Epic Space Marine Deep Dive with Jon Webb

Okay, so welcome back to the crown of command and with me a good John Webb again. So John John hell, are you going mate? Yeah. Hey, good to a good to be back sooner than expected, but looking for another great show with yourself. Yeah, we had a great chat last time, but unfortunately, the technical issues just made it sort of unbearable to listen to. So I thought I feel so sorry for John about that. So, I thought a great dragon dragon back and we can talk

about some epic today. So mate, first of all, would you like to talk to us a little bit? How you got into epic Space Marine? Yeah, definitely.

So I think You know, anyone that listens to the show, managed to struggle through the, the warp Dimensions that were walking, what we were talking about, probably had a little bit of this, but I'm kind of a real quick version is, it was kind of Epic, was the first game that I visually kind of recognize from Games Workshop from before, I knew what Games Workshop was, I would walk past the store one day, the bath store the old old

bath store, had a poster of an imperator Titan in the window. I just say I was a Kid, I didn't know anything. Was I just saw this, this giant robot with, like, a castle on his back and all these guns sticking off of him.

As I asked the coolest thing I've ever seen and then my first white dwarf was issue 18, which was a tight Legions but our report so came in just after just half space me but still part of the second dish and epic and just yeah the kind of the scale and the scope of Epic using the huge war machines and yet massive units of models and whole company's of Tanks. It just really like it was a thing of like I'd played a lot

of Warhammer as a kid. Like it was water that was coming out my real kind of passion and the thing I was felt with 40K was it? It never really reflected the background so you'd read the background that we talking about these, you know company, you know company-wide engagements and you know, Titan battle groups and huge.

The Imperial Guard isn't a millions of men being thrown into the meat grinder and he play a game before it, can it be like, oh, there's like, you know, 20 Space Marines versus for York's, but it doesn't really reflect it was, you look at Epic and all of a sudden you don't thats what 40K supposed to look like. That's the nature of the game.

Game. So it really was that thing of like, yeah, it just know that those two correspond to things of like the the the the initial visual imagery of a tire iron. And just how awesome that conceptually was. And then the scale and scope of being able to play, you know, company versus company rather than Squad vs. Quad. Those sorts of things combined and just really, yeah, set me down the path of like, you know, I play 4K here and there like I dabbled a lot through unique.

I was working for Games Workshop, but these days I tend to continue to play the Fantasy or epic. They're the kind of the two paths I've taken more than anything with, with my gay men. So yeah, that's, that's the quicker version, that's good. - excellent. Thank you very much for that. Now, I, we sort of touched on it in that in your, in your life, like your last interview and into went, you went into more detail about your gaming history

and that kind of thing. So people can if they can bear through That Hideous, audio recording that. If they can pass through that they can they can learn all about that. But yeah, today we're going to, we're going to do so like kind of like an Oh, unboxing of the second edition, of Epic Space Marine, that was released in 1991 and it was co-written by Gervais Johnson and Rick Priestley. So it's got some really good Hallmarks of some wonderful artwork by Kevin Walker.

I think who did the the cover I could be wrong about that or it was somebody else. Gary? Somebody, I'm thinking it's somebody else actually, trying to think. Who did that one? That is all. Goodness talking, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. It was that God was his name. There was an awful lot of people that we didn't really know who they were in the in the illest. Like they'll doing commission illustrations or something special back in the day and we

just I just presumed. They were sort of like these that. Well more. Well known people like Kevin Walker was like one of the most prolific illustrations for like for a lot of the 40K stuff like he did some incredible. Incredible illustrations for Games. Books are back in the TS and

their late 80s and stuff. Yeah, definitely I think it's that this is a really interesting game because it kind of represents that Tipping Point where we move from the kind of the the tail end of what I would consider to be old Hammer to the the beginning of what I consider to be middle Hammer. So yeah, artists like Paul Campbell.

And yeah, Kev Kev Walker. Like you say they're kind of that that they're the ones that I don't know as well as then we get into you know the kind of the John Blanche Jazz good way and Wayne England. That's And I start to be like that is how I recognized, you know, 40K our work, it's quite

funny. I was just just taken on a new art director at work and for those who didn't hit the last podcast, I do actually work in miniature gaming as a profession and we were talking about a car, you know, Mark Gibbons is just a gold of like he defines a lot of Epic for me as well. Like I was actually trying to buy the the Riva tighten, the drawing, the he did, whereas the kind of the river tight and stood over the kind of the ruins of Imperial City, I absolutely.

Door that piece of art scale is slightly wonky on. I think the river Tyne is about 10 times bigger than it should be, but still it's an incredible piece of artwork and I think sadly he has now sold it so I didn't get my chance of owning the original that one, which was a bit depressing. But yeah, I think it's that thing of like, you say that kind of those older, those older guys.

And I mean, someone who I adore is a and Miller and again, you 10/10 all to see as much of him, these days with softly creep it in and this is that kind of and I think Spaceman really represents that moment in games workshop's history where Is that Tipping Point from the kind of almost the the wild west or the,

you know, the real. You just yeah, like, unknown Frontier of kind of old Hammer, just tipping into that kind of that middle and where they started to really put themselves on the map and kind of codify things and to find things. And and on one hand that I think to me it shows a massive increase in quality and the game started to be a lot more holistic and recognizable and And cohesive. But you did kind of lose some of that kind of manic energy of the

kind of the Rogue Trader days. So it's an interesting part. I can see why there's a kind of, you know, that constant like I'm an old hammer and I love old stuff. And I'm a middle hammer and I love middle stuff. And New Hammer is terrible and blah, blah, blah. And I see I'm I just love more having all those forms in all of our planning things from, you know, second edition of Epic, right through to Asia Sigma. I'm as long as I'm having some

inmates who cares? But like I you can see that there is a reason for those divisions and it is about the aesthetic. And the vision of those games essentially and sometimes unfortunately the kind of the price of that movement to a more accessible more recognizable, world is you do lose some of the excitement and that kind of that Roar energy which is why I think a lot of this artwork, you know,

really represents. Yeah. Looking at that cover, you know, you got this card company of ultramarines, you've got a Riva turn, a got a couple of Warlords. It does, there's so much going on and that's what I love about epic as well. It's that kind of that that scale from the human right up to the, you know, gigantic. Belt iron is I'd say it's not represented in 40K. Although of course, one of the things that's so amusing about 40K to me. Now, as you can play with titans in 40K.

And, you know, I was, as Adept, kind of few years back and there was some guys playing a game of Armageddon and they had, you know, Warlords to, you know, two groups of Warlords facing off against each other. And they didn't move the whole game because they just planted their feet and just fired. All the guns each other and you kind of go. Yeah. You because of the scale. You lose that ability to maneuver. Yeah. Yeah and that's where I think.

Epic to me bears fruit and has its value is that it's allowing you to play that scope of combat and engagement, but being able to maneuver and and have that kind of ebb and flow of the game. Whereas, I feel that when you do with 40K unless you plan on a football pitch, a quiet hard to, you know, to do the same, but not me. I'm more power to you if that's your jam. Hey, I'm not here to iook anyone's your arm as they say, like you as long as you're playing with toys, who cares?

But yeah. Yeah, for me. And I think, maybe for yourself that the scale of Epic really does it. Yeah, I think for me, and my friend, Chris, when we got into it, I think it was a combination

of a couple of things. One, it was very affordable because you could buy like this, huge Battalion box sets or army sets basically in those days where you could have, all your epic stands all the, all the Infantry basically and some of the vehicles in plastic and you could very cheaply Build up a very sizable force in no time at all. And because of the scale as well, painting became a lot less

labor. Some so yeah, you'd have a lot more figures but the be a lot less detail that you'd have to work around. So and yeah, I think I think those two aspects of it and the scale, especially the scale of looking at these huge battlefields with all this, you know, all these thousands of troops on the tabletop. Just captured our imagination and the game's rules themselves were so good. That we just kept coming back

for more and more and more. So it was like the biggest can be like a weekend thing every time he used to drive down there and play games and his place. So yeah, I just had really, really fond memories of it and I sort of got back into it and last 12 months or so and haven't regretted it. Not one single knots one single thing. So, okay, so we just go through the the, the game components. Now, in the Mountain Rain rule book was saying a page 10 here.

So, John just talk through what we got here, now, in a box. It made, okay, so it's quite exciting box. It was the one that you always see in the catalog and be like, oh wow, I love that one. So it essentially contains four of the kind of the boxes of plastic troops that you get plus a tie and so quite excitingly. You get 66 bruise of walks six, pairs of Elder and then 12 sprues of Space Marine, split between the two available Basics.

So you You get for the Orcs, you get your basic boys or if you're doing it traditionally, you can stick a flag in the in the stand. And suddenly you've got a stand of knobs as well for the older, sorry, and then they also get their battle wagons nice. Nice block about wagons as it's 18. Battlewagons I want to say, I think so. Yes, reach was through 18. Yeah. So 18 battle wagons and enough boys that you basically, you can.

You can do any of the, the, the kind of the flavors of walk, which will come on to probably a We got through to the cars but like there are six available choices for Orcs. You could essentially field any of those six by using the the band of holes to represent your knobs, using the the battle wagons or Nick in some of the Space Marines, rhinos to do the transports for the transport Vehicles. So that's pretty cool. You get a company's worth of Orcs plus a few extras which is really cool.

The Elder similar kind of deal. You get the the Elder Spirit host, sorry not Spirit host, it's not called that. Is it? Our angle? Get me. Give me cards that will host whoa-ho. Sorry, the other wall hose so that's a combination of Of Guardians and Fulton graph tanks. And again, you get enough that you can feel like one one company card.

And then, a couple of extra mini support formations and the fun graph tags in particular, like it's really interesting like that, that, that design is the original design of the full gravity tank. The kind of the Jazz, Would It Go? Goodwin classic and it did get

updated. We have through 40K and then obviously those updates made their way back into epic and I think a lot of people are not so keen on the classic look but it's kind of come around on me. Like, I've I've picked up an elder Army and it's all the original plastic and metal Vehicles. Not the, the kind of Epic 40K redesigns, and they are different. But you can see those Echoes of where the other line was going. And I see I've kind of got real fun this for like gravattack.

Now in a way I never thought I'd have one of them. Yeah, yeah. Just like the kind of I think it was there more alien like the older at that time, a little bit

more alien than end up being. So that's quite exciting and if the Space Marines you get you get basically to ooh, company's worth of tactical Marines with some some extra stands here and there and then a good mix of rhinos and man, Raiders, so that's quite interesting in. This is back in the kind of the the Horus heresy Rogue Trader. Or when actually lamb. Raiders were not the the special Preserve of Terminators only anyone could jump in the blade Imperial guards W, riding

around. This is a pretty again. It's that wild west era. So yeah you get you know really nice. Mix of the kind of the the lamb Raider, which is the premium kind of battle tank of the, of the space, memories of that time. And in the more boxed Dry no further for your, for your company's. So it was a good mix good, mix of basic infantry with enough, that you could do a company for

each of the different forces. And probably two companies, a Space Marines, and then you've got the warlord Titan. Do you want to join a tour through the wall or tighter? Well, I'm just seeing this diagram in the manual book you.

It sort of been dissected with all these kind of all the kind of parts that come with it. He's he's very fondly known as that the beetle back and wall or tighten because of the style of the carapace that some part of this design, it's very different from the modern iterations of the wallet item. Now you see through the most recent release of the game. I can't remember what it's called now, but the, the I think they've gone to eight mil or 10 mil.

Now, I think with the, with the new new system, they've released now with the what's according to China. Cassette did the second edition. It's this really interesting thing. What they keep saying it's no specific Skinner's epic scale so it's like uw's classic. We're going to we're going to kind of create our own language to redefine things though with Coleman. So in all honesty, I would argue is basically eight millimeter scale. It really does work with your

traditional epic 6 Mill as well. Because you know, as we kind of both know the the 6 mil of Epic is actually two three and six depending on whether you talk about Titans tanks or infantry. So even within the original set of models this scale was very you know classically Wibbly-wobbly engagement ring

style. So yeah, perhaps the wall of Titan at the time it was considered this like and it was I think, you know, because this this was the one that was sculpted for the original adepts Titanic as box. There, we got six of them in there. I think it was a real, you know, defining moment of plastic miniature technology, but of course that was what 20, 20,

something years ago. We've moved on a little bit and actually, it's quite a simple model now, but the whole plug-and-play weapons are quite exciting.

