Warhammer 40k EPIC - The Best game Games Workshop Abandoned... 

I would love to see GW bring it back, especially with some of the newer factions - Necrons, Tau... would love to see them in Epic scale!

I used to play this when it was branded as 'Space Marine'. Yes it was one the best games. It was possible to field huge armies and play games that captured the vast sweep of an epic (pun intended) 40K battle. The rules were relatively simple, fast play rules that allowed the game top flow quickly and logically. A real shame that GW got rid of it.

lets not forget that there was a epic scale game after "epic 40K" , Epic Armageddon, witch still has a community behind it with updates to the rules and tournaments

YES Dave should do more Epic 40k retro minis so he can quench his Epic nostalgia

I’m so early you haven’t even started cutting models to make them into gaming tables

This makes me feel old; I remember it being called Space Marine and still think of the five-in-a-row configuration for infantry bases as the “new” layout!

That space marine lander looks just like any UEF transport from the 2007-8 supreme commander. The way it carries its tank payload externally is so rugged and cool.

I love watching these old school kits being built and painted, I remember loving just looking at the Epic sets, the concept of having so many tanks, land raiders and such was just awesome to 9 year old me :)

I still have 10s of thousands of pts of Eldar, marines and orks from the predecessor and epic 40k. Watching waves of bombers and fighter escorts flying in to paste the field was always terrifying. But seeing an eldad vampire raider land disgorging exarchs and an avatar into close combat was the height of fear. Edit: As an old timer that played the original Epic (space marine and titan legions), one of the peeves about Epic40k was that the game stripped out all the uniqueness of each miniature. In SM/TL, every model had its own capabilities (for example, vehicles suffered -ve armour save modifiers if hit from the rear or side, artillery could fire indirectly if a friendly unit could see the target but suffered from scatter, eldar grav tanks could hide behind cover and use their grav engines to do pop up fire attacks, making them vulnerable to counter attack) In Epic40K, all of that uniqueness was stripped away. Units deployed in detachments which got a "firepower" rating, or an Anti tank special attack, and combat revolved around counting up your firepower and consulting a table for the number of dice to roll. AT attacks were done separately. In effect, your combat detachments were about the size of large 40K armies and an entire 40K round of combat was settled in 1 dice roll. The firepower system was later adapted into Battlefleet gothic where it worked a lot better.

I remember Warmaster, the Fantasy version. Never played it because nobody else could think of anything but 40K, but I had a blast painting my tiny Tomb Kings. They may look intimidating to paint properly, but they're surprisingly easy and satisfying.

I definitely recommend getting a game of 4th ed Epic Armageddon in. Netepic Armageddon has been keeping it alive. It's kind of ridiculous how much it blows 40k out of the water with game play.

Everyone here is making those HUGE models and dioramas, but there so much fun when the tiny models come into play.

I've always loved small scale wargames and dioramas ... there is just something about them that's quaint but also forces you to fill in the details with your imagination. I also love the fact that you can have sprawling boards to battle on or go with a small set-piece that fits on a coffee table but still feels epic. Now, with 4K and 8K resin printers, you can get some insanely detailed "epic" scale minis and terrain. With so many great games out there now, unless you live in an estate home, space can become an issue at 28-32mm scales (especially factoring in terrain). Epic scale is just awesome - a whole army practically fits in a moderately sized bits-box. :)

Pretty pumped to see the return of Epic via Legionies Imperialis! 😃

My preference is for the edition after Epic 40k. Epic Armageddon! Still has an active competitive scene in the UK, EU and Australia.

You've confused the editions here; in Epic 40,000 (3rd ed 1997) the detachments were pretty freeform and you could certainly include a single whirlwind with some infantry (re: 2 minute mark). The detachments in this edition were designed to give you the 'feel' of an entire 40k army with the ability to mix and match what you deemed appropriate.

