Dave wrote:
Also, while we're add it, let's talk about additional EA rules beyond those that would be translated from SM/TL.
- Might of the Omnissiah/They Shall Know No Fear
This makes the formations take twice as much fire to break. I'm a fan of simplicity, this can be achieved with 2DC Knights.
I like this. I know Apocolocyntosis doesn't, but I'll explain my reasoning. If you're already playing as Knights, you're already individually assigning and rolling each wound since they're all DC1 war machines (and if you're just rolling for the formation and assigning wounds, you're doing it wrong). My first couple of games, I kept forgetting half of the Might of the Omnissiah special rules, while having to explain how they weren't, but were sorta space marines operating under ATSKNF.
If each Knight is a DC2 war engine, then it still takes 2 blast markers per Knight to suppress a unit or kill a Knight unit in a Broken formation without requiring a special rule to explain it. If each Knight is a DC2 war engine, it takes 2 blast markers per unit remaining to break the formation. Blast markers on rally would work as normal I presume. That just stripped out a whole bunch of special rules that typically got me "so... you're playing space marines? 40K vs. Epic?" comments and streamlined the process of bringing the opponent up to speed.
As for bookkeeping... Make the critical strike a "vehicle destroyed" result and that's partly resolved. Barons already operate with two wounds. We're only talking about two wounds here, not half a dozen. Could easily do what I do and just put a small marker on the miniature's base when the first wound is lost. Travels with the individual war engine and pretty much resolves wound tracking in about 5 seconds. Going to DC2 certainly won't slow down the dice rolls any, if you're playing it right.
Dave wrote:
- Bravery
Knights are initiative 2+, this rules gives them a +1 to engage if they're outnumbered. Again, simplicity here. Why count when the majority of the time the Knights ARE going to be outnumbered. Just a flat +1 to engage.
Agreed; I'm a fan of the KISS principle. The more I have to keep track of conditional special rules, the more likely I'm going to either (a) forget them, or (b) spend half the game consulting a sheet to explain to my opponent/justify what I'm doing. That kills the fun factor, and leaves the other guy feeling like you're trying to pull one over on him, even when you're not. Speaking from experience.
As for Carlos's list. I'm a little more familiar with Morgan Vening's v1.3 list, and personally wasn't a huge fan of Carlos' decision to tinker with the speeds and stats of some knights, generate a ton of new weapon options for Castellans and Crusaders, and especially forcibly cut them down to a max of 2 units per formation. I also miss the heavy bolters on Paladins, since it did make a difference in prepping larger infantry formations. In short, lots of changes, many of them seemingly arbitrary despite his explanations in the development thread.
As for GW rolling out Knights for 40k in the near future. Knowing GW they're very likely to have little in common with the Epic miniatures I actually have so... I could care a lot less at the moment. It'll be interesting to see what they do with it, but I'm not really trusting the newer crop of writers to do justice to older lore.
but i'm not sure on this: