Part 4: The history of Epic Space Marine, part 2
The most recent edition, Fourth Edition, of Epic is often referred to as Epic: Armageddon after the first rulebook released for it. One interesting feature of Epic: Armageddon is that, unlike previous editions of the game and other games produced by Games Workshop, the development of the game was conducted in an open way with “trial” rules published on the Epic “Playtest Vault” and feedback solicited from gamers via the associated play testers forum.
This collaboration with the community has continued with the development of further army lists. The Epic: Armageddon rulebook contains the core rules for the games, and army lists for Space Marines, the Armageddon Steel Legion Astra Militarum regiments and Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka’s Ork WAAAGH! as they were fielded in the Third War for Armageddon. The 4th Edition of the game also includes rules and charts for the classic line of Titan, including the Ork Mega-Gargant and the Imperator-class Titan. These were previously omitted from intermediate rulebook editions.
The second rulebook released for the Fourth Edition was Epic: Swordwind, which was released both as hardcopy and as a downloadable PDF from the game’s official website. Epic: Swordwind contains army lists for the Biel-Tan Eldar, the Baran Siege masters Imperial Guard Army and Warlord Snagga-Snagga’s Feral Ork Horde.
There has been active involvement of players with play-testing the new armies for the game on the epic forums, with “army champions” coordinating playtesting and revision of the army lists. Unlike other Games Workshop games that use a generic army list for all deployments involving that army, Epic uses specific army lists that represent how an army was fielded in a specific military campaign. There have also been officially released army lists for Da Kult of Speed, an Ork army favouring bikes, the White Scars Space Marines, the Black Legion Chaos Space Marines, and The Lost and the Damned cult army.
Released on 18th August 2018, this edition of the game was heavily inspired by the original 1988 game, but introduced new mechanics to focus more on the management of individual Titans.
AT18 also increased the scale from 6mm up to 8mm.
The first box released was the Grand master edition containing 2 of the new warlord titans and 6 knights as well as a plastic scenery sprue.
So, now we are up to date with the history of Epic Space Marine , you may be wondering what edition i play? Well it might suprise you but i dont use any of these rule sets to play out my 6mm battles. I actually use a very short lived Warhammer 40’000 apocalypse rule set which came out in 2019.
Warhammer 40,000: Apocalypse is a game of massive battles set in the grim darkness of the far future. If you’ve ever wanted to field an entire Space Marine Battle Company or household of Imperial Knights (and more besides), then this is the game for you!
As with Battle-forged armies in Warhammer 40,000, your collections are organised into any of 10 different types of Detachment (and each led by a Commander) that move and fight together on the battlefield. Each Detachment also gains a Faction Ability, enabling you to theme your army by Detachment and include narrative-driven alliances within it.
The innovative rules for Apocalypse enable you to play massive battles to completion in a matter of hours. Alternating Detachment activations ensures that there is minimal downtime for players, maintaining the fast-paced and exciting action throughout. Damage is resolved in the final phase of each game turn, meaning that even units that are destroyed will still have a chance to make their mark on the battle before they succumb.
In each turn, players issue Advance, Aimed Fire or Assault orders in secret to each of their Detachments, giving them a chance to bluff, surprise and outmanoeuvre their opponents with their choices.
Each player constructs a deck of 30 Command Assets (from a choice of 300 included in the set), including a number of faction-specific cards, enabling them to pull off strategic power plays as the battle unfolds. These effects include devastating psychic powers, changes of orders and crucial re-rolls.
Apocalypse plays like Epic and allows you to have massive battles but is easy enough and quick enough to play a game in 1.5 – 2 hours.
All of the army books and data cards are free to download from the Games Workshop website.
The Apocalypse datacards are easy to read and have all the infomation on the card.
Just glue 5 6mm terminators to a base and use the top line of stats named terminator squad 5 models. this stand will cost you 12 points. If you want a 10 man squad make 2 bases and use the second stat line until you loose half the squad…… easy as that.
Now the rule set is sorted the next step is to find some 6mm miniatures.
Coming soon……….Part 5: Epic miniatures