There were at least 4 cameras floating about.

I've opened a thread here for some photos.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Yup, a great fun day, playing against Christoph from Belgium's Orks, John's IG Tank Legion and finally Ben Edgar's dominant Black Legion.

On the scenario front Meeting Engagement worked fairly well, Ambush had quite a few problems as have aleady been outlined, and Spearhead largely worked but seemed very much in the attacker's favour.

On a general note with the scenarios it was often unclear how the rules interacted with forces in the reserve such as air assaults, portal usage etc.

I'll go into more detail in the scenario thread.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

What was the BL list like?

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NetEA NetERC Human Lists Chair
NetEA Chaos + Black Legion Champion

Hordey. As many marines as possible, bikes, raptors, couple of decimators, all covered with an obliterator AA umbrella and surrounded with scout screens.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

You can see a picture of his army (which was pretty much WYSIWYG)here : http://www.tacticalwargames.net/forums....y359092


His was the only Black Legion army list present.

I believe it was his first tournament, and he said he'd check out the Tactical Command ammendments after the day ended (he had not heard of the TacComms forum IIRC, though he said he'd previously stopped using Feral Titans as he felt guilty using them).


In my particular game against him (game 2, Ambush), I finished the game having destroyed or broken everything in his army except the two Decimators and a single infantry formation whilst still having the greater part of my army alive/unbroken, but lost by a margin of 1037.5 Victory Points due to the scenario rules. I would draw nothing from this game as regards relative balance issues as it was all played in this much table space (about 25% of the table).

He played my brother Zombocom in game 3 and I believe the scenario rules may have affected the playstyle of the Dark Eldar army there?

Not sure who he played in game 1.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Yup, Dark Eldar playing as the defender in a Spearhead Engagement is pretty much an auto-loss, especially as my luck had run out, and even engagements where I was 3 or 4 points up were going against me on the dice.

I blame Gavin, who having left the tables at that point passed his luck over to me.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

One of the things that wasn't presented for Winter Warmer is that various races have modifiers to their Strategy Roll in scenarios that involve "Attacker/Defender".

For example, Dark Eldar may always choose to be the attacker in such scenarios, unless fighting Necrons... so, that mitigates there "defensive" weakness in a lot of situations.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

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

Attacker/Defender
Some battles involve the push of forces into enemy held territory and the attempts of the enemy to hold them back.  Such situations require an attacker and a defender.

Scenarios using attackers and defenders often have different setups, special rules, and deployments for each side of the conflict, as well as different victory conditions.  A scenario will indicate how players can determine which of them will be the attacker and which will be the defender, usually involving a roll of opposed Strategy Ratings, and what rules apply to each side.

Some forces rarely act as defenders; either not valuing territory, or not having the manpower to employ static defences, or simply tending to act as raiders.  The following rules modify the way attackers and defenders are determined in a scenario:

Craftworld Eldar or Tau army: +2 to Strategy Roll
Dark Eldar army: may choose to be attacker
Necron army, without Tomb Complex: is ALWAYS attacker
Necron army, with Tomb Complex: determine normally

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

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

Yes, I brought this up, but MoK reasonably ruled that since he hadn't had that rule when the packs were sent out it couldn't be used.

Were I the attacker in that scenario I would probably have won the tournament

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Well, thanks for being a guinea pig for me!  *laugh*

Just posted that to let people know certain things have already been addressed... just not well-communicated yet!

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

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

Just like to say thanks to Ryan for organising a very enjoyable days gaming.

Battle 1 - Meeting Engagement
Armies - Me (Tau) vs Jon (Steel Legion Guard)

This game involved both armies moving onto the table, I had a big activation and speed advantage which proved telling as I could target the guard army with my formations after the guard had moved onto the table, while presenting no real targets for the guard to retaliate against. This combined with the devastating air power of the AX-10's taking out three shadowswords, meant I won fairly easily.

