So in the few games I have played So far. It seams like the aux have the advantage over marines.

I am trying to find videos or other articles to read. But right now it seems like not a lot of online activity.

Well it's a bad time to launch a game, lots of people are preoccupied with the holidays and don't have time to hobby or play. Couple that with product shortages everywhere and there's a lot of people who are missing parts of their armies or even their rulebooks, etc.

 ashlevrier wrote:
So in the few games I have played So far. It seams like the aux have the advantage over marines.

My experience is the opposite. Same model count on the table and marines are better (better armour, better CAF and the most important, better morale).

Solar Aux dominate the heavy armour and flyer game quite heavily at the moment until the marines get their AA and things like the fire raptor get re released, the marine have speed and infantry dominance for the most part, a full detachment of terminators dropping in with double tap and re rolls is really hard to counter and can easily clear a objective to hold.

Think the first thing that needs to be clarified is if you are only using the as yet released models, or if these are augmented with alternative models to use the rules for models not yet officially released.

Auxilia currently lack a good transport option thats easily available (not counting FW resin here), when they get that a few things change.

Auxilia do certainly have better armour for anti-armour with the Vanquisher cannons on both the Russ and the Malcador, and if you managed to grab a Baneblade before they sold out their armoured formations are nasty

ditto air is good, if you got hold of it

I think currently the available options make the game skewed somewhat, longer term I expect the Auxilia will play a good "stand back and shoot" game and prove good at holding ground and being generally difficult to chew through - they have some good assault options, though lack transports currently.

Marines I think will generally be more mobile, flexible and better at assaulting

and I think the winning deployment will be combining the two not trying to use just one, likely workable with either leading and the other supporting


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 Formosa wrote:
Solar Aux dominate the heavy armour and flyer game quite heavily at the moment until the marines get their AA and things like the fire raptor get re released, the marine have speed and infantry dominance for the most part, a full detachment of terminators dropping in with double tap and re rolls is really hard to counter and can easily clear a objective to hold.

while this is true, Terminators can certainly drop in and shoot troops clear of an objective, this is diluted somewhat if the objective is held from an adjacent building or area terrain as they cannot drop & assault. They can also only target a single enemy unit, an objective held by two causes a problem (unless you can get some ranged fire to support them of course), and to be honest eight stands with a 4+ save likely won't last long against the enemies fire.

Have used, smaller, terminator units already, while they are a threat, and cause enemy units to be held back, which to be honest I think is the greatest use for them (as in the threat in being while off the board can tie up far more than their value in enemy units) when they actually arrive I've found they tend not to last very long.

of course an enemy who doesn't guard the rear will regret it.

I wonder if dropping two units of four would work better than one unit of eight, can still focus on one enemy if needed, but can now stick 8 shots into each of two, and also harder to remove?

SU-152 wrote:

 ashlevrier wrote:
So in the few games I have played So far. It seams like the aux have the advantage over marines.

My experience is the opposite. Same model count on the table and marines are better (better armour, better CAF and the most important, better morale).

When the axe men come they win almost every time in combat.

The 5+ save is almost pointless. The better caf is also pointless because aux have rend. Rend averages out to be a +3 for them.

Morale is the only thing marines got. But it don't matter if your dead.

Every game we have played has been a one sided aux victory.


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leopard wrote:
Think the first thing that needs to be clarified is if you are only using the as yet released models, or if these are augmented with alternative models to use the rules for models not yet officially released.

Auxilia currently lack a good transport option thats easily available (not counting FW resin here), when they get that a few things change.

Auxilia do certainly have better armour for anti-armour with the Vanquisher cannons on both the Russ and the Malcador, and if you managed to grab a Baneblade before they sold out their armoured formations are nasty

ditto air is good, if you got hold of it

I think currently the available options make the game skewed somewhat, longer term I expect the Auxilia will play a good "stand back and shoot" game and prove good at holding ground and being generally difficult to chew through - they have some good assault options, though lack transports currently.

Marines I think will generally be more mobile, flexible and better at assaulting

and I think the winning deployment will be combining the two not trying to use just one, likely workable with either leading and the other supporting


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 Formosa wrote:
Solar Aux dominate the heavy armour and flyer game quite heavily at the moment until the marines get their AA and things like the fire raptor get re released, the marine have speed and infantry dominance for the most part, a full detachment of terminators dropping in with double tap and re rolls is really hard to counter and can easily clear a objective to hold.

while this is true, Terminators can certainly drop in and shoot troops clear of an objective, this is diluted somewhat if the objective is held from an adjacent building or area terrain as they cannot drop & assault. They can also only target a single enemy unit, an objective held by two causes a problem (unless you can get some ranged fire to support them of course), and to be honest eight stands with a 4+ save likely won't last long against the enemies fire.

Have used, smaller, terminator units already, while they are a threat, and cause enemy units to be held back, which to be honest I think is the greatest use for them (as in the threat in being while off the board can tie up far more than their value in enemy units) when they actually arrive I've found they tend not to last very long.

of course an enemy who doesn't guard the rear will regret it.

I wonder if dropping two units of four would work better than one unit of eight, can still focus on one enemy if needed, but can now stick 8 shots into each of two, and also harder to remove?

I have to base my thoughts on what is available at the time. I can't just sit and hold out hope the game gets better.

leopard wrote:


while this is true, Terminators can certainly drop in and shoot troops clear of an objective, this is diluted somewhat if the objective is held from an adjacent building or area terrain as they cannot drop & assault. They can also only target a single enemy unit, an objective held by two causes a problem (unless you can get some ranged fire to support them of course), and to be honest eight stands with a 4+ save likely won't last long against the enemies fire.

Terminator shooting isn't particularly impressive though. And short ranged. They can easily scatter out of range or nearby bullding going poof. Cunning opponent also leaves holes in formation so that 1 stand fits there but rest won't resulting dead stands.

Inside thunderhawk seems best to get to melee which is where termies want to be.

Can scatter out of range, however keep in mind they can still move after landing.. though if too close to a building they become "at one with the structure"

agree they need an assault transport of some sort to get stuck in

tneva82 wrote:

leopard wrote:


while this is true, Terminators can certainly drop in and shoot troops clear of an objective, this is diluted somewhat if the objective is held from an adjacent building or area terrain as they cannot drop & assault. They can also only target a single enemy unit, an objective held by two causes a problem (unless you can get some ranged fire to support them of course), and to be honest eight stands with a 4+ save likely won't last long against the enemies fire.

Terminator shooting isn't particularly impressive though. And short ranged. They can easily scatter out of range or nearby bullding going poof. Cunning opponent also leaves holes in formation so that 1 stand fits there but rest won't resulting dead stands.

Inside thunderhawk seems best to get to melee which is where termies want to be.

yes and no, so I have 2 storm eagles with 2 sets of marines inside 2 storm eagles, ram them up the board, disembark and deep strike the terminators next to this detachment as they do not scatter if they are bought as part of the detachment and are dropping within 6" of it.

sure its a lot of points but I am yet to fail to get an objective with this tactic.

 ashlevrier wrote:


I have to base my thoughts on what is available at the time. I can't just sit and hold out hope the game gets better.

You have to, what we have now is just a teaser.

It took AT 6 months to get the titans needed to properly play the game. LI will take atleast that long if not longer (first expansion book) to get what both factions needs.

So as mentioned above, run both solar and sm, and wait with mono faction play until all units has been released.

 Formosa wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

leopard wrote:


while this is true, Terminators can certainly drop in and shoot troops clear of an objective, this is diluted somewhat if the objective is held from an adjacent building or area terrain as they cannot drop & assault. They can also only target a single enemy unit, an objective held by two causes a problem (unless you can get some ranged fire to support them of course), and to be honest eight stands with a 4+ save likely won't last long against the enemies fire.

Terminator shooting isn't particularly impressive though. And short ranged. They can easily scatter out of range or nearby bullding going poof. Cunning opponent also leaves holes in formation so that 1 stand fits there but rest won't resulting dead stands.

Inside thunderhawk seems best to get to melee which is where termies want to be.

yes and no, so I have 2 storm eagles with 2 sets of marines inside 2 storm eagles, ram them up the board, disembark and deep strike the terminators next to this detachment as they do not scatter if they are bought as part of the detachment and are dropping within 6" of it.

sure its a lot of points but I am yet to fail to get an objective with this tactic.

