It has a discussion. But nothing much you can just pick up and run on. Nothing especially concrete. This is where Chroma's supplement comes in. There are a few scenarios in fantatic magazine also. By and large the main epic focus is certainly on the tournament scenario though. I'm sure Jervis had to resign himself to this...

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Well i considerme 50% competitive and 50% floff-gamer too
My fist and for now only torunament army was a full Planetfall/Air-Assault Space Marines force. A StirkeCruiser with a full battlecompany with some support tanks (Hunter, Razorback)and a detachments of Terminators and Devastators from a reserve company, a Thunderhawk, a LandingCraft and a Warhound.
I even painted the Devastators from the reserve company appropiately to show that they are from a different company than the rest of the army.
The only only competitive parts where, that i included the Captain in the Devastators from the reserve company instead of the battle companies detachments where they would belong to.

I won 2 out of 4 games with them. I won spectacular or i failed spectacular. There was no gray area
One game i finished with only the Landing Craft on the opponents Blitz and the Warhound and thus managed a 0:2 loss instead of a 0:4 loss

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Indeed, Jervis is quite the fluff gamer.

He thinks aesthetics is much more important than building tricked out army lists.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

And yet he designed a system that is the least conducive to 'tricked out' than any other game GW have ever produced.

BTW 'tricked out' rarely works at tournament. That's Epic for you.

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[url=http://tinyurl.com/bott2015][img]http://i62.tinypic.com/205fcow.jpg[/img][/url]

will see the point in charging a Reaver Titan with 5 Orky Boyz when he could alternatively Triple away and claim the Blitz

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I think the main issue of contention here is simply one of semantics.

By "WAAC", players such as myself really mean Powergaming.
By "WAAC", tournament players mean bad sportsmanship.

We're arguing over two different things here.

Most tournament players have no problem with powergaming, in fact (as shown by this thread) many feel there is little reason to play any other way. I have no interest in powergaming at all, I'd much rather take a list with vindicators and predators and other maligned units etc than yet another air cavalry list, for example.

Too many times people are making the assumption in this thread that just because someone doesn't like powergaming they must be a bad player (or even laughable). Equally, too many times people are making the assumption that powergamers must be bad sports.

I consider myself a pretty decent Epic player, but have no interest in competing in a powergaming environment. I just don't enjoy that kind of game.

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Epic: Hive Development Thread

Jervis likes the book stats for Baneblades.  

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Then he isn`t a fluff-gamer, because the Baneblade HAS more weapons than in the book

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The stats are fine for the SG model.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

I think there's some confusion of terms here (forgive me if this has come up before, just skimmed the last few pages).

WAAC players really aren't fun to play against, but the definition of WAAC players seems to vary, and I think several overlapping issues are being discussed. So let me give my interpretations of the different terms and you can see if you agree with them.

Powergamer

The powergamer is out to win. The object of the game is to crush your opponent, right? Of course. So why would you ever take anything but the most powerful force you can put together? This usually manifests in the army building part of the game, and the powergamer's army is min-maxed to high heaven. Note that being a powergamer doesn't preclude having themed or balanced armies.

Rules lawyer

The rules lawyer plays by the letter of the rule. Often he will use his encyclopaedic knowledge of the rules to sneakily (or cleverly) prise some kind of advantage. Note that being a ruleslawyer doesn't preclude applying common sense to rules, particularly when they are unclear.

WAAC gamer

The WAAC gamer is usually both a rules lawyer and a powergamer, but goes above and beyond to make a jerk of himself. This means bending or twisting the rules, willfully misinterpreting the rules, unreasonable conversions, etc.

At a tournament, you should expect your opponents to be both powergamers and ruleslawyers to some extent. They are there to try and win, and they need to play by the letter of the rules as this is important when playing new opponents you've never met before. That doesn't mean they are WAAC gamers necessarily. WAAC is a matter of attitude - you can bring the dirtiest list and play by the strictest letter of the rules and if you're a good sport, you're not a WAAC gamer. A good example would be one of those really tough 1mm in-or-out range questions - a good sport (even if he is a powergamer) would grant his opponent the benefit of the doubt, while a WAAC gamer would fight it to the bitter end.

Yes we do need to see a lot more of this kind of stuff, to keep the 'other half' happy, so to speak.

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

This is an interesting discussion. Epic is a game from which great enjoyment can be derived just from being involved in a sci-fi universe. Some people derive further enjoyment from the competitive element of the game. Some people derive enjoyment only from that competitive element. So I think there are three different classes of player. The reason this debate is so heated is that those who occupy the two extremes are playing the game for totally different reasons.

With hobby-gaming, you're always going to get those three classes of player.

On a personal level, I've found that as I've grown older I've become less competitive. That's one of the reasons Epic is now my main game. I used to play a lot of chess tournaments. Chess is pure competition, there is no aesthetic pleasure in chess, even as a game it lacks elegance. I started to grow bored of playing a game where the only real enjoyment I got from it came from winning. I moved onto CCGs which sit somewhere between chess and wargames. I played these very competitively but they were still fun even in defeat. Now I play Epic because I want a game that I know I will enjoy regardless of whether I am playing to win.

Going back to Ginger's questions and ignoring issues of motivation for playing Epic, for me WAAC can come in two forms, outright cheating and "pushing edges".

Outright cheating is a clear-cut breach of the rules such as:

Taking more points worth of formations than agreed
Failing to remove casualties
Surreptitiously moving your units outside their activation

Pushing edges is not clear-cut cheating but involves taking maximum advantage of grey areas, disputable situations and psychology. Examples include:

Not pointing out an opponent's mistake (e.g. opponent forgets TSKNF in assault resolution and loses twice as many marines as he has to)
Deliberately misinterpreting a rule in your favour
Insisting on claiming disputable cover
Insisting you are in range when it is unclear
Over-moving units
Putting your opponent under pressure with the intention of forcing errors

Pushing edges often involves asserting your will over your opponent. This can be done in a number of ways - civilised discussion, heated arguments, hurrying your opponent, intimidation, to name but a few.

Failing to remove casualties

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Depends how often he tries it.

I like Epic because abusing the army lists is such a challenge.
Almost any formation could be used in so many different ways.
I used to have an hour each way commute on the train to work. it was fine, could sit there and run numbers and scenarios in my head.

Now I don't have the commute and can spend more time modelling, painting and um, hanging out here.

So I'm a powergamer I suppose when it comes to list building. I hope it's less obvious when I'm playing though.



WAAC is simply not giving your opponent a good experience. Be he chasing stories, carnage or double bluffing tactics.

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