I'd like Battlefleet gothic to be bought back as it could be great for epic narrative play, like in the middle of battle space marines board a ork ship to destroy some weapon batteries, you pause the fleet battle you move over to warhammer 40k 9th edition

2nd edition Epic is where it's at! I remember being excited as hell as a kid and somehow managing to buy the big box.... I was so disappointed my local game shop let me return it. Actually during the shutdown did a bunch of painting and organizing..... Even though I'm in Chicago not like I know anyone who plays : )

It's so cool to see the older sets being put together

Wow, that took me right back to all day campaigns against my brother, my Bad Moonz against his Blood Angels. Literally epic battles, swinging from despair to elation as the battle swung in each other’s favour. Classic game

I spent many, many hours playing games of Epic as a teenager in the 90s, starting with the original epic Space Marine game. I had an Eldar army and my friend had Space Marines and Imperial Guard. I loved the scale of it, it really was epic. I can't believe GW abandoned this format.

Once used second hand epic models to make a magnetised portable 40k in a tin. (The lid was the battlefield using magnetic terrain to attach a printed map) with storage for rules and armies in the tin base. Theory was that you could just put the lid on and the magnets would be strong enough to keep everything in place, so you could play on a train etc. Only ever had about two games using it. Pieces tended to move when the lid was on, and the issues with pieces glomping together if you weren't careful when moving into melee were worse than expected. And then the tin got bent and everything was ruined. Lol.

oh lord, these take mini to a completely different level! And you managed to write legible text on them! I'd be curious to take a look at the older catalog and just older models in general! I'm incredibly new to everything, so seeing where it all started sounds like a lot of fun!

I have the very first Epic scale Great Gargant sold in North America. I went up to the Games Workshop store in BC the day they released and bought one of the two they had received. They said it was the first one sold in NA because the Baltimore stores (the only other store at the time) shipment was delayed and they wouldn't have it for a few more days.

In a very old white dwarf I ones saw how they took the individual minis of the epic range and put them on small bases and made a 6mm normal battle out of them, for when you wanted a warhammer 40,000 game while traveling. So you can use them all on individual bases and just scale everything to the normal rules and then have very big armies in small areas.

Epic 3rd edition was an amazing set of wargaming rules, it stripped away a lot of the extra fluff and focus on letting you fight large battles. Among my friends, the Warhammer players other than me HATED it, while my Wargamer friends LOVED it, praising its speed and need for real tactics.

Getting some real nostalgia fro this vid, although I never played epic I still saw all the minis in white dwarf. You did a really great job with those tiny minis!

3:50 I love that one Space Marine’s expression, it looks like he’s afraid of what he’s shooting at!

This actually was my introduction to Warhammer 40k. I played and created an army of Tyranids (finding the rules was a challenge), using what we knew as the 5th edition Codex. I also got to use the Bio-Titans. Our group had a Space Marine player, one with custom Tau miniatures, a few Eldar players, two Imperial Guard factions. I had to move away, but still keep the Tyranid miniatures. Some of them are custom, but a small set are as close to the original as I could find.

that sponsor just makes me want a tabletop time video on heroscape

iirc I used a converted Epic scale Great Gargant as an Ork dreadnought way back in early 3rd edition 40K. The idea was the Mekboyz got the scale on the blueprints messed up.

The epic miniatures worked well with Battletech. We used the Rhinos for APCs.

This makes me want to make 40K Dioramas...just little ones you can stick on a book shelf...maybe a set of Book ends, like two opposing armies facing off.

I love that as I write this comment, GW is in fact releasing a heresy era epic game. Love that you've called it

The slow zoom in at the end of that sponsored segment was priceless. Oh also the game seems really neat too!

