film from that point on became utterly preposterous and most of the plot threads that had been built up to that point became 100% irrelevant. The set up had the potential for a great finish of the film but it was completely wasted as if the writers just got lazy and decided to take the easiest way out. Silvia Orduna is the biggest draw of the strippers by far, but that was nowhere near enough.
The Last Dragon Rating: B
I have often said that 1985 was the absolute zenith of American pop culture and film and it’s been downhill ever since–yet this film, which I never saw as a kid nor remembered seeing the trailer for, completely calls this into question. If you liked Miami Connection, this is the NYC counterpart. Strange pacing, uneven acting, disturbing and random placement of music videos from years earlier as if to simply increase screen time?? This is hard to rate as it’s a cultural gulash of Afro-American (emphasis on the afro) and Chinese stereotypes and cultural appropriation that would be considered totally inappropriate to put on film these days. In one critical scene, some boom-box carrying Chinese fortune cookie factory workers force the “Dragon” character who is obsessed with Chinese Kung Fu/culture to teach them to play craps, which he does not know how to play and just makes up the rules. ALL the characters make fun of each-other’s ethnicity which is a bit of a breath of fresh air since we are still under the thumb of political correctness. As bad as this is, it’s still entertaining.
I’m a big Warcry fan. It scratches that skirmish itch and does not over stay it’s welcome at the table during individual games (looking at you Mordheim and also you Necromunda!). I’ve played a lot of one-offs over the years and in early 2025 I was intro-ing the game with the intent of playing a campaign with a group of semi new players. during this time I decided to get my brother the Blackthorns for his birthday and give them a solid go with painting. This started off well, with two of the miniatures done right around his birthday last March…. then I got the Epic 40K bug and totally shifted gears for a bit there, not getting back to them until DECEMBER of last year. I finally cranked the last one out two weeks ago and it was a journey worth remembering as these are some beasts to paint, and stretched my skill-set to say the least. I am a notoriously slow painter so I feel if I had them done by late Summer, it would have been OK….January 2026? This was not ok.
Stock paint jobs, these guys are mostly painted with gold armor on the box, but I did not want to go that route as it was just TOO FRIGGIN GOLD. Looking at the othher Sigmarines for inspiration, I happened upon an article in White Dwarf issue 502 (a really good issue for paint advice/tips as it goes through their typology of notation going forward for Paint Splatter articles) and in the back it has a beautiful mix of steel and gold armor for Sigmarines. This would be my start. I did a test model of a random sigmarine I had lying around (no idea where it came from) and it turned out super solid. I was quite nervous about messing the Blacktalons up, so this was a critical step.
The Black Talon kit was pretty easy to put together, but I had to decide on helmets or not for all but the elf-lady and I went with no helmets except for Neave who I wanted to look like an emotionless Sigmarine out of the bunch. There isn’t a lot of skin on these guys, so the heads have to look great as they are big focus of the miniatures above all that metal. Rostus and Henrick (the two big dudes) were fairly easy to paint skin- wise, but Rostus is one of TWO bald members of this troop and that’s never easy. Shakana, the crossbow lady, has brown skin and that is the easiest ever to paint and make look good. I’m going to talk about Lorai (the elf) separate.
Metal wise it was Iron hands steel with a wash of nuln oil, hightlighted with ironbreaker, but with a glaze highlight (super thin layer) and when that dries you do a recess wash of drakenhof nightshade and then a final edge highlight of stormhost silver. I did a few scratches in the armor, but since these guys were super badass, I left it mostly alone. The Gold was Retributor Armor with a Reikland fleshshade wash highlighed liberator gold and then a Gore-grunta fur wash, then edged with stormhost silver. I overdid the edging a few times and had to clean it up. Overall both of these recipes worked great for the superheroic models these are, that would never let their armor get dirty.
The rest of the model was just picking out details for the armored guys, but there were two parts to these that I struggled with– the ENTIRE elf lady (Lorai) and the Shakana’s bird. Paint recipe wise I pondered these for way too long (weeks of procrastination) before diving in. The biggest issue with the elf lady is that her skin has to be perfectly smooth AND she has a bald head– no hair at all, totally bald. This along with very delicate armor and weapons and it was no wonder she took the longest by far. Shakana’s bird ended up being super easy, just selecting three different colors of blue and breaking those out into three colors (base layer, highlight, very highlight).
