EpicUK isn't an alternative to the NetERC as their missions are completely different. EpicUK covers possibly the most densely populated area of Epic players in the world and as such have unique abilities and demands on them that IMO make for a good justification to 'do their own thing'. But don't think for a minute that that they don't use the resources that this site produces.

A website.

It should host the armies book and explain what netEA is, what the netERC and ACs are etc.

I'm hoping to help out here at some point. I found it extremely difficult to get started with EA, with information scattered all over the place. It's not clear what's complete, what's not, where to go for help, etc. Once you've done a lot of digging around it all becomes clear and obviously people round here are always friendly and helpful, but it takes a fair amount of patience.

I'd like to setup a web site that has all the information one needs to get started. It would be useful to include a list+job description of people responsible for various aspects of NetEA, and those people would have access to the CMS so they could update info, upload documents etc. The site would have to look awesome and feature an overview of each army, together with pretty pictures from the community's best painters. Information and links to all the companies making good proxies would need to be included, with estimated costs(£) for 3k armies for any given race where possible. Basically, a one-stop-shop that inspires people to give EA a try. We spread the word, get featured on a few wargame sites, nail the SEO, and who knows what might happen.

This is what I do for a living:
http://percipio.me/

So you can see it's all entirely possible. Time is the ever-present issue as we're working hard to build our business, but hopefully I can get the ball rolling sometime this year.

Cheers

I think the idea of a seperate website that hosts the "Face" of epic would be a great idea, somewhere first time users can jump onto and just interact with whats been produced and in a filed and sorted manner, in a essence the best of tac cooms in a "retail" type format, then if people want to jump into the forums and get involed on the tac com side of things they can, otherwise they have a user friendly site that provides them with a set formta t for epic that they can get the ball rolling with for there gaming and such.
Im more than happy to help with anything that maybe required in this regard, as i currently have nothing but free time up my sleeve, weather its just mundane filing type work or anything else within my means.
but lets get it started and see more action and less deliberating, talk is good, results are better, as it was mentioned ealier inthe htread better to have something simple and underway people can log onto for now and then have it revamped at a later date.

Tim NZ

I'm curious, is there a reason why the NetERC has to be just 3 people? Couldn't it be 4-5 or whatever and so you only need majority to agree on something etc for efficient rulings etc. That way you have some redundancy built in in times of absences.

Also, I understand a small group would control things better with less argument, and I like that, but couldn't there be "assistants" to the NetERC as well, that could perhaps help pick up the slack in times of need?

Perhaps NetERC make rules/policy etc and the assistants get it online for them or whatever or help out when they aren't available? Assistants could be keen folk with small moderator powers for editing etc and, shall we say, "have no life" (like me - not specifically putting myself forward here btw):D and are usually always around (here daily etc) to get things up in a speedier manner.

Anyway just an idea.

CS - I think you must have missed it but Hena announced a couple of weeks ago that he was resigning from the ERC, which is one of the reasons why this has come about.

Secondly, even if has been, I don't think we should necessarily/fatalistically assume the forum/player base will shrink for EA, I believe we could have had a lot more posters and players here now had we got organised and produced the army book years ago as was widely wanted, so that new players and curious W40k people could have one simple (annually updated) thing to download and look at rather than the sprawling threads and forum sections (which are organised well for playtesting but unnecessarily complex and off-putting as the only introduction for newcomers/casual players). It would also have been a massive morale/motivation boost to us too - the ongoing situation has been really dispiriting for posters and playtesters here; all that effort that's gone into developing the lists that isn't reaching the audience it could because of the, frankly terrible, basic organisational admin, which need actually only have taken a hundredth of the time and effort the list development has. I realise we're a volunteer organisation and people have other priorities, but things can and should be delegated to people who do have time and other volunteer organisations have managed so much better and quicker e.g. Epic-UK or the Blood Bowl rules committee. If someone had told me a couple of years ago it would take anywhere near this long and given me a list of the armies to include I'd have happily typed a document including the entire lot up over at most a few days of working solidly at it. I know others would have done so too and did offer e.g. Marconz. Instead years have drifted past and many people have drifted away.

