I think it would be a good idea to have a public discussion of "what should the Space Marine list do?". It certainly couldn't hurt!

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Vaaish



True. But if the preconceived notions are so widely shared, is it reasonable to dismiss them? Sometimes it is, but I think saying "Space Marines should use this" or "Space Marines shouldn't use this all the time" isn't an unreasonable point of concern.



Not uncommon, no (though I don't think it's as common as Epic army compositions would suggest). But the thing is that Reavers and Warlords don't seem to be nearly as common. And should they really be more commonly taken than many actual Space Marine units?



Well, I went and reduced them to 25%, myself.

However, the fact that Warhounds are virtually ubiquitous among high-placing lists is strongly suggestive that they're perhaps too good for what they cost. Though, equally, it may just be that all their approximate equivalents are inferior.



If we do nothing else, we'll certainly make him feel special.

And it's true enough, what you say here, though TRC's point seems indicative. TEC sometimes takes Warhounds and sometimes does not either, IIRC.

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why not have each army champion a share postion between 2 people ? open the the time frame of avaliability more and more hands on should in theory = faster / more progress ?


Just a thought



Tim NZ

Several Army Champions have nominated seconds who are to take over if they disappear for any length of time.

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While I understand Dobbsy's point, it misses the roles of the Army Champ (AC) and Epic Rules Committee (ERC) in these debates, even if as Mosc says, "life intervenes" into our world of toy soldiers.

Frogbear got it right - comments and debates are both healthy and, to an extent, inevitable.
The AC needs to facilitate, guide, inform, and ultimately decide on the way the list develops. Such decisions have often taken years to develop and usually go through cycles as Mephiston points out. The extent of any changes depends on the maturity of lists, but is also impacted by the 'power creep' that has plagued some later lists.

And IMHO, even though the "core lists" are deemed to be the most 'balanced' that does not necessarilly mean there is no room for improvement. But such changes need to be considered, supported by facts and potentially gradually introduced to ensure they have the desired impact.

That pretty much sums up my position, and my slackening of enthusiasm for Epic in general. Play, argue, debate, discuss, but nothing ever seems to change, especially not in an upward manner.

The lack of such has lead to the shelving of entire armies. I'm not interested in a Marine Air Assault list with Warhounds, but no other army build seems close to competitive, and so they haven't been played in well over a year. Maybe that just exposes my limitations as a player, but it's not like I see others breaking that mould.

Morgan Vening

Oh were is Priestley and Johnson when we need them! If GW hadn't left us loyal fans hanging, you think we'd be having this discussion?

Seriously though, I've been reading this thread and I have to say...Wow! As a newbie to TacCom, I'd first like to say I think the love for Epic is NOT in question with this group. And I whole hardheadedly agree with TimNZ when he said...
I myself am happy to see all the different lists being developed and I'm ecstatic to see the supplement books that are out (bought Siege and Raiders) and the time and dedication that went into them to be produced. Oh yeah and the modeling and conversion ain't half bad either...It definitely makes me feel that this particular game that all so many of us love is going to continue on even if the "powers that be" don't share our same enthusiasm. (Why does it always have to be about the Benjamins?)

Now with that said, I'll throw my thoughts into this discussion. I'll make it short.

With the short time that I have been on this forum, I think the one thing that is the biggest strength, but also the greatest weakness is the various list developments. I'm not complaining by any means. I for one never thought in a Dark MILLENNIUM (sorry, just had to use a 40K reference) that I'd ever see a DK of Kreig, a Dark Eldar Epic army or even a Necron Epic force until I opened those PDF files and got blown away. I thought, "man I'll never doubt Epic ever again!" Then I myself wanted to get involved (for as much as I can) and offered up my thoughts, services, etc...I'm seeing first hand what's involved and I agree with Moscovian about the "life" issues. I myself have a family and it can be hard to get free time to do anything extracurricular, but I also agree partly with what Steve54 had to say about ongoing projects and stepping aside to get them done. Maybe it's not an issue of too many irons in the fire, but maybe it's an issue of getting from point A to point B. There is a lot of projects and a lot of help going on with those projects, but it doesn't seem like the focus is there to get one particular project done over another. Is it the individual's responsibility to get it there, or is it the committee's? Should there just be a general consensus within the community to have one particular project done? Not pointing fingers, but who's in charge?

