From the Armies book:
"** Note - If you choose Rough Riders, this is the only extra choice you may take."

I understand you cannot mount them in the Chimera, but why not include a psyker nor Captain?


Edit: I've been flippin' through pages of old White Dwarf magazines and there I found a list used by the GW staff that had a Captain on horseback miniature and Rough Rider Captain in the attached detachment sheet.

Edit 2: But then I've read an official Q&A by J. J. where he says the article in White Dwarf 216 is wrong. Rough Riders CANNOT include Psykers nor Captains. Solved!

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Who knows. Doesnt really make a lot of sense from just looking at the army list. Maybe there were some fluff reasons at the time. A look at the 40k 2nd Edition Imperial Guard codex might reveal some hints, but not sure.

While I praise Epic 40k being flexible when creating detachments, sometimes I acknowledge they can be waaayyy too flexible. The one thing that has bothered me is how big some of them can get, where they look like unruly mobs as opposed to following some military structure.

If I wanted to go nuts, I could field 2 normal command squads, one rough rider one. 3 Imperial Guard Squads, 3 Heavy Weapon squads, 3 Rough Rider squads, Ratling Squad, Ogryn Squad, Sentinel Squad of 5, Support Weapon Battery of 3, Leman Russ tank, Demolisher, Griffon, Hellhound, and a Hydra. Its just all over the place.

However, on the flip side, you can very well argue that in times of war, units suffer casualties, units get reshuffled, slapped together, suffer vehicle breakdowns, etc, and who knows after some battles you could very well have a detachment look like whats above.

The problem is, what is it going to be good at? And I think that causes some problems with noobs creating detachments. Its a long process, whereas in SM2/TL it takes 5 seconds, and every detachment has a specific set of things you know its good at. I think if they limited the size of the detachments to half of what they could be it would help. Like Eldar detachments.

That way would could still field some detachments from leftovers in your bitz box, but still limit the size of the detachments to keep them getting ridiculously big. I mean, an experienced player might know better than to put all of his eggs in one basket, but to a newer player, watching some 30 unit detachment lose to another 30 unit detachment in a firefight but only take one casualty and flee, is ridiculous.

All that being said, I don't see why you can't add those two extras to a Rough Rider command.

Thanks for the extended reply. I'll follow your remarks risking this thread to go off topic: it's true that there is too much freedom in 3rd edition for creating detachments. And that's bad for newbies. But I always restrained from making "power" detachments and followed the fluff and reason. I always play for fun and not competitive. I know competitive players fielded nothing but Land Raiders. I never included more than 2 in a detachment. You make your own fun when designing detachments. But freedom is not good for all types of players indeed...

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Thread derailed! sorry.....

Myself and Moredakka have been tinkering with the epic40k rules for a while now, and one of the discussions that came up was army lists and how they are put together.

We looked at changing the way that detachments are created in the following way:

For example space Marines.

1st thing is a commander, so lets say a captain. (with options to include a librarian etc)

2nd compulsory troops, so 2 squads of tac marines, with transport options, (rhino razorback etc)
Then optional troops such as more tac squads, devs, assault.

3rd Company support troops. These are troops readily available to a company, such as bikes, landspeeders, support weapons etc. (limited to 3 choices)

4th Chapter support. This is stuff like LR, Preads, whirlwinds etc. (limited to 2 choices)

Then for every 2 Detachments you can take an army support choice, such as, titans, aricraft etc.

The intent was to limit the player from fielding super formations and be more in keeping with what would be available to a commander.

All the options in the support choices would be flexible, so for example if you chose a company support choice of land speeders, you could have 1 to 5 landspeeders etc. So you could still have a lot of flexibility.

Anyway, its a lot of work, and difficult to explain. If anyone is familiar with the way armies are chosen in Flames of war then you should get what im trying to say.

Steve

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That sounds very interesting. IMHO it's the "free form" detachment system which really hamstrings epic40k, otherwise it's pretty solid rule system.

I remember taking on a friend's IG with massive marine armoured companies (which I had from sm2). Yes I had fewer detachments, but with no alternating activations and better speed there was no disadvantage and could merrily walk up to his tanks one at a time, decimate them and move on to do it again next turn. Likewise hulking devastator detachments with rapid fire did the same to the infantry. Basically it felt like marines played like IG only better.

Look forward to seeing what you have come up with.

Hello again, what I briefly outlined above was just a WIP idea. I may use the EA lists as a guide, thereby reducing the detachment sizes further.

IMHO, marines should be in small hard hitting groups, as opposed to the IG with their large companies and hordes of armour.

Anyway, we are working on it.

Steve

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Hey Steve maybe you should do an update on the state of play with this in the project thread just to let people know it's not dead.

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Done, see here -

viewtopic.php?f=12&t=28349&p=547977#p547977

Steve

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IIRC, there are alternating activations in the shooting phase (not in the movement one though), and devastators have no Rapid Fire (due to the Heavy Weapons ability). But yes, in 3rd edition SM were a very shooty army, and good at it.

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Arhh, my mistake, it has been getting on for 20 years since I last played 3rd ! :-) But I think we are agreed that the marines just felt too shooty and too mob-like(?)

I think it's a great idea to base the squadron/unit sizes on the EA lists purely for compatibility of collections. I did actually have a stab at pointing up a blank version of the EA marine and Eldar lists with 3rd ed points at one time about 4 years ago (no idea where they are now) but then we got into EA and never ends up playing. I think the key things the EA lists have going for them is the simple structure, simple 25pnt increments (mostly) and they result in armies which feel right fluff wise without even trying.

Note: Net epic's may be similar but I've never looked at it.

Personally I'm quite keen to look at 3rd again as I think it might suit my club. EA. Is great for competitive play but I'm finding that it's difficult for people to join in games casually without getting trounced by those who play a lot (as a casual Infinity player I know how they feel !) There is interest in playing an 6mm 40k game as many have the minis, but very few of them have the time or desire to really get deeply into the rules and list building of EA along with many other game systems. I've recently been looking at future war commander (which I think md plays?) as several of them already play blitzkrieg, but a revived epic40k would be great. Looking forward to the updates yorkie/md...

@ yorkie, thanks for that mate.

@ Blip, yes i have played EA and FWC, infact all the commander series of games they are really good fun but as usual to detailed to allow for mega games. I still find myself looking back to 3rd edition for this reason i want to be able to play with a lot of models within a reasonable length of time. Epic 40k is still the only game i have come across that is designed for just such a purpose. With work on updating army selection and the like it should help iron out a few of the games minor problems.

As already mentioned me and steve have been tinkering with an updated E40K rules project which is still far from complete and i hope this will eventually become my main rules set for epic gaming and maybe historical mechanised combat too. I like to paint small but game big.

Also E40K is great for casual players at clubs etc as it's so quick to set up a game and learn the rules within a turn or two. And as you say many old hands have epic models stashed away from way back so no need to acquire new models either.

Cheers

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Exactly!

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To come back to my original post: I've been flippin' through pages of old White Dwarf magazines and there I found a list used by the GW staff that had a Captain on horseback miniature and Rough Rider Captain in the attached detachment sheet.

Edit: But then I've read an official Q&A by J. J. where he says the article in White Dwarf 216 is wrong. Rough Riders CANNOT include Psykers nor Captains. Solved!

_________________
Epic 40,000: Exodites, Necrons, Dark Eldar, Sisters of Battle, Tau

BLOG: Epic 40,000
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Toco's Mod: Allied HeroQuest