Yeah, like it weirdly. It's the one of all the times that they did it's the one that I don't actually have that affection for in the way the like if you talk to me about the the because it's Mars pattern essentially, so the Mars pattern warlord, Mars pattern or even the marzipan war hound, the war had in the Reaver, I will go to bat for any day of the week. I adore those models. I think that's superb.

The wall or for some reason, never quite did it for me and I don't know why because it's the same styling. It's got, you know, the the big flat panels with the kind of Being raised metallic border around, its got the night style face play. But for some reason, I think part of it is to me the weapons I think they were still figuring out what you know what allows kind of looks like? What am L going? Looks like what a plasma that

looks like. So when you look at the the weapons on this model, they don't quite match what, you know, as kind of the visual language of 40K that kind of really came about more through you know later on an epic and then through 40K second edition but it's cute and it's very like it's It's amazing how much they did with such limited care.

So a bit like you know, the whole reason that the depth I thought who's came about about, how do we get two armies in the Box, create what model and cast it into colors, or we need a civil war, all we've accidentally create the Horus heresy, that's kind of the origin story of why the Horus heresy exists and why there are, you know, good and bad Space Marines in inverted commas. So again, this thing of like we got this one more Lord tighten and a weapon sprue.

And between those two, you know, that that one kit you can do so much with it. And certainly, if you look at the original adapts Titanic s, which I know, we're not here to discuss today, They but just as a quick nod back to it, they actually Define multiple classes of wall or time within that with

different weapons. Configurations to find what weapon Titan. You had, you know, whether it had two guns, three guns for guns and I think you can even go up to Six Guns by combining the the kind of the shoulder weapons if you really want to go crazy. So it was quite a clever flexible care for its time and, you know, did a lot with not with with not a huge amount of option. So you know, it's got one head, one body, one, Pace, such a three-part model and then the guns.

That's, that's quite clever for how much you can do have. Such a simple idea. It's just for some reason to me it's still visually jars so I'm apologize profusely to warlord fans who probably going to crucify me now but it's that one model that just weirdly I had don't have that love for in the way I do for the other everything else in the Epic line I will I will go to bat for but for some reason the plastic will have a wall or just stuck out to me.

So now I can I can sympathize with that. I think it's not my favorite of the line. I think my the Reaver Titan. Hmm, we have to be my all-time favorite design, of any tighten, their released for epic or in the 40K Universe, especially the Centenary. This Love that love that model. But anyhow, moving on, we got lots of counters, we got tons of calories, you got like Rubble counters objective markers which will be coming in very important during the game because it's all very objective based.

You've got other templates to represent Vortex for the The weapons and barrages, which we'll get into later. And of course, your order counters, you'll have a lot of older counters that you need a lot of them for you. All of your detachments and your companies in your army as you play, and we'll get to those bit later on and of course, a lot of Epic Army cards. Now, you need the Army cards, it's a little bit different from other games.

And I really enjoyed the, the sort of the, the Army building in Epic because the cards would have everything you need. You would have in that particular Detachment or company with a points value and just to sort of very simple set of rules how to actually build an army. And you can just use the cart piece of card to construct an army with in what five minutes or something. And you know, you've really done it. So it's really, really simple

and easy. Yeah, I think my one point on the couch is, if you can get hold of the counters for space and redo because they're on a thicker card stock than anything that came since so like I've, you know, you tightly And space may contain the same sets of objectives, counters and bearish templates and all the counters. But you can see that the ones from Space Marine were on a thicker punch board.

And as a result, they just, they just feel better and they're easier to pick up off the table and flung over and so on so forth. So, like, I always use my Space Marine count as one we're playing, just because they've got that that durability and thickness that makes them much easier to use, which is a weird thing. But, you know, that's, that's I'm a weird guy and certainly I think what you're saying that the Army building it.

It's so immediately visualize me, you know, you you put your company called down and then you can attach up to your five of your support cards and anyone special card and you can just, you know, and it was really important for things like aux where the whole structure of the Army and the way they behave is intrinsically linked to how you build the built the cards out and you can just look at it and know our call.

Yeah. Those you know you will sort of do it when some example I play We Lay the cards out and we lay the support cards next to the company card and they just all look beautiful. But you know, when you see those White wolf Army from about reports and they've got, you know, the page with the Army shot and then they got the cards underneath all kind of block together. It just looked right if that makes sense.

It does. It's a really fun like building, an epic Army is a really fun visual tactile process which is why it's great, it's not as messing around with all. If I drop a bolt gun here and put a lot of Cannon here, can I get, you know, just under my 2000? Plus I know just bang out your cards by Mount bang. Yep, cool. That looks great. Yep. No, I totally agree, man.

It's very simple and very easy. And I really like that system, how they, how they designed that, it comes up with some dice because some scattered ice, you got some you got, you got a scattered ice and you've got these other special diets which will quite unique to Epic because of the Titans. And they were you're aiming Dice and you have two dice ones like up or down and elements left and right.

And they'll be used for when you're when you're shooting your Titan, you're posing Titans, and you'll need to roll the dice to wear these. That would be as where the shot was actually hit on the Titan template, but we'll get to that later on, but you can, you've got some buildings in. There you go. Some cross piece shaped buildings. And some Tea Bar shaped buildings, which you could easily construct and have like a plastic top on it, which is great.

So that you can put all your little Miniatures stands on top of there. If they're occupying a building. Yeah, that they I mean again if you've got a set of those if you're ever playing Epic scale or you know, when we play titanica Samuel, I do play Titanic as well because I'll be, you know, I'll play anything. If it's, if it's this scale, they're really good for that as well.

There are really, you know, is that really effective cheap simple to use and it's still, you know, it really holds up even though she has colored cardboard and a plastic roof, but they hold up to this day. And, you know, if you look after them, you know, maybe glue them onto a bit of MDF, so they've got a bit structure. They're really, really helpful. All unjust. Yeah, they're so that kind of that plastic roof is so iconic to the kind of the Titanic is

look. And obviously, they originally, they were kind of the polystyrene ones were like that was in the that's Titanic as to these big vague formed or polystyrene formed versions. And then with the new Titanic, as they've made essentially plastic fault, you know, contemporary GW kids with plastic, you know, who the panels together make a building but they've all been that kind of that square blocky. You know, brutal Imperial. Design and they're all sort of tease and elves and crosses and

stuff. And yeah, it's just is so visually like that is what, you know, that is what we're fighting over. So yeah, they're really cool. Really like them. Yeah, me too, man. I'm really like, I think they're still brilliant today, even today I think they're still hot up against most contemporary designs of other manufacturers have come up with other epic scale, buildings. I think they're still my first

choice actually okay. So moving on, we're going to go to the starting the game and this where we look at the battle. And how we choose our force and how actually make our armies. So, John just run us through how we make an epic army, man. Yeah, definitely. So, first thing to look at, is the page 12, the drawing on page 12. That's a John Blanche classic.

And I was only, I was just quickly reviewing this over lunch, too, kind of real prep for today and just that, that group of Oaks were diluted rhinos and that's that classic. Jon Bloch thing of you Jon Bloch doesn't just do. I want to do a drawing this like a gargantuan? In the Elder tire iron but he's also dying, you know, companies Of Orcs there's there's, you know, a whole group of gravattack's flying past. There's a warlock in there.

You can, you can pick out the individual troops such as a dark Reaper. Some Guardians, you can see who these people are, you know, swooping Hawks jumping off the battlements and and it's just a scale again, it's humongous. There's meat missiles raining down from the sky. It's a huge City in the background. Like it's this Grand scope that represents ethics. I think it's pictures like that. If you're interested in six minutes, Gaming on why you should be interested.

Look at those pictures, that's what you're representing on the battlefield. Anyway, that's enough because I loved her. So build a building for sweeter than a minute ago, but to kind of clarify it. So when you you pick your troops so you pick your army obviously. And then what you do is you you always have to have at least one company, and the companies are kind of the big building blocks of your army and they will normally be either whole bunch of infantry or a whole bunch of vehicles.

Al's and sometimes a mix of the two so with the Orcs it would normally be in all Clan. So six different orc Clans each of whom has a slightly you know special slant which will go through later but it's essentially a whole bunch of Orcs and some folks who are in charge for the Space Marines, there's the different flavors of spaceman actually in this in Space Marine, you just get the Tactical company. So, it's the most flexible, it's a whole bunch of technical Space

Marines and rhinos. And for the older, it's the war host which again is A couple of groups of Guardians and some graph tanks to Jet them around the battlefield. So once you've picked your first company, you then kind of have to throw the three choices. Essentially you can either keep adding more and more companies and the companies really are value for money because you get a lot of troops for your points but they are slightly inflexible because you'll tend to have to

keep them fairly close. Now you can break the detachments down and send them off into different parts of the battlefield, but there is a limitation of its kind of a it's the the kind of the benefit. Is numbers. The disadvantage is slight inflexibility, shall we say? So you can either add more companies, and I would normally say one per thousand points, its kind of my Baseline in, and depending on the Army, I'm playing old up and down that.

Or if I want to go for a specific title, they say for the sake of might want to flood the board with dogs or buy more companies, you then have to either you can then either add support cons who are more specialist formations so that might be something like some From is riding motorbikes or Squadron of Tanks. Maybe you've got your battle company of space. Major, I really want some lamb.

Raiders to go with them which would also be a good choice if you're playing out of the box because you've got some lamb ribs in there. So you can grab a card or of up to three years, sorry, three land, Raiders. And your add up to five support cards. The only Army where it's weird, is chaos, but we're not gonna worry about cows today, so calstrs a slightly differently way but so you can have 125 or 025 support cards with your with

your companies. Then each company that you buy also gives you access to one special card. And the special card is kind of like it says something a bit special so it's normally things like Titans commanders or really like esoteric and quite powerful troop types. Where if you kind of had loads of them running around the battlefield, it would quite quickly get out of hand and be

completely unbalanced mess. So really, you know it's again it's a really clever thing where The the the kind of the construction of the army helps build the kind of the, The Narrative and the law into it. So, you know, the core of an orc army is all boys. So you have to buy a clan or a company Of Orcs to start and then what you can't do is go and then I'm just going to add 400 Gardens because you're only allowed one got a clan or one Garden card / Clan and you know,

there's only one war boss. So you can't have, you know, 20 War bosses. You're only allowed, you know, one special card per plan again. You gotta put my wall box in so just yeah, it helps reflect that kind of the way the armies fight in the background. The way you build the armies. In the the mechanical sense is reflective of that and it's so, you know, it's that kind of you one company up to five support

one special. That's it really simple to remember, yet it really emphasizes the importance of actual infantry in in Space Marine epic, you know, infantry means everything. They're the ones that going to be a grabbing objectives are the ones are going to be, you know,

no holding fortifications. They're the ones that going to be, you know, you know, you know, sort of, you know, hunkering down inside buildings, getting making it really difficult for your enemy to get out of getting them out of there, going to be involved in hand combat so they're really the sort of the really, the real focal point.

Actually, if you like a tree, really make up for a lot of things and the special cards, of course, come lots of different kinds of Titans that you can take four different. Factions and they of course, are very special in their own right and they are supposing comparison to the Infantry become the center of a lot of Firepower in your in your army. You know you sort of look at this kind of thing.

That's so you know, 10,000 meters high over the over the battlefield in Camp in comparison to your inventory and you just think yeah, this thing's going to be like it is a magnet for We single missile that I've got in my in my Arsenal and that's that's how usually the how it plays. But I really love that that sense that these are these incredibly super hard to kill incredibly powerful Titans. You know, to striding through the battlefield. Do you get that sense of feeling as well to John?

Yeah, I mean so like it's one of things where it's so tempting to kind of take the, the least amount of companies you can in the most amount of like fun shiny stuff because obviously this Those tend to be the really exciting stuff, but like you say what you find is very quickly, you will fall behind on objectives because you just calm, yeah, a squadron of three land. Raiders just cannot secure ground in the way, you know, 20 stands of org boys can for

example. So and then yeah, you know, I kind of find it goes one of two ways with Titans. You're either like right point every scary gun at it that I can until it's dead or just pretend it's not there and try and weather the storm. So obviously, It's a my partner. She tends to play walks quite a lot. A lot of the time I tend to ignore her garments not because I think they're bad far from it. They're running around causing Mayhem with their gut Buster cannons and all sorts of misery.

But it's that you have to commit so much to taking one down. There's sometimes you're like oh you know it's going to be too much of a cost like a too much an opportunity cost. Yeah I'll deal with it later or I know where it is and I know what objective is it can can kind of interact with so maybe I will I'll send some poor sacrificial. Like, oh, this is kind of a Guardsman. Just go over there and stand in front of the garden for a bit.

