Category: epic

Bommerz over da Sulphur River

This was on display at Warhammer World.

In Bommerz over da Sulphur River you can take the part of the Ork Fighta-Bommer pilots, screaming down to smash the vital bridges. Or you can command the heroic Imperial defence, pouring a devastating stream of flak and laser fire at your attackers and directing the counter-attack of your brave but outnumbered Thunderbolt Interceptors. It included several aircraft miniatures from the Warhammer 40k Epic line.

I never bought the game, however the concept sounded fun.

Legions Imperialis: Rhino Transport

I have been thinking about getting some miniatures for Legions Imperialis since it was released. So was pleased to get the Legions Imperialis: Rhino Transport boxed set for Christmas.

The Rhino is the most widely used armoured personnel carrier in the Imperium. Based upon ancient STC technology, the fundamental design is robust, reliable, and easy to maintain, with an adaptive power plant that can run off a wide variety of fuels. Within the Space Marine Legions, the Deimos pattern was the most widespread, serving as the basic armoured transport available to the Legiones Astartes and the foundation on which a number of other war machines were based.

In the box you get two sprues that can be used to construct ten models.

This was the first time I had seen these models in the flesh. They are smaller than I thought they were going to be, but are (obviously) bigger than the older original Epic miniatures. However I thought they would be larger than they are.

I like how the box has come with transfers covering the many legions of Legions Imperialis.

When it comes to painting models, I do like to see how others have been painted. These are the images from Games Workshop.

I am thinking I will paint these as Imperial Fists.

The first stage will be constructing the models. Unlike the older Epic models, which were a single casting, these are multi-part kits.

 

Epic Battle Group

This is an Epic Battlegroup of mine.The models are from the 1990s.

The Warlord Titan is the original plastic model from the original Adeptus Titanic game, complete with plastic weapons.

The Land Raiders are plastic models, whilst the dreadnoughts are the original metal castings from Space Marine.

The scenery is from the (now defunct) Snapdragon Studio.

The models were painted in a similar manner with a light brown base coat and an ink wash.

Epic Ork Great Gargant

I got this metal Epic Great Ork Gargant model when Space Marine came out in 1989. I have recently rescanned the original photograph.

It was an all metal kit, with the main body comprising three parts, with then  parts for the weapons (arms), feet, belly weapon and gunhead.

I really like this model and only really got it on the gaming table with Epic 40000. I know most Epic players don’t like Epic 40000, but it is my personal favourite of all the Epic games produced by Games Workshop.

I know there was a resin hybrid metal kit of this gargant, which didn’t get a wide retail release. This was a much easier kit to put together (and wasn’t as heavy, which I am not sure is a good or a bad thing.

I was disappointed with the metal Epic 4000o Ork Gargant, it never was as good as this one. It was also surprisingly more challenging to put together.

Of course with the focus on the Horus Heresy, we’re not going to see a Legion Imperialis version of the Ork Great Gargant. I would really like to see a modern version of this model. We know Forge World in the past may have produced something like this, though they never did for Epic, they have done retro versions of the Space Marine Land Raider and Rhino.

Epic Size Comparisons

Over on the Warhammer Community site is an interesting article comparing the new Legions Imperialis miniatures with Epic miniatures of old.

The new Legions Imperialis models are much bigger than the Epic versions. This probably means that it will be challenging to use any Epic models alongside the new ones. Many of the models were pretty much underscale anyway.

One mistake in the article is that they mention plastic Leman Russ tanks

On the left is an adorable family photo, depicting three generations of the Leman Russ. At the front in green is an old metal version from the Space Marine-era in the mid 90s, joined by a plastic model (we think) from Epic Armageddon. The new Legions Imperialis Leman Russ kit also builds Leman Russ Vanquishers, pictured on the right with a smaller plastic version below it.

These plastic models were in fact resin models from Forge World. Here they are advertised in the Forge World catalogue.

I had a few, but as they didn’t match the metal Epic 40000 models I had, so I sold them on eBay.

The Epic History of Small-Scale Warhammer

There is a nice article over on the Warhammer Community on the history of Epic that leads into the future release of Legions Imperialis.

The miniatures might be small, but the upcoming Legions Imperialis is a huge deal. It’s the first Warhammer game of combined arms at epic scale released in two decades – and the first set at the time of the Horus Heresy for more than 30 years. And as you’ll see while we take a lot of (tiny) steps down memory lane, it’s drawing on a proud and petite pedigree.

It’s interesting to read this about the 1991 edition of Space Marine.

This edition is one of the major influences for the Legions Imperialis rules – but it’s important to note that they are not the same game.

Personally my favourite edition of Epic was the 1997 Epic 40000 set of rules. As it says in the article:

…this game was all-change for epic-scale. The miniatures stayed the same size, but the entire scope of the game changed around them. Armies were no longer confined to set companies or detachments, making force selection more flexible, but the trade-off meant that the complexities of different weapon types were much reduced to make the game faster.

I am looking forward to Legions Imperialis and I do wonder what models will be on the horizon for the new game.