Introduction:
Having been invited to to talk about my love of Epic Warhammer 40,000 on The Crown of Command Podcast which you can find here, it got me thinking about the 30+ years that I've played the game. Since Epic seems to be going through something of a mini-resurgence thanks to the current pandemic - with lapsed gamers suddenly dusting off their old armies either to paint or play with - I thought it might be interesting to share a bit of my history with the game.
Before Epic:
I first became aware of Games Workshop in 1987. I was a big fan of 2000AD and at that time GW produced Judge Dredd: The Roleplaying Game - even though I was unfamiliar with roleplaying, I remember the concept of setting a game set in Mega-City One being one that excited me and so I picked up a copy! It wasn't long before I spent endless hours preparing and running games for my friends using that system. Later that year I learned in White Dwarf magazine that a game called Warhammer 40,000 was going to be released. As Tolkien fans, myself and my friends were intrigued by this new game which was going to mix fantasy with science fiction. When it came out, we enjoyed it, but for some reason we never fully engaged with it and only played it a handful of times.
Epic Roots:
A couple of years later, Games Workshop opened their shop in Glasgow Queen Street, and one cold January morning I turned up with some birthday money burning a hole in my pocket, looking to see what goodies I could pick up. When I spotted a game called Adeptus Titanicus in their sale items going for £10 and snapped it up. We found the game fun, but, at that stage the game was nothing more than a skirmish between 6 Imperial Titans. It was the box artwork - and some photos on the side which showed tanks and tiny Marine miniatures at the feet of the Titans - which really captured my imagination. The idea that we could be fighting large scale battles rather than the small-scale skirmishes of 40K filled me with excitement and I remember avidly awaiting the release of Space Marine.
1st Edition:
When Space Marine arrived, it didn’t disappoint. I loved the game and would literally spend weekends playing it. I couldn’t get enough of it. The only problem was that it took hours to play a single game. 1st Edition Space Marine was essentially a game bolted on to the Titan combat game of Adeptus Titanicus and both rulesets were complex and involved. A single game required my friends to commit to coming over to mine to play on both a Saturday and Sunday…and even then it wasn’t unusual for games to have to finish without having come to a complete conclusion.
The impracticality of running 1st Edition battles did nothing to stop my imagination running riot, though - In those days I had no gaming table or terrain (other than the buildings provided in both games) so I’d throw some video and cassette tapes on to the floor to build makeshift hills and then throw an old white sheet over it to create my battlefield - the snowfields of Hoth from The Empire Strikes Back was how I imagined it!
2nd Edition:
When 2nd Edition was announced, I remember not being too delighted at the prospect as I was happy with Epic the way it was - and had a feeling even in those early days that Games Workshop were trying to fleece their fans into buying a game they already owned a second time. My curiosity got the better of me though, and I invested in a copy of 2nd Edition Space Marine. I’m so glad I did! I recall really liking the structure that was given to the game by the scoring of Victory Points which suddenly meant a game of Epic could be played in a single session - quite the revelation! I remember being shocked too by how lethal the system was; in first edition everything had a saving throw and vehicles often had to be damaged twice before being destroyed. Initially, the loss of some of the nuance and complexity of 1st Edition put me off as I felt they’d went too far. I quickly realised that it was the saving of the game for me as I was able to bring friends - who’d been disheartened by 1st Edition’s endless sessions - back into the game now that it was at a more manageable runtime.
Myself, my brother and another of my friends had a lot of great games at that time. I think there was a point where I was playing on a weekly basis and a lot of my time was spent talking to friends about battles we’d fought and about which units we liked to field. Eldar were my personal favourites, probably because their skimmers’ pop-up attacks were a really cool idea, but also because the Howling Banshees and Striking Scorpions were always beasts in Close Combat who could even deal damage against multiple opponents! I also pored over White Dwarf articles and battle reports, trying to spot if there were any tactics that I hadn’t thought of. All in all, I have a lot of very happy memories of that time.