Please whilst everyone else goes to win the battle for us, but yeah, like it no no matter what time class or gagan class you're dealing with, it's gonna make its impact on the board. And certainly when you do kill, one is such a, such a huge moment because it can be the kind of the turning point of any game like, no, no Titan loss is insignificant. And, you know, there's nothing greater than when you you know,

you finally put you know. Because you know, there's that that really Ting Dynamic. Again, the difference between kind of an imperial tire and an all-time. So in a real Titan is very heavily shielded, and you have to chip away at it Shields. But then, once you get through the Shield's, what tends to happen is, you'll hit a critical location and it will probably explode or is reactor will, you

know, cook off? Or it's a kind of a very, very the end comes quickly with that iron ore as with a gargan, what you tend to find is, you do loads and loads and loads of damage to it for a long long time and it just sits there soaking up and soaking it up. And you start a fire here and you're knocking an arm off there, but it's not really that bothered. And then over that huge amount of time. Eventually, it builds up 20, and now there's no 25 is Raging through it and all it can do is

explode. So the end gargan is a lot is a lot slower. Yeah, but it's kind of fun and, you know, just the visual image of this, you know, they know they're on fire. They know they're going to be spoke but they don't care. They just keep plodding along firing off what they can while they can have it as good time as they can. And then ultimately ends up with, you know, the boiler goes pop and the head goes, flying

off the garden and the arms. Fall off, and there's anything standing anywhere near it. Just goes up in a kind of a cloud of superheated steam, it's really fun. So, even within the time classes, there's that kind of, you know, then they don't behave the same. And so, even though they're the same, you know, the same class and the same and I think that's reflective of the armies as well. So maybe talk about tactics at the end, but, you know, the behavior of the troop types of

behavior of the tanks. Like what's so interesting about second edition epic? And with Space Marine has, there's actually a lot of greenery sort of before we Recording will talk about how the rules themselves. Very simple. It's the, it's the granularity and the texture and the detail of the individual troop morals, that is where that complexity and excitement comes from the game. So actually, you know, a land, Raider is not the same as an Orc tank, they behave differently.

And they have very different weapons and very different behaviors and that's what makes it really exciting. Yeah, I find that too because I think I think there's a lot of similarities between this game and Man, O'War, as I was doing a Manowar, kind of a deep dive in the rules there.

And well as I'm playing and I feeling it's a very, very similar and both both systems, actually maybe a lot of inspiration came from epic when they designed Manowar, I think, but anyhow moving along, we've got the formation rule. So each of your detachments or each of your stands have to be within a 6 cm. Now this game you just CM it doesn't use. It doesn't use inches just to put just a just a throw you off there.

So yeah, it does, you send cm and each one has to be within Cm of each other within his own Detachment. So basically if you had like a Detachment of land, Raiders in this example here on page 14, you can see three land writers and have to be 6 inches within of each other. So if they're out of six inch 6 ISO like I'm saying six inches already six centimeters then they're going to be out of formation so that's not allowed as a big boo-boo.

You can't do that and I think that's one of the interesting things against of talking about the texture. So Companies have different spins on whether they are, you know, one big Detachment or multiple small Detachment. So if we look at an orc ran, an Oakland is essentially two detachments. The knobs are one Detachment and then the 15 old boys were second attachments. Those 15 Oldboy is all have to stay together.

They have stayed within 6, cm the can't just wander off and do their own thing was with a Spaceman tactical company. You actually get three detachments of Space Marine. So, actually you've got, you know, six towns of Marines and three, rhinos has a Detachment. So you can actually split that into three different kind of You know many missions or operations on the battlefield if you need to. So they could actually grab three different objectives whereas the Orcs have to stick together.

So there's that you know immediately that kind of that that tactile difference between two different companies, which were essentially infantry companies but they can behave in slightly different ways and it's yeah, it's really interesting that that do you. Do you split your company's up or do you keep them together? But obviously that about 6, cm is crucial, you know, stick close to your mates.

Don't you know, there is a rule. If, if you get, if the models get shot out, so that creates a gap, you have to get back into coherency. So Community is important, but only when your next move, so that's quite interesting one. Like I've had it in the past where I've had an artillery group cans of corn, they have a really bad habit of blowing themselves up. They just get too excited when they find that, they just cook themselves off and go up in a

big. You know, the cloud of demonic blood and gore and it's always the middle one that explodes. So you end up with like, you know, you've got your six enemies, six enemy 6. In the middle, one goes up and something. There's a 12 centimeter gap between the kind of the left and the right ones that remain they only have to get back into formation on the next move. So if you choose to keep them on first fire, which is the only way they can chew. They don't have to worry about

getting back into formation. So that's kind of an interesting little wrinkled that you can slightly abuse if you're using artillery. But on the whole you want to be where your mates are because you want to be getting together for, you know, it's easier to kind of mass fire on people and it's easier to stake a claim to an objective and keep on it for your boys are Let me know mobbed up what you do have to be

careful though. Of course, is those those blasts templates, we spoke about Jennifer if a Titan with a, you know, with a missile pods or what's the, what's the crazy? The One-Shot missile, that does the 45 templates worth of damage? The closer you are, the more models get affected by that. So there's always that that push-pull of like I want to be near people because I've gotta stay in formation and I've got a be mobbed up so I can be effective in combat. I can be effective for

controlling an objective. But what I want to be is in one big lump so that someone could just drop a blast and play out of nowhere and just obliterate my company. And so, that's a really exciting. Again, that's the kind of tactical thing of like, oh, what's the optimal amount of distance between my troops? Hmm. Now that's just true and they, you know, your troops are there to support your empathy, like the vehicles are there to support the Infantry.

Infantry there to claim objectives in your Titan is there just to scare the hell out of your opponent and to kill and as much things and they can take. Outbuildings, they can do all kinds of things. So, everything is very vulnerable to and I think that's a big difference between in terms of this game 240k is that Terminators are not these invulnerable. Tin cans, they are in second edition or in later editions, but they are very very, very vulnerable.

And they have a saving, throw it like a 6 Plus or something like that. It's really it's interesting. Most infantry has no safe. So actually in terms of resilience, there's no difference between a Nor could a space frame, which is unusual. But when you think about the scale of the combat and the nature of the weapons being used, you can have all the arm, you know, Weaponry in the world. After all the armor in the world would a wall or tighten opens up

on you. You, there is no amount of armor that is enough to resist that. So actually a Terminators are very unusual in that. They're one of the very few infantry models in the game that has a save. And like you say, there's Savers 6 Plus like one of the best armor saves in the game. For infantry is pretty much the worst armor save. It's possible to have in any other game which is really unusual.

So yeah, that was, you know, it catches you at first, we like wait a minute, why my specialty is dying just as quickly as the Orcs, but I think when you think about in terms of, well, it's not that they're being, you know, it's not that they're being killed by the ball pistols. Whoever is the, you know, the plasma gun in the the unit or yeah, you're being shot by a tie in class weapon or a vehicle

class weapon there. Just isn't enough armor to protect you anyway and once you kind of get over that hurdle it you know they'll start to make sense and it tends to be more about what the Infantry can kick out. But like I think what you were saying earlier is so true. As it's very, very easy to think all infantry rubbish as a result. So I won't take, I'll take my unit, my back country. And what you'll find is, you'll lose games. Yeah.

That's right. You like numbers and you lack the ability to take and hold objectives. And it's one of those really interesting sort of game you can win or lose. I mean you can win or lose on turn one based on the state of objectives so you get points for killing stuff. But the majority of the points on the board there are up for grabs it from taking objectives. And vehicles cannot, you know, you can't drive early land, Raider up the stairs into the building and conquered an

objective. It's not okay. Like only inventory can do it, so you have to start taking those infantry, but you just have to start, you know, you have to again I guess it's not changing the sort of those viewers like, you know, it's like 40 K is like zoomed right in on the battlefield. And then you zoom out one step and something your epic scale. So you have to do that kind of mental exercise with Weaponry, as well. So it's, it's zooming out one step and being like, right?

My infantry are not there to be like a A bulwark of Defense. I have to be careful with them because they're quite fragile, but they're also integral to my strategy because they're the only ones that can kind of win the game for me in a weird way. So yeah, really, really fun, really, really fun and I think the other, you know, again, apologies, I keep doing tactics

you can use. This is awesome waffle on like a lot of companies come with transports and the ones that don't can struggle to be engaged in the game. So you know, one of the one of the best clan cards you can take is the The Goth Clan and what's so good about them is they have twice as many knobs as any other Clan, what I would say about the orcas has the knobs are your secret weapon?

Knobs are just bananas good and have some of the best guns in the game and a lot of them but because they don't have transport Vehicles by standard, they could only move, it's 10 centimeters a turn. You are going to struggle to get them into the game in the kind of that, that kind of midterm

like past the halfway line. So, you'll dominate your side of the Board, but you'll struggle to reach into your opponent's off of the table, and of course half your objectives are over there, so it gets really interesting. So, you know, any any company that comes with vehicles baked in is in a good place because it gives you that kind of that cheaper transport that lets you reach out and grab those

objectives last-minute. Lets you sneak around flags and stuff and by not having transport Vehicles. You sometimes, find your options are limited as a result. So you could always think about like other ways to get transports and there always are. But then the opportunity cost of that is you spent all your support Saint transport Vehicles which means you don't have any of the funky tanks and guns and stuff. So again, like that's do great.

Push-pull balance of engaging with this game of like I need my boys to do something but what's the cost of doing that? Yeah, that's a good point because there's so many options for your army as well. You got so many cards when you get the base game went because when we when we go through initially, through the expansions and that kind of thing in the base game, you get like a set number of cards that will cover most of the Infantry, or if not all of the Infantry.

A and vehicles that you can get later on when you're expanding your armies. But when they release the expansion's, they covered everything. So you had just a wide range of all different kinds of possibilities when constructing armies, and what you could take. So when we getting on now, we're going to objectives now. I'm now this game is an objective based game and at this, one of the things I really enjoy about it.

So you have, I think about 60 objected counter that come into the end, the game, and there are eight When I tread counters. So basically, when you're setting up your table and just to touch on that as well, the game is played on, usually a 6x4 table, but you can play, I played on a 4x4, it works fine, you can play it even you know depending on the size of the

game. If you're playing a thousand points or something, you could play easily on a 3X3 no problem or two by four or something like that. The Only Rule that stipulates is that it has to You have to have an 80 cm sort of Zone in the center of the table where you cannot deploy your troops. So it's a Works a little bit

different. This I think most games have like a 12-inch deployment Zone where you measure from the, from the very edge, you like your table edge up but this one it's sort of measures from the center and back towards your deployment zone. So it's 40 cm basically and pass that 40 40 cm own you can. Probably anywhere from that, that line to your table Edge right across the table. So there's no, there's no sort of infringement on either side

either. So if mean Java playing a game, we would both take for sorry there's a fourth year for objectives. Uh, so let's say I'll take the red new takes the blue and then we place those face down onto the table on terrain, or in forests or just on the open or wherever it might be. They just have to be at least, 25 cm from any table Edge and at least, 25 cm from any other objective counter, that's there. The only rules that are

stipulated in the game. I think it's interesting as well, like so one of the there's this sort of, there's the, the mechanical aspects of that, which is this happens before you deploy armies. So what's really interesting is, you could set up like, you know, I'm going to put all my counters right. You know, either in my deployment Zone, all just next to it and of course you Row four sides and set up after that happen.

So you myself what you think is a really strong strategy and then you're a Wonder of your side of the board like straight away, still knows it. So you have to be like sensible about where you put them. Cause what you do want to do is put something new. So, obviously like a kind of advantage that you're putting in a meeting goes. Well, I'll take that side of the table. The other thing that I tend to favor as well as part of Lies,

try and tell part of the story. So I tend to put a light was saying like, in a key building or in the key forest or on like a ridge that overlooks. So they're like, not only just our your arbitrary points on the map but they are the All positions that your armies would naturally be fighting over because there is a Strategic Benefit to doing so. And what you find that is it makes the games more exciting because it's like you know the very nature of capturing.

Those objectives is also saying that kind of telling that story because I think this is all about telling stories and actually there is an advantage to capturing that objective because it gives you. And you know, all of a sudden you've got a forest full of inventory. That is just to say, you know, we'll go into why forests are so powerful and a bit, but like a forest. Full of inventory is actually near impregnable to a lot of things. No other infantry.

