I’ve always been a big fan of Games Workshop’s Epic game. I’ve owned pretty much all of its incarnations over the years and currently have large Blood Angels and Eldar armies, but what does that have to do with Warmachine and Hordes. Well, Epic is for representing large scale battles with a single assault between a couple of formations in Epic being the equivalent of a whole game of Warhammer 40,000 (a game I’ve never been able to like). Epic brings a grander perspective to a battle than just the small scale clashes that occur between platoons. In some ways Flames of War has a similar perspective to representing battles.

Warmachine and Hordes are more than just skirmish games, but they certainly aren’t designed to scale to represent larger battles. That’s not a criticism, I love the fact that an individual warjack can double-handed throw an opposing model and aim it at an important target. Trying to represent that at a larger scale would bog things down. If you’ve ever played a 100pt Warmachine/Hordes game you know how things start to slow down as the time between turns gets longer. Epic Armageddon is about the movement of whole armies. Instead of being concerned about the movements of individual troopers you control larger formations of 30+ troopers (in six strips of five). They are represented at the 6mm scale, i.e. an human sized trooper is about 6mm tall. To alleviate the time between turns formations are (more-or-less) activated alternatively allowing the commander to react to events as they unfold on the battle field in a very fluidic manner.

How would this be great for Warmachine/Hordes? Since Superiority Privateer Press have been trying to given an impression of the scale of war in the Iron Kingdoms. 35pt and 50pt games are almost the ubiquitous standard and they are much closer to a skirmish game than a full blown strategic battle. The Forces of Warmachine books describe grand armies of hundreds of thousands of soldiers. Imagine playing a 1000pt game of Epic Warmachine with 3-4 warcasters on the field surrounded by 15-20 ‘jacks and large formations of troops, artillery and cavalry and you start to get an idea of what I’m talking about. This Epic scale would require a different rule set and it would be a challenge to represent the power of warcasters at this scale, but I think it would make for a great game. Imagine replaying the assault on Northguard in its entirety! How about trying to represent thousands of Khadorans moving into the outskirts of a city like Point Bourne? Hell, I want to play a game that looks like the cover of the Warmachine MkII rulebook!

C’mon Privateer Press, how about a strategic level game for the Iron Kingdoms?

Owen