However it was complicated a little by most of the weapons in my army being infantry killers, I ended up pretty much having to just break his big tank formations by laying blast markers as they just would not fail their RA saves against my guided missiles.

Result 2-0 to Tau (Defend the Flag and Though Shall not Pass)


Battle 2 - Ambush
Armies - vs Gavin (Biel-Tan Eldar)

Difficulties in interpreting the scenario asside and the occasional oddity that came up in play this game was still fun and basically came down to Gavin picking the wrong force to ambush. So the element he ambushed contained recon and aircraft which in the case of the aircraft stayed away from the battle entirely so as to present no target for double points kills and the recon just moved onto the table and spotted all the front eldar formations (The scenario was played in this case that the pressence of war engines in the attackers forces allowed the defender to act normally from the beginning of the game).

After this the bulk of the Tau army moved onto the table in the second turn and just started shooting the now spotted (and generally marked) eldar formations to pieces. Gavin managed to launch a couple of nasty rolling assaults to try and turn the game around in the third turn but when the broadsides with fire warriors fought off some falcons and the avatar the eldar army was effectively shattered.

Result - Tau Win (No objectives in this one just Vp's - 1000 Vps worth more eldar dead than Tau) effectively equvalent to a 3-0 win.


Battle 3 - Spearhead
Armies - vs Greg (Codex Marines)

Another slightly odd scenario where my Tau army (seeing no reason to set up garrisons for the marine warhounds to kill) basically didnt even appear until the second turn.

Again a relative lack of air cover meant I was able to cause carnage with the AX-10's, accounting for 3 warhounds this game. This and the activation advantage meant I could run rings around the marines and just shoot them up. Still any engages the marines did lauch tended to wipe out Tau formations and this combined with me loosing sight of the objectives and being unable to wipe out the last 2 units in the BTS or shift some terminators from an objective meant it was a winning draw to me on Vps.

Result - 1-1 (Seal the Breach vs BTS) Draw

Came second overall in the end which I was very happy with and it was interesting to give Tau a run out. The scenarios were definately quite fun to try out as something a bit different.

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Actually I'm not so sure of that; Spearhead was the only game I won (by a 4-0 margin at that) and I was defending. It depends on the armies and tactics used really.

I'll post more detailed feedback, along with comments, photos and at least a couple of playtest reports in the coming days, pretty exhausted today.

Excellent tournament though, probably my favourite so far  

Thanks loads to MoK (and everyone else that helped) for organising and running it! Here's hoping Ryan steps up again next year for a Winter Warmer II! (perhaps a Summer Sizzler could also be a possibility considering there seems to be a lot of epic players in Bristol).

Epic-UK and other potential/actual tournament organiser should take note; variety in armies and scenarios can be a draw to a tournament and be popular and enjoyable, even if not as finely competitively balanced as other, more restrictive tournaments.

15 out of a potential maximum 16 due to someone dropping was good going too and there were a high number of first time epic tournament attendees and a player from as far away as Belgium, making it a truly international tournament.  

Space Marines don't have much manpower so they ought to be attackers too and Chaos marines are raiders so they attack things a lot. Giving out special rules to piles of armies defeats the point of the rule being special.
"DE always attack" seems like another 40K rule being cut and pasted to epic, something that nearly aways doesn't work. Letting DE get stratergy rating 6 for the purposes of the deciding attacker or defender seems to be all thats needed. Its not completely impossible to imagine that they could be caught flatfooted by some exceptional tactics.

I don't see why any of the other armies need special exceptions.

Still, its not quite the point at hand! The tournament ran well, and was lots of fun. My Ultramarines managed to find that their traditionally woeful inablity to secure their own blitz/objectives didn't matter when attacking in ambush or spearhead. Which was nice!

Although it led me to be destroyed by Gav in game one! The only thing thunderhawks hate more than horrible nightwings is horrible nightwings on combat air patrol...  

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"A good orbital insertion is one you walk away from, a great one is where they can use the Thunderhawk again." Roboute Guilliman.