So yeah it's like kind of you know trying to do two things. You're a make it fair and balanced. Be tell a story, you know is there a is there a specific like you built the the squat kind of Bauman didn't you? There's this very Echoes the ones we see in white dwarf so that would be a really good point to put objective and it's a hollow. This is this cool squat Fortress that they're going to, you know, defend that to the death.

So of course that's where one of the objectives going to be this is where we could command and control is going to be there. And maybe all their supplies are in there. So the last thing they want is a bunch of Orcs kicking the doors down and burning it to the ground. So that becomes a really cool ejected point and that's a natural place for adjective counter.

So yeah, like don't just think of them as these arbitrary like, you know, points on a map that we just have to walk up to tell a story with them and it'll only make the game more exciting. Well, now we come to the best part. Now, if you thought that what you've heard so far is sounds

really good. The best part in the most favorite part of what I think of the game is that armies are set up secretly so they're not deployed as Asian war games where you know we did you roll a dice and you know the person who wins can force other player to deploy their first unit or whatever. You both basically all they suggest to put something in the center of the table so that it

can block line of sight. And then you deploy all your forces and then use lift lift the boxes or curtain and whatever it might be in the center fog of War levels of war and I love that aspect to it. I love games at The Spoils of War element to it, do you? Do you enjoy that aspect, too? So it's one of those things where whenever I do, I do it the other way, which is that, you alternate deployment, and I think it's just a time thing. So epic already takes quite a

long time to play. Like it's one of those games where not because it's complicated, but because there's just so much going on. You have so many troops on the table and so many, you know, interacting rules. So we tend to do the the alternating deployment thing. But I do love again that that kind of that visual that storytelling of. Yeah it's almost like the two armies have snuck in in the kind of the early morning and the you know the fog had lifted in the sun was just coming up.

And they didn't really know what was happening on the other side of the, kind of the battlefield. So so it is that kind of, that really exciting moment of. Yeah, when the screens go up, so like, I will happily do it whichever way is kind of beneficial to the the, to the, the time, and the, you know, the battle, and the people I'm playing with, but no, certainly, the, the proper method of the secret and the, you know, this guy like it was when they said, I'll draw a map and, You Know,

sketch on the map. And again, that's I think about you can imagine like, or we sent our Scouts fall and they've reported back and they've given us this, you know, crappy little hand drawn, you know. Diagram of how they think the battle for a little while. Yeah, we'll put some guys up on that mountain maybe and we think we'll take that forest.

And again, is that really? You can imagine like, a little Imperial Guard officer, you know, hunched is little come on Chimera scribbling away on a little tablet roaring this kind of layout of how he's going to deploy his troops, I think it's really fun. It's like if you've got the time and the space to do it do it that way and it's just if you're you know if you have a nice talk about game or you know maybe a club game and you just don't have seven or eight hours to

dedicate to a game theoretic. The alternating deployment is like a kind of It's not as fun. It's not as flavor some, but it's more. Expedient. So, yeah, you know, but I like to picture myself as an Imperial Guard Commander. Like, I think that's that's I do it properly. If you can, it's my advice. Yeah, it's good. Like I think either way is fine.

I just I just find the fog of War really funny because, you know, you just have that really surprise element of where they Place their Titans, or whether plate regard and send. It could be a real mix match or, you know, you could have things. We really need to be them on the other side of the table. I really like that aspect of it and then he will go to the sequence of players. I'm going to run through and I'm going to read through each of the sequences and and what we

can do in each turn phase. So the first one is the order phase. So, both players place an order counter face down beside each of their troop detachments vehicle squadrons and Titans. Each player then rolls a D6 and the player who scores highest wins the initiative for the turn order. Counters are then turned over and revealed to view. So I like this aspect where Orders are in secret. And only, when you've decided who wins initiative, then you flip them over to see what each

of your detachments. All vehicles are Titans are doing next. One movement, phase truce with Advanced or charge orders, may move. Those would charge all his move, it double rate, the player who won the initiative may choose to move first or second, the player who moves first and moves all of his models and then his opponent does the same. Now, just touching on this sometimes I get a little bit carried away and and I win the

initiative. Think I am going to be first and then I get get counter charged, don't do that. It depends on the situation. But yeah. I like this aspect where the person who wins can choose, you know, who's going to move first, who's going to move second but they move everything. It's so easy to think that like going first is the Strategic choice. But actually like, you know, Elder is a really good one.

Like the Elder kind of always want to go second because they have so many scammers and stuff that they can be like, oh you've charged me. I'll just fly away and Nothing you can do because like the movement phase like so yeah. It's like you know your natural instinct is to seize the initiative but actually you know the smart player things is this? The time to seize the initiative and trap people in combat or is it time to let my opponent move first?

Because the other thing is well you can do of course is you know, Titans and some weapons have like fire arcs. So if you move second you can maneuver around a Times fire Arc. So all of a sudden he's looking totally the wrong way and you know, no doubt the other kind of the Sepsis like bashing the moderato and they like turn the tide around. Turn the side round at. Meanwhile, the Orcs of like snuck around its flank and it completely out of line of sight for its missiles.

So there is, there is a strategic Choice there, which I think is. So like so exciting that there's like that counterplay of, like it's not the obvious thing of you've got to go. First. You've got a win. Yeah, and I like as well. Let you place the orders before you roll for initiative. So you think you've got a plan? Yeah, no I'm going to, you know, pull my guys on charge and going to race across the table and then you lose the initiative and you're like, oh, That's actually

a really bad idea. But you've committed to that action now so you gotta, you gotta roll the dice and hope I guess. Yeah, really love that aspect to it. I really enjoy a lot of these sequences actually how it plays out, but then it does go into null alternative Activation. So now we're going to the combat phase. So combat is worked out in three separate phases in the following sequence.

So first why segment? So true for the first flight orders May Fire troops alternate firing troop detachments vehicle squadrons Titans in other units. Starting with the player who won the initiative. Okay, so yeah, this is where this where it will alternate. So it's really important that well decisions need to be made on which ones you're going to fire first, because they may not survive depending on what your opponent activates, they could wipe something out before you

get a chance to shoot back. So I quite like the alternate alternate activation for shooting as well, in the first fire segment, then we come to the close combat segment. All true. And base base contact, find out around a close combat. And after that, we go to advance fire segment and troops would Advance fires.

Sorry, Advance orders, May Fire, then players again, alternate firing trip, detachments Vehicles, coordinates Titans, Etc. Starting with the player who won the initiative, and after that, we get to the end phase. So if it's your points add up, so if a player has reached the victory Point level, that he needs to win the game, then the battle is over. He has one damage Titans may be repaired. In this phase and troops with broken Morel. Check to see if they're going to

fall back orders. Next turn will go into more detail and those all those different phases of play later on. But first John, let's go through the auto count all the counters mate. So there's three of these aren't there? Yep. So, we've got first, fire, Advanced and charge and again, they represent those kind of those, those three kind of dynamic output. For a unit. And it's always that really difficult choice because so first fire is, you literally

can't move bun. You get to shoot in the first five face. So you get to shoot before the majority of anyone else. So really, really powerful because obviously being the first to fire means you tend to do the damage first, which means you can, you know, trim away numbers, or you can take Strategic Benefit however, than the inability to move. Might mean that you're, you know, caught off balance, or your counter charged, or you're

just, you're out of position. This is the kind of the vanilla Choice as it were to get to move. Which is advantageous. You can only move your normal speed, so you're not bombing across the table, but you are making some progress and then you get to fire in the advanced phase which is actually the last segment. So unlike a lot of War, what Am I games? You normally would go you know movement shooting fighting or as actually epic goes movement, first fire close combat second

fire. So that's that's that again that really interesting Dynamic where it's like you get to advance but the disadvantages you will be making your Ranged attacks. At the end of the turn. After close combat has been four. And after first fire and then charge is what it sounds like. You just run screaming at the enemy. Sometimes you use it just to make up ground, so you're not actually charging into combat. You're just essentially Marching In traditional term.

So you're looking to double move to to race to an objective or to racer to break a take advantage of a hole in a line, or to fill a hole in line. The downside is, you don't get to shoot at all, but you do get to find close combat if you make into close combat. So It's so easy to think, oh, you know, it's always best to be on first fire. But then, of course you're not maneuvering, it's so easy to

think I should be charging. But if you're charging your not getting to take fire advantage of your Firepower. And then the weird thing about the advanced, like there's looks all the funny thing about. My talk should always be on either first fire or charging. They should never be on Advanced orders and I'm not sure I agree with that.

I think there is actually a strategic use, but the disadvantage is you are always shooting last and you're not making much ground up. So it's it's always a difficult choices to like, you know, there are some more like artillery artillery will basically be on first.

For the majority of the game because that's they turn up, they've got such range, they will sit in the back of an army, you know, probably on a hill behind the forest, making indirect shots, they're not going to be doing that much post combat troops with minimal weight.

Range. Weapons will probably be on charge orders, but it's the kind of the ones in between and the hardest, one of all is with Titan classes where you're like, what is the right choice for a tie-in because you want it to do everything. And, you know, a lot of times, specifically kind of Warlords and great Gardens, they're the kind of the battleships of the of the table. They've got so many guns. Is that you want to be making best use of that but if you, you know, hunker down on first fire

and don't move. You'll find maybe your targets maneuver around you. So you don't get to Target them or you're out of range with some of your kind of mid-range guns.

So it's always that really like gut wrenching choice of like I really want to be on first fire because I want to open up with all my cool you know, Titan class guns but if I do that I might be opening up an empty field and thus wasting the potential of that time and so really, really interesting dynamic in the in the Face just yeah, you know.

So so visual and so exciting when you flip those counters and you like oh no, they put a, you don't have shoulders that was expected to go first fire know, they're gonna run away or they're gonna get a counter-charge my artillery. I wasn't expecting that like, is it wild man is so good. Yeah, I love, I love the, I love the order counters. I love the whole concept behind this mechanic.

It's so different from any other game I've ever played, since playing Space Marine epic and I would love to see it in more games actually. I think it's a really, really cool. Don't lie. Okay? Now troops would know or to counter. So in sometimes, and I do this, sometimes I forget to put something down, this feeling isn't silly me, and then basically, all that happens is they can't move, but they can fire in the Advanced Fire segment, okay? So that's that's all that

happens with them. Okay, then it goes into initiative, so we know about that when you see roll the dice to see who wins the initiative and they can, they can then decide who moves first or second, the reveal orders. We reveal orders as we have talked about before, that it goes into the Special Rule of command units.

Now, some trips are describes command units on their data sheet, examples are spaced by NHK units, Elder, warlocks, and Ork, knobs each unit consists of one or more troops stands, plus an appropriate transport Vehicles. The command unit does not need orders. It automatically counts as having charge orders or movement and first fire orders for firing there is therefore no need to place an order counter for these troops. The command unit is Distinct unit.

Just like any other units such as a tranq squadron or an infantry Detachment. So they've got an example of a Spaceman HQ unit that has a little backpack backpack. Sorry, back Panet. Kind of miss a manifold the same Banner pole. Yep. That you can put little banners on there and that kind of thing to really make your units. Your commanders should have shown from what everything else and to stand out and I think that that come on rule is so critical, like it's not.

You're not going to have a loads of commanders but like you know whether it's the hands of a Space Marine units or your org knobs or you know your Imperial Guard officers. They are so powerful because they have that flexibility of a they don't get a command counter so you can kind of the one unit that you can be reactive with because you can see what's happening and then decide when to move them and then the second thing is they have that ability to use both charge orders and

first fire orders. So they will be shooting before anyone else, and they can theoretically go further than anywhere else in A reactor manner. So I've sort of I hinted at earlier out like well, you know aux or knobs being the secret weapon org, knobs have a 50 cm range on their guns, which is very powerful and they kick out two shots of turn and I think they've got - one modifier on their guns for remember correctly.

So, you know, golf knobs, 8 stands, 16 shots, 50 cm ranges is that, that's kind of the like 0225 is kind of the, the short range. And then 25 to 50 is the mid-range. And that's where a lot of the Will happens. So you've got this, you know, it's mob of a org knobs kicking out 16 dice worth of shots within 50 cm themselves when they choose to add who they choose to. That's so powerful.

So, you know, you and that there is a complex rules with come on units about how you can't Target them, and that's the closest unit. So on so forth. So like they are really, really critical.

It's important to keep them safe, but also it's important to put them in a position where they're going to participate because you will Find that you will you know you will notice the difference they make when you start playing and all of a sudden they can be reactive or they can kick out shots in ways you weren't expecting so it's a really important thing to remember. And yeah, you'll never get many but you'll appreciate the ones you've got for sure.