Getting at least one replacement ERC member, to take over Henas post - and most importantly getting the army book published and heavily advertised - should be our absolute top priority and these could form a catalyst a new motivator to better thngs. There are a lot of little things waiting on the army book that we could do to help publicise epic and recruit and maintain new potentially interested players. Groover's series of articles on Bell of Lost Souls from a year or two ago were a great example that could be done again. Something it would be good for all of us to do is for us to start writing up battle reports again and cross-posting them to other forums like Warseer or Dakka or whereever, including clear links to the army book with each list. We could get Groover to do a Bell of Lost Souls post with a link to the army book, mentioning that things had been a bit quiet but a re-vamped ERC had formed and things were moving on again. I truly believe EpicA is GW’s best wargame and that the lists we have here are overall excellent and we can do a lot better than we have been at communicating/publicising this and recruiting new people. Things have been petering out and progressing painfully, glacially, slowly, but if we start making over positive steps then things can easily re-energise and move back in the other direction.


I’m not against diversity, but there are already plenty of other forums catering to the GW games and wargaming in general. We already have a lot of sections of the forum that see so little use it could be worth moving them or closing them entirely to simply the currently lengthy list of sub-forums – you have to scroll down past 30 sub-forums to even get to the epic specific forums, whereas IMO they’d be better being at the top.

Wandering sort of off-topic now sorry but if you’re changing the structure can I suggest creating new a new army sub-forum for Dark Eldar (they’re a main army and share no units with Craftworld Eldar so it makes no sense for them to have to share their sub-forum) plus probably ones for Inquisition Lists and Squats/Demiurg too? It would help organise current and past playtesting threads for these armies better.

IMO Chroma is finding out how difficult first hand having a newborn is.

Perhaps CS would be best to confirm / deny my next point, but the months leading to the end of the school year tend to show participation wane, with it picking up considerably around September, peaking around January 1st. In other words, I see nothing unusual about the the waning traffic right now.

I'd also note that EpicUK don't hold exclusive sway over the UK; The most well attended Epic event in 5 years (26? 28? players?) happened earlier this year, and it was an event that was not EUK-affiliated (Allowed NetEA lists) and was mostly attended by gamers who do not normally go to EUK tournaments.

I'd also note that EpicUK don't hold exclusive sway over the UK; The most well attended Epic event in 5 years (26? 28? players?) happened earlier this year, and it was an event that was not EUK-affiliated (Allowed NetEA lists) and was mostly attended by gamers who do not normally go to EUK tournaments.

I believe 18 actually turned up, and it possibly had the most rancorous aftermath with complaints over rules and unbalanced lists (especially the nid list with 1 shot spores)

I'd also note that EpicUK don't hold exclusive sway over the UK; The most well attended Epic event in 5 years (26? 28? players?) happened earlier this year, and it was an event that was not EUK-affiliated (Allowed NetEA lists) and was mostly attended by gamers who do not normally go to EUK tournaments.

Speculating on who is and is not a good choice for positions that are as yet unadvertised/unavailable is counter-productive and fractionary. It does no good to the game or the community, and there will be opportunity to raise opinions and points if and when the specific matters arise.

<tongue firmly in cheek> Hey that would then make Melbourne the second most populated area of players of Epic in the world! 18 were supposed to turn up to Heavy Bolter 2009 but we ended up with 16. D'Oh!

Frogbear: as the owner and runner of this site, CS created and appointed the netERC.

<tongue firmly in cheek> Hey that would then make Melbourne the second most populated area of players of Epic in the world! 18 were supposed to turn up to Heavy Bolter 2009 but we ended up with 16. D'Oh!

Where are all these Epic players ? spent 7 years in melbourne from 2001 - 2008 and made a good effort to find a local player pool and found 1 person that was pretty much by chance.
Here in Chirstchurch NZ we have about 8 - 10 regular players and maybe double that in people tha play it as a 3rd or 4th system.
Its a real shame i never managed to catch up with the melbourne community.

Tim NZ

The mechanics of setting up a site is the easy part. The content is where more of the work is. There are some excellent ideas in the posts quoted above, which I appreciate. The idea is to have a 'starters guide' to EA, giving an outline of the current state of the game, links to the documents required and lists of what is needed to play the game, and where to get it from. It is my observation that EA is a very difficult game to get into, and new players are often confronted by a variety of documents to download and read through, some overlapping, some contradictory. Suggestions above including sample army lists with costs are all excellent. I welcome any and all submissions for this section, to turn it into the first and best place for EA resources for the player community. If you have ideas of how to organise this, or suggestions to write content, please do drop me a PM.

Frogbear: as the owner and runner of this site, CS created and appointed the netERC.