Tiny little mini men

One of the games I have loved to play over my 30 odd years of gaming is Games Workshops Epic system.  From the very first days of Adeptus Titanicus to the current incarnation of Epic:A its been a game, that whilst not a main system, has always been on the back burner.

I remember very well playing in Oxford GW during the early 90's against Gav and Woody, two of the staff there at the time.  I was using Orks (I always use Orks), Gav had Chaos and Woody Space Marines.  Every Thursday night we would get a couple of games in and much carnage would ensue.  The games would end with cardboard chits strewn across the table, a huge pile of dead stuff and a pint (if I'm honest several pints).  As Miranda would say 'such fun'

So its with some sadness over the last couple of weeks that I heard that GW have pulled the plug on all the specialist games and that you will no longer be able to buy Epic figures direct from them.  As I write this the Ork section of the site has been decimated with only a few basic units left to buy - I never did pick up some of the new Squigoths and I'm sure the other sections are similarly bare.  On speaking to a few other folks its seems that people have approached GW on several occassions to get a license to produce these models but have always been turned down - seems a shame to see such a great system (one of Jervis's best IMO) just gather dust.

However all is not lost, there is a small but passionate Epic community in the UK mainly centred around http://epic-uk.co.uk/wp/ and a friend of mine pointed me in the direction of Mingeddon, a ruleset designed to let you play very quick games of Epic as a way of introducing people to the game - you can check those out at https://sites.google.com/site/epicarmageddonlondon/minigeddon

Manufacturers are also picking up the ball.  Just today (and to be honest it was what inspired this post) I came across an Indiegogo campaign from Troublemaker Games to create 6mm scifi army plastic sprues.

From the campaign

Hi everyone,
We’re looking to produce some new 6mm scifi army plastic sprues.
Our initial goal is well on its way to being met, but beyond that we’ve got some great stretch goals planned, including more models on the sprues (for the same price – so entry level pledgers will get their boxes upgraded for free if we hit Stretch Goal #1), plastic buildings (suitable for 6mm or 10mm gaming), and with a little extra push, a boxed game…

At the base level a pledge is £22 for 5 sprues seems very reasonable, and hopefully the stretches will mean you end up getting even more for your money.