You still scater from deep strike. I will read the rules again. But from my understanding you will still scater.


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I am certain that the rule says you have to have deep strike and independent. Terminators only have deep strike


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 Formosa wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

leopard wrote:


while this is true, Terminators can certainly drop in and shoot troops clear of an objective, this is diluted somewhat if the objective is held from an adjacent building or area terrain as they cannot drop & assault. They can also only target a single enemy unit, an objective held by two causes a problem (unless you can get some ranged fire to support them of course), and to be honest eight stands with a 4+ save likely won't last long against the enemies fire.

Terminator shooting isn't particularly impressive though. And short ranged. They can easily scatter out of range or nearby bullding going poof. Cunning opponent also leaves holes in formation so that 1 stand fits there but rest won't resulting dead stands.

Inside thunderhawk seems best to get to melee which is where termies want to be.

yes and no, so I have 2 storm eagles with 2 sets of marines inside 2 storm eagles, ram them up the board, disembark and deep strike the terminators next to this detachment as they do not scatter if they are bought as part of the detachment and are dropping within 6" of it.

sure its a lot of points but I am yet to fail to get an objective with this tactic.

There's also the chance to get shot down with over watch. It's pretty easy to do. Aux walkers have a lot of krak missiles and multi Las. Also the rando vanquisher round that downed a marine aircraft. Lol

you are right you need independent, Assault marines have that not terminators, my mistake. back to the drawing board.

 Formosa wrote:
you are right you need independent, Assault marines have that not terminators, my mistake. back to the drawing board.

It's okay. I am going to try large units of marine infantry. As many as I can bring and just swarm the objectives

I have list in mind with about 200 plus 60 rhinos to haul them.

Won't get for ages enough infantry to run it though. Beside such skew not being #1 to collect gw can't keep marine infantry available for long.

There are certainly balance issues unit to unit. Why do malcadors if russes do it better point for point? 10 russes with vanquishers/las is 10pts cheaper than 6 malcadors.

The marine planes definitely need an faq/errata for their heavy bolters to give them light at like their solar aux counterparts.

Balance wise the only thing seemingly contributing to combined arms is just the random level of access players seemingly have to build their armies with. But for those who have had no problem purchasing a sizeable amount of models or printing a sizeable amount of models to draw from to list build.
A good example too of some players getting ahead of things is in the AA department with player printing tarantulas/AA.

A big factor that seems to contribute to most units not being able to take hits too well is the games lack of a core cover save mechanic for units other than knights and titans which get a -1 or -2 to be hit depending on how much cover/how obscured they are to the attacker (25%, 50%+).

Something that may have to be considered as well is the 6 always hitting stuff unlike titanicus which could at times see integers pushed to like 7 ect. I've noticed with flyers it just seems too easy to dump fire into them and hope for 6's.



I understand marine player's frustrations with ogryns and veletari, I think this is more an issue of how clunky combat is and how critical they've made rules like rend.

 Crablezworth wrote:



I understand marine player's frustrations with ogryns and veletari, I think this is more an issue of how clunky combat is and how critical they've made rules like rend.

Yet Marine Missile Launchers and Dreadnoughts are way more broken than Veletari and Ogryns. It seems they forget models cost points.

 Crablezworth wrote:


I understand marine player's frustrations with ogryns and veletari, I think this is more an issue of how clunky combat is and how critical they've made rules like rend.

I find it really interesting they've given the rend/extra D6 rule, as historically that was a really powerful melee advantage. If you think in SM2, AFAIK only one unit had that (Striking Scorpions) and that unit was so powerful in melee that it got nerfed for the community (NetEpic) version of the game! And it was how big units of less powerful infantry could mob and take down close combat specialists.
As most combats are that two dice roll-off, I think you're going to get a lot of people taking World Eater assault troops, again similarly that dice re-roll is an incredibly useful trait and will mean they win most combats.

 Crablezworth wrote:


Something that may have to be considered as well is the 6 always hitting stuff unlike titanicus which could at times see integers pushed to like 7 ect. I've noticed with flyers it just seems too easy to dump fire into them and hope for 6's.

Titanicus has natural sixes always hitting, you just can't do voluntary penalties like aiming if they'd go past 6+.

That's his point. Too easy to just fish on 6's.

But seeing how strong airplanes are already not sure is buffing them right idea. Having them even harder to kill is not what i would want to see

tneva82 wrote:
That's his point. Too easy to just fish on 6's.

But seeing how strong airplanes are already not sure is buffing them right idea. Having them even harder to kill is not what i would want to see

Point being made was that LI would let you fish and AT wouldn't, which is incorrect. Both games have sixes always hitting, AT just has additional bits you cannot opt for if the penalties would take you to that point.

A working example would be something like 40k 8th, where you would indeed be unable to hit things if you reached a 7+ to hit from modifiers.

 Sherrypie wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
That's his point. Too easy to just fish on 6's.

But seeing how strong airplanes are already not sure is buffing them right idea. Having them even harder to kill is not what i would want to see

Point being made was that LI would let you fish and AT wouldn't, which is incorrect. Both games have sixes always hitting, AT just has additional bits you cannot opt for if the penalties would take you to that point.

A working example would be something like 40k 8th, where you would indeed be unable to hit things if you reached a 7+ to hit from modifiers.

Yes and unlike AT units other than knights and titans in LI don't naturally benefit from -1 or -2 from 25%/50%+ obscured without being entirely within area terrain or in base contact with obstacles.




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tneva82 wrote:
That's his point. Too easy to just fish on 6's.

But seeing how strong airplanes are already not sure is buffing them right idea. Having them even harder to kill is not what i would want to see

Well the issue is because they're not forced to move a minimum on to the board they can be used very cynically on account of the 30 inch range on their missiles for example combined with pre measuring.

This also makes them incredibly disgusting if fielded in medium to large units. They also largely circumvent terrain rules so it can be frustrating. Added complication to that is planes with hover mode can enter in hover mode limiting their target options but also granting them plenty of safety via los/cover.


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 Pacific wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:


I understand marine player's frustrations with ogryns and veletari, I think this is more an issue of how clunky combat is and how critical they've made rules like rend.

I find it really interesting they've given the rend/extra D6 rule, as historically that was a really powerful melee advantage. If you think in SM2, AFAIK only one unit had that (Striking Scorpions) and that unit was so powerful in melee that it got nerfed for the community (NetEpic) version of the game! And it was how big units of less powerful infantry could mob and take down close combat specialists.
As most combats are that two dice roll-off, I think you're going to get a lot of people taking World Eater assault troops, again similarly that dice re-roll is an incredibly useful trait and will mean they win most combats.

Yeah and my only concern with people taking any legion is that they're not doing a super friends list where every formation is a different legion to gain that specific advantage. Got no prob playing against world eaters, but if they've got friends its a bit much.

 Sherrypie wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
That's his point. Too easy to just fish on 6's.

But seeing how strong airplanes are already not sure is buffing them right idea. Having them even harder to kill is not what i would want to see

Point being made was that LI would let you fish and AT wouldn't, which is incorrect. Both games have sixes always hitting, AT just has additional bits you cannot opt for if the penalties would take you to that point.

A working example would be something like 40k 8th, where you would indeed be unable to hit things if you reached a 7+ to hit from modifiers.

And unhittable is not good. You can't have unhittable things in game and expect game still to work.

So 6's hit is good.


The planes are silly good already so unkillable would be bad and unkillable units are always source of npe.

OR you'd need to invest some resources into AA. Coming from other editions of Epic, I personaly prefer that option... but in my preferred version of Epic, flyers don't stay on the table and die (or need to abort mission) pretty easily to the right counters.

wonder if the way it used to work would help here, its not "a natural six always hits!" but provides a way to have a 7, 8 or 9 through a six then re-roll for a 4+, 5+ or a second 6

Ah, I forgot to say: additionally, other editions flyers' had to spend a turn rearming/refuelling after completing each mission, so at most they'd be doing stuff only half the battle.