These models have molded bases that have a bunch of stuff on them. I’m not a huge fan of this but it suits these models. Again the base on Lorai was like painting another model though with the tree, mushrooms, water and these weird floating fish things flying around her feet. All of those things needed recipes of highlights, washes and shades and that took awhile. I pondered for several days on what to make the floating fish look like, and how to achieve the shiny water effect on the pond with what browns to use to make it look like muck. I pulled it off but it took way too long navel gazing.
There was one major modelling issue with Neave as she had a horrific gap in her fur cape that had to be filled with greenstuff. Mostly putting these together was a snap (except for Lorai… of course) but it was frustrating to have to fill that large of a gap.
Overall, highly recommended the Black Talons as a kit– these look incredible when painted and I think they redeem the silly looking original Sigmarines. They are absolute terrors on the Warcry table as well.
This year was not bad, but man I had a struggle hobby-wise from what my plan was to what the reality ended up being. I started off the year really wanting to play Warcry and do a campaign, so I painted a lot, made some plans for some intro games for new players who also got warbands and painted them, I painted terrain, etc. and was ready to go. We had a session last January (almost exactly a year ago) and there was passion for the project. February is rough for miniature gaming due to snowboarding as much as possible (it’s the month with consistent snow more than any other here) but in March I was determined to get Warcry rolling– even getting my brother the Blacktalons set which I promised to paint for him, and that’s when it all went to shit! I am a slow painter and I told the guys that I wanted to make sure I had his stuff painted before we started playing a campaign… and guess what is still sitting on my painting table: the last two Blacktalons miniatures. Why you ask? I got the Epic 40K bug. I was looking at some of my old gaming books and came upon my Warmaster core book. Reading through it I was thinking: man it would be cool to play this someday and looked around if I had some stuff. I do not but during that search I found my old Epic 40K and Space Marine 2 miniatures and rules and that became an absolute obsession. I immediately started painting up the Mentor Legion (at a good pace too) and convinced folks to play a game in July. I happened upon a massive Tyranid army (painted) and bought that with $$ from my second job. This tossed Warcry (and painting them) to the side.
So this year of our lord 2025, was ALL about Epic 40K for me, which I had a feeling in 2013 was the best Epic ruleset and now after two HUGE games last year, I am 100% convinced that the 1997 rules for Epic are not only the best for 6-10mm gaming in the 40K universe, but one of the best rulesets that GW has come up with. I again wish I had played this when it came out…
Board Games
We have played far less board games this past year than normal, but we still got a lot in. My favorite for this year is unexpectedly TOWNSFOLK TUSSLE. I saw a post on twitter of the “Bort’s Face” card and needed to find out what that was from. I fell in love with the rubberhose artwork and completely dastardly take on a boss battler. I even pimped out my set and got the miniatures painted which you MUST do if you own this game. They are really easy and fast to paint (though I had other projects at the time– see above).
Other than Tussle, I got in some games of Fantasy Flight’s Warrior Knights, which is a fun romp and way better than I originally thought.
Last but not least, we played a LOT of Arcs Blighted Reach. Instant classic and while with the departure of Cole Wherle from Leder games the future of the game is in doubt for expansions (likely won’t be any if I was a betting man), Blighted Reach is an undeniable insta-classic 4X space game and really doesn’t need anything else. This is WITH the expansion, not just the base Arcs game, which isn’t worth bothering with even as a tutorial for the real game.
RPG’s!
This year I ONLY ran Dungeon Crawl Classics, and my kids game (not little kids any more!) is going strong about once per month and I ran a game on the ski trip as well. I’ve got a lot of RPG books and games and looking at what I have and what I actually play, I really need to do a massive culling.
That said, this year I’m looking to start a WFRP campaign but using Mythras (none of the WFRP rulesets are all that great, including 2nd edition compared to Mythras). We’ll see if that kicks off.
