Alex slowly recovered, propping his hands on his knees and taking several deep breaths of the cool morning air.
As oxygen refilled his lungs, he felt his wildly beating heart gradually calm down, and the golden spots before his eyes slowly faded.
He straightened up, wiped the fine beads of sweat from his forehead, and offered Liu Yi a slightly weary smile.
"I'm fine, it's just been too long since I exercised, and suddenly running felt a bit off," Alex waved his hand, his voice still a little breathless. "Thanks for your concern, Lao Liu."
The two chatted briefly by the roadside. Alex politely declined Liu Yi's offer to continue accompanying him, saying he was much better and could go home to rest on his own.
Before parting, Alex suddenly remembered something and turned to call out to Liu Yi, who was about to continue his morning run: "Oh, by the way, if you're free this weekend, want to come to the club for a few games of Warhammer tabletop?" His tone was much more relaxed, and a hint of anticipation flashed in his eyes. "I remember you said last time you wanted to try the new expansion pack."
Liu Yi's eyes lit up at the mention, and he readily agreed while jogging in place.
After they agreed on a specific time, Alex finally turned and slowly walked in the direction of his home.
—
The next day, Alex arrived at the club.
The moment he pushed open the door, he subconsciously looked around but didn't find Liu Yi or any other familiar faces who played 40k.
The club was a bit quiet; only at a long table in a corner were two group members fully engrossed in an EPIC battle.
EPIC is another form of Warhammer tabletop battle, a large-scale miniature wargame focusing on grand campaigns and super-large-scale army confrontations.
Unlike standard Warhammer, which emphasizes Kill Team-level tactics, EPIC focuses on depicting The Galaxy / Milky Way-level epic battles.
Under this rule system, players no longer command individual soldiers but entire legions, armored formations, and even Titan Legions.
The battlefield also expands from an ordinary tabletop to an entire planetary surface, or even across star systems.
Alex approached to observe the game, seeing hundreds of miniature models densely arranged on the table.
These EPIC-specific pieces were only one-sixth the size of standard Warhammer models, but the details remained exquisite.
Here, each tiny piece represented a complete tactical unit—it could be a five-man Astartes Kill Team, a main battle tank, or a knight titans formation.
Taking the current battle as an example, the two group members deployed three full Astartes companies, with over 400 Space Marines condensed into dozens of miniature pieces; the blue side, meanwhile, assembled over 40 various armored vehicles, from Rhino transports to Predator tanks, all accounted for.
Even more astonishing were the Titan Legions towering on both sides of the battlefield—each side deployed over a dozen Titans of different models, from the nimble Warhound-class Titan to the massive War Master-Class, forming a steel wall on the table.
If these were standard-scale Warhammer models, an army of this size would probably occupy the entire club space.
Just setting up these models would require an extra-large sandbox table, not to mention the nightmarish experience of rolling dice and calculating damage for each unit individually in actual combat.
But under EPIC rules, all of this became feasible and enjoyable—through a simplified command system and unified combat resolution, players could easily control such a vast army, focusing their attention on the strategic level rather than tedious data calculations.
"General! My Warhound-class Titan Kill Team is attacking from your left flank to take out your Warmaster!" One of the group members seemed to gain an advantage and shouted excitedly.
Alex smiled knowingly; this was precisely the charm of EPIC—using the most streamlined rules to enact the grandest epic of war.
Then, he greeted the two: "Hi, Sea Hare! Old Meng! Playing?"
"Yeah, I had nothing to do today, so I decided to play a couple of EPIC games. Playing Kill Team every day gets boring, doesn't it?" Old Meng smiled at Alex and casually explained.
Compared to EPIC, which involves hundreds of people or even dozens of Titans fighting each other, playing Kill Team, where an entire game has less than twenty models, can indeed become dull after a while.
However, this also struck Alex, making him involuntarily think, "If only I had such an army in 40k."
After all, this was a 30k legion with full vehicle support, heavy firepower, and coordinated Knight Family and Titan Legion operations. If such a force were thrown into the battle of Rostov, it would be enough to change the course of the war.
Compared to the well-supplied and technologically advanced 30k, although the Imperial military strength in the 40k era has not declined too much, and many things have inferior substitutes, the overall combat level has indeed decreased.
Especially in the area of Astartes large-scale operations, they have regressed too much; many tactics and advanced weapons from the Legion era have basically been lost by the 40k era.
Thinking of this, Alex didn't know where the inspiration came from, or perhaps it was a revelation from the Emperor, but he opened his mouth and invited the two: "By the way, Sea Hare, Old Meng, if you had the chance to go to 40k, would you go?"
"No way! What good person would go to that hellhole to eat dirt?" Old Meng immediately refused, then turned back to pack up his pieces.
Sea Hare, however, showed a thoughtful expression, then looked Alex up and down before casually saying, as if unintentionally: "If there's a chance, it would be good to see it, after all, 40k's medicine is far more advanced than 3K's. If I could bring back some medical technology or equipment, I could even get a Nobel Prize."
"If you could really bring back 40k's medical technology, it wouldn't just be a Nobel Prize; you could name a prize after yourself," Alex joked casually. He knew clearly that if this could actually happen, the country might not be stingy about establishing a prize.
As the two were talking, Old Meng, who had already finished packing his pieces, took out his phone and was scrolling through short videos.
Alex heard a news broadcast from his phone: "Recently, a certain armored synthetic brigade of our army's ground forces conducted live-fire tests on a new type of main battle tank. This model of main battle tank has been refitted with the latest model of laser weapon main gun, with astonishing power…"
"Damn, did the country dig up alien technology from behind the moon? A few years ago, laser weapons were just a concept, and now they're being installed as tank main guns?" Old Meng immediately cursed with a "holy cow" expression.
Alex and Sea Hare exchanged glances and both felt a little curious, leaning over to see what was going on.
However, the video's content wasn't limited to just tanks; besides the 99A refitted with a laser main gun, the army was also testing bipedal mechs.
This made Alex unable to help but sigh that the speed at which the country was digesting the gifts he sent was truly astonishing.
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