If i look at the recent Wh40k Codices and the upcoming Codices is have thefeeling that Epic transforms more and more into a game of the past only played by old people fearful of change.

Best examples are the Necrons which current Codex has very different style than the Epic: Raiders list and has a pletora of new units.

In the coming month Chaos and Eldar will get loads of new units and i have the feeling almost no one wants to introduce these into Epic.

This isn't even power/Codex creep as lists with this new units won't be more powerful but rather add more flavour to a game.
Yes GW isn't helping either inintruducing new units for essentially the same job as established FW units (Eldar seem to get a "Lamia Strike Fighter" and "Moon Siren Bomber", Chaos get's a "Dragon" aircraft, etc).

I remember a time the Epic community embraced change and developement of new army lists. This process seems to be stalled somewhat.

Anybody feels the same? Or is it just me?

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I think if it ain't broke, don't fix it....

as a community, we care a lot about balance, it takes a lot of time (especially since most members here are hobbyists doing things in their spare time) and effort to get lists and units to a point where they are balanced in the wider sense of the game

GW are about selling toy soldiers to kids, they release so many new things all the time as part of their sales strategy, much of the things they release have huge amounts of overlap with existing units that they're not needed.... epic as a game of abstraction doesn't need those units either....

I think it boils down to the fact that GW's aim is to produce miniatures and make money, the epic community on the other hand is largely interested in creating a balanced and fun game.... when was the last time GW gave a crap about doing anything like that?

I think enough is happening to entice new players into the game, without it fragmenting into dozens of unfinished lists trying to cram as many units in as possible... which is where I think the game will end up if we try to keep pace with GW

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Well, you've always been ahead of that curve, BL.

I think Epic at it's best neither tries to ape 40k, nor ignores the changes going on in it's big brother. A stagnant community will evaporate, to be sure. However I think we need to be aware of model availability, list balance, and player pool size, too.

Take the new Necrons. The old Necrons were full of Lovecraftian horror and mystery - and I loved the background for that reason. The new Codex stripped all that away, and they lost their interest too me. I may still make a Necron army, but it will the old Necrons. I know some feel the same, and that means that the player pool for the new Necron lists is neccessarily limited. Without a broad player base, a list cannot be properly vetted. Another problem is model availability. There are proxies available for the old Necrons, but not for many of the new units - without widely available models, the new lists will see little action. Stand-ins are all well and good, but only in the short term.

Finally there is list balance. Lists in Epic are created from whole cloth. The interactions between units (combined arms) are as important as the units themselves. This differs from 40k where GW feels free to add units to old armies because the units are more important than combined arms. In fact the best armies in 40k are armies that spam certain units (leafblower Guard, for instance), whereas doing that in Epic usually weakens an army. Thus we usually add new units to new lists, instead of inserting them into old ones. The drawback is that there are only so many players, and only so many lists those players can support. We seem to be nearing a saturation point for lists in development, where adding more lists simply fragments the development instead of adding to it.

All this means new units are less likely to make it into Epic, though all these hurdles can be overcome. For those units that add something truly new to Epic, there will always be room. It may just take a bit to happen. For those that add nothing existing units do not, 6mm allows a great deal of flexibility to 'counts as'.

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yes, that's what I meant to say......

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I think part of it is the various army champions / ERC - a good number of them haven't done any development work in a long time, and show little sign of doing any in the future. Some of the others are active, but mostly only with EpicUK list development.

So when new units are added to the background/40k, half the time they're being added to armies that have a champion who's got no interest in doing any development work either on existing lists or on new variant lists.

As far as I'm concerned the NetEA project is crippled right now, and is probably not going to produce much more worthwhile in future without some radical change.

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Necrons are such a good example that they almost don't fit with the other lists in comparison for discussing wider development lag, as they have gained so many new units that it is difficult to even begin using them as "count as" with the old list.

Where a couple of new units are added to a main race i think lagging behind is fine, they are probably easy to use 'count as' if you have minis for them, or easier to theme a minor varient list with only 1 or 2 changes. With the necrons, I think a major new core list probably is needed given the scope of the changes in 40k. I'm not saying get rid of the old – freeze it – keep it in legal use as a legacy list, but concentrated development and testing on a new one.

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how about just creating a 'new units' pool?

every time GW releases a new unit or vehicle, just stat it up and stick it in the 'new units' pool for people to use in friendly games....? most 40k/wfb tournaments have comp rules anyway, keep the netea and epicuk lists as they are with minor annual tweaks to facilitate a level playing field for tournaments, then you're free to have units of stormtalons, necron upside-down barges and whatnot in epic, guys like yourselves will have new units to play with, miserable buggers like me can stick with the tournament lists..... I already pretty much only play with EpicUK lists as it is now

Time was that GW said you could only use special characters with your opponent's consent, why not have a list of 'opponents consent' units?

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Necrons are certainly the best example but it's getting noticeable with most factions.

There just seems to be little interest in doing development work from most of the Champions these days, whether it be "modernising" or simply working on variant army lists, half of them don't do either.


Do that... and a few more years down the road, and Epic won't look much like modern 40k at all.

That's cool of course, if that's what you want.

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not sure I follow, surely modern 40k is an 'everything and the kitchen sink' situation at the moment?



I don't want that, I'm quite happy with how things are at the moment, I was just making a suggestion....

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I think there's some gold among the gravel.

Certainly there's a lot of ripe ground for variant lists these days that isn't being explored, and *some* of the new unit additions really are so prominent as to be worthy of including in existing lists (Stormtalons & Land Speeder Storms for the Codex Marine list, for example).

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Well, I think it is inevitable considering the speed of development of Wh40k theses days (A codex every two months, a lot more vehicle sized kits) and the way lists are traditionally handled in E:A.

I already exposed my ideas about list development in E:A a year ago (here), but I will point out again that the "everything including the kitchen sink" approach of list development would make following Canon/FW/Wh40K evolution much simpler.

I agree that there are good things happening, however it's difficult to reach a consensus on what's gold and what's not.... for example, I support the storm talon existing, but I hate the model so much I'd rather not have it at all..... part of that is due to it being so heavily armed it's tricky to justify in epic (pages and pages of arguments back and forth tend to support this, although hopefully things are now moving forwards!)

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That's where the lack of interested Champions comes in.
The only reason the Stormtalon is going to get tested is because Marines are one of the few lists that have:
A : An active champion
B : A champion that doesn't think everything released by GW post 1997 is poop.


It ain't. People are just afraid of stuff.

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I'd almost be tempted to just start playing with things before discussing them here..... it has much more weight with everyone if you say 'I've been testing the stormtalon, I've played half a dozen games with it and here are my thoughts' rather than arguing over the stats beforehand and getting people's opinions dug-in before anything happens....

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Not the worst suggestion ever!

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