Well, I promised a review so here it is, albeit rather (okay, very) late. You
don’t need to read all the way through to get an idea of my opinion of the
game - the fact that most of my recent posts to the group have been to [EPIC]
threads and that I’ve painted more Epic models in the last couple of weeks
than I did in the entirety of E40k (a game I actually liked) might give some
hints… I’ll be as thorough as possible to make up for lost time, so:

WARZONE ARMAGEDDON

Well, the title page did warn us - short story written by Gav Thorpe.  What
sort of curse is "Yarrick’s bloody fist"? Oh, well, onto the pictures,
including an Ork attack on a combined Space Marine/IG force (something the
rules don’t actually allow for). T

INTRODUCTION

Standard introductory spiel. Still, it gives a taste of what the designer was
aiming to get across - from the emphasis on being able to play a wide variety
of battle types and on tactical considerations, we learn that Jervis is aiming
to make a tactical wargame rather than a standard GW gun/swordfest. We don’t
have the 40k-style emphasis on ‘this is a game in which troops have big guns
that make impressive loud noises, and run at each other screaming Waaaagh! and
hacking one another to pieces with sharp choppy things", which is refreshing.
There’s still the usual GW attitude in evidence, though - "In most tabletop
wargames one player moves and fights with all their models, then their opponent
moves and fights, and so on". Is it really so painful to concede that GW
systems aren’t the only wargames in existence? At the very end, though,
Jervis does break with tradition - he thanks the GW staff and, *gasp*,
playtesters who have worked on the rules. It might not be much, but when was
the last time a GW game had an acknowledgements section?

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

"If you’ve got this far, we assume you have read the special GW Book-Opening,
Page-Turning and Reading Primers, available for only £30 each from your local
GW store. If, on the other hand, you have just opened this book at random and
are having this read to you, you will need to purchase copies of these
products."

No? Oh, well, maybe not. Basically it’s an extended contents list - we’re
told we have core rules, advanced rules (war engines, flyers etc.) and the
like, as well as mentioning the training scenarios used to demonstrate each.
This and the previous section also stress that the Armageddon setting has been
chosen as an example and that gamers are therefore not constrained to playing
on Armageddon - obvious enough but there’s no harm in pointing it out.

1.0  EPIC GAME RULES

The usual ‘what you will need to play’ (‘paper and pens’ are included
despite GW’s aversion to games that require note-taking), followed by the
equally standardised ‘this tank-shaped armoured thing is a tank; these
roughly people-shaped green things are infantry’ business.

The rules proper begin with blast markers, probably the key innovation Epic
40,000 brought to the game. This is accompanied by a ‘Design Concept’ box
explaining the rationale behind the rule (these boxes crop up throughout the
rules, though the brown background makes them a little difficult to read). In a
nutshell, blast markers represent the suppressive effects of enemy fire, the
effects of action on surviving troops and the effects of poor leadership (units
that fail action tests gain blast markers) with a straightforward rule. Unlike
Epic40k, blast markers accumulate primarily when formations sustain casualties
rather than just come under fire, so actually killing things is more important
than in the previous system, but as the design note says troops "will only
withdraw when a combination of casualties and sustained enemy pressure
convinces them that their position is untenable". Going into the details of
blast marker effects would basically involve a rundown of a good part of the
basic rules, but they are a hugely important part of the game and a very good
design feature that as intended keeps the game simple while representing a lot
of battlefield effects that affect the game’s tactics, a level of depth that
certainly wasn’t evident in Space Marine and isn’t in most GW systems (it
was in E40k, of course, but people turned away from that for other reasons.
Having said that, an E40k player coming back to Epic now will find that the
basic game engine has more in common with that system than Space Marine).

The method of determining sequence of play is, however, new to this edition -
no bad thing as the E40k counter draw was a silly idea, if not quite so silly
as the EpicA design concept on ties (the player with the next birthday wins) -
in other words, just roll dice for it.