Video Games
Arc Raiders for me came out of nowhere and snagged my game of the year 100%, but many months of last year were spent finishing Jagged Alliance 3 and another sleeper hit with me was E-Sports Godfather, a MOBA management game that should not be missed. As soon as I can get off Arc Raiders, AND if I can stay away from Crusader Kings 3, I will be getting back on that one.
Music
I listed to a LOT of Snow Strippers this year and I think they are fantastic. Everything is so glitchy and insane and yet (not that I dance or anything) danceable. BUT about as far from electronica as you can get, my favorite track for the year is this:
What I’m looking forward to…
First off is the Invincible RPG which looks like an updated version of FASERIP. I think I may get my kids group to try this out for a session or two. I’m seeing a lot of Arc Raiders in my future as that game continues to deliver.
Hottest chick on the Planet
I really don’t know, really haven’t been paying attention BUT I did notice that Bagnol, the hottest chick on the planet many years running, had a kid, so for 2025, we’ll give her a rest and hand it to Nicola Cavanis.
If you told me in the summer I would have 100 hours into a looter-shooter by the end of 2025, I would have bet you $100 and a slap across the mouth that there was now way that was even remotely possible. AND…. here we are, with not only playing a ton, but got enough garbage in my stash to do the first season reset and get a modest bonus. This game is a fucking miracle. Design-wise it’s very similar to how Fortnite came about, as it started as a Big Boss Battler FPS and then morphed during playtesting into the boss battler looter shooter that it is now. Fortnite started as a rather lame FPS zombie tower defense and morphed into the PUBG-killer for little kids that became a global juggernaut.
There are so many games out there that try to find the secret sauce like this and I think I have an answer for why this one, PUBG, and FORTNITE hit so hard: CHAOS and CREATIVE PLAY. All three of these games are tight FPS games, and all three allow the player to come into a game with a plan that is totally different from any other player’s plan, and likely very different from what they did the round before as well. Hel, my first Fortnite win I just hid in a bush and back shot the last guy after he took out the third last guy… other times I dropped into hot zones to fight it out to get the best loot before the mid-game. There are tons of strange tactical plays in Arc Raiders, from setting up elaborate traps, gargoyling, to a hardcore run and gun PVP, to an Arc slayer to someone that runs onto maps with ZERO equipment and rolls the dice. All of them are somehow both viable and totally not viable in various situations. People gear up with a plan and the game answers with things you could not have foreseen happening, like spawning into and area with a rocketeer right there, or a leaper dropping into the building right next to you between you and the extract, or ALL the crazy stuff real people try to do to and for other players. What’s more, you can absolutely contribute to this chaos for great effect on a round. See someone with a Stitcher (and anti raider weapon) running around shooting people into the ground? Lure Grenade him to draw the Arcs in that he cannot hope to even damage. Having trouble aiming? set up massive traps in common areas and pick up the loot later. Want to help people? Set up ziplines so they can traverse the map in a jiffy, or heal them up (when they don’t shoot you). I think the combination of the chaos of a round and that you get such a wide breadth of choice in terms of how to approach it are what make Fortnite, PubG and Arc Raiders top of the pops.
Aesthetic
Arc Raiders is a trash-collection game and it’s aesthetics support this throughout, the raiders and Speranza denizens wear a variety of cast off gear and clothing, most of which is straight out of late 1960’s and early 70’s sci fi films. In contrast, the Arc robots (?) are ultra modern looking and mirror something that would be designed along the same lines today. This is a huge draw for the game as it just looks great throughout.
Sound design
The belle of the ball by far in Arc Raiders is the sound design. The importance of sound, sound recognition and being able to tell what is happening locally as well as on the larger maps themselves throughout the trash collection is essential to what makes AR fun as hell. You will know immediately on a map if players have engaged a matriarch or rocketeer, or if you haven’t checked the clock, that you are now down to 10, 5 or 2 minutes left based on sounds on the map. Locally, other raiders make sounds doing anything and everything and one of the biggest areas of learning the game /experience is what those sounds mean (and what to do about it). It’s hard to describe without experiencing it how important sound is to the entire Arcs experience, but it is phenomenal.