It makes makes talk knobs quite scary. Doesn't it in? Yeah compared to a Space Marine. Yep. Yep. Are you one shotted a Elder Phantom tighten with a unit of organ Ops once because they just kick out so many dice that even yet with all the The clever Halo feels that the Valentine's got one shot goes through got a lucky Target location. Got it in the head. The head pops off the time. Don't like you. You don't expect talks to be able to shoot as well as all the knobs can do is basically where

I'm coming. I'll use spectral spear, close combat Army but the org knobs are your secret guns lying. Nobody expects or knobs to do what they can do the world. That's true. Matt, that's true. I really love my org knobs. And I love playing the Orcs, and we'll get to those at some stage in the future because I'm sure people will be interested to know how they work, but now we're going to the movement phase.

So moving troops. So so as we talked before the the counters will to will denote how how you're going to move in the game. So first wise, you can't move and charging moving double your move, speed value and advanced, you just move your regular speed value. Now, we've got some, some Troop Vehicles here with rhinos or anything that can that can actually transport infantry. So some Vehicles like the OG battlewagons the Rhinos. The Falcons can do it and a number of other vehicles can do

it as well. But there's some special rules as to how you can move them job you like to go into that mode. Yeah. So this is this is the one of the one of the ones you need to read it a few times to figure out. Sometimes they're in the same Detachment so you have your infantry and your transport vehicle and you basically you're either in or out of a vehicle,

right? Schrodinger's vehicle you're either in it or out of it so the Infantry can move up to the vehicle, getting the vehicle, the vehicle and drive away, or the Infantry, can get out of the vehicle and walk away. However, where it gets interesting is there's kind of a weird time. Mechanic which is the more one of the units has used up time. In terms of its movement, the less the other unit can do because it's sat around waiting.

So you basically do it by percentage and this is one of those things where this is a very traditional Games Workshop rule, where you have to pass it out and think about what it means and perhaps in a contemporary game would be done very differently, but it's quite Charming. So for every X that our unit moves before interacting with the transport, you must knock. X off of the Y value of the movement. So a Space Marine. Unit can move 10, cm If It Moves 6 cm to get to the Rhino it has

used 60% of its movement. So therefore you must knock 60% off of the Rhinos movement and thus it can only move 40 percent of its value which I want to say is 15 for rhinos, but it might be 20. I apologize. I don't play Space Marines, so yeah. So it's that, it's that it's that, you know, if you think about it, like however, far like, whatever percentage of your movement, you've moved, has to be taken that same

percentage, not that. Value has to be taken off the remaining movement of the other thing. So what you tend to find is, you will normally jump out of tanks at the end of a movement because being in a tank, is kind of a death sentence in this game because if the tank pops you go with it, there's no mail out rule for 99%.

I could like the plague Terror of Mogul, has a bailout Rule and I want to say, is one of the very few things in the game where you can actually jump out of it as it goes up in Flames most Vehicles if you're in them and they go up, you go with the vehicle. So you tend to find Find people. Well, you know, you'll advance and then you'll leap out at the end of the vehicles movement. And then if that vehicle hasn't gone, it's full distance. You'll maybe make a, you know,

an extra couple of centimeters. But what you don't get is that kind of full thing where you know, your rhino bombs across the table your space from a leap out and then they go another 10 cm they can't do that, so read it carefully. But if you think about it in terms of percentages, you know, before and after the move, that's kind of how I wrap my head around it. Yeah it's actually quite

confusing. I've always been really confused with vehicles and in how it interacts with a tree when Charge and the Infantry get out of the vehicles. I usually just do it so that I usually have my infantry deployed already in the vehicles when I start the game anyway and then I usually put them on charge orders and then charge them and then use their for movement and and just get the Infantry that when they deploy just to set out around the

vehicles. Some yeah, just a touch the outside of it so that this out of it. So there's safe in that regard. But yeah, it's one of those ones that you just need to sort of No Doubt. Before you start using that rule. I think now the other one it's quite unusual is the skimmer, okay. Now you love you L, don't you?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean in all honesty, there isn't an epic Army, I don't love, but I think the the value of the Elder is there there they have more skimmers that anyone else like they really bring skimmers to the for. So, it's Kim is a great because they can just bomb around overall the terrain and, you know, not a care in the world because they're going over it rather than through it. The, it's the pop-up order, that's really exciting here.

Now what's interesting is skimmers actually get an extra rule which I think comes in and tighten Legion. So we're not going to talk about it. Today, we're just going to talk about the pop-up rules for now, actually. No. No, I think it is. It does come in pitting, doesn't it? This is one of those weird things where when you play all the editions of Epic, you you start to forget which rule falls into which, which era. But anyway, we'll talk about pop up for now.

So skimmers on first fire are able to make special pop-up attacks, the vehicle pops up out of the concealing cover. So what you normally find is the photograph tanks have duck down behind the forest or behind a building, so no one can see them and they essentially just rise up into the air, some vertical path, take a shot, and then sink back down again behind the table. So, it's really powerful because it means you, you get that that ability to shoot without the

risk of kind of counter fire. Unless of course, your opponent is waiting for you to do it. So they've seen you, you know,

fly behind the woods. They like there are some autographed tanks back there, keep an eye out for them and then they go on to first fire and they do get to make a counter short to you but it's only It's on first fire, the get to make the counter play against skin but so it's a really powerful rule that you can really take advantage of if your opponent's not paying attention or if they're using an army that tends, not to want to be on first fire, such as Orcs, you

can really start to, you know, control them. And you know, even even a little Detachment of three photograph tags tucked in behind a forest popping up and snapping off Laser cannon shots at you is really quite irritating when you just you just want to be able to like deal with it. They like, oh no, it's duck down behind the building. Can't see him anymore. So really, really cool. Little rule. That one is against that visual thing of you, just imagine them just just appearing over the top

of the building and far enough. These shots like really cool and then I think the Falcons are probably one of the best vehicles in the game. Hmm. Very, very good. Walk to a value for the, for the, for the range of therefore, their things allows Cannon or something. They've got mounted on it. So, yeah, for a transport vehicle in inverted commas. They really do kick it out, don't they? Yeah. You compare that to a rhino with his look. Wrapping the weinsteins.

She spoke out on the top and I'm like, well why don't I have toast? Yeah, exactly a shock and I can fly. What's going on fly and do everything. Yeah, absolute water. I don't know who wrote those words. But let's see. Now we go for two terrain. Okay, so it says here, some models are able to move through some types of terrain while others will be slowed down by it. Okay. So I think it sort of follows the the sort of, you know, typical GW The rules for moving through terrain.

So if we jump to the terrain chart you can have a look. So it categorize it into a couple different groups which is nice and simple. So you got buildings, so buildings, trenches bunkers or one group foxholes rocks. Rumble crash Has Broken. Ground is a second group and Hills marshes, rivers and woods. And each one of those has a shoot modifier. So, if something is in that It can take some cover from it. So buildings - to Rubble - one Hills Marshall River 0 and then was minus one.

So if you're in, you know, Hills Marshall River, the kind of open ground as it was, they don't affect your ability to be here, but, you know, hiding behind trees or ducking into craters. Suddenly, that makes you hard at it, which is quite powerful. And in the other thing that's really interesting is how they affect movement. So there are three classes of model in the game and actually there's this for in the future, but we're worried about the future later.

But for now there's three says infantry vehicles and Titans. Yes, and they are affected by the terrain, walls in subtly different ways. Basically, can they move into them? Can they move through them? So you have no effect which is this model is not concerned about it. So what's quite interesting here in his infantry? Soften no modifiers to movement for any type of training less? It's literally impossible.

So they can't go through marshes and they can't go through Rivers because they'll sink but they are not slowed down by buildings. Rough ground Woods, which is very unusual normally, you'd expect was to slow them down whereas if you're a Cole most of that is impossible so you can't, you can't drive to rebuilding. You can't drive through a swamp. Can't drive over a river. You can't drive through trees.

And then the Broken Ground becomes difficult, and then for Titans similar, they can actually stop through craters. They don't care. They make the craters. Let's face it. Same with hills. Same with rivers. They can go into words but they can't go through marshes or Congo through buildings, but again, they can kind of smash through them.

So there again, you get that kind of that, that Resting like scissors, paper, rock effect, where infantry can take covering woods and buildings and are not affected by them for movement. So they can race through buildings and race to take up those positions and then actually vehicles cannot get into the woods to clear them out. So that was one of things I was saying earlier about the kind of the forest being like an impregnable bunker.

If you can fill it with with infantry because the tanks just can't drive into it and they also can't see into it to shoe which again will come on to when we get to the combat phase whereas a Titan can be just as kicking trees over and kind of rooting out. If you got a tie an armed with flame For example, he could really close the Mischief, it amongst the trees, and you burn their burning, the and salad Burnet down, the ants nest and kicking infantry out.

So that's, you know, that's quite exciting. So, difficult terrain is your traditional, what you'd expect from a will have a game is terrain has crossed a half movement that tends to only really affect vehicles and then Titans very specifically with Woods impossible, can't enter it pretty simple and then buildings that's where again, that kind of we were talking about the buildings that come in the Box. The start of this, they have the space on top.

So you you literally represent where the Infantry are by putting them on the roof of the building even though they're technically inside the building. And it's really fun because it's an immediate visual think of how many troops can fit in this building, where it's as many as you can fit stands on the roof. And, you know, once you've filled up that kind of that, that cross section of the roof, no more. Even three can go in that. So, you know, there's five or

six tons of troops in there. That's really good fun. And actually, the line of sight rules interact with as well. So, they can only shoot from the kind of the facing of a building that base is touching. So, again, that's a really

exciting. Kind of like it's such a clever because you could get so bogged down in like oh I've got to write that you know these infantry are in this there on the North Face of the you know building in Corridor certainly no no we ain't got time for a lesson and stick them on the roof. That's how many can fit. So you got really in a media tactile visual representation and also for line-of-sight purposes.

Exactly. The same mechanic is used so it's actually really clever in its kind of Simplicity does a lot of heavy lifting in a really simple mechanic which is to me. Me, the mark of good rules writing. So, yeah, that's that's kind of terrain in a nutshell. I suppose lately did perfectly, and you sort of segue straight into the combat phase, which is excellent. Cool. So let's just go quickly over

that. So basically each of your stands will have some kind of, you know, like an attack value for range attack and usually it's usually one dice. But in the case of vehicles, that might be more input, knobs made knob stands. Have to some but generally I think each stand has only one dice. So if you have like six six trip stands for exams. For example, you'll be rolling six Dice and you will need some

kind of Target number. It's a little bit different from other games, other game systems, and games workshop's line of, you know, typical type of you know to hit roles and that kind of thing. Basically, they're just giving you a Arrange an attack, dice factor, and it to hit roll, which is modified by terrain, and that kind of thing, of course. But so, as long as you're in within range and you can see your Target and it's legitimate Target, then you just roll your dice.

And if you roll that that that number that special number, then you hit them, then it might give as a modifier to their target. Saving through just depending on what kind of model that is, that's firing. What kind of weapon they're using. So that's basically how that works. Anything to add there at all. John know, I think that, you know, we creep into dangerous territory when it comes to house ruling and stuff.

But one of the things that I think can slow you down with epic is technically, you know, rule. So we get to the rules as written vs. Rules as intended or house ruling, and rules, Laura and stuff. So you would actually, theoretically, declare on a Model by model-based. So, let's say you've got a group of six, tactical stands shooting. You were specifically say this, The shooting that model this status shooting that model this

data sheet in that model. And that's that's you know, if you've got the time of day, your that's doing it, by the book, what I tend to favor is kind of mass rolling. So we say that I've got 6,000 Space, Marines, they're going to shoot your mob of walks, and we're just going to allocate damage on a kind of front about basis. So let's say, I roll my six dice, four of them hit.

And so I'm just gonna pay for his and that is technically abusive because if you know, if you've allocated your shots, you have to start thinking about all, what's the average size of And I you know, maybe I want to put three shots on to that Stan because I have to kill it. So you'll find you'll do consider like overall, perhaps consistently slightly above the amount of damage you would otherwise do but it certainly speeds things up. So again, that's that's where I

get into the like I'd like to try not to spoil too much but it's just something like that. Whereas this you know where, you know, when you think you're ready to shoot a company worth of Space, Marines, do you really want to sit in alakay? You know, 18 stands worth of dies one at a time It's up to you ready. So by the book, you should actually literally say, you know, stand one is shooting August and one stand to is shooting all stand to stands.

Reissuing, all stand wide and allocate them that way. I like to mass Roll Just because it gets you through a bit faster and it keeps the game flowing. And I think that's really important. And also, you know, if you're both doing it neither of you is getting an unfair advantage.