Play is alternating, but with a twist that I was leery about when the preview
rules appeared but that seems to have proved an interesting addition to the
game. This is the idea of the action test and the related one of retaining the
initiative. Each army has an initiative value - this is normally the same
throughout the army but some formations (such as Imperial Navy units in a Space
Marine army) have a different value from the rest of the army. This is where
blast markers reflect the leadership or battle-readiness of the troops, as
formations that have accumulated blast markers are more likely to fail their
action test (a D6 roll against the initiative value), in which case they will
only be able to take a hold action (and will gain a blast marker). Once a
formation has taken its action (assuming it passed the action test) the player
may try to retain the initiative and use a second formation before play passes
to the opponent - this involves another action test with a further modifier.

There are eight basic actions units other than flyers can take - more than in
previous editions of the game - and the desired action is nominated before
making the action test. Actions include overwatch (now the only way to shoot
skimmers making pop-up attacks with direct fire weapons), marshalling
(regrouping to remove blast markers), or moving at various speeds and shooting
(with or without modifiers to hit) or assaulting. A major change is that troops
on engage (charge) orders only move at normal, not double pace, and this
accordingly reduces the incentive for tactics that involve charging headlong
into close combat as is standard procedure in most GW games.

Movement is handled in the normal way for GW games, and for the sake of
simplicity troops embarking or disembarking from transports cannot move in the
turn they do so (but can shoot if disembarked, and transports move at full
speed after embarking troops) and can only disembark at the end of a turn. A
significant difference is that each unit has a zone of control 5cm in all
directions that prevents enemies not carrying out an engage action from moving
through that zone.

Now the really interesting bit - shooting. The usual rules apply - line of
sight and range are required. Splitting fire is prohibited, which given that
many formations consist of identically-armed units and aren’t that large
isn’t that strange (and of the others, you don’t expect Orks to be
disciplined enough to do more than point where everyone else is pointing and
let rip). In any case, on this scale it’s roughly equivalent to one army
shooting another rather than splitting fire to shoot two separate armies, which
seems reasonable. This is where suppressive fire comes in - as you might
expect, the more heavily-suppressed a formation (the more blast markers it
has), the fewer of its units can shoot. Fire arcs have made a limited return -
most weapons can fire in any direction but some units (mostly flyers and war
engines) have fixed-mount weapons in one direction or another (usually forward
or fixed forward, 180 or 90 degrees respectively).

This is the part that will interest players of Space Marine who turned away
from Epic 40,000, as this is the part that has been incorporated from SM into
the E40k game engine, with some refinement. Weapons now fire individually and
roll to hit (complete with cover and action modifiers) as in the old system. A
significant difference is the loss of the save modifier characteristic - all
weapons without one of several special rules (macro-weapon and Titan Killer,
principally) allow enemies their full save. Considering that such things as
cover modifiers have their place in the game, this does look something of a
glaring omission, but is balanced by the almost complete absence (even on
Titans) of 3+ or better saving throws. The other noticeable difference is that
weapons now have a type - AT, AP, AA or macro (MW) that determines what it can
shoot and how effective it is against each target. Most common weapons have
both AP and AT values; macro-weapons are those that can target either infantry
or vehicles. Light vehicles are particularly vulnerable, being susceptible to
both AP and AT fire. The distinction also allows selective targeting to some
extent - AT shots ignore all infantry in a formation so are good for destroying
the units’ transports, for instance. Perhaps most importantly it allows for a
lot of flexibility in unit armaments and the appropriate restriction of weapons
that are of little use against one type of target to the other (for instance,
heavy bolters are pitiful tank-killers so have no AT value, while a lascannon
won’t ever kill a stand’s-worth of troops with a shot so that has no AP
value).

A note on overwatch: this ability is now triggered by movement and can only be
used once a unit completes a move (but before it shoots). As I’ve said in
connection with 40k, this reactive overwatch ability now requires tactical
application rather than just going on overwatch and, if no one moves, unloading
your fire into some luckless enemy unit at the end of turn as happened with
40k2 overwatch. On a related subject, the ‘snap fire’ rule from Epic 40k
has gone completely.