 Albertorius wrote:
Ah, I forgot to say: additionally, other editions flyers' had to spend a turn rearming/refuelling after completing each mission, so at most they'd be doing stuff only half the battle.

though IIRC previous editions didn't have a set number of turns, but played until some win condition was met? (IIRC usually breaking the enemy army)

and in that case the idea of "fly your attack run, then spend a turn turning round" sort of made sense, the idea they sod off to refuel and reload makes less sense but its just a reason for it to be every other turn

thinking here the trick with aircraft and how they go down is to simply not bring them on initially, except interceptors that fight at extreme range and try to stay out of enemy range - leave them off until the enemy has been thinned out a bit and its a bit safer?

Well, take into account that the "engagement scale" was different... for example, a single Epic Firefight (when two detachments met at 15cm or less, which was bolter range, and duked it out) was equal to a full 40k 4-turns battle, and the idea was that every turn was a longer amount of time than just a couple minutes, so there was a certain amount of abstraction.

everything is an abstraction, its more find a mechanic that works, then "justify" it, in whatever way works

leopard wrote:
everything is an abstraction, its more find a mechanic that works, then "justify" it, in whatever way works

There is also that, of course.

But it justified having those cwute cardboard airfields out of the board to keep your flyers on ^^

 Albertorius wrote:

leopard wrote:
everything is an abstraction, its more find a mechanic that works, then "justify" it, in whatever way works

There is also that, of course.

But it justified having those cwute cardboard airfields out of the board to keep your flyers on ^^

Oh so very much yes

SU-152 wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:



I understand marine player's frustrations with ogryns and veletari, I think this is more an issue of how clunky combat is and how critical they've made rules like rend.

Yet Marine Missile Launchers and Dreadnoughts are way more broken than Veletari and Ogryns. It seems they forget models cost points.

Ogryns will wipe a unit of dreads in close combat. trust me i know from experence. dreads only hope is to over watch with hand bolters and kill the Ogryns before they get there. the marine missile launchers are the same as the aux walker. but the aux walker is better and can spam it. good bye airplane.


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tneva82 wrote:
That's his point. Too easy to just fish on 6's.

But seeing how strong airplanes are already not sure is buffing them right idea. Having them even harder to kill is not what i would want to see

we have stopped taking planes because its to easy to shoot them down. aux and marine players alike.

 ashlevrier wrote:
we have stopped taking planes because its to easy to shoot them down. aux and marine players alike.

Yeah my problem is the volume of fire of some units activations sorta negates the need for 6's, you're likely to get some if you're throwing like 12 shots.

tneva82 wrote:

 Sherrypie wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
That's his point. Too easy to just fish on 6's.

But seeing how strong airplanes are already not sure is buffing them right idea. Having them even harder to kill is not what i would want to see

Point being made was that LI would let you fish and AT wouldn't, which is incorrect. Both games have sixes always hitting, AT just has additional bits you cannot opt for if the penalties would take you to that point.

A working example would be something like 40k 8th, where you would indeed be unable to hit things if you reached a 7+ to hit from modifiers.

And unhittable is not good. You can't have unhittable things in game and expect game still to work.

So 6's hit is good.


The planes are silly good already so unkillable would be bad and unkillable units are always source of npe.

I do not agree. 6s always hit is lazy design, and makes lots of weapons, some covers, and negative modifiers useless and worthless.

The best approach is (again) Epic Armageddon: 7+, 8+, 9+ (that's rolling a 6 and then rolling again to get 4+, 5+, 6+).


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 ashlevrier wrote:

SU-152 wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:



I understand marine player's frustrations with ogryns and veletari, I think this is more an issue of how clunky combat is and how critical they've made rules like rend.

Yet Marine Missile Launchers and Dreadnoughts are way more broken than Veletari and Ogryns. It seems they forget models cost points.

Ogryns will wipe a unit of dreads in close combat. trust me i know from experence. dreads only hope is to over watch with hand bolters and kill the Ogryns before they get there. the marine missile launchers are the same as the aux walker. but the aux walker is better and can spam it. good bye airplane.


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tneva82 wrote:
That's his point. Too easy to just fish on 6's.

But seeing how strong airplanes are already not sure is buffing them right idea. Having them even harder to kill is not what i would want to see

we have stopped taking planes because its to easy to shoot them down. aux and marine players alike.

Ogryns won't get to HtH, they will die in droves with the 6+ save (or maybe 1 or 2 stands reach base contact?). They will also die to the Dreads Light weapons (PD on top).

Again, you are missing the Armoured trait on Dreads, which makes them extremely survivable against point defense weapons.

Again, the aux walker is worse than SM missile launchers (it cost more points, which you insist in ignoring), and do not benefit from structure cover or the Armoured trait. Oh and it is actually worse vs planes than the Dread (accurate las-cannon), which you also forgot to mention.

the Heavy sentinal is not bad, that multi laser and missile launchers with a 4+ save is fairly solid, being able to move up before the game starts is also good.

SU-152 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Sherrypie wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
That's his point. Too easy to just fish on 6's.

But seeing how strong airplanes are already not sure is buffing them right idea. Having them even harder to kill is not what i would want to see

Point being made was that LI would let you fish and AT wouldn't, which is incorrect. Both games have sixes always hitting, AT just has additional bits you cannot opt for if the penalties would take you to that point.

A working example would be something like 40k 8th, where you would indeed be unable to hit things if you reached a 7+ to hit from modifiers.

And unhittable is not good. You can't have unhittable things in game and expect game still to work.

So 6's hit is good.


The planes are silly good already so unkillable would be bad and unkillable units are always source of npe.

I do not agree. 6s always hit is lazy design, and makes lots of weapons, some covers, and negative modifiers useless and worthless.

The best approach is (again) Epic Armageddon: 7+, 8+, 9+ (that's rolling a 6 and then rolling again to get 4+, 5+, 6+).


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 ashlevrier wrote:

SU-152 wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:



I understand marine player's frustrations with ogryns and veletari, I think this is more an issue of how clunky combat is and how critical they've made rules like rend.

Yet Marine Missile Launchers and Dreadnoughts are way more broken than Veletari and Ogryns. It seems they forget models cost points.

Ogryns will wipe a unit of dreads in close combat. trust me i know from experence. dreads only hope is to over watch with hand bolters and kill the Ogryns before they get there. the marine missile launchers are the same as the aux walker. but the aux walker is better and can spam it. good bye airplane.


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tneva82 wrote:
That's his point. Too easy to just fish on 6's.

But seeing how strong airplanes are already not sure is buffing them right idea. Having them even harder to kill is not what i would want to see

we have stopped taking planes because its to easy to shoot them down. aux and marine players alike.

Ogryns won't get to HtH, they will die in droves with the 6+ save (or maybe 1 or 2 stands reach base contact?). They will also die to the Dreads Light weapons (PD on top).

Again, you are missing the Armoured trait on Dreads, which makes them extremely survivable against point defense weapons.

Again, the aux walker is worse than SM missile launchers (it cost more points, which you insist in ignoring), and do not benefit from structure cover or the Armoured trait. Oh and it is actually worse vs planes than the Dread (accurate las-cannon), which you also forgot to mention.

your ignoring my point from experence. armoured is good. but then vanquisher pops dread. the aux walkers are better at shooting down aircraft because more dakka. they also have a free move at start of game. frag missile to clear out buildings. half my dreads have las. the other half has assult cannon. all aux walkers have the same load out.


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 Formosa wrote:
the Heavy sentinal is not bad, that multi laser and missile launchers with a 4+ save is fairly solid, being able to move up before the game starts is also good.

yep. they are a good option for the aux. lots of dakka for the points.


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https://youtu.be/xRsivs31swc?si=DBESxff2NCZPeHeZ

had another game, 1,500 again, this time rolling in the secondary objectives - which in the end didn't matter much.

one slight change we have made is that objectives within 3" of a building are moved, or the building is moved, such that infantry within a building cannot control it - may revert this when games get larger but at present removal of such is awkward.

defeat for my XIV & Auxilia, moving forward to grab ground and hold it didn't work this time, such is dice.