Here is an example during the first week of play dealing with a single rocketeer without the correct weapons, and having no idea what to do…
With fighting raiders, it’s really a crazy mess when people get stuck in, and usually when the adrenaline is pumping, stupid choices are made that lead to failures. An example of three such ‘events’ below.
When it comes down to it, Arc Raiders just delivers what gamers want, a playground of chaos and insanity that can be avoided by not taking risks and playing super safe, or leaned into by jumping on stella montis with ZERO equipment except a couple of smoke grenades. Totally game of the year.
Ever since the very early Pandemic craze (not covid-19, the board game), I’ve known deep down that I hate co-op games. There’s something so incredibly lame playing what is essentially a SINGLE PLAYER GAME with a bunch of other people, especially those games where the goal is completely unified. It’s no longer a secret in these types of games (Pandemic, Zombicide, Spirit Island and all of their clones) that one player quarterbacks the entire table and no one has any fun. This is the antithesis of what I want a board game experience to be.
What started to break the mold were semi-coops like Betrayal at House on the Hill and especially Dead of Winter. The simple addition of player goals that may be concomitant to the overall goal, or maybe not, was the sweet sauce that the games needed, but so few clones of Pandemic took the time to do it correctly.
Enter Townsfolk Tussle, one of the meanest co-ops there is! At it’s core it’s a straight up boss battler like Street Masters or Kingdom Death, but with some nasty twists. All the players are trying to become the new sheriff first and foremost, but they have to not only outdo the other players, they have to make sure the Ruffians don’t stomp the town while doing so! Instead of last hitting the boss, players get objective cards to complete during a battle, each giving them points to become sheriff overall, but the player with the most objective cards completed gets the highly sought after Boss items (like Bort’s Face!). Sometimes you will go for a high point objective card, knowing it will be the only one you can get and you won’t get the boss loot this time, just so you are first in line for the sheriff hat.
This creates a situation where players will not only NOT quarterback each other, but will put the others in compromising positions during play in order to prevent them from fulfilling their objectives. If the players do this too much, the bosses can and will end the campaign. Woe to the player who had the 6 point card if they are the last townsfolk standing and the boss ends up winning…
I won’t go too much into the game-play but this game is very simple and clean, and I expected to be pretty bored by how simplistic it was but while the basic actions of the characters are not-complex, the insane terrain and totally berserk bosses (20 of them!) has made every battle so far just a real slap across the mouth.
If you like co-ops like Spirit Island, but know in your heart that it is a single-player game never meant to be played with 2+ players, give Townsfolk Tussle a long hard look.
… and it’s NOT just about the combat system (which is the best in RPGs: period). This is a set of videos on Design Mechanism’s Mythras, which I’ve run Vikingthulhu and Old West (with a couple one shots of other settings). It’s good to see a game that’s a bit older like this get the props it deserves.
MAN! this game was a blast to play. 6 players, 9 hours or so of pure unadulterated 1990’s epic glory! This is the first really big epic 40k game I’ve played since college (before the 1997 rules came out, so it was the Space Marine 2 version with the unit cards) and I remembered why we loved this scale so much back in ye olden days. This is a semi battle report, semi-review of 1997 Epic 40k interlaced with a lot of pictures from this giant friggin game.
I talked to folks back in April to see if we could schedule an Epic 40K game at the end of July when Mouth was in town and told them only that it would be “very, very big‘ and plan for all day if they could. It turned out to be quite the large game, the biggest I’ve played since Space Marine 2 in about 1993 or so. We had 6 players, 2 for the Nids (thanks James), one Ork (Mouth), one Eldar (Dan), one Imperial Guard (Chris) and one for the Space Marines (Bill).
The Scenario
Epic 40k was released in a boxed set with ‘three little books’ for the rules, armies and battles. In the Epic 40K “Battles” book there are a slew of scenarios, and for what I wanted to do the Planetary Invasion was perfect. Not everything is on the board at the start of the game, so it gives players some time to come to grips with the system and just how big the game was going to be before it got really big. It uses hidden set up for the defenders as well as the objective markers and excellent morale system from Epic 40k.