The final change in the shooting phase is another innovation for EpicA, and
this is the introduction of a crossfire rule (helpfully exemplified by a photo
of play with arrow representing the path of the crossfire). The Ork quote at
the top of this mini-section is actually quite amusing… Establishing
crossfire is straightforward enough - if a 45cm line from one of your units
connects it with another of your units and part an enemy formation is along
that line, you get the crossfire bonus. As with most valuable bonuses in the
game, crossfire awards an extra blast marker - though only if you destroy at
least one enemy unit. It’s also the only instance in the game where you’ll
find a save modifier, as troops caught in crossfire have -1 save. When the
early versions of the Epic rules were posted I was initially concerned that the
bonus may be effective enough to become the only viable tactic, but in its
toned down form (in earlier versions crossfire caused double the total number
of blast markers inflicted from casualties) it’s just one more addition to
the tactician’s repertoire, as it should be.

The rules for assaults were another Epic 40,000 addition and as far as I can
see they’ve been transferred wholesale to the new game. As helpfully
explained in the design notes, assaults cover all short-range combats, with
short-range firefighting, close combat and supporting fire from neighbouring
formations all being factored in. The primary difference between firefighting
and close combat is whether the roll to hit is made against the unit’s
firefight or close combat value, but some weapons (usually assault weapons, but
sometimes small arms) have special effects like the macro-weapon ability or
extra attacks that can be used either in firefights or close combats, but not
both.

Victory in an assault is devastating - a previously intact formation that loses
the assault will be broken and will lose extra troops as they’re hacked down
by pursuers and formations close by suffer blast markers to represent the
demoralising effect of the formation’s loss/retreat. It is therefore very
important to plan assaults and not a good idea to send in a formation against
one that it might just about beat, unless you can really afford to lose it.
Rules for supporting fire allow units from non-assaulting formations that are
in range of the enemy to participate in the assault, so co-ordinating attacks
is vital. The Commander ability (in part 2.0) is an extremely important one in
game terms for this reason.

Next we are introduced to the result of being suppressed, worn out, demoralised
and hacked to pieces - units becoming broken. This happens when the unit has as
many blast markers as units, and is not good news. Broken units that lose
assaults are automatically destroyed as are those that end a move within 15cm
of the enemy, and any blast markers that would be inflicted on a broken
formation instead destroy one of its units. It’s also hard to rally broken
formations, though happily it can be done.

Next we have a good idea also introduced in this set of rules - training
scenarios. The usual examples of play litter the text, but at the end of each
major rules section there’s a scenario between small forces designed to
demonstrate the rules to that point. These are a far cry from the WFB/40k
‘two models start 16" away and shoot/charge’ - they detail terrain features
and the smallest forces are around 600pts in rules terms (for new players, a
single box of SM plastics is enough to get started). One gripe is that
there’s no provision for using equivalent Guard or Ork forces, so players who
don’t want a Marine army would face an unnecessary financial outlay unless
they either substitute models or use counters (available from the Epic site).
The scenarios here include datasheets for the appropriate Marine units and the
Marine ‘They Shall Know No Fear’ rule (effects of blast markers are
halved).

2.0  SPECIALIST UNITS & WEAPONS

A long list of special rules - another gripe is that there are probably rather
too many. Each is accompanied by a picture of a unit that uses that rule as an
example. I've already mentioned most of the important ones, but will make a
special mention of the Commander ability.

This is one of the single most important, and imaginative, special rules in the
game although comparatively rare in some armies (particularly Orks, who can
only have one character with the Commander ability). GW games have long been
criticised for their lack of ‘command control’ rules (by Andy O’Neill
among others) and while this is an area where EpicA is somewhat spartan, the
Commander rule is the closest equivalent. This rule allows a commander in one
formation to ‘order’ up to two other formations with a unit within
coherency distance (5cm) to join his formation in a charge - as the standard
formation is the Detachment (for Space Marines), this is analogous to charging
with a full company in SM days instead of one detachment. This allows you to
co-ordinate attacks in an assault, especially useful if (like Marines or Eldar)
you have formations of few units each. Of course, it also allows you to take an
action with two or three formations at a time rather than just one, although
there is a risk that the commander will fail in his order attempt.