If you could print off the infantry and ships, the scale of the battles would be amazing. I always thought it was a cool idea to combine space combat and ground assault. Calling in orbital bombardment and reinforcements is just 🤘

I would love to see more like this. But i just keep coming back to the idea of building a modern list using epic scale minis and 3d prints for the unavailable newer stuff and playing like that, it makes transporting your army easy and a game could be played on a coffee table or something like that. Anyway, rant over. Thank you for the pleasant video

I've seen people play regular games of 40k with epic scale models and I found that an amazing solution for portability and being able to play games basically anywhere since you don't need a massive surface.

I used to have so much fun with my squat trikes playing Space Marine / Adeptus Tiganicus. Eggshells armed with hammers, and short hammers at that, but terrifying when the survivors opened up with their twin meltas. That squat box was something I don't think you'd see today. It was a little army in a box, designed to genuinely provide you with what you needed, great for a skint teen like me. All I had to add was some artillery and a couple of titans. Happy days.

Great video dude , cool to see these older models but i never realised how small they are

SO COOL! I would absolutely buy this! You could field MASSIVE WARS like in the the Horus Heresy books ones! Like, i could see them do this for every war front in those book! The battle for Mars comes to mind. With its MASSIVE Titan legions and the Hive city large battles of fielded mechanicus units and Space Marines! This could absolutlely be sooo DAMN COOL to do a big lineup of! But if there isn´t more people like me that are interested in these things, then i absolutely get that it doesn´t get made. But i could abaolutely see myself buying and play this if it made a comeback. I love the charm of it too. The mini, mini minies are so damn gimmicky and charming that they almost sell themselves in my opinion.

Great stuff! Would love to see more EPIC content!

Very cool video. I've only been into 40k for about 8 months and into tabletop games for 6 years or so. Seeing models from the history of GW, especially at this insanely tiny scale, is really cool.

I wae around 6/7 and i loved Epic 40,00, me and my older brothers had loads and still got a load, including my metal Warlord Titan. Great video man brought back some good memories.

I picked up an Epic scale Dominatrix for a painting contest and I utterly adored painting it. It has a weird janky charm to it and the detail on the metal mini was pretty impressive

I used to love this game!!! This was the first box set I bought from GW oh so many.....decades ago, and Titan Legions. This video brought back so many nostalgic memories. I think I had every army that was released, Orks, Marines, Chaos, Squats, Tyranids, Eldar, Imperial Guard....I would love for this to come back, but possibly only to build and paint the minis again and have them back in my collection.👍👍👍👍

This was an awesome video! Dunno why, as I never played 40k, but it took me back and made me feel like I was 10 again.

Epic is the game that introduced me to 40k. I'll watch anything epic related

Do a deep dive on the catalogue! Man, so many nostalgic childhood memories of browsing through games companies catalogs like GW, Wargames West, and others. I'd love to see those again!!

The 1989 Space Marine was GREAT. The infantry bases were square and the troops were in sort of X formation like you would find 5 on a D6. Between my friends and I, I think we had fielded all available by 1996 or so. We stuck all sorts of stuff on Rhinos to make Whirlwind tanks, Predators, and Vindicators. So many arguments about rules and if psykers could use their powers from inside tanks. The squad stands also had a hole in them to stick a flag along with some stickers of each of the chapters. So many late nights and missed homework assignments so I could get my armies ready for the next big battle. One of the last huge battles we held included over 1,000 units....Marines, Orks, Squats, Titans, Eldar, Imperial Guard. The Tyranids, Necron, and Tau didn't even exist yet.

Ive been 3d printing scaled down versions of space marine alternative models to make them really small, its so cool to see them in such a tiny scale. Not to mention i save a lot of resin that way too

Here, I have to disagree: 🧐 Obviously, Battlefleet Gothic is the best discontinued GW game. For its time, it is exceptionally well designed, and its mechanics perfectly convey the theme of massive sailing ships in space exchanging devastating broadsides. Also, it pretty much single-handedly defined how spaceships of all the major factions in the 40k universe look and work. But Epic is certainly up there, too. Great video!

the original space marine was the first war game i ever purchased. i was way too young, set it aside a couple years, started playing around 12 and never looked backed. enjoyed it greatly.