The Orks, Mentor Legion, Eldar and Imperial guard would be the defenders and the Tyranids (all 5000+ points of them) would be the invaders. In the scenario, the defenders set up a portion of their forces all hidden (except titans and super heavy vehicles, which can never hide) and on the first turn ONLY flying and drop pod units can be moved onto the table by the attacker (the ‘nids in this case). Next, the attacker chooses a table edge and from turn 2 on, reinforcements from both sides come on to the table (based on rolls, but always at least one detachment). Ideally as all the rest of the stuff comes on the table, things on the table already aren’t there any more so the number of detachments doesn’t get overwhelming.
Fate Cards: we did use the fate cards from the base game as well as the army-specific ones from White Dwarf. These were great, but I would probably dole out a few more for this size of a battle.
We also used the 2D6 and choose the highest rule for firefights and close combat: recommended.
The Armies
One of the huge strengths (among many) of Epic 40k is that it has a very flexible detachment system, one that influenced many sets of 32mm 40k rules that came after it. Players can mix and match to come up with some really crazy detachment build outs as well as some that are HARD counters to tactics from other armies.
With this power comes great responsibility. Instead of the static detachment cards from Space Marine 2 with very generic (and not very effective) detachments, the player’s must create their own. From my last plays of Epic 40k, I learned the hard way that this can take a very long time indeed. If you do this all on game day, you will waste many precious hours doing that instead of blowing stuff up! Build out everything (long) before starting play. This has been made far easier with this super handy online tool.
My goal was to create a set of detachments that covered as many units from my huge Tyranid army as possible, and then create 1200 points of detachments for all four of the other races. With the exception of the Orks, I had to learn what detachments worked, what sucked and what everyone had for models. This took a LOT of research online and in old White Dwarf magazine, namely WD 211, 216 and 217. The Orks as you will see below were really simple to put an army together: it was ALL GARGANTS.
The Tyranids
This army included nearly everything I own to make up the massive invading force. This included a Dominatrix supported by three Hierophant titans, four combo gargoyle/Harridan units (flyers), an artillery detachment to lay disruption down and the obligatory genestealer, termagaunt and hermagaunt swarms supported by Carnifexes, Zoanthropes and Tyranid warriors. All in all, an absolutely monstrous army including over 40 termagant stands alone. This was the only army with air units as I felt the other players (except for the Eldar player) had no experience yet with this version of the game and the interdiction rules would have slowed the game down quite a bit. The air units were sort of just a distraction until turn 3 which showed just how badass flyers can be in the game, but I digress…
I stared from almost zero with painting my Mentor Legion in April and spent the months between then and the July game buying, assembling and painting as much of the army as I could. I meant for it to be a pure marine force and I got CLOSE but due to some unforeseen weekends out of town in July, I had to replace 500 points of a huge assault marine detachment with 2 Warhound Titans.
The main ‘hammer’ detachment was 9 bike units along with 5 Vindicators for close support. This a really good combo for a detachment as it is fast, hits really hard in close combat and can also win some firefights when needed to push back enemy detachments that are out of position. The second detachment is a more standard Marine one loaded into in Rhinos and Razorbacks. Of course, no Space Marine general is going to battle without Land raiders and there was a detachment of 5 plus 2 predators to keep enemy infantry away. I wish I had finished my massive assault force as the player playing the Marines (Bill) would have had a great time drop podding them into the middle of the Nids! I love the little dreadnought models from this version of the game but could not include any in the force unfortunately. Next time!
One of the dudes had models for the new game Legion Imperialis, so he brought a gigantic Leman Russ detachment, 8 griffons (for massive barrages) and a couple of Baneblades. It looked OK on the table with the 10mm scale difference, the Baneblades looking a lot like Ogres from the older game Ogre from Steve Jackson Games. He didn’t have a ton of infantry, which is probably good because they would just be meat for the grinder vs the ‘nids anyway.
