An Epic Game of Epic Epicness

My first wargaming love, err <thinks>... fourth?... well somewhere in the top ten anyway has always been Epic in it's various guises, ever since my first white dwarf (152). Truly an apt name, nothing else has ever conveyed quite the gravitas or captured the ENTIRE GALAXY IN FLAMES!!! feel as Epic does.

Prototype template

Never a perfect system, every version has brought a different experience, and what I've recently wanted to experience was gigantic titans of doom. Having recently ebayed a mass of titans, I cobbled together a simple set of rules (I think I like designing games more than playing them) from all the previous iterations (including the recent GW created one floating around on the net).

I stole the Imperator's plasma allocation for example (that always struck me as an exceedingly elegant way to introduce tension into a game), simplified "to hit" and damage using the space crusade dice (which are excellent tools conveying two different kinds of information as they do), and reduced damage effects to a damage track as per a million different games.

So a couple of weeks ago, as part of a weekend of games-of-stupid-fun a friend and I tried it out!

The Enemy Without

Approximately 42 days ago...

In the damp and dripping ruins of an abandoned comms tower on Tenebrae Quintus, Jaques Bishop impassively listened to a man who was neither there, nor entirely a man.

"Are you quite finished?"

The holo-figure glared but remained silent.

"It is not a matter of betrayal. You were greedy, you delayed, and you were noticed. It is as simple as this."

"We did not delay! The trader argued over payment-"

"Come now, it took you five hours to convince the man the pebbles in his hand were worth more than the figure you planted in his mind? Tsk, tsk. I know you know that I too am gifted as you are - I am aware of everything from the moment you loaded the cryo-stores."

The glowing figure looked murderous and sullen beneath his cowl.

"If the Ordo are aware - and I assure you they are, I still have loyal servants within after all - then Van Saar and the other Istvaanite crones who support him will already be on their way, and our business is already concluded. I told you that this would be the consequence if-"

"You know our resources are vast and powerful, Inquisitor. The work will proceed regardless, the Hive will-"

"No. Your Hive fleet is on the other side of the sector, with a great many space marines in between. But you may do as you please if you think you can survive the attentions of the Ordo."

Bishop flicked the holo-comm off, the cowled figure vanished.

"Goodbye, magus."

High above, entirely unnoticed by the sentry drones and the remote-scanners, something watched in the dark.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Battlespace Galactihulk

++ Part 1, Resources ++

Space Hulk is awesome. Battlestar Galactica is awesome. Ergo, a mashup of the two would be THE AWESOMEST.

A rather ridiculous project considering approx 6 months work off and on for all of a days entertainment (hopefully more return on the investment in future, but getting a mutually free weekend between five gamers is less than simple sometimes).

Without going into details about the design process, it demanded a lot of custom cards to try and mirror BSGs mechanics. Finding a source which was prepared to do arbitrary designs for volumes of less than a hundred print runs was a bit of a nightmare but a friend eventually pointed me at ArtsCow - 54 custom cards of gameable quality and about 4 weeks shipping figure in somewhere between £6 and £10, offers depending.

Yes I could have done it all with a sharpie and a couple of decks of playing cards, but really, if you're going to do something, don't do it 90%.

Resources posted here.