Thank you for reminding me of Final Liberation, I played that game what feels like aeons ago and since watching your epic vids was trying to remember it

I used to play this in the late 90's. I had massive Armies of Space Marines, Orks, Eldar and Squats (Dwarves). My second ex and I would spend inordinate amounts of time painting the figures. The game was incredibly fun, but it was a massive time-sink. For a regular game to be played on the table-top you would need to commit 6 to 8 hours. If I recall correctly, that covered about 4-5 turns. I gave all of my Epic stuff to my nephew a few years ago. His Mother just advised me a few months ago that he now works at a Games Workshop store. Go figure!

We played "Space Marine" over and over during the 90's on a 4x2 meters table, and, pun intended, it was EPIC (sometimes 8 or more people around the table). Tons of troops (with the square bases at the time), vehicles, titans, squat trains, giant cannons, each unit had its own reference card, it was a lot of fun. Strangely when Epic got released, we never played it, to have to replace the square bases with the long ones was too tedious, and we didn't have our large table anymore... Memories.

Nice painting. You forget to mention EPIC ARMAGEDDON, the last and best Epic games, even the best GW rules ever made... Its still played and supported today by many people in many countries :)

The detachments used to organise your army in 1997 were very flexible. You were able to field different detachments based on the same army list detachment option. Your tactical squads were selected in pairs of two units (two bases with five tiny dudes each). Each of those squads had the option to have a Rhino. The tank squadrons were usually in sizes of 1 to 3 tanks for squadron. The minis were enough for a lot of legal options. There's nothing "illegal" in a sprue that has 2 Land Raiders, 2 Whirlwinds and 4 Rhinos 🤷‍♂️ Also, two marine infantry sprues was enough for 6 tactical squads (12 bases), 2 assault squads (4 bases), 2 devastator squads (4 bases) plus a captain base, a librarian, plus terminator, scout and bike squads. If you were counting, the first 10 squads I listed are the exact composition of a standard battle company of the space marines. All that was legal in the 97 version...

Fantastic episode! Thank you for all your efforts in putting this together. Space Marine (Epic) is still very dear to my heart even though I sadly sold off by my armies in 1998 ☹️ Blood Bowl and Epic are my all time favorite GW games, without question! If they brought back Epic I would preorder it straight away!

The absolutely best game they ever made. The sheer scale of it, the models, the cute explosion markers, the rules allowing each side a chance to react or seize initiative. Peak TableTop.

As a kid I used to carry a few space marine epic tanks purely as toys, as being single boxy plastic items they were actually pretty durable. I still think back fondly to an old land raider I used to carry about on holiday.

I live for Jen's cameos! 😂

I absolutely LOVED playing Epic (I got the Adeptus Titanicus kit for Xmas 1988) and still have some of it packed away. I would totally buy it in a heart beat if it ever came out again.

My friends and I LOVED Epic 40k. For about 2 to 2 1/2 years, at least once a month, 4 or 5 of us would take over one of the bays in my friend's parent's garage, set up a 4' x 8' table (which we build specifically for this purpose) and have these HUGE, dare I say EPIC, battles that took anywhere from 4 to 8 hours (sometimes more) to play. More than a few times a Saturday game ran over into Sunday. Fun times...

i love retro videos like this hope you make more in the future

I was lucky enough to see a few games of this played back in the 90s, was a really interesting game, fun to watch. I miss old Necromunda........

Epic scale was my first introduction into WH40k along with the first Space Hulk. Fielded a combined Squat/Imperial Guard 1812 overture army (I didn't know that kind of build had a name till long after I stopped playing). Thinking about it being abandoned still makes me sigh and weep just a little.

Mine have been repurposed into Battltech/Mechwarrior troops giving the O'Choda Special Forces their own proprietary medium and heavy battle armors while the Rinos and Land Raiders have become the chassis for SRM and LRM carriers.