Aircraft did essentially nothing, I had a pair of Xiphon, that killed a Vanquisher and plinked a wound on a Malcador, opponent had one, that did nothing - but both flights being kept back to avoid massed overwatch - to be honest points would have been better used elsewhere

Think I need to change how my SA infantry are organised, I currently have two formations, which is fine, one for each side of the board with a commander in each, good on one side, naff on the other.

so far they get broken before they get to charge, managed one charge this time which was bounced by overwatch with a failed morale check.

think whats needed is an assault detachment and a stand off detachment such that its hard to break the formation before the assault one gets where it needs to be. likely needs (another) box or two so the stand off lot can basically be cheaper bodies and the Ogyrn can be in the lead.

may be looking for some suitable STL files as I need more plain bodies but don't really need a lot of the rest (though another box for more axe murdering lunatics would be good)

also seriously need to adjust the marine infantry, the rocket launcher is just too good not to be bringing more of, "ignores cover" as expected is worth its weight in gold - and is also why the Auxilia didn't live long enough

Marine infantry the last units to die though, and put out some damage.

still close at the end, scenario with three central objectives, neither of which got taken until the third turn such was the slaughter around them

leopard wrote:
had another game, 1,500 again, this time rolling in the secondary objectives - which in the end didn't matter much.

one slight change we have made is that objectives within 3" of a building are moved, or the building is moved, such that infantry within a building cannot control it - may revert this when games get larger but at present removal of such is awkward.

defeat for my XIV & Auxilia, moving forward to grab ground and hold it didn't work this time, such is dice.

Aircraft did essentially nothing, I had a pair of Xiphon, that killed a Vanquisher and plinked a wound on a Malcador, opponent had one, that did nothing - but both flights being kept back to avoid massed overwatch - to be honest points would have been better used elsewhere

Think I need to change how my SA infantry are organised, I currently have two formations, which is fine, one for each side of the board with a commander in each, good on one side, naff on the other.

so far they get broken before they get to charge, managed one charge this time which was bounced by overwatch with a failed morale check.

think whats needed is an assault detachment and a stand off detachment such that its hard to break the formation before the assault one gets where it needs to be. likely needs (another) box or two so the stand off lot can basically be cheaper bodies and the Ogyrn can be in the lead.

may be looking for some suitable STL files as I need more plain bodies but don't really need a lot of the rest (though another box for more axe murdering lunatics would be good)

also seriously need to adjust the marine infantry, the rocket launcher is just too good not to be bringing more of, "ignores cover" as expected is worth its weight in gold - and is also why the Auxilia didn't live long enough

Marine infantry the last units to die though, and put out some damage.

still close at the end, scenario with three central objectives, neither of which got taken until the third turn such was the slaughter around them

If you search milky way on yeggi I think there's some decent bodies.


Planes I'm finding a bit frustrating, we both ran a couple yesterday and it still feels like they're too easy to destroy. I really don't want the only way for them to feel viable being a unit of like 3-4, because the sheer firepower gets insane.

Marine missile launchers are great, wish solar aux had something with a decent range for infantry that could go in units, even if it was just like a multi laser or something. I need some rapiers.

yes aircraft being fragile is tempered by how they can hit quite hard, they need care, I've swapped to the sort of tactics I use with Flames mid war Panzers, think of them as glass hammers and position to limit return fire - making them your last movement activations if possible.

you limit potential targets but also limit the chance you don't get to fire at all - avoiding stuff on First Fire seems to be a good idea too

cheers for the hint, will go have a look have seen various guardsmen type models, hoping to get stuff I can use as plain bodies that don't look too out of place (even if they end up in dedicated units)

and yes the lack of organic heavy weapons for the SA is a problem

I have Tarantula, I want a decent Rapier solution, push comes I can model the carrier, the crewman may take a bit more but could just go old school, a tracked carrier and a pair of crew standing near it

I've got about 8 tarantula painted, have you ran yours yet?

not yet, not finished painting, have 4 of each flavour in base & wash

have held off as agreed with regular opponent not to use stuff he doesn't have access to (will be printing him some in the new year)

they look interesting tactically

deploy too far forward and they will be easily killed, too far back and they are less useful - I think they are more a bit of a speed bump than serious threat

reasonable range on their guns, accuracy nothing special on the las-cannon one and not too hard to shove something cheaper they will lock on to in place of something heavier - their saving grace being when they fire

I'm hoping they slow down an enemy who feels obliged to kill them before coming closer, while distracting some fire from my infantry

the air defence one is likewise interesting, this has to be thrown forwards or enemy aircraft will just stay out of range while picking off your units that advance beyond them (this also makes mixed batteries harder)

I think for the points though I'm very tempted to run a few units, and make them large enough they are awkward to kill, or small enough they are a waste of decent firepower

leopard wrote:
not yet, not finished painting, have 4 of each flavour in base & wash

have held off as agreed with regular opponent not to use stuff he doesn't have access to (will be printing him some in the new year)

they look interesting tactically

deploy too far forward and they will be easily killed, too far back and they are less useful - I think they are more a bit of a speed bump than serious threat

reasonable range on their guns, accuracy nothing special on the las-cannon one and not too hard to shove something cheaper they will lock on to in place of something heavier - their saving grace being when they fire

I'm hoping they slow down an enemy who feels obliged to kill them before coming closer, while distracting some fire from my infantry

the air defence one is likewise interesting, this has to be thrown forwards or enemy aircraft will just stay out of range while picking off your units that advance beyond them (this also makes mixed batteries harder)

I think for the points though I'm very tempted to run a few units, and make them large enough they are awkward to kill, or small enough they are a waste of decent firepower

Ya been holding off for same reason, wanted opponent to have time to paint theirs. The air defense seem great, but almost not needed yet as neither of us have a sizeable airforce just yet. I am excited about the las tarantulas, very cheap and lots of decent ranged shooting. Hoping it pairs well with smaller detachments holding objectives in the backfield.

leopard wrote:
had another game, 1,500 again, this time rolling in the secondary objectives - which in the end didn't matter much.

one slight change we have made is that objectives within 3" of a building are moved, or the building is moved, such that infantry within a building cannot control it - may revert this when games get larger but at present removal of such is awkward.

defeat for my XIV & Auxilia, moving forward to grab ground and hold it didn't work this time, such is dice.

Aircraft did essentially nothing, I had a pair of Xiphon, that killed a Vanquisher and plinked a wound on a Malcador, opponent had one, that did nothing - but both flights being kept back to avoid massed overwatch - to be honest points would have been better used elsewhere

Think I need to change how my SA infantry are organised, I currently have two formations, which is fine, one for each side of the board with a commander in each, good on one side, naff on the other.

so far they get broken before they get to charge, managed one charge this time which was bounced by overwatch with a failed morale check.

think whats needed is an assault detachment and a stand off detachment such that its hard to break the formation before the assault one gets where it needs to be. likely needs (another) box or two so the stand off lot can basically be cheaper bodies and the Ogyrn can be in the lead.

may be looking for some suitable STL files as I need more plain bodies but don't really need a lot of the rest (though another box for more axe murdering lunatics would be good)

also seriously need to adjust the marine infantry, the rocket launcher is just too good not to be bringing more of, "ignores cover" as expected is worth its weight in gold - and is also why the Auxilia didn't live long enough

Marine infantry the last units to die though, and put out some damage.

still close at the end, scenario with three central objectives, neither of which got taken until the third turn such was the slaughter around them

i played two 1650 games. i was 3rd legion the other side in both games was Aux. i lost the first and got a draw on the second.

i had 5 aircraft in my list. 3 fighters and 2 storms. the Xiphons in a group of 3 killed some tanks. the 2 storms didnt do so much. second game i used them as assult transports for the assult marines. they did good that time.

i ran two units of 12 stands of infrantry. one unit had rhinos the other didnt. but i did have just 4 rando rhinos for taking objectives and activations.

marine tanks are good for one thing i think. overwatch when the axe men come. first game i got swarmed with mass units of ogers and axe men.

second game had more tanks and less axe men and ogers.

the draw game was close. marines still have a 0 win rate in the local group. marine tanks just die unless its the heavy tank.

i may make smaller units instead of large infantry swarms. also rhinos are amazing at overwatch when the axe men come.

kind of a moment of pride is when the baneblade opened up on the rhinos and not the infantry.

leopard wrote:


Think I need to change how my SA infantry are organised, I currently have two formations, which is fine, one for each side of the board with a commander in each, good on one side, naff on the other.

so far they get broken before they get to charge, managed one charge this time which was bounced by overwatch with a failed morale check.

think whats needed is an assault detachment and a stand off detachment such that its hard to break the formation before the assault one gets where it needs to be. likely needs (another) box or two so the stand off lot can basically be cheaper bodies and the Ogyrn can be in the lead.