And as long as you do that, you know, allocate the damage front to back, you can make sure you, you kind of, at least have that kind of like, well I know I don't want my knobs to be short so they'll be, you know, further bag. So they will not be Uh, the ones that get killed like, that's not doing it by the book. That's me being a bit naughty, but it does make things a bit faster when it comes to Rolling

dice. Just because you are going to be rolling, a lot of dice, you know, when you, when you've got the kind of the number of weapons on the table that you've got ya. Like it's just one of those weird things that have just said about how elegant the kind of the the building rule is in terms of infantry basement. This is like weird counter thing. We like this is what I would expect in a skirmish game and they're doing it in a you know, a small scale.

Micro alma mater combat game. Like it's a weird case where I think that rule doesn't belong in this book at all. So and certainly in the future, they would have they will change that in other editions of Epic so that you don't do it that way. So it's one of those weird little wrinkles and I think that mean maybe then talk about it, maybe it was in a white dwarf article, I don't know, like I've read, you know, GW or a company notorious for liking people to

house rule. They they've literally done it in that report saying, oh, we just did it this way because we thought it made more sense that for me is a household. I think it helps keep the game flowing without massively changing the experience. But if you want to buy the book, you are more than welcome to have fun, allocating 18. Individual dice rolls against 18 individual stands of infantry more power to you. Yeah. I know I can I can certainly understand how you feel about

that. I prefer to do it by the book. That's okay. Because I just like to say okay well you know, he's shooting it because you can have it, you can have mixed unit so you can have like knobs and boys or you know whatever it might be. You know, you could have a mix of different kinds of troops stands in a unit that you're firing at and, and then, it becomes also that problem of, okay, let's say, let's say, you do the the mass rolling, right?

You just, you roll them in in group, lots and that kind of thing, then it becomes a decision, okay? Which troops died are the ones in the front or the back who decides that? Is that the person who's shooting or the person who's controlling the troops the size as well. So I think I I think To make it

a clit cleaner game. I know it takes longer but I just say okay he's shooting at him, he's shooting at them whatever and just roll the dice and that be it's definitely like if you do it by the book at least two more of a tactical choice because you're lying, all I need to kill this stand and if I only roll one dice out here, I might not do it.

So maybe I've got a commit to dice to it and of course then they both here and you're like oh I wasted that opportunity so it like it definitely has a more of a kind of a tactical depth. Yeah. Yeah. Just out that you know, either, Of expediency. So you like, absolutely. I can. Yeah, I can totally see. Like, I have no issue doing it by the book. It's just, I like to chug a Dyson and kind of resolved as quickly as possible.

So, yeah, by the book, they both have their advantages and I think, by all means, like, I totally understand where you're coming, from with your kind of you like to do it that way because it does. Yeah, I think, you know, it has its hazardous, you know, his place as much as anything and it's just, it's slightly different wrinkle on the same concept like the Today it's almost dying. Everyone's having a good time, right?

Yeah. But a good thing a good point though is that actually your interests and do an awful lot of shooting and maybe that's just me. But I think mainly mainly your vehicles are doing the shooting your Titans doing the shooting you're bigger stuff for doing that. The Infantry is sort of pumpkin down into buildings and they're holding objectives. Their ranges are very limited anyway. So it's I think and then mainly doing hand-to-hand combat

actions from my experience. So it's it just really Is on the particular unit you'll shooting and it might be just a squad of Five Guys. Anyway five stands there's only five dice, so yeah, I think the bigger the like I guess it's that difference between whether it's a yeah like a you know, like say a Detachment of Space Marines with six troops, it's perfectly fine to run those individually.

When it's, you know, let's say a 15 stands of walk boys and then they've reinforced it with three more cards of walk. So actually there's another 12 Hawks on top of that and I was like, you got 27 stands up walks, I don't know, like I probably the purest are going to string me up here but like, I'm not sure I've got time to roll 27, individual contacts from, you know, from pretty crappy weapon.

That gives me walks in there. The find that old 25 to 50 cm ball is depending on which, which flavor of Oak you've got like, so yeah. L-dub Space Marines. I think it makes total sense to do it. Other allocating one at a time, I guess, I guess, but partly. It's because of my experience with Sam plays talks a lot. She says she's my wakame and she has this weird thing where she likes to Actually God's first firing shoot with heroic, boys.

So maybe I'm just like I'm in this weird place because that's not something that normally happens in your standard game of Epic. I think a lot of the time. So yeah, she she takes a lot of infantry and doesn't make you a good use of their guns. So all of a sudden, we are resolving a lot of all shooting that you wouldn't expect to see ya. Yep. No, that's okay. I think I think either way you can do it, you just house rule it to to sort of, you know, streamline how you want to play it.

And as long as your opponent agrees and you having fun is the main thing. Definitely, Okay, so, now goes into, let's see, the the line of sight. Now, a vehicle or Titan has a 180-degree to its front line of sight. Okay. So that's its fire Arc now range, we just went through that as well. It did you just did look at the data facts for all your guys, to see how far they can fire and then it goes into line of sight as well into more detail.

I suppose it's basically, you know, they're doing it like the old style of you know, you just go down to eye level, the model if you can see the other model. Yep. It's in line of sight, again is amusing to put true line of sight into a kind of a microwave, because they're working out the line of sight from a 6 millimeter high space, ring is actually quite difficult. So again, as long as you go into these games with the idea that you're both there to have fun. You're both there to tell a

story that's color. There's nothing on the line, really like then you'll and I Is What It Seems. Kenny, I write games for a living, I work with company, with a company, we met games so much of the, the kind of the kind of where you get into the real technical language. And the Really nitty-gritty of it is, therefore the like real like 2% Edge case, 98% of the time you're going to look at the situation go, of course, their space emergency. That's Hank. So there's not even a

conversation. We had, you just know there's a Shore. It's just when you get into those like, oh, you know, can you see him pass that kind of leaf sticking off that rightmost, twig of that branch of that tree, and it gets into the real I think, you know, specifically, you know, this era of Games Workshop, they were not interested in it. You've really got read, you know, Nigel Stillman talking about it or, you know, rip Priestly talking about it. They just like Jervis to this

day. Like, just have fun. So the lot of slide rules are very, very simple, and it's true line of sight. So it's can the unit, see the unit and for the majority of people in the majority of instances you will just you will just be able to look at the table and know instinctively and if you're going to get that into argue the toss on like, you know, At six millimeter scale, you're kind of playing the wrong game. So I think for the majority of people, this will be more than

more than what they need. Is, everything they need to be able to play the game and if you're playing against someone that the concert is arguing, that also line of sight, find someone else to play with, there's my advice. Yeah, yeah. They might not have the best interest of the game at heart if they're really getting down into the kind of or I don't think you've got line of sight there and it's he's got timing. Yeah, that's it. That's it. That you'll come and see

different. Situations like head Mile and the squat land train. Like, it's supposed to be this

huge. Colossal, it is called the Colossus actually and they had like a hill in front of me or something or something was in front of me and I thought, well, technically, it should be able to see over it, even though the model is scaled, she know, it's small and what it should really be. So yeah, you just got to work things out with your opponent to make things that smoothly play out during your game and like, give us good as you get. So don't don't be like oh come on man.

Let me see. And as soon as they go off the same thing, you know. I know you've not got line of sight like as long as you're both, be even-handed with it since about any. Yeah, you know, we were sort of a hint that earlier, like the squat, infantry a 6 millimeter scale, the squat vehicles are probably more like 32 foreign millimeter scale, so there is a natural imbalance there anyway. Yeah. Yeah, you know and of course, he'll in reality versus a helium Warhammer.

Like how often do you see? That's kind of those beautiful pill-shaped, you know, 2 inch high heels. That that that's like a high plateau in In our world. But you don't tend to see those lying around that often. So this idea of like this, you know, this essentially bumping the ground, you know, gigantic train engine could hide behind it. It's kind of ludicrous anyway so you have to abstract things and it again have fun.

Keep the game flowing. There's no we're not playing poker, you know, high-stakes table. This is just two mates getting together to make some pew pew noises at each other. Like it's yeah. I just, we're going too old for a, you know, just have a gaggle. That's it. That's it. Mike, that's what it's all about. Alright, so now we're going to barrages and brushes and other special attack, isn't it? So basically, they use the barrage template, which is maybe, I think it's time to

inches diameter. Which one I think it's 2 inches. I could be 3 inches from memory after seeing where I jump between games and I'm like is it 30 mil across? Yeah. So it's yes. 66 centimeters across. Okay, six enemies across, okay. Cm. Radius. Yeah, 3 cm radius 6. Cm diameter. Gotcha. Okay, I'll keep forgetting number in centimeters. Not in. We're not we're metric and Imperial. Just so they they fire. Usually usually whatever fires a

barrage is either. And like a, like a Titan, like the squat Titans. The squat Army, which I usually play myself, has enormous amount of barrage weapons at their disposal, and they like to just sit back and just barrage enemies as they come towards them. So basically your your vehicle or your Detachment will have some kind of barrage value and the chart that you will need to find out the target. Number two, hit will be in the

back. It's got like a brush table here and it says total brush points, and will have a range between one and eight or nine, sorry, 99 or more and it gives you like a, to hit roll. So basically, if I had, for example, 6 barrage. Points in this particular Square Detachment was firing. I'll need a 4 plus to hit a direct barrage, okay? At an enemy enemy unit, then there's indirect barrages. So basically, as long as one of your one of your troops can see the enemy troops, okay?

Then you can Target them but you need to use the scatter diagram. And to D6. Okay. Because it's going to naturally scatter because they can't. So if you can see you don't scatter, if you are showing if you like right yeah I like out of line of sight. So over a building or you know whatever whatever that's when you have to use the scattered ice.

So that's quite interesting because it's that you can protect your artillery by hiding it behind a building but as a result so they're safer but their range is less targeted. So it's got more like less effective because it might scatter. Her or you can put them out in the open and you'll do your do more damage to your hip more regularly but you obviously then easier to shoot off the table.

So that's a really again an interesting tactical diameter of do I want to keep them safe but less effective or risk them but it sure that they do more damage.

So yeah. Barrage is a really an interesting and like you say it's kind of squats Imperial Guard and Titans tend to be the ones that you like an orc Army is a few barrels template scattered here and there but not many whereas here in Imperial Guard, artillery company or ask Um, the artillery company, I really kick them out, you know, dropping a left, right and center and then there's there's interesting as well as on most units will combine their artillery into one single barrel.

So one single template let's say adding them up and looking at the table to see what they hit on. Very very few weapons actually would do one bearish template per weapon in that Detachment. So there's a few you know keep an eye on your arm, unit cars in your army, special rules. There is a very, very few that actually would drop multiple bars templates, which are Very dangerous because of course they

can really blanket an area. And really, you know, if you catch me on an infantry company out of, you know, on the hoof you can really take them off the table with it. Yep. That's right mate. So thanks for clarifying that to ya know. I've actually forgotten about that, it's but you need to roll out that whatever that barrage number is, you need to roll that dice to hit, whatever stands or whatever, vehicles are

underneath that template. And I think they have to be at least half under the template in order to be considered a Target, which I think is what how they normally judge those things. Anyway, I don't think it's like, just whatever it touches. It has been lifted from the so I've hit again. This is that weird thing where because I've played so many different games now. I'm like, no, it's if you're touched and of course, not bike, or is it? Because that's the other version.

So, so says, whenever the barren lands anything underneath maybe here. Exactly. So I think is actually feel touched. It's not 50%, but remember you then roll the dice to here using the barrage template, so it's not guaranteed to be damaged if you're under the template. That's true.

And I think where it becomes kind of For court and critical is, if you're using the newer style like strip basing versus the square base in, because it was a straight face, you can a lot more of you will be hanging out inside of the template, but I feel pretty certain its anything under is is eligible to be rolled to hear and those Acer's, Whenever Wherever the barge lands anything underneath maybe here.

Exactly is for normal barrage, but let's just check and it is Yeah, roll one dice for each model under the template. So it just says under the template so I think anything even clipped by it is eligible to be here, okay? But again, if you know you could house rule that and say no, you gotta be at least 50% or you got me completely under it, tells how nasty, you want your borrowers, templates to be, I suppose and I guess it's a squad player you'd be like, I want to

be nasty things. Yeah. And the orc light of the orc Titan has that that gut Buster is like a 12, CM challenges the big blast. That's not. Yeah, that's actually become one of these disappear. Under that can be very, very lethal. Now, if you hit a vehicle, if you'd like troops in a vehicle though, it's - to to hit them. Mmm, so that makes that makes infantry inside buildings that I say vehicles. I don't know, I think it's okay.