I always thought it would be cool to make a “Travel Edition” Kill Team for long car rides or plane trips using Epic modes

I know I’m late to the party, just wanted to say that I’ve got a pretty gnarly cold and this video was perfect to kick back with to calm me down. Little bit of lo-fi tunes and a cool relic from the past. Love it.

I remember my mate getting the boxed set for his birthday. We were all so stoked to help him assemble and paint all the tiny minis. Such a shame that it was discontinued, guess it doesn't make money.

Love this vid! I used to play epic and seeing the printed models make it look like a playable game again. Lovely looking army!

Great video! I played Chaos, Tyranids and a bit of Squats..

Battle Fleet Gothic and Epic 40k both live on in Dropfleet and Dropzone commander. It is heavily inspired by Halo and CnC Aestetic wise. Also these games were both made by former GW employees.

I'd love to try something like this, it looks like a fun project. You've done a wonderful job of these!

My first delve into GW was epic. Got the game box for Christmas one year after mentioning the game in front of my mother. Ended up with all my cousins and family ily playing. I had one of them old tin biscuit containers full of khorne troops, my brother had irks and my cousin had marines. Best years of my life, we used to play whenever we could. Just used the floor. It was great. I hope they relaunch it cause if they do, I'm in lol

I still remember 1 board at my local GW (which is gone now) being dedicated to Epic when I was just getting into Lord of the Rings with the fellowship box. Always thought it looked cool.

Oh jeez those guys are so tiny, I can't imagine the most likely painstaking process of applying the little details with paint

I remember 40k epic I originally started with Space Crusade it was a birthday present from my great grandmother when I was young loved anything 40k since

Beautiful models, and a nice walk down that memory hole. I always wanted to combine Battlefleet Gothic, Epic and Warhammer 40k normal scale in a great campaign game. Sadly, I had no takers in my group, so it stays just dream in my very old noggin. 👍

Just watched this video. Never really played 40k, but i did play Epic! My friends and I hung around GW in Beckenham, England and played lots of Warhammer, Fantasy Roleplay, Armagedon, Man o War and Epic. At home we would have armies each side of the living room that were 4 metres long, taking 1hr per side per turn, as we limted ourselves. I even fielded 70 Lemon Russ tanks in one game. I still have many of painted mini's including a base coat finished imperator titan. Terminators were the hardest to obtain, as i believe you got 3 per pack and needed 5 to use them.

I would also LOVE to see Warmaster, both Fantasy and Historical come back. The rules are fine I need MINIs

1994 -1997 I was in High School. And among us geeks and gamers Epic was all the rage. There were enough of us, that it would have been possible to put together a proper competition with a league and everything. Alas we just wanted to have fun and weren't thinking about things like that. I played orks. I still have that Mega Gargant somewhere too! Great times...

I have two armies, Space Marines and Eldar, fully painted. This is one of the best specialist game GW produced back then. Epic armageddon has the most used rules.

I loved this game. Basically Brigades or Divisions of futuristic armies going at each other. Titans were the bomb, i had a Warlord Titan which wrecked everything before it. The infantry were still formidable. Whole detachments would arc up on one titan and gradually over a few turns its shields would be wittled away to expose the armour of the Titan. It was like ants taking down a giant. From the Titans perspective you either ignored the infantry and tanks and focus on rival titans or you focussed on them. The game really showed where the fighting was the thickest by showing blast markers. Each blast marker looked like a 3D explosion with a larger marker representing 5 tokens. You would get one for each hit you receive to represent suppression, casualties etc etc. For the units to do anything they first had to roll for blast markers and try and equal or greater than the amount of blast markers to be able to give orders. Failing a blast marker check the unit could do nothing but try to reorganise itself and remove blast markers which represented leaders rounding up or getting a grip on the situation. They also had the air war represented with transports, fighter bombers, fighters, orbital strikes and orbital drops. In response you had AAA guns and missiles or detachments just pointing their guns in the air and shooting at the planes. Artillery was represented as well. Another thing I liked was the way you could randomise the creation of the terrain on your map depending on what type of world you were on. You could be on death worlds, alien worlds, ice worlds and lava worlds. This would all affect how the game was played. Just as I turned 18 and started to work and get money they stopped making this game which really annoyed me because I was going to create a combined Imperial Guard Army with Spacemarine and titan legion support.