One thing I’m extremely thankful for back then was that GW used to release boxes of plastic Epic miniatures which meant that I could afford to build sizeable forces relatively cheaply. I suspect the thinking was that players would top up on a lot of these forces by buying a lot of the metal miniatures that came in the Blister packs but, while I had a few of these, I really didn’t have the funds to afford much of that stuff, so my armies were, by and large, sourced from what was available in those boxes. If I’m honest, it probably restricted my enjoyment of the game as the lack of variety meant that we almost always played Marines v Elder because the other factions required metal miniatures that we didn’t own.
I have to say, I feel very sorry for young people nowadays trying to get into wargaming as it is not cheap. I’m sure there are parents who are happy to buy their kids all of these expensive kits - there's far worse things their adolescents could be up to, after all - but I do think that the price probably makes it difficult to get young people interested when they can buy immersive computer games comparatively cheaply. I do wonder if younger generations will still play war-games when they have so many other options.
Anyway, back to life in the mid-nineties... As I was now in my late teens, the amount of time I was able commit to Epic waned as myself and my friends found other interests to occupy our time, but we still played intermittently. When Titan Legions came around in 1994, it almost turned me off Epic. When I played it, I felt the Imperator Titan and Mega-Gargants took all of the strategy out of the game by making it about those two incredibly powerful models - and the business of their Titan sheets seemed to create a mini-game that distracted from the action on the tabletop. I also hated the Knights because I thought they looked like 40K miniatures - and that was a game that I had no interest in playing. Fortunately, I also realised that I didn’t have to bother with any of the new units that Titan Legions introduced as I was perfectly happy with the game as it was. I continued playing, but on an increasingly infrequent basis for probably about 10 years.
Post-millennium Epic:
I can’t recall exactly when it happened - early 2000’s I think - but one of my friends discovered an early version of Net Epic on the internet. He recommended that I check out the rules, and I agreed that the system was pretty great. It’s basically 2nd edition with bells and whistles, and I’ve been running some version of Net Epic ever since. The advent of eBay and of finally having a decent disposable income meant that I was able to buy a lot of the metal miniatures that I’d so long wanted and my collection has probably quadrupled in size. Other than Marines and Eldar, my forces were largely unpainted and, although I don’t claim that my painting is that great, I’ve since invested a lot of time in making sure my Ork, Squat, Imperial Guard and Chaos forces are table-worthy.
I missed out on Epic 40K and the same is true of the latest version of Adeptus Titanicus, but I have dabbled a little in Epic: Armageddon. There was a lot about E:A that I liked, especially the mechanic that enabled units to resolve movement and firing in the one activation. Ultimately though, I wanted to play it with the units and stats that I was familiar with from 2nd Edition. As a result, I designed my own house rules, Net Epic Evolution (available here), which brings that mechanic to Net Epic.
My Epic Campaign rules - Epic War! (available here) - came from an idea that had been swirling in my head for the best part of two decades (I remember discussing the idea with one of the staff in GW not long after 2nd Edition was released). I’ve since run 2 campaigns using the system; the first was Marines v Eldar and the second Orks v Squats and both were a lot of fun! I hope to run another sometime soon!
I also hope to play some Imperious Dominatus very soon - it's a system which takes all of the best parts of 1st and 2nd edition Epic and applies them to a D10 system (much better than D6)!
Although I’ve dabbled in some other games of late, when it comes to tabletop gaming, Epic will always hold a special place in my heart. I’ve recently made a return to the game and have begun putting up some new battle reports and videos which I hope the community will enjoy!
Speaking of which, the Epic community is one of the friendliest gaming communities I’ve come across, and I’ve made a lot of new friends and acquaintances through Epic - right across the world - so I have a lot to thank the game for! I hope in my own small way that by sharing my love for Epic whenever possible that I’ve been able to give something back to the game that has given me so much enjoyment over the years! Here's to the next 30 years!