I think you should drop one infantry formation and boost it for durability. It is the tanks that are the work horses in solar, not the infantry. How big are your core units when you use two sub cohort formations??

In my 1500p force i am planning on using only 1 sub-cohort with 3 core units of 12 bases (8 las + 4 flame), 8 ogryns, 8 sentinels and 8 storms. That puts me at strenght 51, bp 26. Then i allso plan to add some russes with the defualt cannon instead of air support. bp of 26 using just the content of one infantry box may not sound too strong, but as a solar you are ment to sit back with the infantry until the armor element has done the heavy lifting.

Allso solar dont have ground transport models, dont have light armor and dont have artillery, when we get that survivability of the infantry should go up a little.

core units currently run eight strong, aware thats on the small side

the four lasrifle, a pair with flamers and a pair of Ogyrn

built that way as I had one box to start with, then gained a second, thinking of doubling them up to be honest.

while at 8 strong they die the interesting bit is more that they break before they die, to the point that I do double them up its going to be asymetric with one unit being basically just the las rifles who sit back - the job being to hold ground, survive and stop the formation breaking, while the other gets boosted with six Ogryn and six flamers

they have a pretty simple role currently, advance on the flanks, letting marines handle the centre, and distract enemy fire from the marines - they need to look scary while not being too many points.

not run their armour as yet, need to jiggle the list about a bit for a 2k game thats coming up


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Follow up: game coming up, someone I've not played yet, apparently the local club have a few who have fiddled with the points system and force design slightly

you have a point value, main and allies as usual, but cannot buy knights or titans with it, then there is either an extra total which can only be used for knights & titans or a set number of knights & titans get added.

the thinking is the point values are so out of whack as to neutralise them and remove the ability to forgo the titan and bring a lot of extra ants to swarm the board with - while still permitting the bigger toys to be used.

I actually think, not having tried it yet, this is perhaps not a bad way to go

If you look at the units and what they actually do, a tercio isn't much except a vehicle for more ogryn and veltaris, or a screen for valuable shooting units. They have very basic shooting and no melee flexibility unlike tacticals. And if the tercio isnt a great unit, the current selection of units means the sub cohort isn't either.

Until the next expansion when they hopefully release a light armour, more transports and artillery unit, the pioneer company is the best bet. It still gives you all the good infantry options, without the tercio tax, with access to bastion, with two slots for air, and giving all your infantry infiltrate (compensating for the lack of transports).

Ogryns and veltaris seem to be a bit of an issue for a lot of people. They have a lot of ease of use with the 15" march and able to melt through every terrain feature people commonly put on the table (obstructing and structures both allow full infantry move), while denying los to them. New people tend to not not read rend until it's time to melee and assume dreads or whatever can take them. Once more people get access to rapiers, I have a feeling the ogryns and veltaris will be easier to interact with; 120 for 18 30" 4+ -1barrage shots does wonders at picking off infantry.

have got twelve rapiers sitting waiting primer arriving this week currently, six thudd gun and six laser destroyer - and I agree the lasrifle bodies are more or less a tax (though useful for sitting on an objective once its taken as in cover they still take effort to shift)

will be moving to a Pioneer formation for the Auxilia shortly, basically avoiding the need for transports as they can largely deploy where they will need to be and can then stay there

likewise Marines likely going for a Garrison formation for infantry so similar reasons. in both cases getting the assault bodies somewhere useful

and with barrages more likely transports likely become even more important to shelter from them

okay so played a 1500 point game today. almost a mirror match against a marine player. my take away from this game. seams like its very easy to get a large lead on VPs if you can nab a objective. i just needed his home objective for one turn to get a win. at 1500 it still fells like a knife edge. i had his home objective for two turns. that would have been 18 VPs alone.

he had two aircraft i had one. i shot down one of his with a single tank. go 6s. the other got shot down by my plane. but mine was also shot down. aircraft are just to expensive to get hit with a lucky 6.

deap striking terminators are what gave me the win. landed on the home objective and just pulled a dwarf. come and take it.

i was more aggressive so i had more of the board early.

so my first marine win. but seeing as how it was a marine vs marine fight. its kind of a wash.

preads did okay this time. i kept them at 22 inches and just shot at other tanks. sics did meh. one got a shoot down a plane. my kratos all failed me. but that was more to do with rolls not the tanks them selves.

MVPs again is the humble Rhino. little guys all over the map taking pot shots at infantry. or in the case of two of them hunting down tanks with multi meltas. they did get a tank kill this time

 ashlevrier wrote:
okay so played a 1500 point game today. almost a mirror match against a marine player. my take away from this game. seams like its very easy to get a large lead on VPs if you can nab a objective. i just needed his home objective for one turn to get a win. at 1500 it still fells like a knife edge. i had his home objective for two turns. that would have been 18 VPs alone.

he had two aircraft i had one. i shot down one of his with a single tank. go 6s. the other got shot down by my plane. but mine was also shot down. aircraft are just to expensive to get hit with a lucky 6.

deap striking terminators are what gave me the win. landed on the home objective and just pulled a dwarf. come and take it.

i was more aggressive so i had more of the board early.

so my first marine win. but seeing as how it was a marine vs marine fight. its kind of a wash.

preads did okay this time. i kept them at 22 inches and just shot at other tanks. sics did meh. one got a shoot down a plane. my kratos all failed me. but that was more to do with rolls not the tanks them selves.

MVPs again is the humble Rhino. little guys all over the map taking pot shots at infantry. or in the case of two of them hunting down tanks with multi meltas. they did get a tank kill this time

Yeah planes it just feels like the message is you must take like 3-4 to a unit and go full ham, it really sucks how expensive they are when you just want a one or two on their own. As you said the lucky 6's are too easy to come by. I think there are two possible solutions, one is allow jink like a feel no pain save, or weapons without skyfire can only shoot planes at half range, it'd cut way down on the bs overwatches.

The progressive scoring is not something I'm a particular fan of, have you considered trying a scenario but doing end game scoring for objectives? Could still do the secondary thing but it helps cut down on one side getting a big lead early on.

Deep striking terminators are very good, being able to reliably choose when they want to come in is very strong. I've yet to see them miss hap but I also don't really like that as a balance, would much rather they get delayed or placed by opponent that just wiped out.

Nice to hear about rhnos with meltas hunting down tanks, that sounds awesome

Has anyone tried running an Aerial Assault detachment yet? Is it viable?

I'm building one - 3 Thawks, 2 Fire Raptors, 3 Xiphons, 4 Storm Eagles (so far), but haven't played yet.

 ingtaer wrote:
Has anyone tried running an Aerial Assault detachment yet? Is it viable?

It's pretty much the most specialised, most money/resource intensive to print, so id imagine not many people have ran a full version of it.

Hard to imagine it's not viable though. You can dump full units of assault marines and terminators (and min units of dreads) out of hawks, which can also use their hellstrikes and turbo lasers to do the hangback and snipe out of Overwatch.

Needs proper play though. When you have so much choice for movement and what to target you can make more mistakes.

I think anyone who played AI likely has a leg up in terms of being able to run one. It's more difficult to gage how marine air force will do because of 2 factors, the first being they need, imo, a fix to their heavy bolters to bring them in line with solar aux, not being able to shoot down other flyers seems sorta silly. Second, most of the marine flyers have hover, this is actually a massive deal because they can switch from being in los to the whole world and vice versa, to actually being where they are physically and drawing los from their accordingly. So the concern in general with flyers seems to be flying on and maximizing long range weapons like 25-30 inch ranged missiles, it's sortof a middling threat with only a plane or two but if a huge portion of the opponents army are flyers it could be quite scary without aa.


