New units and formations

[Content from Rulebook page 146.]

The ease with which new units and unique formations can be used in a scenario is one of the biggest advantages they have over tournament games. In a tournament army list, it takes months of testing to ensure that units and formations have the correct points value and that they are balanced and fair. Over the years I have worked at Games Workshop, l have attempted to come up with systems that allow players to build their own units and add them to a tournament game army list — but I have never succeeded in coming up with a system that players can't exploit in some way or another.

For this reason, the Epic tournament army lists only include units and formations that have been extensively play-tested, and that are readily available as part of the Epic model range. The bottom line of any set of army lists is that it they are as fair as possible for both players. Having a situation where one player may have access to units that another player simply can't get hold of just would not be fair, and so is not allowed.

In contrast, there are many players who really enjoy scratch-building and converting models, or that have collections of models from older versions of the Epic rules that they would like to use. Scenarios are the perfect place to use such models, as the player devising the scenario can create the units in such a way as to ensure that everything is — more or less — fair and balanced for both sides.

Scenarios also allow players to field non-standard formations — in other words, formations that are different to those described in the army lists. The 'fixed' formations used in the tournament army lists are a huge simplification of the type and variety of formations that can be fielded in an army. It is extremely rare for two formations to be exactly the same in their composition, even if they are nominally of the same type.

For example, while a newly recruited formation would start off at full strength, over the course of a campaign casualties will reduce its strength until finally only a hard core of very experienced troops were left. If we take a Steel Legion Infantry Company as an example of this process, then a newly raised company would probably have twice as many units as the formation shown in the Steel Legion army list (that is, about 24 instead of 12), but as it is green and inexperienced it should probably have an Initiative value of 3+. The same company at the end of a campaign might be reduced to half a dozen stands, but as these are all hardened veterans they should probably have an Initiative value of 1+. You get the idea, I'm sure.

Now, it is clearly neither practical or desirable to try to create a set of tournament army lists that cover every type of unit and every type of formation that could possibly be in an army. Instead, the lists concentrate on what is typically found in each army. Thus the Steel Legion Infantry Company does not represent a bunch of wet behind the ears new recruits or a small group of hardened veterans, but rather something about half-way in between. When playing a scenario, however, there are no such restrictions, and you should feel free to invent new units and create new formations as you see fit.

If you are devising a scenario that requires an Imperial Governor's elite personal bodyguard to be present along with the Governor in his bullet-proof limousine, then you can just go ahead and work out what is in the formation and then come up with the datasheets for the new units. Any new units that you invent like this clearly won't have any points values, that isn't really a problem in a scenario as you can just use a fixed force list instead.