The Eldar
My buddy Dan has a huge amount of Eldar from ye olden days (and some newer stuff) so I just made up a list very close to what was used in the WD 216 battle report but with the edition of a Titan instead of an Avatar unit. This contained a core aspect warrior unit in grav tanks, the absolutely required night spinner detachment to lay down disruption all over and an Engines of Vaul unit with 2 scorpions and one cobra for the pop up MADNESS. Plus the Jes Goodwin sculpted masterpiece of an Eldar Phantom titan to round them out. Of the forces, this one is probably the most effective overall and balanced.
Last but not least we have our violent green friends. Though I have a large Ork army, none of the infantry or vehicles are painted and I made a rule for this game that everything on the table would be painted (and painted well, which is not hard for 6mm for the most part). As such the orks were by far the easiest to fill their 1200 points: two great gargants (one containing the Warlord) and one Slasher Gargant. I acquired three beautifully painted gargants earlier in the year, and they looked gorgeous on the table (which was good as they were hella expensive to buy).
The Imperial Guard, Orks, Eldar and Mentor Legion were the defenders, so they had to set up first, but other than War Machines (including Titans, Baneblades and Engines of Vaul) all units could be hidden. Each player rolled to see what started on the battlefield and what was in reserve, and all the players had at least one unit that started on the table. The centerpiece was the Ork Gargant, that sat his fat metal body on top of the central hill of the table. After set up, we Nid players got to choose a side come on from, and I made the mistake of selecting a short edge of the table, thinking I could rely on my speed and drop troops to win the day. This was a mistake from a game play perspective as tons of units on both sides never saw battle at all as they had to slog across the giant table.
Per the scenario, the Nids could only use flyers and mycetic swarms (drop troops) during the first turn, all other units rolled to come on the table in subsequent turns. Drop troops come on as small pieces of paper dropped from above the table by tipping a blast template!
This was a massive battle, so I just touched on the highpoints in the turn descriptions below.
The Battle – Turn 1
The Nids had the only flyers in the game so we just went all out on attack run orders the first turn. The Aerial assault by the Gargoyles and Harridans units (5 of them) were all trained on the great gargant, but unfortunately, they weren’t able to take down even half of it’s 12(!?) power fields! Lesson learned.. use the flyers somewhere else!
After the flyers ran their missions, I made my first tactical mistake and dropped one of my larger mycetic swarms directly onto the great gargant which turned out to be a slaughter as the it was able to snap fire at over half the unit, destroying a ton of them before they hit the ground. What’s more, Gargants have assault 30, so it would be very hard to take it down with the remaining swarm, which were shortly after blasted off the other side of the hill by the Leman Russ detachment anyway. I learned my lesson about snap fire, and landed my other detachments more judiciously as a screen for my incoming troops.
The Leman russ and Eldar moved into positions in the center and left respectively and were set up to hold both areas during the next turns. The Mentor Legion had only their fast attack detachment on the board and moved it quickly to support the Gargant on the hill.
The Battle – Turn 2
During turn 2 was when fully I realized that our choice to bring the Tyranids on the short table edge rather than the long was ANOTHER tactical mistake as it allowed the defenders to line up in a smaller area to shoot at the ‘nids as they came on, making it impossible to overwhelm any flank. To the south were the eldar, with the Eldar titan holding that side, and to the north was the onrush of the Imperial guard, but worse, the center was still held by the impenetrable great Gargant who was back up to 12 power fields after the useless aerial assault the turn before– this turned out to be the only Ork unit that got any action in the game as the other two gargants came on as reinforcements and could not stomp their way into battle.
The Nids rolled pretty well for reinforcements and all but one of their titans were now on the board along with a massive assault spawn detachment that was poised to take on everything in the center of the board.
In the shooting phase, along with the blasting from the Great Gargant, the Imperial guard griffons did a number on any exposed Nids, which caused a lot of pain and anguish, but that would be taken care of in turn 3 when the flyers were back online to fly attack missions…
The Battle – Turn 3
This turn started out with the total annihilation of the Imperial guard griffon unit (8 strong) from five attack waves from the gargoyles plus Harridans during the flyer missions phase. It was a slaughter not unlike the road of death from desert storm 1…except just plastic and metal pieces. While a moral victory, this really did not amount to much in the scheme of the battle as the Tyranids were hard pressed to get their forces in close enough without being destroyed from shooting.