My problem with flyers currently is they really do feel like paper for the most part. We've both only ran a few per game, but that's sorta the problem, detachments of one aren't exactly resilient and it's shame given their elevated point costs, often approaching the cost of a baneblade. That said, until the local game shifts to being more flyer heavy on both sides, I almost want to make jink an additional save that can always be taken. I'd probably regret that change once we're both rocking larger detachments of planes but for now it really sucks that garbage ground fire en masse actually stands a pretty good chance of shooting down a plane, which really isn't a fair model of how AA works even now, there is quality aspect seeking/guided missiles that are very expensive that excel at shooting down air craft, and then there are aa units firing hard shells/bullets and they waste a tonne of ammo and often can't hit fixed wing aircraft unless they're very low flying, they're much more of a threat to choppers. In real life you had whole iraqi villages and cities dumping ak fire into apache's doing very little. If modelled like LI every 10th ak would be downing a boron armoured combat chopper worth god knows how much, I don't doubt an autocannon could down an aircraft no problem, but it has to hit first, same with the insanity of tanks firing their turrets at planes, they could maybe hit a chopper if it was just hovering but a fixed wing air craft with a tank cannon? Seems next to impossible.

I could also see only allowing weapons without skyfire to shoot planes within half range or something. It's also fair to say that, it's not like AA is particularly expensive for marines or solar aux, its just that currently only people who already have appropriate models or printers have AA. The dedicated aa missiles on the acastus are very very good.

I think the reality for now without any alteration is flyers are sorta a bit cynical in that one is sorta forced to either be a little pedantic on the pre measuring side of things to get an idea of potential threat radius of enemy fire/overwatch fire. What messed me up first time running flyers was thinking for some reason HAD to move the full movement stat like with flyers in 30/40k, but it seems like with that not being the case the name of the game is come in short and dump long range fire to neutralize any threats first, or do some while coming in in hover mode to also now limit possible incoming fire because los matters now.

to be fair though, its not exactly hard to kill a baneblade either

when three predators stick out six AP -1 shots, three re-rolling to hit and a 4+ or a 6 v fliers they are reasonably likely to get enough to splat a baneblade or a flier. something like a sicaran detachment with higher rate of fire and 'tracking'

have been bringing one or two Xiphon in here, towards the flanks, and aiming to be in range (just) of the desired target, which itself is a more forwards located enemy armoured unit to minimise return fire

sometimes soaking overwatch from say a quartet of Kratos for a turn can be worth their loss

leopard wrote:
to be fair though, its not exactly hard to kill a baneblade either

when three predators stick out six AP -1 shots, three re-rolling to hit and a 4+ or a 6 v fliers they are reasonably likely to get enough to splat a baneblade or a flier. something like a sicaran detachment with higher rate of fire and 'tracking'

have been bringing one or two Xiphon in here, towards the flanks, and aiming to be in range (just) of the desired target, which itself is a more forwards located enemy armoured unit to minimise return fire

sometimes soaking overwatch from say a quartet of Kratos for a turn can be worth their loss

My issue is, some players are a bit more obsessive/contemplative than others and I fear every time a plane or detachment of them come in it will take them or me far too long to figure out where to place them given the unlimited ability to measure everything. This only gets worse in larger 2v2 games imo, I'm getting flashbacks of taking 20 minutes to decide where to put deep strikers only for them to get intercepted by broadsides no matter where you placed them

I think anyone who played AI likely has a leg up in terms of being able to run one.

Certainly true for me. I have a total of 12 Xiphons, 6 Storm Eagles, 2 Fire Raptors, and a Thunderhawk that I never got around to building for AI, which will now serve me well for LI instead (and also AI if I ever manage to get a game of it in in the future).

In terms of SA, I can legitimately feel squadrons of at least 8-12 aircraft of every plane in their arsenal easily, in some cases a good bit more as I double dipped to cover variant designs (i.e. Thunderbolt vs Thunderbolt Fury).

Agreed though, flyers seem way overpriced for what they bring to the table. The game (like most minis games that feature fliers) sets them up to be glass hammers, which is appropriate, but then makes it a relatively trivial affair to hit them rather than representing the challenge posed by their speed and maneuverability. They never seem to hit quite as hard as they would need to in order to truly be a "hammer", but they are definitely "glass", and an expensive one at that. Most flyers seem to be overpriced by about 10-20 pts IMO.

chaos0xomega wrote:

I think anyone who played AI likely has a leg up in terms of being able to run one.

Certainly true for me. I have a total of 12 Xiphons, 6 Storm Eagles, 2 Fire Raptors, and a Thunderhawk that I never got around to building for AI, which will now serve me well for LI instead (and also AI if I ever manage to get a game of it in in the future).

In terms of SA, I can legitimately feel squadrons of at least 8-12 aircraft of every plane in their arsenal easily, in some cases a good bit more as I double dipped to cover variant designs (i.e. Thunderbolt vs Thunderbolt Fury).

Agreed though, flyers seem way overpriced for what they bring to the table. The game (like most minis games that feature fliers) sets them up to be glass hammers, which is appropriate, but then makes it a relatively trivial affair to hit them rather than representing the challenge posed by their speed and maneuverability. They never seem to hit quite as hard as they would need to in order to truly be a "hammer", but they are definitely "glass", and an expensive one at that. Most flyers seem to be overpriced by about 10-20 pts IMO.

The one area I'd disagree is, once you get to a level of having a lot of bombers they can be insanely strong, because you can also outfit them with wing bombs for maximum insanity in the movement phase or all missiles for 30 inch sniping. Cost is sorta all over the map.

Glass hammer is more or less right idea for planes, but they just let too much hit/target them. Like right off the bat a solution could be if you're on advance order you just can't, you need to be on first fire, the idea too of a tank driving full speed while hitting a fixed wing air craft with 120mm cannon is just, it'd never happen unless it was chopper.

Side note, I also think it was a mistake to allow advance to overwatch, first fire outside of very long range/high quality shooting rarely ever seems useful unless the unit has no plans of going anywhere anyway like a detachment in a structure holding/guarding an objective.

cost is all over for the whole game, GW seem to have been doing that a lot recently, just phoning points in. have expect some suggestion about "power levels" to be the solution here

(when in practice the two turrets of the Leman Russ for example should just have been two different units in the "Battle Tank" slot, at different costs, with maybe the option to add one to a normal squadron for a set cost)

I think once the kit for the tarantula comes out air power will be less common

there is also a solution to people who take an age to decide anything, start packing up - make a few comments about opponents dropping dead of old age etc first, but when people are that slow its a problem for you, basically stop playing them

have one locally who seems to need to map through every single option, measuring, placing dice etc before deciding anything (this is in other games mostly)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
side note, do think grounded aircraft and an airbase will make for a quite interesting board, will have to adapt some of the STL I have with landing gear deployed and find something suitable for hangers/control towers etc

overwatch on advance.. personally I'd allow it, with the detachment determining how many dice it has for each weapon

then halving them


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Further thought

Legions is still a new game, its got one book with units in, its ripe to make a change before it gets too developed

move to a D12, rolls and is nicer to hold than a D10, easy to convert, but provides half increments to what we currently have

e.g. a las cannon goes from a 4+ to a 7+

then maybe run with a -1 when over half range, so the current "hits on a six" becomes "hits on 11+", and can take the modifier to be a 12

I would love it if GW would learn how to design games that predominantly use something other than a d6, but I'm not holding my breath for it.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I would love it if GW would learn how to design games that predominantly use something other than a d6, but I'm not holding my breath for it.

nor me, the HH boxed games, well Burning of Prospero, certainly used others

amazed they haven't done something with like a "D14" and a trademarked shape

 ingtaer wrote:
Has anyone tried running an Aerial Assault detachment yet? Is it viable?

I played against one (we already have the miniatures from previous Epic editions).

Extremelly flexible and powerful to grab objectives. THs delete armoured detachments in one run. It seemed OP even when making the mistake of treating it as 1 W only

SU-152 wrote:

 ingtaer wrote:
Has anyone tried running an Aerial Assault detachment yet? Is it viable?

I played against one (we already have the miniatures from previous Epic editions).

Extremelly flexible and powerful to grab objectives. THs delete armoured detachments in one run. It seemed OP even when making the mistake of treating it as 1 W only

Yeah I'm guessing the that's why the easy 6's are there, when a plane heavy list shows up it can just bring so much firepower that without the occasional good fortune of a few getting shot down to less than stellar shooting it will be a quick game. It's just unfortunate that running just a few flyers is so glasshammer.

chaos0xomega wrote:

I think anyone who played AI likely has a leg up in terms of being able to run one.

