That's why I loved Epic Armegeddon, They even put in rules on proxying, They were quite simple. You were not allowed to use a model that was legal in your army to represent another model in the army. So if you were running Space Marines, you could use Chaos planes to represent your Thunderbolts, but you couldn't use a predator to represent your razorbacks. They had to also be similar in size.

This lead me to run this Imperial Guard list at the last official GW tournament. As I didn't particularly like the official Lost and the Damned List. Everything in the army is proxied or converted.. So I proxied things like Plague Riders for Rough Riders, Giant Rodent Monsters for Ogryns, Hellblades for Thunderbolts.

No-one had an issue with it and it was one of the most relaxed tournaments I ever have played in.. There was a really funny match I still remember now. I was up against Orks, and we both just went to hell with this and meatgrindered our units (because that is just what they would do in the canon). It was a horrific blood bath, and everything died with an hour and a half left, so we went to the bar and had a real laugh.

One game I've played for a LONG time (and in fact find far superior to Attack Wing in almost every conceivable aspect) is the Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator. I really think it's about the best blend of strategy and detail you could get in a game involving massive starships which have a dozen weapon systems and many subsystems that you must balance.

But it didn't need miniatures for play. It used carboard tokens on a hex map, and while they did sell minis for it, you weren't required to use them.

Here, Here! FASA' STCS is great and still in my collection. Lots of fan based sites also that have converted over the newer stuff for those so inclined.

If it has miniatures, it is a miniatures game. Any game, even those considered miniatures games, can be played without miniatures. They are called hex and counter games, just like FASA' ST, Squad leader, etc...

Epic Armageddon? Throw that away and play 2nd Edition Space Marine/Titan Legions. There is no other...

Armageddon is a far better game. I was brought up on the original Epic, and I loved it at the time, but it had some serious issues, and wasn't amazingly well balanced. I believe Epic Gold fixes a lot of the issues it had, but it still doesn't have the depth of Armegeddon

The real issue was Epic 40k put everyone off Epic (It was far too streamlined and none of the units felt like they had any soul) and Armegeddon really wasn't advertised well enough to get people back into Epic. However It's one of the best game of large scale combined arms I've played, and Space Marines really do feel like Space Marines, I love taking 100 of the best against 3 or 4 thousand orks. You only win if you plan strikes, set up ambushes and take the objectives at the right time, unlike a lot of games where you win with Space Marines by walking at the enemy firing bolters.

To each his own, I dislike Armageddon's suppression rules. That and Warlod titans sprinting 45cm down the sidelines for touchdowns. I would still play Epic Armageddon as second to 2SM/TL, would not touch Firepower edition.

[...]

Why are you collecting X-Wing now? More for the ship minis or the cards and tokens?

For me? I was the figures.

I like gaming. I also enjoy miniature games but I'm a terrible painter. I don't have the skill, patience or desire to invest the time. So when I play these types of games what happens is I end up with counters, (a good game is still a good game), unpainted miniatures or poorly painted ones.

But when I saw the Millennium Falcon (that was the first Star Wars: X-Wing figure I saw) I went, wow. That is really well done for a prepainted figure. I decided to get a Millennium Falcon just to have and then get a couple of figures and try the game. The fact that I can modify the pilots and ships makes it more fun.

So... to recap, for me, it was the figures.

The minis got me started. Not only do they look great, FFG even made the effort to have them all in scale with each other. So far I have 1 of everything except the HWK-290. Wizards did a horrible job with their starship models so I never bought any of it.

I've only played a few games with my brother-in-law. We don't stick to 100 points or even bother to count points. We just put everything on the table, equipped however we want within the limits of the ship/pilot and slug it out. We had a lot of fun doing it that way.