I hope the boards stay up long enough for your to finish this, Hena!  Looking forward to it.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

I'm hoping you get to finish the game so I can leverage (steal) it for my BoLS Epic series.  

Thanks for the fast report, Hena!

So, you didn't find the LV Warriors to be too much of a drawback?  

I'll post more tomorrow, just getting ready for tomorrow's D&D game and then I've got to head to bed.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

It was a good game with exciting engages.  Also it is really nice to see nids having some teeth again.

Some first impressions:
1. Independent formations are positive addition. Nids have always suffered a bit low activation count and now they can make up for it.

2. Spawning is simple and effective (especially with artillery formation that sits usually more than 30cms away from enemy)

3. Some engage ranges have increased and that made clear effect.

4. Ravener. I really don't like this one. Clearly superior to other broods, can FF, (too) good in CC, have save and count only half casualty in engages. It has spawning cost of 2 and there is no reason not to spawn only these if available.

5. Gargoyles. Nice. I really always liked them being AA, even though it is not fluffy, but it works. Spawning cost 1 just makes them to be spawned instead of either gaunt it is just so much better.

6. Warriors are light vehicles. Ouch! I didn't have any dedicated AT formation (only t-bolts for harassing), but these are really easy meat for falcons/ fire prisms, predator annihilators and such AT-firebases. They do need meat shield even more now and that makes raveners even more needed.

7. nids seem to work quite well without SC.

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Rats Keep Running...

Dark Eldar Dracon

The ravener seems to be the biggest bone of contention. It is effectively compulsary for shielding purposes so I think a drop to 3 stands at 125pts (41.6pts each) or 4 for 150pts (37.5pts each) would be better as we mustn't forget that additional warriors come in at 50pts each.

I still don't like spawning being more effective away from the enemy (sounds like retreating Nids being drawn to reserve synapse rather than attacking forces sweeping up all the stragglers). Something that would need a lot of testing though and it does appear that the spawning system is working ok.

Spawning gargoyles is always going to happen because they are the better gaunt, they cost more to buy but spawn at the same rate as gaunts so to keep the simple spawn system this will happen (The alternative would be a more complex points based spawning system)

I was quite disappointed with the Hydraphant (and the general beating the nids appeared to get) but was it down to the beast itself or just bad luck. The Hierophant always strikes me as the better option for it's longer ranged weaponry particularly at standard sized games.

I feel that Assault spawn need a winged tyrant, their speed is wasted somewhat with a walker and warriors would be vulnerable to sniping with AP fire.