Certainly true for me. I have a total of 12 Xiphons, 6 Storm Eagles, 2 Fire Raptors, and a Thunderhawk that I never got around to building for AI, which will now serve me well for LI instead (and also AI if I ever manage to get a game of it in in the future).

In terms of SA, I can legitimately feel squadrons of at least 8-12 aircraft of every plane in their arsenal easily, in some cases a good bit more as I double dipped to cover variant designs (i.e. Thunderbolt vs Thunderbolt Fury).

Agreed though, flyers seem way overpriced for what they bring to the table. The game (like most minis games that feature fliers) sets them up to be glass hammers, which is appropriate, but then makes it a relatively trivial affair to hit them rather than representing the challenge posed by their speed and maneuverability. They never seem to hit quite as hard as they would need to in order to truly be a "hammer", but they are definitely "glass", and an expensive one at that. Most flyers seem to be overpriced by about 10-20 pts IMO.

I have to say that MOST units in the game are glass hammers, the rest are crystal cannons.

The only models with a decent defense/attack ratio are garrisoned infantry and shielded Titans.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crablezworth wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

I think anyone who played AI likely has a leg up in terms of being able to run one.

Certainly true for me. I have a total of 12 Xiphons, 6 Storm Eagles, 2 Fire Raptors, and a Thunderhawk that I never got around to building for AI, which will now serve me well for LI instead (and also AI if I ever manage to get a game of it in in the future).

In terms of SA, I can legitimately feel squadrons of at least 8-12 aircraft of every plane in their arsenal easily, in some cases a good bit more as I double dipped to cover variant designs (i.e. Thunderbolt vs Thunderbolt Fury).

Agreed though, flyers seem way overpriced for what they bring to the table. The game (like most minis games that feature fliers) sets them up to be glass hammers, which is appropriate, but then makes it a relatively trivial affair to hit them rather than representing the challenge posed by their speed and maneuverability. They never seem to hit quite as hard as they would need to in order to truly be a "hammer", but they are definitely "glass", and an expensive one at that. Most flyers seem to be overpriced by about 10-20 pts IMO.

The one area I'd disagree is, once you get to a level of having a lot of bombers they can be insanely strong, because you can also outfit them with wing bombs for maximum insanity in the movement phase or all missiles for 30 inch sniping. Cost is sorta all over the map.

Glass hammer is more or less right idea for planes, but they just let too much hit/target them. Like right off the bat a solution could be if you're on advance order you just can't, you need to be on first fire, the idea too of a tank driving full speed while hitting a fixed wing air craft with 120mm cannon is just, it'd never happen unless it was chopper.

Side note, I also think it was a mistake to allow advance to overwatch, first fire outside of very long range/high quality shooting rarely ever seems useful unless the unit has no plans of going anywhere anyway like a detachment in a structure holding/guarding an objective.

You know what's funny? Mole mortars being specially good against planes with nice range and a -2 to armour (AP -1 + hitting rear arc).

LOL


Oh man that's good, picturing mole mortar bursting from the ground b-lining right into a plane

I now have to get some mole mortar purely to see the look on an opponents face

Now I really really really need rapier mole mortars

 ingtaer wrote:
Has anyone tried running an Aerial Assault detachment yet? Is it viable?

i have 6 total aircraft. 3 fighters and 3 storms. i need way more to do a air list.

Been looking at putting together a detachment of command and tacticals, tacticals, missiles in 3x Storm Eagle. 8x Assault in TH, 4x Contemptor in TH and having two fire raptors run interference/fire support. All the planes can act like skimmers so can use the terrain as cover. Major downside I can see is obviously points but can anyone think of other weaknesses? Maybe need some redundancy or trade 2 Eagles in for another TH?

Main thing I see is that you're investing ~800 pts into flyers by my rough approximation, to get 7 vehicles coming in at 9 wounds, whereas the same points can get you ~18 predators + 2 Sicarans for 20 wounds (and a lot more guns) or 12 Kratos for 24 wounds and still a lot more guns. The other thing to consider is that of all those flyers, only the tempest rockets on the fire raptor have AP-2 and the turbolaser on the THawk has AP-3, all else is AP-1 or 0 which leaves you incredibly light against something with high armor like a titan, other than that you have armorbane only on the hellstrike missiles carried on the THawk and nowhere else, which likewise limits your efficacy against heavy armored targets.

Basically, again - you're very mobile but made of glass, and though they hit hard on a per model basis, they don't really hit hard enough nor do they have the volume of firepower needed to overcome the shortage of high ap or armorbane.

Finally had a flick through of the core book and the rules for the Knights appear to be better implemented this time around, and should have been a primary force. Titans feel slapdash and would keep their use to a minimum, if used at all, as they're far better implemented in Titanicus.

Might be having a game on Sunday to give it a whirl, but it would have to be open play with AT and AI models as I can't get hold of any LI kits at this time, unless its a bunch of Melta-Reavers.

Thinking of 1K points of 4x Thunderbolts, 2x Cerastus and a Warhound. The second force would be 2x Acastus and 3x Questoris.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I would love it if GW would learn how to design games that predominantly use something other than a d6, but I'm not holding my breath for it.

This is the community version that was quite literally written with that in mind
[url]
https://imperiusdominatus.org/[/url]

D10s instead of D6s to give that granularity, so you have differences in armour save for different armour marks and things like that. Even if you won't play it, it's quite interesting to read as it shows what sort of thing GW might have done if the designers had been permitted to go further.
Although it is still based on SM2/NetEpic, so is very similar mechanically.

SamusDrake wrote:
Finally had a flick through of the core book and the rules for the Knights appear to be better implemented this time around, and should have been a primary force. Titans feel slapdash and would keep their use to a minimum, if used at all, as they're far better implemented in Titanicus.

Might be having a game on Sunday to give it a whirl, but it would have to be open play with AT and AI models as I can't get hold of any LI kits at this time, unless its a bunch of Melta-Reavers.

Thinking of 1K points of 4x Thunderbolts, 2x Cerastus and a Warhound. The second force would be 2x Acastus and 3x Questoris.

Knights are far far far better than in AT and much closer to the prowess they show in like 30k/40k, but that's also where I'm gonna totally disagree and say a knight only faction in LI wouldn't only be boring, but massively broken. I'm not just saying this to say it, the core problems of LI are unit costing in general, especially not costing most weapons, knights make a mockery of this, even with weapons/upgrades they pay for. I'd go as far to argue that they largely outshine the titans, they're that good. Even an armiger has 2 wounds, a shooting attack with demolisher and engine killer and a cc attack with rend for like 60pts. That's the smallest knight unit and it's still insanely strong. Moriax and styrix have cc weapons with ap -5 rend and wrecker (3), like who needs a titan when a knight can like one shot a structure. The atrapos's cc weapon is just as insanely good and is also a gun lol, and it has macro extinction protocols, giving it re-rolls to hit against titans knights and super heavies AND it can re-roll a dice of its choice very fight.

 Crablezworth wrote:

SamusDrake wrote:
Even an armiger has 2 wounds, a shooting attack with demolisher and engine killer and a cc attack with rend for like 60pts. That's the smallest knight unit and it's still insanely strong.

Hmm what do you mean?

The smallest Knight detachment is 180 points ( and consist of a minimum of 1 knight Questoris, + upgrades), and it is not good for the points. So in order to include Armigers, it is min 360 points (you get 4 knights but still not very point efficient - but I guess it depends on what you compare with...it's way better than Malcadors).

basically write the entire point system off currently, its essentially FUBAR, a phoned in system that had neither care nor thought applied to it

it is what it is sadly

the "meta" will change with each new wave of releases, pretty much everything outside infantry hunkered down in buildings can be killed and killed reasonably easily, a lot going to whoever shoots first

SU-152 wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:

SamusDrake wrote:
Even an armiger has 2 wounds, a shooting attack with demolisher and engine killer and a cc attack with rend for like 60pts. That's the smallest knight unit and it's still insanely strong.

Hmm what do you mean?

The smallest Knight detachment is 180 points ( and consist of a minimum of 1 knight Questoris, + upgrades), and it is not good for the points. So in order to include Armigers, it is min 360 points (you get 4 knights but still not very point efficient - but I guess it depends on what you compare with...it's way better than Malcadors).