So I meant, I meant infantry in buildings and I was very late. I'm quite tired actually. So of course. So stop talking. I really. Well, I don't want to talk. You can do all the talkin. That's Fine. But they get a minus 2 to hit, which I, which I found it in recent games with Gordon that I would bleep actuals playing that wrong. And I was killing all these guys in the buildings and we realized our hang on, we actually get some - to to hit them, so that makes infantry in dug in buildings.

Really, really well. Oh, it should it make sense isn't it? They're actually in the building. So now we're going to skip over a couple things with that. They talk about, you know, line of sight and what troops can be seen and that kind of thing and exam, examples here, we're sort of going with I think John yeah. It's that special firing command unit.

Now, you may only shoot at a commanded if he is the closest enemy Target, this represents prevents unscrupulous players deliberately targeting valuable commanders in reality and made explosions and cross fires, commanders would be impossible to pick out from other troops. So that's an important rule that you can't. Just go and Target the knobs of the Orcs and kill them off. They have to be the legitimately the, the closest Target It makes sense.

Now armor saving throws. Now this comes into effect with vehicles because vehicles have four different sides measured in a 90 degree Arc that crosses through the vehicle. So basically have a front rear and sides bit like a was it like the same sort of thing as fantasy battle where you have, like line of sight? Yeah, things for units. Yeah. Front side and rear charges.

Definitely. Yep. So basically, you get a - 1 save modify if your shot from the side and minus 2, if your shot from the rear for that's, that's that's in regards to Vehicles, though. Okay. For a tree, you just get, you know, that's where you live vehicle. Said things like land, Speeders or bikes. Nephew zip them around the flank or the rear of a meaty tank. All of a sudden you can start to chip away.

But of course, then there were some really like squat Vehicles, really bizarre, but they tend to have a The OnePlus all around rule, so actually they are not modified. So again, keep an eye on your army cars, keeping your special rules, sometimes you think you're being clever by flanking and actually there's just, it's just such a slab of metal that

there isn't. There's no weapon good enough to kind of punch through it. So and and what's interesting is what I think is one of the unusual games where you can have a 1 plus a for you, you always save. So you can literally evidence of all. So in a lot of games that be like you who are 1 plus save, but actually a one is always a fail. That's not the case in Epic. So if Going up against something that's got a one plus save. If you do not have an army

modifier. The only way to deal with that is to start sneaking around the flank sneaking in the rear. So, you know, keep an eye out for that as well. And again, that's where they're kind of the squat, you know, the the Titan class squat Vehicles will often have that and it just makes them a little bit more durable and they tend to go up pretty quickly, nonetheless, especially when the Gut Busters

are on the table. But it's I hate Ghostbusters so much when a ball around just skip through your land train and takes out. A single character and train yourself. Please, I did in my last game. I thought I'd just take that for him for a bit of a laugh and actually hit the his land track. I think was his Colossus and destroyed it. It killed it with our savings through. Paul's had such a hard time.

Try to take out his land trains, you know one hiding the wars against the squats and yet that that certainly didn't answer. The answer is got Buster's, you need to be lucky. That's the only thing. No sure. It can drift off and go. Get through a forest or something and then is not so good. But yeah. Okay.

So moving on, we got cover. So basically if you need a seven or more to hit something because it caused the cover modifiers, you can do it. So, if you need 72 roller 6 and then you need to roll for a seven. For example, you need a forum or 85 or more and 9, plus 6, or more now, it goes into Titans. Titans are quite extensive in their rules. We're not going to go through all the weapons and that kind of thing, I don't think that's

really important. But they do have these tightened Shields. Now, the Titan Shields, what are protecting them from being shot at by or being, you know, exposed to enemy fire. So they have, do they have six? Yields is that correct? It varies by such a different type classes, have different amounts. I like a war wound. Has to, I think we've asked for it. Yeah, I think of Warlords. Got six. Remember correctly.

And yeah, so basically the yeah, Six on a wall or so the bigger the tighten, the more energy Shields to protect it which is fun. Basically every time they take us you know successful wounding here you just lose a shield instead until they've got no Shields and then they're in trouble. Yeah but they do get a chance to repair them. So in the end phase, let's, let's say, I shot up. John's at is Titan. Here's Reba Titans Shields. And a managed to take three down. Will end of end phase.

He can roll a dice for each each shield and Roll out of five or six, you get to successfully repair those. Yeah, so that's quite cool. The Orcs don't get that, they don't get that, they tend to get more Shields but they don't get to repair them. Which again, is that? Again that fun thing of there is a there is a contrast between. So even as the same Coral I think the other fun thing was well with Orcs as they get the flicker rule. Where every time you shoot a shielded gargan.

If your rollers 6, The Shield actually flickers and doesn't deflect the shot and sort of show homes through to hit the garden which is, oh my children, not as good. Yeah. That's right. And you got you got to roll a dislike and it's like it's 3 plus D3 for the shields on the flash of going or something like that. So for a random amount yeah rents all and them very much very profitable. Okay, so we must give a few other rules.

Therefore, the times with I think that's something we can cover in it, in it in the Space Marine supplement. So now let's go to close combat. Now we go to the the meat of the of the game. And that's what we really enjoy the most. Well, I Really enjoy the close combat phase. Anyway it's certainly rusul close. Yeah takes no prisoners it doesn't. Okay John so give us a quick rundown of the close combat for sure.

So obviously your models have charged using that charge orders and basically what you start doing is is essentially pairing off your troops. So any any, you know it sounds crazy that a Space Marine could even get into a fight with a wall or time if it really likes being dead. So you would you would you would Square them off. So 1 V 1 1 Wang zi 14 as much as possible.

If there are multiples. If they overlap, you can start to do no gang up in 2313 V1 which will come on to a minute and then all combat is for simultaneously. So basically, you you, you pick where you want to start with the Ashley, doesn't matter because it's all simultaneous.

You would then say, right, my, you know, my, my squirrel Space Marines is going to fight your squirrel walks, both players, roll two dice atom together and at the close of salt factor of that stand and whoever has the highest winds and the other side is destroyed no arm. A safe possible. So this is where it gets really dangerous because you can have, you know, you're cool, super tank with a 1 plus save. And a guy with a chainsaw runs up to it beats in close combat

and it's gone. No armor Savers allowed, which is really, really brutal. And in the other kind of extra layer where we talk about the multiple combat is for every combat you fight in around after the first with the kind of the same stand. Your opponent gets an extra die. So let's say to stand divorce, charger stand of Space Marines, its 2D six verses to D6 for the first fight. The speaker means win. I killed the orc the second or

gets to have a go at this time. The Orcs roll 3 D6 to kind of represent, I guess the the spacer is getting tired essentially, all the advantage of you know your mates distract the Space Marines while. So you slide them in the round, the back of the head with your with your ball got away so

that's really good fun as well. So you know models that have a kind of a numbers Advantage can really benefit from that when they can start to really gang up on the small elite units and the you know they'll they'll take damage and you know the elite unit will win the first few rounds and then you'll get into that kind of second third. Fourth row. And I've had it, where, you know, this is kind of how you deal with a really Kick-Ass tire iron.

You you accept the sacrifice of multiple stands. And then the last sort of 345 stands will suddenly start going through because they're just rolling so many, their own five, 676. Because at times close the sole

factor is quite high. So like a wall or tight end is closer so 14. So the worst he can get as a 16 and so to get to 16 is going to take quite a lot of dice, but you can slowly work your way through that, you know, chipping away, chipping away and eventually Yeah, that you know, seven days, nine stand is all of a sudden going to miraculously stuff, a grenade down the leg of the design or something and blow out like it's ludicrous. It makes no sense but it's kind

of fun when it happens. So yeah that's that's really it with close combat. Yeah, if if the and that's really good. Thanks. Thanks John. Those perfectly said my like I couldn't say it said it better myself. But with the, with the, with the factor of first fire. Now, if you if a Grizzly Crookston, yep.

That's four examples. Let's say that I have my my squats on first fire in a building and then John had his aux charge me. I get to shoot at him before he gets to, engage me into close combat and then The ran in close combat which is really good. So you get sort of a double whammy there so you get to take them. Hopefully, take some out before they get to you and then hopefully, if you're lucky, you get them to clean them up in the

in the close combat phase. So if you do feel that you're going to be charged if you do see it, see them sort of breathing, down your neck, put on first fire. And then that way you get some shots off before they get there and I think the other thing we did again hinted at earlier and I suddenly had a moment of doubting if it was in this version of the game or not. But pinning, so once you're engaged in close combat, you have to stay in close combat and tell you. You're dead or of one.

However, there is a like a painting class. So infantry camp in infantry, Vehicles camp in vehicles and infantry Titans camp in Titans vehicles in the tree. So, you know, if my squad of of Space Marines Scouts runs up to a tire iron. He doesn't even know they're there. He just walks off and I left sort of feeling a bit embarrassed. Whereas if a tiny gets into a fight with a tired, all of a sudden they are pinned, they cannot move away from each

other. And then again, I'm saying about skimmers and the fact that they can actually move out of close combat. And again, that's a really real advantage of the elderly. You can charge an out of formation and if you've gone first and they then get to move, they can just flit away from you with their skimming rules and just leg it for. So that's one of the most frustrating things as an old player is having to chase Elder

around the battlefield. And that's where I think about like going s can be advantageous if you have troops, that can scare more. You have troops that can break pinning going. S is really powerful because you can walk out of being charged and not have to suffer that round of close combat that you don't want to. So again, it's a really interesting kind of close combat wrinkled too. To think about. Yep. That's true. Mate. Excellent.

And now apart from that now Titans Titans work a little bit differently. They cannot be pinned by anything except other Titans as you just pointed out before. Okay, so that's their main thing, but they don't get the power Shields. So the void Shields are gone. So when you're going to hand combat, they don't, they don't take effect. So they're very vulnerable in hand, combat, and that sense. Now let's see what interesting as well. You don't roll the scattered

ice. When you will fight in close combat close combat with Titans? Yes, it's a tune. That's huge effect. So um, we cut we kind of skipped over it but when you target a Titan with a range tag, they have, this is like, it's one of my favorite rules is one of the reasons I really love that because it reminded me of battle

tag. So you would declare or I'm going to shoot you in the head but you then roll a dice to see if you're, you know, if you're shot strikes true or fake you know the last minute that ice tigers in the shop. Zips over his shoulder or hits him in the flank or whatever. So that's what those are up down left, right? II swear that we talked about the star, you don't roll those dice in close combat against the tie.

And so that's really helped because what it means is you you basically choose where you're, you know, hurting that tired and you're going to go for the weak spot. And again you know, if you were a crazy house rule that you couldn't you, you could argue, there is no way that a Space Marine, could Target the head of Italian because it was a jump up in the air and punch it, like it's crazy.

So you could maybe say, oh you know, infantry could only target, you know, legs down or you know, the first few rows of anyway, we're getting into like speculative territory. But it's just better in mind that when you when you fight a tightening close combat you pick the location. So let's say, you know, going with the story, the Titan like squats down to be able to hit you and you wait for the moment to jump up and punch through the plexiglass lens.

That's how you can hit a Titan in the head in close combat. There is a way, there's always a way if you're willing to tell a story but it seems weird that the type one actually engage in close combat in the first place who disagreed, just like the sort of stomp on you or just the way. Yeah. But it resent. Yeah, they have a huge close. With assault factors. So, to beat it in any combat would be very, very difficult.

You need to put a lot of stands in there and I think again that's where it gets some, you know, tactically. Don't leave your tie ins out to be at a, you know, if a mob of 15 stands of all boys goes in the times probably going to kill the first 13. But then, the last two are going to ruin his day, there's also need to have that kind of that Skirmish line of infantry, in the way to kind of soak up some

of those initial attacks. All of a sudden the Orcs have, no, just no chance of killing That's high and so you got, you know, you think of times as being, these are more gods of the table but actually you have to have your infantry protecting them and, you know, making sure that they're being used to their best effect or a candy opponent is going to take advantage of them and exactly in swarm them with, you know, cheap disposable infantry and just through sheer weight of numbers.

I've somehow, like I said, probably just packing so many grades around the toes of the Titan, the eventually it just yet. Blows Its feet up and it falls over or something. Yeah. Yep. Now they're one of the highlights of the game. That's for sure. Titans are just the thing that you need to you, you always want to test because of not only because they are so destructive and they're so invulnerable to anything but the charts that they have that you get to roll on and that kind of thing.