3.0  WAR ENGINES

The principle behind war engines is simple, and makes them more consistent with
standard rules and so more straightforward to use than in previous editions, if
potentially more fragile. As in Epic 40k war engines (in other words,
superheavies and Titans) have a damage capacity measured in the number of
‘hits’ they can take, although this aside the war engine rules are new to
EpicA. The number of damage points a war engine has is its defining
characteristic - the number of blast markers it takes to suppress one, the
number of ‘kills’ you need to destroy it, the number of dice it rolls in an
assault etc. etc. are all the same as its remaining damage capacity, rather
than being 1 as with most other troops. Two pages are spent describing each
instance in which this principle applies, which seems somewhat unnecessary. For
once, however, a GW system is made too clear rather than too ambiguous. The
only other significant difference between war engines and other troops is that
war engine transports can carry troops from formations other than their own.

4.0  AEROSPACE OPERATIONS

Aircraft have long been a thorn in Epic designers’ sides. First they were
essentially skimmers with unlimited move and a tendency to move in straight
lines (SM/TL). This made them far too vulnerable to attack and also gave them
the ability to fly rings round the battlefield over several turns. Epic 40,000
radically changed and improved the flyer rules, but the result was just too
fiddly and complex, messing around with the cardboard runway, refuelling, too
many mission options and so forth. EpicA represents another major revision,
albeit one that keeps the concept of flying particular missions from the
previous edition. Aircraft begin each turn out of play, but you can choose one
of three actions (ground attack, combat air patrol and interception - you can
choose to stand down, but that seems rather pointless) and pass an action test
to bring a formation into play on your table edge. It can then move and make
limited turns to reach its target and attack. At the end of turn surviving
aircraft then disengage unless they’ve landed. The rules look more complex
than they are, and this does look to be the best incarnation of flyer rules yet
in a GW system.

Spacecraft are, I suspect, a rather unnecessary addition to the game but one
that allows people to use BFG models they already possess. At the start of the
game, a player with a spacecraft secretly notes down where on the battlefield
his spacecraft will attack and/or drop troops (see? Paper and pens re needed
after all), and chooses a turn the thing will arrive (this isn’t a secret).
All spacecraft have the ability to make an orbital bombardment when they
arrive, a barrage attack using the 40k ordnance template (don’t worry, it’s
a one-shot thing per game!) centred on the preselected target point. Probably
the most important contribution spacecraft make to the game, however, is the
planetfall ability. Planetfalls are more restrictive and less accurate than
teleports (ie, the unit can scatter from the target point), but have the
advantage that they can take place at any time during the action phase (ie,
when you bring the spacecraft into play) and as most units with planetfall are
large transports, most vehicles and units unable to teleport can be dropped in
this way. Given the cargo capacity of most spacecraft and the fact that some of
the planetfalling transports themselves can carry multiple formations, you can
deploy a substantial reserve force in much the same area in a single turn using
planetfall - these units can all take their own actions later in the turn,
which means it can often be best to leave the planetfall until close to the end
of your action phase, giving you a lot of fresh units to command while your
enemy has run out of troops to activate.

After the training scenario we are given a page of templates that can be copied
- barrage, orbital bombardment and, for no apparent reason, the flamer template
(which isn’t used in any current list, either in the rulebook or the Vault).

5.0  BACKGROUND AND FORCES

The fluff section is reasonably thorough, given that the Armageddon campaign is
its
sole focus. The maps and story so far are all taken from the Armageddon 3
website and Codex: Armageddon, and there’s a two-page introduction to the
Imperium as a whole. Finally there’s a summary of events in the Third War so
far, including those since the end of the GW campaign. The idea that the entire
Blood Angels Chapter would abandon Armageddon to take Tycho’s body home is
daft to say the least. Personally, I like the Armageddon setting but I know
many people don’t, so the bulk of the fluff won’t interest everyone. Onto
the armies; although the book irritatingly locates the army lists in a separate
section after the unit descriptions for all armies (rather than having each
list accompany the appropriate army’s entries) I’ll deal with them together
for convenience, though won’t fully review each:

SPACE MARINES

Three pages of SM fluff and a breakdown of standard SM army organisation open
this section. Every army in Epic now has its own special rules and
organisational structure, unlike the previous systems in which a generic
formation structure applied more-or-less unaltered for all armies (even when
this didn’t work very well for ‘special’ armies like Orks, Chaos and
Tyranids in SM/TL). The Space Marines’ sole special rule is the already
mentioned "They Shall Know No Fear" (yes, the "And" is missing), which balances
their small formation sizes by making them harder to break.