I was thinking about this thread viewtopic.php?f=4&t=19197&start=45, and what Moscovian had said about you snooze you lose. Shouldn't this be the ultimate goal of what all this creativity is all about? To get it in print? I say this, because after the Siege and Raiders lists were put out, I haven't found too much debate over what's uber and what isn't about these lists...and I think that's a good thing. Seems like it's set in stone (I'm sure others would disagree), but it's out there. It's has a physical manifestation. It's being used in at least one major tournament I know of (Adepticon) and everyone seems happy about it.

But in the end it's just a game right? Use what you like or what Legion 4 said, "Do what works for you". I'm here to play some Epic! Try something new with my toy soldiers and have fun doing it. The TacCom Community for me has made that possible.

The NetEA project has two main goals:

1 - Help expand the range of army lists in a user-friendly, easily-approachable, manner. (The Armies Book list collation project)
2 - Provide gaming supplements like Epic:Raiders and Epic:Siege.

Currently, it's meeting goal 2, and failing goal 1.

Agreed. People are just happily playing the lists.
Raiders and Siege are examples of the NetEA open development style working well and resulting in popular, balanced lists.

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Really? I'm going to say something that comes off as harsh, but take it in the sense of us being familiar... That's a pretty pathetic stance. You cannot convince me that Space Marines NEED Warhounds because the last two people who played SMs against me field them regularly without Warhounds and have won just fine.

Warhounds: I agree that they are a great unit choice. I agree there may be some small balance issues. I agree that the Space Marines lack MWs. None of these factors are game killers. The SMs don't automatically lose because of it. They may lose more often but I doubt it is on the order of being a no-fun army. If you have to have the absolute best units every time because winning is that important to you, then it may speak more to the player than the army itself.

We should keep things in perspective. Balance issues I am sure exist with the SMs. But these are tweaks, not entire rewrites. We're not talking Tau List 3.5 where everything had 5 x AT2 rail guns. ~ Some of you people make it sound like the Space Marines can never win and it pulls the whole discussion so far to the side that it becomes impossible to reasonably determine what to do.

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Ahh. No offence taken, but your focus is on the wrong part of what I wrote. It's not the Warhounds I have a problem with. It's the Air Assault part. Which includes Terminators and/or Drop Pods. My issue is, that the Air/Space/Teleport elements make any real ground force other than Warhounds look pretty dismal, competitively.


Oh, I'm sure that Marines can win. My concern is their ability to win when NOT playing Air/Space/Teleport. I have no problem losing (if I did, I'd have problems, given how often I've been losing), but intentionally handicapping myself by taking large numbers of mechanized infantry or tank formations, and little if any deep strike stuff, well, that's no good for me or my opponent.

I want to see Marines have a bevy of acceptable army builds of similar strength, not one or two uber-competitive builds, and half the formations used rarely, if ever.

Morgan Vening

This is a forum for the discussion of rule amendments. Having lots of proposals on the table is the nature of the beast. All the speculative discussions may give an impression of ever-changing rules and an inability to settle anything, but that's not the case. The impression of fluidity is an illusion, created by the intense concentration of alternative proposals. The rules are far more stable than they appear.

Lots of stuff is discussed. Very little comes to fruition. The rules change only very slowly.


That's not to say that we don't need to do a better job of projecting the idea that it's a solid rule set. It would be beneficial to do so.

I've been told I was "very special" since I was a Kid

That, and he has been playing Epic regularly - several times a day - since he was a kid !!

Some say, that Dave Thomas only knows two facts about ducks, and both of them are wrong.

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and until this year he had no concept of "second place"!

Except for two things. One is that if you model and paint your toy soldiers as well as you can, you have something to be proud of, regardless of whether the rules behind those models makes them uberkilly or not. Unlike CCGs, where you've just got some pre-printed cards in a box. Is it more important to have a winning army, or is it more important to have a well painted army?

Second is that the rulebook does say that tournament play isn't the be all and end all and that creating scenarios is part of the way the game was intended, so maybe that's something worth looking at in more depth, as scenarios can be built to change the meta entirely.

Could even look at running some varied scenarios in tournament play...