|
Sadly my very close friend friend James, the Eldar player in this report, recently passed away. I'd like to pay tribute to James and share a little about our friendship as a large chunk of it involved around Epic.
I met James when I changed secondary schools in January 1987, when I had just turned 12. He was tasked with showing me, the new boy, around the school and helping me settle in. I still vividly remember our being introduced to each other. I can't say that for too many people in my life. Anyway, he excelled at the task he was set, and not only did he make me feel at ease, but we swiftly forged what was to become a lifelong friendship.
We were both huge Star Wars fans as children and we at the time we became friends both got interested in comics, specifically 2000AD. So, when I spotted GW's Judge Dredd roleplaying game in the Argyle Street Virgin Megastore, I had to have it. The two of us along with a few other friends became hooked on playing that game for a period of four years or so. It was always fun and I have great memories of those times, most of which involved a lot of us laughing so hard that it ended up hurting.
As a sidenote, one of the games I wrote and GM'd was called R&R which essentially involved the Judges being given some time off to go home to their city block to rest. Of course, there's no fun in a game where the characters spend their time sleeping, so in a blatant rip off of Die Hard the block was taken over by (teenage logic alert) hundreds of terrorists who put the block into lockdown. That one was a real hoot, and I remember James' dismay as his character stepped into an anti-grav chute which had been switched off! One lucky roll and two broken arms later he did survive! It made me smile last year when I went to see Dredd in the cinema and essentially watched the same story (writer Andrew Garland admitted the film owed a lot to Die Hard as well)!
Anyway, I digress. It was because of our love of the JD RPG that I started buying White Dwarf, mostly because they would print scenarios/campaigns for the system. And it was White Dwarf that introduced us to 40K 1st edition! We played a bit of 40K but it never really took off for us, RPGing was a much more enjoyable experience, mostly because of the social aspect and because we thought it was more fun.
However, when I bought Adeptus Titanicus in a GW January sale for £10 (probably in 1989) the two of us started to get hooked. AT was an enjoyable game but it was those pictures on the box that really captured our imagination. You could see the tiny 6mm Space Marines and the art on the front of the box had us both asking "what if?", and "wouldn't that be great?"
Along came Space Marine (1st edition) and the "what if's" became reality. We had a lot of fun playing 1st edition Epic, but games were frustratingly long, often taking an entire Saturday (11am until 9pm if I remember rightly), and occassionally even longer!
It was when the 2nd edition came along that our love of all things Epic was firmly cemented. But I can remember the shock then of just how easily things could be destroyed, particularly infantry which largely died without any save at all - madness we thought! But then we realised that the relative ease of slaughter and the VP system shortened games to an (almost) managable time period and we really became addicted!
I was very lazy at painting miniatures and was only interested in fighting the battles. It was James who was the only one that had patience enough to paint up some of the forces. Those familiar with my battle reports may be interested to know that my pre-heresy Dark Angels and a good chunk of my Eldar forces were painted by James during his teenage years. They've seen a lot of action since and have survived the ravages of time well!
I have no idea how many Epic battles we fought but it was easily over 100, and probably closer to 200 or possibly even 300. And while we certainly had a number of discussions about rules, I don't ever recall us having an argument during any of those games. Sure, we'd sometimes finish with one of us feeling a little bruised after the encounter bemoaning shitty dice rules, but like the roleplaying we had a lot of fun and laughs. The main thing was to enjoy the game and we definitely did that.
The scale of the battles was absolutely something that we loved about Epic and there was never any other wargame for us after that point. And it stuck with us as we continued battling against one another throughout our 20's and 30's. In fact, it was James who found NetEpic rules online (3rd or four edition as I recall) which we both thought were a great improvement on 2nd edition Space Marine. We must have ended up playing those rules for something between 10 - 15 years (I'm getting old so my memory is a bit suspect here).
James was one of those people who was an incredibly kind and caring friend. To give one of numerous examples; I was diagnosed with Crohn's disease a couple of years ago and after a spell in hospital James took myself and my wife and another friend to Ayr for a day at the beach. He could have just come down to see me for a chat but wanted to do something to brighten up my day. He did exactly that by driving us there on what was, for Scotland, an unusually hot and sunny day. The whole day lifted my spirits during what had been a particularly stressful and difficult time in my life. Tragically, James would later also suffer from health problems that cruelly claimed him at far too young an age.
Returning to Epic, our most frequent battles were Marine v Eldar, and James had a particular penchant for those pesky Space Elves. So it seems fitting that in this report, our final battle together, he played the force he most loved.
I may have won that battle, but I'm devastated to have lost a such a wonderful friend.
In loving memory of James Hollywood 1974 - 2013
|
.