Unit entries for all units include the datafax, a photo of one example of the
unit in question and a short fluff description, which may just deal with the
basic unit concept but may also add details of that unit type’s role in the
Armageddon campaign (for instance, in the account of Salamanders Devastators
defending a refinery). This is a template Jervis borrowed from BFG ship
descriptions, and I’m a fan of the approach.

The Space Marines have all their units from the previous edition save for
support weapons and a full seven new ones. The Battlebarge and Strike Cruiser
are of course familiar to BFG players, while the Land Speeder Tornado and
Typhoon and the Predator Annihilator have been added from 40k. In addition the
army includes the Hunter, a Rhino with a multiple hunter-killer launcher that
serves as an AA tank, and the Space Marine Landing Craft. This is only as
heavily-armed as a Thunderhawk but has a higher transport capacity and can
transport vehicles from spacecraft to the surface. As a whole the trend among
Space Marine units is for resilient troops, good firefighting (and to a lesser
extent) close combat ability and a dearth of genuinely heavy weaponry (the
army’s only ranged macro-weapons are Land Speeder multi-meltas, for instance,
and there are no Titan Killers). Their AA power is poor save for the
Thunderhawk and the Whirlwind is their only barrage artillery. Of course, in
any army list with a large number of units there’s a risk that some will
simply be redundant and this was a trap that the heavily-detailed Space Marine
system fell into too readily. By and large, EpicA has managed to avoid this but
there still are wasted options in the lists. In the Space Marine case, the most
obvious is the Land Speeder Tornado, a Speeder upgrade identical to the Typhoon
except for having a shorter-ranged, less accurate AP attack. Less clear-cut is
the difference between Assault Marines and Bikes - again the saving is
worthless (25pts won’t buy anything in the list except a Land Speeder Typhoon
upgrade), but jump packs are more useful than being mounted although bikes are
faster and in all other ways as good as or better than Assault Marines.

Space Marines only have one ‘level’ of formation (ie, they aren’t
deployed as companies with supporting units like the Imperial Guard)- the
Detachment. However, although a detachment is normally 4-6 models plus free
Rhinos, all but the aircraft can be upgraded and many of these upgrades take
the form of attached units like Vindicators, Dreadnoughts, Hunters and Land
Raiders. Even so, Space Marine detachments are small formations for their cost,
and are cheaper than IG companies. This means that they will have more
formations than IG or Orks and together with the best initiative in the game
(1+) they are able to steal a march on their enemies during the action phase,
and are also more flexible in overall force composition. Space Marines are also
extremely well-led, with Commander access in most formations, and so can
co-ordinate their small formations into larger assault forces. For the air
power and potent weaponry Space Marines lack, they can call upon units from the
Imperial Navy and the Titan Legions, but with no ally rules in this game cannot
fight alongside Imperial Guard outside home-brewed scenarios.

IMPERIAL GUARD

The Imperial Guard have lost the Leviathan and the Ordinatus (the Adeptus
Mechanicus will be a separate list), but along with Imperial Navy spacecraft
they have gained four new units of their own - the Leman Russ Vanquisher, Storm
Troopers, Valkyries and Vultures. Unlike the Space Marine army, in which all
vehicles bar the Dreadnoughts and Thunderhawk are new models, the Guard range
is otherwise unchanged from Epic 40k - the Valhallan models now do service as
Steel Legion infantry. Valkyries and Storm Troopers go together, in fact are
pretty much essential for one another as the Storm Troopers’ pitiful range
compared with other Guard units means they require fast transports. The
Valkyrie and Vulture are the Guard equivalent of helicopters - the Valkyrie is
the airborne cavalry workhorse while the Vulture is the attack ship, most
useful for its long-ranged anti-tank missiles. Like the Space Marines, the
Guard army falls easily into the roles you’d expect - a lot of expendable
grunts(only half the basic IG infantry have autocannon, making the rest
effectively bullet-catchers), powerful tanks and lots and lots of barrage
points. IG Fire Support platoons also give some of the best firepower for the
points you can get - eight AP5+/AT6+ 45cm shots for 100pts. Here too there are
signs of redundancy in the unit selection - the Basilisk can act as *either* a
Griffon for twice the price *or* a down-gunned Leman Russ, and in competition
with other artillery and tanks looks set to fall by the wayside. Meanwhile the
never-popular Bombard is outclassed by the Manticore - its ignore cover ability
being barely longer-ranged than that of the Demolisher or Hellhound, while the
Manticore’s far greater range and disrupt ability are preferable for the same
cost. Quantity over quality has always been a Guard doctrine, and like Marines
they lack truly high-powered weapons save for the Shadowsword’s volcano
cannon.