It makes it so much fun. And all the flavor, text with it. Yeah, it's actually really like, I say, it's why, why epic spoke to me. Yeah, felt like BattleTech. It felt like I think of the others. He's ridiculously huge creatures and I'm like, you know, most guys would always got 10 wounds and then I know he's Kind of got one wound but he's got one wound across 20 different locations and it's I think VA you can chip away and you can, you know, the gun can explode and fly off or

you can take his head out. And actually, you know, with Garland's, if you blow the head off the gargon, it doesn't stop the garden. They just kind of carry on without the boss and they sort of spend a little bit of time, figure out. What do we do now? The boss has just been exploded but we're still in the fight, keep going, this is great. You know, there's great kind of

visual moments of like yes. So much more than just our, we took a shot, his dead and take them off the table and that's right. I love that. I love it. Yeah, me too. It's got a real heart and soul to it. That's what I love about this game. Yeah. Okay. Now we come. We come to the end phase now. So we're sort of nearly nearly wrapping up. We never really that. We really made it. So thanks for thanks for sticking with us guys.

So now victory points, this is the most important thing because we're sort of calculating, these aren't we John during every turn at the end phase where now so let's say we play through our first turn then we're sort of looking at, okay? How many victory points that we claim in this turn? John got, you know, for objectives and hand side. I've got four jacks in my size, so that's that's 20 points with are worth Five Points each, okay?

And we're sort of making a tally of these, as we're going through, that's really important. You do it record-keeping, you doing your objectives. Now, you may have an old Games official game, where you need a notepad and a pencil to work out happening. It's like a real old-school war game, isn't it? Absolutely. So you'd keep keep record of that because cut because Depending on the size of the

game you're playing. So let's say me and Jonah playing thousand point game as a starting point game. For example, so we go to our our chart at the back and it's got here, Victory level table. So up to 1,000 points, the number of victory points required to win is 30. So that's our Target number. So it's the the first person to reach 30 you've won the game. So there's actually no sort of turn limit in the game in that regard. So you basically just going towards, it's like a well, it is

like a time limit. It's like a Time. More than a term limit really definitely to get to that that sweet number and I think what's interesting about so there's the two ways to score points as objectives. And then there's breaking your opponent's formations.

So every formation has a point value, you normally flip the card over and it tells you how many models need to be destroyed to break it. And then once it's broken, how many points it's worth and the kind of is an interesting conversation that kind of happened the other day in one of the in the the Epic Facebook group where a guy who's kind of news that Game was asking how it works because what's interesting

is broken, formations stack. And once a formations broken, you've scored, its points forever. Where is objectives ebb and flow? Because there were five points, but they were five points whilst you control them and those are not additive. It's at the end of the turn, however, many objectives, you control are worth, you know, that times 5. But if you lose those objectives later in the game you haven't Bank those points you recalculate it at that moment.

So let's use or said we do you score for I score for Someone so you get 20 points, I get 20 points towards our goal in turn to if you then take one of mine off me. All of a sudden, you get 25 and I get 15, but that's not added to the 20. We had originally it kind of replaces that 20. So it's always the kind of whatever your current objective Point score is plus the, the additive destruction points, and those two numbers combined, tell

you how close you are. So that's really interesting because you get into that situation where you're like, oh I've you know, I've killed X number of troops and I'm on this many points. If I can just steal two more objectives and stop my opponent scoring. Any back I can get to the, you know, the the wind point of the game and, you know, it's that really exciting thing of like it's about territorial control as much.

If not more than destruction because those you have five points per objective is huge versus, you know. Yeah. Ok. I killed three land. Raiders, that's only worth two points. So it's that really interesting album flow That You Don't See in a lot of be like normally it's just additive it's however many you know. Your point. I'll turn off the turn after turn. This is I know. No each turn you reassess the table situation to see where you're at, in terms of territory and then you add your

destruction on top. And I think it's really interesting because actually, it's territorial control, that will decide the game. Killing stuff is really important because I was gives you a tactical Edge in it to score some points. But it is very rare that you'll win a game through destruction alone. Because all the, while you're killing stuff, your opponent's barely nicking all the objectives because you're not

paying attention to them. And all of a sudden they've scored 35 points and broken one of your companies and they've pushed over the line and what and you're like, oh I've you know, I've done 28 points worth of damage but I need to get to 32 win and I can't do it because I've not got those objectives. So again that's one of the things that really makes ethic unique in the kind of thing. The Games Workshop over of work, if you will that I love it for that.

Like I just is ITS Tactical warfare that's based on strategic tactical decisions. Rather. Just who's got the biggest gun kill the dudes? Yeah. Yeah. But I love it for that as well, because I think, yeah, When we, when we started playing it, I think it was just this ebb and flow, kind of feel that you have a sort of you. You take control of something, then you lose it and you need to fight me back and I love it. It's like, this is now sort of nail-biting finish to was the end.

Yeah. So there's so many aspects to Epic that keep kept. Kept us coming back and moved to play it more and more into experience more and more again. So yeah. Alright, so we've gone through the break points and what we need to achieve to in order to win the game. Now the last few Points when we

look at his morale checks. Now, now on the back of the card, as John was saying that you have some kind of break break point, you also have like a morel checkpoint as well, so, once the unit is broken, they'll need to take a morale, check? Okay? To see whether they're going to still fight, all and carry on or whether they're going to fall back. So, a unit, must take a morale, check under the following circumstances. Once troops have sustained casualties, Equal to their

breakpoint. They are broken sir. Try surviving troops on that card. Must take a mallet check immediately. Now, Marines are usually really like squats are like incredibly High aux are really low for them, real morale. Check. So that they'll tend to break more more commonly than not. So, to Broken troops must also take a morale check at the start of the close combat segment. If they are engaged in close combat which be quite nasty three sometimes truths must think I'm a real check.

In response to a particularly horrible encounter or experienced troops and gaze by demons. For example, there's a circumstances will be indicated in the special rules for these creatures or situations as appropriate for True Source a control. Check if they wish to Rally as explained below and five note that command units, never need check morale. But some can affect the morale of troops around them. As described below. John, you'll go through the remaining points mate. Yeah sure.

So like say yeah. Whenever you're called upon to take that role test you, you roll the dice and you saying, there's that kind of sliding scale of like Marines tend to do it. They tend not to worry about morale because they're super cool. You know, genetically modified Heroes Orcs. It takes a long time to break in or Clan, but once it's broken, you find very quickly, they start to Peg it.

So it's that interesting thing. So you really D6, if you pass your fine, if not you're going to fall back. So fall back basically replaces your order. So the full-back token is marked which is it looks the same as the other order. It's just the really bad one. You may not be given any other orders because you're too busy trying to run away and then you fall back, you turn. So as your fallback, you move up to double your speed as if you were charging, however you move away from the enemy.

So you are fleeing essentially, you're not permitted to move into any way that brings you closer to the enemy. So that's quite tricky if you're being encircled. But basically, wherever the enemy are not go towards that space. If you're in cover however, or you cannot see an enemy troops, you don't have to move.

So once one of them, There is if you fall back into a forest or into a building or behind a building you basically get to take a breath and say, oh cool, I think we're safe for a minute guys. Let's just wait here and then try and rally ourselves in the future. You can't shoot, which is fine. If you find close combat, you're a - to to close the sole Factor because you know, you're already

shaking. So it's a really, really bad you, you are not a combat effective, you know, this point if you take a further morale check for any reason, you route that are completely destroyed. So It can be really powerful to kind of, you know, break a unit. And then, you know, however, you find a way of doing it to go out them again and cause them to Rowell. And again, that's without you know, that taking the penalty if you're charged is kind of

important as well. So if you charge a unit that is broken and they felt I'm rotting like they're gone before you even fight so it can, you know, it's devastating, you are not, you are not operational because you can't fight and if you are called upon to fight, there's a good chance, you're just going to round off the table. So very, very bad. Is being broken. Once you are broken, you continued to retreat, each turn and less.

As we mentioned, you're in a spot those considered inverted, commas, safe, and then you can take that rally test. So the end phase, you can attempt to Rally as long as it's not the turn. You were broken, you take a, I'll check if successful you rally in your back into fully combat Effectiveness. However you've still given up

your break point. So that's the important thing is you unlike with, you know, an objective, taking objective back, you lose those Points, once you're broken, those points can never be taken away. So even if the unit is broken, and then rallies, you've still given up your victory points to your opponent for that unit, being being broken. So, yeah, and that's, that's kind of it, right? I think we just wrapped up do nothing.

You did it'd be really made. I'm so glad you could make it to to go through this with me. I think I don't think I could have done it as good as you could made us, as in describing all the rules. And what kind of thing. It's such a big break break that speed. Yeah, in the back of the It does cover all the Epic forces but we're not go through those. We're going to show you through.

Yeah, let me Savor those for cuz, you know, if you think this is good, I mean that we've only gone through the first three layers of the onion. I think for epic, it really gets into the whole game in the flavor of the of the different armies in the supplements that were released for it. And I think the first one was that was for the Space Marines, I believe. Yeah, I miss V impairment. I was in Korea. Yeah. So that is Imperial Guard space. Gene's Titans and inquisitors.

Interestingly it's quite exciting with the introduction of the flamer, template to Epic as well, because it turns out there's not a flamer template in the core box. All right. Weird little wrinkle. I noticed it as I was unpacking mine and like that's the title Legions, flame a template. So just a strange little thing man. Okay, well yeah, I didn't realize that actually. So I think I've got one from my awkward. Yes. But yeah, we will go through those in a later.

Supplement or later episode of say, I'm so tired. So I'm out at about 130 kids, I've got, I've got, I've got a 3000 point game of war, hammer to play tomorrow, brilliant, and I've got a ton of stuff to do, and I just haven't got around to doing, but that's okay. I'm going to have fun tomorrow anyway, but so. But I want to say thank you so much again, mate, for taking the time to come and talk to us tonight. And we're definitely going to continue doing these in the future.

Brilliant up. So, it's like I'm thrilled. You invite me back and I apologize again for just going on and on and on its own. No, no, I want you to go on, please don't please don't let me just like Bumble through the whole thing mate because we just sound awful, so you're making me sound professionals. That's great. Good, like I said we've got four supplements to go. So it's plenty of effort content. There's tons and it's not just epic Space Marine.

I mean, there's other iterations like, epic Titan Legions that you guys play you and Sam play together. So yeah, we've got a lot of stuff to cover.

But hopefully this gives some the people and inside and what epic is and how to play it and maybe they're going to venture on eBay at some point or in the sales groups and maybe just I have a car, I really hope so. Like it's one of those things where I just think, if you like the world of 40K, but you want to see, it played at the proper scale there again. You know, people are gonna crucify me for that, but it's like, if you, if you want to see 40K done, right?

He would say, pick up a copy of Epic space reading. And, you know, we sort of said it before, but like, there are so many good thing. Third party companies out there making totally not Space Marines and totally not space. Also even here because eBay prices are getting a little bit,

eye-watering these days. Even if you know, if you're happy to go for like, you know, proxies or they, you know, they basically a Space Marines, if you if you look at them right, like you can pick up an army, really good quality stuff and you really you won't regret it. Like, you know, is that it's such a simple game, but it has that tactical depth and complexity that we spoken about when the rules don't interfere.

Some why I hate is when a game with a rules, get in the way of the gameplay and it doesn't do that. It's so clever in its elegance. And simplicity like Simplicity is often used as a negative. But actually in this life as a positive, it just lets you get on with the business of.

Well, I've now got, you know, a Titan battle group and three companies of Space, Marines and a tank company and they're going against an entire walk War. Rather than or I've got my 10 Space Marine, tactical boys going up against a handful of horse. Like, it just lets you show, like, you know, if you've ever read gorn's ghost and God, I wish I could play a game before it came like that. That you can, it's called epic. Yeah, that's my ear. Be summed up so beautifully someday.

Yeah. But you're right ladies, it's a beautiful system. It's a beautiful game. I think it has stayed around for so long because of that too. It stood the test of time through various editions. But yeah, I think second edition is probably the one that's closest to our hearts, I think. But hopefully, it will ya be close to someone else's hearts in in the, in the near future. So any on mate, let's leave. Johnson.

Yeah, get some sleep. I will might I need to hit the hit the sack pretty soon actually, but and but thanks again and we'll stay in contact soon. A absolute pleasure is always good to chat to you and enjoy your epic and enjoy your will happen tomorrow. Okay, well we'll do thank you very much again we'll take it easy. Okay, bye.