As I mentioned in my second post my early GW gaming was mostly epic scale with the 2nd edition Space Marine boxset (and later Titan Legions, both of which I still have).
Back in 1997 I was eagerly awaiting the release of the new Epic 40'000. However after reading the various articles and battle reports published in White Dwarf during its short lifespan I was not particularly impressed and so never bought the game (or even tried it out). With its failure as product and the death of support for Epic my main opponent and I moved on to playing Necromunda and my Epic stuff was left languishing in the bottom of the cupboard.
I can't recall exactly what turned me against ruleset at the time, but I suspect it was mostly the dramatic change and the massive simplification that occurred. I do remember that the free form army lists and loss of the higher-level military organisations you got due to the Company cards was one of my major turn-offs.
More recently however after re-reading many of the those articles in WD I have re-evaluated my opinions. I went so far as to buy a set of the rule books off e-bay and have been reading through them. Certainly the simplification of the rules no longer bothers me, I much prefer simplicity in my rules these days.
The removal of the plethora of special rules for every single individual unit actually seems very sensible to me now, whilst many troop types may have been reduced to single generic entries (as some argued reducing the character of the armies) this makes sense in epic scale, the mechanical differences of units in WH40K simply won't matter at this scale.
Epic is a clash of large formations not of the individual warriors who make it up, and I think now I understand what Andy and Jervis were attempting to achieve.
Sure there are things I would have done differently and there are definitely some flaws in the rules but I do have a hankering to try them out (if only I had the space...).
And yes I have the Epic: Armageddon rules (on pdf anyway) and they certainly simplify the rules and retain more individual character in the units than Epic40K, but still I like the pure compactness of the this system.
Anyway I've probably bored you enough with this essay.
Til next time.
Cap'n Smyrk
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