Irisado wrote:
The thought of playing NetEpic has been crossing my mind for a while now. I played second edition Space Marine for years, even after it had been superseded by Epic 40K, and EA, so assuming the NetEpic rules are quite similar I have a feeling that it wouldn't be too difficult to get into.
I've only had cursory looks through the rules over the years though, so my question is, just how similar are the rules? I don't have a lot of free time at the moment, so if there are quite a few similarities it would be helpful. Are there any major areas of the rules which have vast differences from second edition?
Hi!
I'm a little slow on the draw in my dotage, but here's a brief overview of some of the changes.
1. Fog of War
In the old days you placed your orders as did your opponent, rolled initiative and then revealed all the orders. Typical for GW games where winning the initiative was just too great of an advantage. To combat this we did the following:
Orders are NOT all revealed and only are revealed when the unit is activated to move. Second, you and your opponent ALTERNATE choosing units and activating them. Combined with revealing the orders as you activate the unit it creates an interesting "fog of war" effect where the players are constantly guessing what the potential orders of non-activated units. Is that unit on first fire orders? Should I charge that unit before it moves? CAN it move? The choices are many and varied and unknown, as it should be.
2. Snap Fire
We reintroduced some 1st edition concepts back into Netepic. If your on first fire you get to choose to expend your fire in the opponents movement phase to interdict movement. Of course there is a penalty for this rapid fire response (-1 to hit), although some units do it at no penalty (usually static defense weapons).
Combine this with fog of war and you get a movement phase that is engaging and not just "u-go-i-go".
3. Titan building
A second thing we reintroduced from 1st edition was to build your own titans. Thus you buy an empty chassis and pay for the individual weapons. That determines final cost and VP value.
This was in response to the fact that some weapons were clearly better than others, yet they all cost the same and yielded the same VP's under the original rules.
Under Netepic you can still build those "uber-titans" but they cost a lot more and its worth more VP.
4. Praetorians
Things like the Capitol Imperials, Leviathan's and such should be awesome machines of death! Under the original rules they were fragile things really not worth the points.
Under Netepic they have templates just like titans. They are now worth taking and worthy of the name!
5. Unit by unit reappraisal
This is a general one and beyond the scope of a summary, but we went through every unit and made too good units, less so (or more expensive) and units that weren't very good, better or cheaper.
Don't assume any unit is as you remember, check it over first, you'll be surprised.
Some examples:
Tarantulas, they have AI's, so they don't get the snap fire penalty. They are now the weapon of choice for static defense!
Space marines. Did it bug you these mighty beings were as brittle as everything else. Now they have a save, not a big one, but a save. Durability!
Eldar titans. No one wanted to take them since a barrage went right through the holofield. Under Netepic rules, all eldar titans holofields now make all artillery scatter editorially, even again direct fire! Eldar titans on the move now are deadly, as they should be!
These a ton of stuff like this....
6. Pinning Classes
Pinning is a crucial concept. In the original rules a single infantry unit could engage a titan in close combat and thus "nullify" its massive arsenal since it was "pinned" in close combat. Ridiculous!!
Under Netepic each unit is assigned a pinning class related to its mass and stature. A unit of a larger pinning class can pin one of a lower class, but NOT the other way around. Thus a lone infantry stand can be ignored by the titan (it belongs to a higher pinning class) and shoot at other things, while the infantry is still pinned (and probably will be killed by the titans in point defense system versus infantry, another one of those clever additions
).
This also balanced skimmers (way to good under the original rules). Since a skimmer cannot be pinned by a non-skimmer, they can "choose to be". Why, if the skimmer is chooses not to be pinned by the non-skimmer unit, it can be picked off by units outside close combat, although they could move away next turn. If they choose to be pinned they cannot be shot at from outside, but are locked in combat until destroyed.
To compensate the skimmer "nerf", now skimmers on first fire orders can only be shot at with snap fire, not remain aloft (which made them total sitting ducks!) for the whole turn. This makes it difficult to attack (as they should be), but not impossible, since all armies have fliers and units whom take no snap fire penalty (remember those tarantulas against eldar players
).
There are TONS of other stuff, buts that what I can remember. To tell you the truth, while Netepic still shares the same "chassis" with the original rules, the changes, in some instances, are profound enough to make it a distinct experience.
You'll have to unlearn a lot of original rule bad habits when you learn Netepic play.
Primarch
