What is Epic
| In
1988 Games Workshop launched a game called Adeptus Titanicus. The
game was set in their Warhammer 40.000 universe and featured massive
building sized warmachines known as Titans fighting against each other.
The game was GW’s first attempt at producing a 6 mm. Sci Fi
game to challenge FASA’s Battle-Tech series which had been pretty
much the only game on the market until then. It was not long before an expansion “Space Marine” was released. This game introduced regular infantry and tanks to the system. The original game was set during the Horus Heresy and featured loyalist Imperial forces fighting against traitors corrupted by Chaos and led by their Warmaster Horus. Another expansion book called “Codex Titanicus” was released in 1989. Codex Titanicus introduced other races such as Orks and Eldar to the game. It also contained eratta and corrected a few minor problems with incompatability between the two previous games. For several years White Dwarf supported the game with regular articles introducting a number of new units such as Imperial and Eldar Knights. This also resulted in the very first Epic Battlereport involving two "real life" titans namely the game designers themselves: Jervis Johnson and Andy Chambers. |
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In
1991 it was decided to give the system a major overhaul. The result
was Epic Space Marine. Some rules had been simplified and army cards
had made picking an army much quicker and easier. The game had expansions for each of the major races. “Armies of the Imperium” covered Space Marines and the Imperial Guard, “Renegades” Eldar and Chaos and “Ork and Squat Warlords” the Orks and Squats. White Dwarf made a book called “Space Marine Battles” which contained a compendium of WD articles, battle reports and modelling articles. In 1994 Epic Titan Legions was released. This game introduced even larger titans for the Imperial and Ork forces and fixed some bugs in the Epic Space Marine rules. Arround this time the Tyranid race emergedin the 40k universe. This resulted in the “Hive War” expansion. At this point Epic was at the top of it’s popularity. It was supported as one of GW’s main three games but for some strange reason this period also saw the release of some of the worst miniatures created for Epic. Many veteran players will probably remember the mk2 Vindicator and the "Thunderbrick" Gunship as particularly horrible examples. Sometime arround 1996 the Design studio also had plans to re-do part of the miniatures line. This resulted in a series of unreleased models (sometimes referred to as the "x-vehicles") This included many new Eldar miniatures including Exodites but also the very first Ork Fighta Bommerz. |
In
1997 the Epic game system went through it’s 3rd In 2002 Jervis Johnson began work on a new project, Epic Armageddon which was released in 2004. The game combines the tactical element of E40k with the detail of the previous editions. The entire process of development and playtesting has been done in cooperation with the fans via the online Playtesters forum. The result is a very balanced game and the initial sales indicated that it was a major success. In spite of all this Games Workshop decided to close down Fanatic in early 2005. This meant that the Eldar supplement "Swordwind" would be the last published material for Epic. From now on all future support would be online and miniatures production would be limited to mainly re-releasing SM2 and E40k era models. Werther or not E:A will seeofficial supplements for Chaos, Tyranids, Necrons and Tau, only time will tell. |
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