Well, from what I gather, with the future for Forge World’s Epic range uncertain, lots of people have been panic-buying the stuff they still can. To the extent that FW are making a lot of extra money from their Epic lines at the moment. It’s possible that this will mean FW will be more inclined to keep some of their range, even if they’re not likely to keep all of it. But I suspect it won’t make that much difference.

I’ve only been joining in in a fairly limited capacity. I’ve ordered a couple of packs of the already-disappeared Basilisks from an independent reseller, which would provide six. Ideally I’d want a company’s worth, though, so for the remaining three I’m ordering a pack of Medusas and a pack of Earthshaker platforms from Forge World. I’m fairly sure that the Earthshaker would fit into the chassis from the Medusa to make a Basilisk model. Since I’ve also got a pair of old Epic 40,000-era metal Basilisks (which will probably wind up converted to carry Commissars), that’ll probably be all the Basilisks I’ll need when I come to do a proper Guard army. Other artillery isn’t affected by the change since Manticores are used in Aeronautica Imperialis and are therefore safe for now, and FW never did any models for Bombards or Deathstrikes anyway.

Unfortunately, that’s all I could afford to panic-buy for the moment (especially having bought a couple of CDs this week as well*). If they’re still in stock, I might try get some super-heavy tanks in a fortnight when my next JSA payment comes through. Beyond that though, I’m not actually too worried. Hydras and Manticores are safe (as it happens, I’m not sure whether I prefer FW’s Manticores or Citadel’s, but since Citadel’s can only be bought along with Armageddon Pattern Basilisks, I’d rather get FW’s). I’d have preferred to use FW Chimeras, but I’d be willing to make do with Citadel’s (and at least I won’t have to worry about the Lasguns snapping off). So the only major loss is the Warhound Titan. And I might well be able to get some of the old-style Warhound models from Ebay or wherever. I don’t like them quite as much as the FW Lucius Pattern models, but they’re a damn sight better than the current metal figures.

Of course, all this assumes that I’ll ever actually get around to putting together an Imperial Guard army. If not, then I’ve just wasted a significant sum of money (relative to my current income, at least) on some models I’ll never actually use for anything. Still, I’d certainly be keen to put together more Epic armies if I can. Especially since it makes introducing new people to the game easier if you can lend them one of a choice of armies. In theory I’d quite like to do Space Marine and Ork armies one day as well. Fortunately, neither requires any Forge World models besides maybe fliers. And perhaps Titans for the Space Marines, but if I can sort those out for the Imperial Guard then I can re-use them for the marines. Some of the FW Ork vehicles are quite nice, it’s true, but I could live without them if required.

But while FW dropping Epic wouldn’t actually impact my own plans too hard at this stage, it would be a major blow for the game as a whole. Especially if it leads to GW following suit. That would completely scupper any plans I had for new armies unless I was planning to scrape them together from second-hand stuff online, which I wasn’t particularly. So I really hope that they do decide to keep at least some of the range.

*Heaven & Hell’s new album is superb (I’d been listening to a downloaded copy since last week). Dream Theater’s is interesting so far, but I’ll have to listen to it a bit more before I can properly pass judgement. The cover of Iron Maiden’s To Tame A Land on the bonus CD is quite cool though.