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…
The Mentor Legion
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!
The Imperial Guard
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.
The Orks
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 Set Up
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.
This post originally appeared on mraaktagon.com.
