Draccan wrote:
Also - yikes to the news (to me) about AU doing their own ruleset. I can't fathom why the UK and AU crowd doesn't join in one single NetEA ruleset and work for changes from within. The Epic community would be so much better without fractured rules and army lists. Esp. when you want to attract new players...
The NetEA ruleset isn't going to change, beyond FAQs, so in that sense there is no opportunity to work from within. It's in the description on the front page of
https://net-armageddon.org (my emphasis).
'It incorporates the official Epic Armageddon rules
without modification, and builds on top of the rules by providing clarifications and updated army lists (many not included in the original publication).'
This means that, for players that are unhappy with parts of the Epic Armageddon rules, they have a choice of playing another game or edition, or doing their own variant of the EA rules. See
https://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd ... =4&t=33200 for some of the issues that different players would change, or dislike.
My personal 'friction points' with EA are:
- War Engines don't degrade gracefully as they gain Blast markers and damage.
- Larger War Engines interact poorly with the overall dynamics of EA, particularly the need for high activation counts and the inability to split fire with weapon systems that don't complement each other.
- The activation system plus the tournament scenario's emphasis on last-minute objective grabs places strong restrictions on how army lists can be constructed.
- Several EA mechanics (Skimmers forcing firefight values, clipping firefights...) and army lists lead to rock-scissors-paper matchups on the game table.
- The Initiative test to activate a formation is fantastic as a concept to represent different degrees of organisation, but on the tabletop it can lead to frustrating game experiences where you're fighting against the dice rather than your opponent.
- This is a list-level issue rather than an overall EA issue, but there are a number of internal and external balance issues in the NetEA and EpicUK army lists, where specific factions or specific units in a faction are substantially better or worse than other choices.
- Messy Aircraft interactions with other Aircraft if there is AA cover on both sides.
If you're a small group and the friction points get too much, you're probably going to end up moving to another edition, like I (mostly) did. If you have a larger group with a consensus about what needs changing, you can do a variant of EA, like Epic AU, EA Ragnarok, Epic Alight, and a few others I can't remember the name of.
As a general note, collaboration between the EpicUK and EpicAU groups is incredibly unlikely.
The two groups play area terrain and Line of Fire
very differently at events, and there have been a number of very loud and angry arguments over the years, regarding who is following the published rules and who is using house rules. After the last argument, there was a noticeably drop in Taccoms posts from the EpicAU community.
GlynG wrote:
Many of us in the UK find it a bit baffling and unnecessary the Australians came up with a new heavily modified version of the rules. In the UK we're happy still using the original Epic Armageddon rules, they may not be perfect but they are very good and better to stick with what everyone is used to.
...
There's a big upswing in interest in Epic locally here (20 player tournament this weekend just gone) and several new players at a local club getting into Epic through playing 30k Epic.
Please be careful with generalisations. There's a big chicken-and-egg effect in the UK due to the EpicUK events, with players being pushed towards EA because that's what's used at the events, which use EA because that's what people play, because that's what's used at the events, etc. etc. I
have to play original EA if I want to go to an event, because it's the only option.