As became clear in a long discussion between myself and Mikael, Imperial Titans
are curiously underarmed - not in the amount of firepower they can put out,
which is certainly substantial, but in that they, like other Imperial forces,
are short on macro-weaponry, the exception being the Warhound. No doubt they
are still formidable opponents to face, even if poorly-armed compared with Ork
equivalents.

Of all the formation types in the game, those of the Imperial Guard borrow most
heavily from Space Marine. The Tank, Super-Heavy and Artillery Companies are
essentially straight translations though infantry companies are smaller (though
twice the size of any Marine infantry formation). Each allows the purchase of
up to two support formations (which act independently of the ‘parent’) and
three upgrades (which add platoon, squadron or battery-sized units to the
company itself). As companies are expensive formations and units like Leman
Russ, infantry and Fire Support units can only be taken as upgrades, not
support formations, the Guard army is not enormously flexible and will rarely
have many formations to activate, but those formations won’t break easily.

ORKS

The Ork unit selection is preceded by background information as was the Marine
section, and Orks have two special rules: Mob Rule, which gives a rallying
bonus to large Ork mobs and Power of the Waaagh!, which encourages Orks to
double move or charge rather than shoot. No prizes for guessing Ork taktiks.

Since the last edition, the Ork unit selection has changed most of all. As one
might expect, the trend among Ork units is for poor firepower, weak armour and
good close combat ability. In fact, so pronounced is this tendency that there
is a lot of duplication among Ork units - for instance, Kommandos and Boyz
differ only in the fact that the former have special rules, and as the costs
for both are the same if you’ve got the choice adding Kommandos to an
existing mob is better than adding Boyz.

Ork Gargants are a force to be reckoned with by any count. The Supa-Stompa is
an incredibly ugly model, mostly because of its weapons (the mega-choppa is
horrible) but also because of the tracks (oddly enough it counts as a walker),
but there’s no denying its punching power - a 30cm Titan Killer attack, 4-6BP
of long-ranged macro-weapon fire and/or a Titan Killer close combat weapon. Ork
Gargants, and the smaller Stompa, have a modular weapon fit - most can choose
to replace one close combat arm weapon with a powerful gun (or vice versa
depending on your perspective). This mini-Gargant, that can put out two barrage
templates of macro fire plus a ranged Titan Killer attack plus a close combat
macro-weapon attack, costs 250pts - the same as a Warhound or superheavy tank,
but there’s no comparison in the armaments. The Warhound (whose new model is
even uglier than the Supa-Stompa) is completely outclassed.

The Ork army list is based around large, varied mob formations, and it helps
for them to be sizeable both because of Mob Rule and their lack of command
characters (only one Warlord in the army) to co-ordinate assaults. Mobs can be
normal, big (twice as many units of each type) or huge (three times as many)
before upgrades, with different costs for each. Big mobs are a good compromise
size that will allow you to take several mobz while still outnumbering Guard or
Marine enemies, and each mob can be further upgraded with transports, extra
infantry, light vehicles and gun or battlefortresses. To free da Boyz to go
bash humies up close, Big Gunz can be organised into their own five, ten or
fifteen-strong mobs which can be further upgraded with - you guessed it - more
big gunz.

More on the way...

Philip Bowles