Individual models in Epic were neat for being recognizably what they were depicting on such a ludicrous scale, but a small army looked insignificant on the table. Visually, the game shined with huge engagements (like each army doubling or tripling the size of the ones included in the 97 box game, since it *is* only a starter box). And the ruleset helped with that hugely. Unlike normal 40k, Epic's rules (post 1997) were suited to large scale engagements that ran smoothly and had lots of tactical decisions (hence why the rules simplified a lot of the units; it was intended for armies to actually have a ton of units). Unfortunately Epic players preferred the more detailed, skirmish sized engagements with their tiny units from 1st edition. But those games made your units look like they were engulfed by the table, rather than filling it up. Alas!

Northern CT, Southern MA has a gaming group of 50 people. The game is amazing and they even made new rules for stuff like necrons

David's painting just keeps getting better and better

I was lucky to find a bag of these models believed to be from the space marine box set which I only have some vehicles from both army’s and about 4-5 metal super mini figures but in total there was a wide rage of miniatures from this time of Warhammer and being someone who wasn’t born until 97 this stuff always interests me, it’s annoying that it got dropped but I’m glad to have found some of these minis and been able to go through the time warp of looking into them and identifying their origin 🙌🏻

I was there when Rogue Trader was introduced into the US and all of us fell head first hardcore into the game. From there we bought anything GW we could get our hands on, and I ended up being the one that brought Adeptus Titanicus to the table, we all loved that game and the rules that followed. I still have Adeptus Titanicus and Space Marine rules on PDF from first to third edition on a disk somewhere lol. Wish I held onto that stuff

Loved the content here! Do more epic 40K! Of course I wanna see Tau, Imperial and Squats!!

Had a squat army. That big land train, huge cannons. Great stuff.

I remember this game when it was called White Dwarf and I love the old magazine art works and the old school cut out buildings for use with the Warhammer & 40k version!!!!

i have 13500 models in epic (bases) in space marines (5 complete chapters), eldar 2 craft worlds, orks, squats, 3 chaos armies, 4 imperial guard armies, tau, tryanids and nekrons. I have not missed playing epic as i still play it for over 30 years now.

I had all ten companies of the Imperial Fists at Epic scale. Forge world also did some Epic scale minis too. I had some Grey Knights which I got from Games Day in 98 I think it was. I sold it all on Ebay decades ago, wish I hadn't. I hope they bring it back one day.

I would love to see n hear more I see lots of amazing models on mito but haven't really looked into them until this video

I would love to see this and Warmaster return. I know there are fan-made rules for Warmaster, and I'm working on High Elves army for it. But to see it picked up officially again would be nice.

Dude am in the UK and this was my first step into gw what a trip

Well researched, well presented and well done! I never got into Epic but I was sorely disappointed when the Eldar Wave Serpent 40k model didn’t follow the Epic one. I’ve seen a few (very few) well done conversions throughout the years. It made the actual 40k Wave Serpent look “cheapened” with the tacked on antenna over a Falcon’s hull.

Nice video! Thank you! Epic brought me back into wargaming again after almost over 25 years. The scale is just so nice and a proper made table is just as much of a pleasure as the miniatures itself. The size makes it also really immersive, as it transports the feeling of beeing generals comanding their troops on the battlefield somehow quite well. F.e. with the "order tokens" in 2nd edition. It is just plain fun an I can only recommend to try a game/ battle with a friend!