Tnx, but Lindköping is a tad too far away for this poor student =-) I'll look into it tho.
As for the "quantity as a quality of its own" question, in some games it works, in others... not so much (W40K Apocalypse?).
The reason it works in E40K is of course the very unsentimental treatment of special rules and the abstract rules for shooting... Something which, incidentally, makes it a
lot easier to balance, especially since all the armylists were written at the
same time (w00t!).
Balance and consistent army-lists being a revolutionary trait in a GW-game, and a sort of "Gordian Knot" cut solution to the extreme fiddliness of Epic Space Marine. And as is well know, a solution not very well received. But had GW stayed the course and not abandoned the game in favour of the Tolkien franchise I do believe they could have made something out of it...
Pure speculation at this point of course. Anyway, an extremely interesting read on this by none other than designer Andy Chambers can be found here:
http://www.redstargames.net/pdfs/Fanatic%20Rant.pdf
