As many of you will be well aware, several of the members of this forum have started thinking about (and discussing) changes, improvements and fixes that we think will help improve NetEpic. Under Primarchs guidance, these will hopefully make their way into Platinum Edition of the rules.
Before we delve into the depths of the post I would like to make one point, we should all get into the habit of referring to the various groups of units as formations rather than cards (or another word if people can come up with a better term). Although some people still use the old cards in their games, NetEpic has moved away from them and many of the army lists have units which do not have actual “cards”. Therefore, from this point forward, I will be referring to the groups of units as formations. So we will have Company Formations, Support Formations and Special Formations.
Myself and Primarch have had a few email discussions about one aspect that I am proposing, and that is how we build armies to play the game. This all came about after reviewing the current army lists and I noticed how the formations (cards) for some armies are 20 years old and do not truly represent how those formations are structured, and have been for some time now. Along with that was the issue that transports and how they are included are not simple to swap out or add to formations (if any of you followed the discussion on Guard post you will have seen me and Primarch talking about having to have different sized transport formations for the different sized troop formations).
So with that in mind, I have been looking at the army list side of things and what can be done to improve the system. I have started with Space Marines as they are what I would call the “core” army and along with Guard is the one that has the most specific structure to it these days. When I have bottomed them out, I will start looking at the others (likelihood is that most of the others will be easier to do).
I had several goals in mind when looking at a new system:
1) Standard formations should be in-line with those as described in the current fluff. So for marines that means following the Codex Astartes (to some degree) and the sorts of things we have seen coming out in Apocalypse. But, to not alienate those players who have armies built around the old structure; allow them a way of using those old structures.
2) A degree of flexibility to be applied to formations. This mainly applies to tanks as the number and type are not set in stone.
By doing these, we also open up the game to the Armageddon players who construct their armies based around the current fluff and no body can deny that attracting players into the game is a bad thing.
3) Multiple transport options included as part of the formation. By including the option to take transports directly as part of the formation we can get rid of the “Footsloggers” and “Standard Transport” rules and also simplify how other transports can be used instead of the normal ones.
4) All possible units that are in the 40k world to be included. More options means more fun. Just because there isn't a model for it doesn't mean you shouldn't be able to scratch build something or proxy with another appropriate model. But again, if you only want to play with the older stuff, then there is nothing stopping you from doing it.
So onto what I am proposing. Taking a look at the standard Battle Company, this is how I think things could look.
So firstly, the detachments have been adjusted to follow the newer style of 6 tactical squads, 2 assault squads and 2 devastator for a company. But, as mentioned, old formations should still be catered for, so there is an option to swap some models about.
Jumping to point 3, by removing all the normal transports from the formation to start with it opens up a more simple system of mounting the troops, we don’t have to worry about making multiple support formations of different sizes to cope with formations of troops with different numbers. It also means players can make interesting mixtures of formations, by mixing and matching transports as they see fit. Again, for those old school players, it is still easy to make up the formation as it used to be.
Point 4. In the example above, I have included Damocles and Storm Eagle. Both are new models in 40k, so players should have the option of using them (well technically old models since in the fluff they appeared in the Heresy period, but are still available for modern 40k armies). The other slight change is to allow drop pods in smaller numbers; so again, players have the option of doing cool stuff with their formations.
Obviously detachment coherency would have to be maintained, you wouldn't be able to mount 2 assault stands in a drop pod and the other 2 in a rhino.
The points are just place holders at the moment, but the points cost of the formation would be the total points of everything. You would then work out the break point from the total numbers of models and finally the victory points.
The same rules would apply to the smaller support and special formations. So a support of a devastator detachment would look like this.
And a vehicle squadron might look like:
Old players still have the option of fielding the traditional 3 tank formations and Armageddon players can use their 4 tank formations and both have the option of mixing and matching tanks if they want to.
Obviously this sort of system would require that the player works out the total value of the formation and then the related Victory and Break Points, but that shouldn't be difficult. It isn't as if we don't utilise something similar already when we build titans.
Thoughts?
Matt
just think it is a good habit to get out of, especially when writing about them in army lists.