That said, taking the entire onslaught of a concentrated Tyranid force one side of the map was way too much for both the Eldar (except the Titan) and the Mentor legion vindicator/bike detachment, both of which were destroyed. The Mentor Legion drove back a detachment of tyranids in a firefight that had been blasted by the griffon’s artillery barrage already only to be counter attacked by the biggest assault detachments in the entire tyranid force. This was the only ‘very large’ close combat in the game and while the Mentors were able to do some damage, all but one vindicator was left after the Nids were done.
While the Tyranid Titans and Dominatrix cleaned up the Eldar on the flank, for all their shots at the Eldar Titan, it did not get a scratch on the damn thing the entire game! This was deja vu from dozens of games of Space Marine in my ill-spent youth.
There were so many blast markers on the table at this point that we had to search around the house for suitable markers from other games!
The Aftermath
We had to call the game after Turn 3 due to time, but it was obvious that the Tyranids were going to take the L on this one, likely after doing quite a bit of damage to the allied forces first though. The number of Titans concentrated on the left flank would have overwhelmed it until the other Ork gargants and warhounds could get into the conflict. On the force morale score card, the Tyranids were in the 60’s and the Allied forces were still at 99 (as high as those cardboard counters can go). I would have liked to have had the 4th turn to see whether or not the Gargant could be displaced from that damn hill.
Epic 40K is Incredible and should be played as much as possible!
The 1997 rules are insanely good at this size of a battle. Despite totally new players, despite running out of time, the game went smoothly with only a few checks to the rules here and there (a lot of looking at army sheets and the titan sheets could have been better). I’ve played this version three times now and I think it is better than Epic Armageddon that followed it a few years later, far better than Space Marine 2 (which just goes into far too much detail for the size of battle I want to play) and also better than the new GW 10mm games (Imperialis) which isn’t even a contender as it only has Imperials vs Imperials.
When you play these rules and really familiarize yourself with them you realize they are an iteration and improvement on the grand-daddy of this scale of miniatures games: Advanced Squad Leader. If you have played ASL or even just SL, Epic 40K in this version will feel like a faster, cleaner and fun update to those rules. The focus on firepower rather than shooting individual weapons, the charts for number of dice to roll and the way close combat is handled is all an improvement on the fundamentals from Squad Leader. I think Jervis Johnson and Andy Chambers absolutely hit dynamite with this version– GW’s marketing department at the time just couldn’t SELL the game (along with some really ugly miniatures…).
Some other reasons (not in order):
Detachments: breaking away from the cards from Space Marine 2 was wonderful, now we could tinker with detachment builds with all sorts of units for the fight at hand, while this is extra work on the player’s part, this is really excellent and a crucial part of why this is such a flexible and fun system.
Shooting phase: There are big weapons, some special stuff like barrages and pulsa rockets, but all normal shooting uses firepower and a reference table. This makes things FAST and it works out totally fine.
Assaults and Firefights: the assault phase of the game represents a 4 turn 40K battle and detachments can either charge into close combat to wipe out the enemy (at risk to themselves) or manuver into place to get into an advantageous firefight which won’t do much damage, but will displace a detachment from where they are at and force a retreat. The combination of these two means of close engagement is the key to the game, and I hate to use the word elegant for anything but a dame, but it damn sure is.
Morale system: Each detachment contributes to an overall morale for the armies, and when detachments are broken or destroyed, they reduce morale, whoever gets to zero first (in most scenarios) loses the game. Morale can be increased by getting objectives so the game can see-saw from turn to turn.
Blast Markers: these are now used in tons of different games, and for good reason as it simplifies something a bit hard to abstract as it’s not damage, it’s not breaking of morale, but rather overall disruption, fatigue and chaos of battle for a detachment.
Well, I’ve written enough about this game, gotta get in some more plays! Thanks goes out to the Epic Remastered FB group, and the guys that created the Epic 40K Remastered detachment builder which made everything super easy for me to organize for all of these armies as the flexible detachment rules is one of the huge strengths of the system, but naturally it requires a lot of prep. GO HERE to give it a go.