And the cost isn't prohibitive if they're a primary faction and not fitting into 30% of another, that's my point. The armigers you'd add to a questoris, you get 3 for 180 so for that 360 you've got a pretty good force, but now that your'e not limited to it being only a small percentage, it gets silly fast. Acastus are very strong all comers, fantastic ranged fire and AA.


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leopard wrote:
basically write the entire point system off currently, its essentially FUBAR, a phoned in system that had neither care nor thought applied to it

it is what it is sadly

the "meta" will change with each new wave of releases, pretty much everything outside infantry hunkered down in buildings can be killed and killed reasonably easily, a lot going to whoever shoots first

Yeah but see that's a problem of alternating activation anyway, at least the last point. This is also my problem with overwatch the way it currently, it just devalues first fire even more.

As for the point system, the ultimate balancer is even with things being fubar, you're always able to field what your opponent can, that's not exactly great for races to the bottom but the benefit of the system is provided model access isn't limited, anyone can join said race to the bottom,

The even sadder part was that they had community systems which have been playtested to destruction over the past 15 years by hundreds of players and are now nicely balanced (NetEpic and Net Armageddon) - they had it sat right there for the taking and I'm sure none of the guys maintaining those rules would have minded helping out. But, we know that they weren't even contacted.

Also agree on overwatch/FF. Again it's another example of needless over-complication. The first fire mechanic neatly covered the abstraction of someone charging into a gun that was waiting for them (with the exception of artillery) and then just use a Snap-fire mechanic for fliers, as in Titan Legions. There was no need to add rules for overwatch, point-defense in my opinion.

personally I prefer the way Flames of War handles closing fire

this is a game that has no overwatch, no reaction fire mechanic

essentially unit "A" charges unit "B", they move up, make contact. unit "A" then gets to shoot at them. using normal shooting rules (which rules out using area effect barrages etc due to proximity). hits resolved as normal, if more than five hits (or now eight for larger units, used to be ten, and slightly different for armour) are scored the assault is pushed back 2" and the combat never occurs

this is combined with a "pin" mechanic that reduces rate of fire

works quite nicely and is quick

anti aircraft fire is likewise quick, a unit declares its firing AA, it is resolved, it is then marked up as having fired and doesn't get to fire again. and not all weapons can fire in an AA role, and quite a few that can are reduced to a single dice

 Crablezworth wrote:
[
Knights are far far far better than in AT and much closer to the prowess they show in like 30k/40k, but that's also where I'm gonna totally disagree and say a knight only faction in LI wouldn't only be boring, but massively broken. I'm not just saying this to say it, the core problems of LI are unit costing in general, especially not costing most weapons, knights make a mockery of this, even with weapons/upgrades they pay for. I'd go as far to argue that they largely outshine the titans, they're that good. Even an armiger has 2 wounds, a shooting attack with demolisher and engine killer and a cc attack with rend for like 60pts. That's the smallest knight unit and it's still insanely strong. Moriax and styrix have cc weapons with ap -5 rend and wrecker (3), like who needs a titan when a knight can like one shot a structure. The atrapos's cc weapon is just as insanely good and is also a gun lol, and it has macro extinction protocols, giving it re-rolls to hit against titans knights and super heavies AND it can re-roll a dice of its choice very fight.

Mixed feelings on the Armigers, when weighed up against Leviathan Dreadnoughts which are 75 points for 4 Dreads, and 2 Heavy sentinals at 35 points. A single Armiger would cost 60 points in comparison, and can be outgunned by those units. But I do strongly feel that passing judgements is foolish before having played the first game, as what looks good on paper may not work in practice, and I suspect that I'll be disappointed once again, as I was with Titanicus.

Titanicus seemed to be decided by whoever landed the first solid blow with little real way to come back from it, encouraged sitting on shoot orders behind buildings such that anyone who moved to get a shot would be shot first

SamusDrake wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:
[
Knights are far far far better than in AT and much closer to the prowess they show in like 30k/40k, but that's also where I'm gonna totally disagree and say a knight only faction in LI wouldn't only be boring, but massively broken. I'm not just saying this to say it, the core problems of LI are unit costing in general, especially not costing most weapons, knights make a mockery of this, even with weapons/upgrades they pay for. I'd go as far to argue that they largely outshine the titans, they're that good. Even an armiger has 2 wounds, a shooting attack with demolisher and engine killer and a cc attack with rend for like 60pts. That's the smallest knight unit and it's still insanely strong. Moriax and styrix have cc weapons with ap -5 rend and wrecker (3), like who needs a titan when a knight can like one shot a structure. The atrapos's cc weapon is just as insanely good and is also a gun lol, and it has macro extinction protocols, giving it re-rolls to hit against titans knights and super heavies AND it can re-roll a dice of its choice very fight.

Mixed feelings on the Armigers, when weighed up against Leviathan Dreadnoughts which are 75 points for 4 Dreads, and 2 Heavy sentinals at 35 points. A single Armiger would cost 60 points in comparison, and can be outgunned by those units. But I do strongly feel that passing judgements is foolish before having played the first game, as what looks good on paper may not work in practice, and I suspect that I'll be disappointed once again, as I was with Titanicus.

Well you're not wrong on instinct, the leviathans do look disgustingly strong for 75pts, one consideration with armigers is they have 2 wounds each, keep in mind generally stuff that is multi wound is like 75-100pts, like baneblades and kratos. Their thermal spears, though short ranged, are great at hitting buildings and engine killer on something so small is very strong. Not to mention rend, also moirax can get a wrecker cc attack similar to leviathans. Leviathans definitely do seem very good for the points though. Heavy sentinels are a surprisingly good amount of firepower but a bit weak to incoming fire.

The main thing with the armigers is they won't be alone as they are upgrades to knights that tag along, so while they are quite short ranged, especially armed with thermal spear, the knight they're with may have longer range weapons, like an acastus.

That is the one thing I'm not so happy about is the Armgiers having to follow the larger Knights around the battlefield, like little ducklings. They're supposed to be Lords of War in their own right dammit!

SamusDrake wrote:
That is the one thing I'm not so happy about is the Armgiers having to follow the larger Knights around the battlefield, like little ducklings. They're supposed to be Lords of War in their own right dammit!

however part of the cost of units is the ability to wander off and do their own thing, allowing far too many cheap activations basically breaks thre system unless GW go down the route Battletech uses with activations so whoever has the initiative always gets the final move as well as the first shot

leopard wrote:
Titanicus seemed to be decided by whoever landed the first solid blow with little real way to come back from it, encouraged sitting on shoot orders behind buildings such that anyone who moved to get a shot would be shot first

It was too weighed down by external stuff, what started as a very visual game, the terminals, the weapons cards corresponding to modular weapons quickly got bogged down with upgrades, that aren't visual, and made worse by corruptions and mutations that again were largely not modelled, and gw was no help there either way. Then you've got the stratagem cards and their limited availability, and the matched play book introducing hands of them, forcing one to play magic cards while also playing AT apparently. Great looking game and scale but it all gets/got bogged down, setting up for it feels like ae slog, the terminals are great but the space they require just sorta kills its viability for a lot of people and to be played in a lot of places. Even the die hards show the absurdity of the game with the mega battles that get like 2-3 turns max in a day of gaming. Hopefully the rules for titan/knight games in the great slaughter are better for that sort of thing.

As much as I miss the detail of titanicus, they could have done a bit more to flesh out weapons if they weren't going to cost them, like something akin to gets hot. Also could have had something along the lines of auto simulacra.

What they did get right is titans being able to remove obstacles and damage structures as well as move over intervening detachments if they have enough movement. The splitting fire per dice can be a bit silly, a warmaster targeting 5 structures is sorta nuts.

was only the base game the times I've played it, as usual the point values felt like little more than a token effort

but every game came down to who got a lucky shot first winning, when you only have two or three units in a game, one getting hammered is basically game over

Agreed regarding the titan terminals; one of the reasons we liked the Cerastus Lancer so much was that not only was it the only Knight worthy of the game, but Knight terminals can easily be reduced by 2/3rds in height, as most of them was just repeated information. The Warhound terminal also had room for reduction, but not enough to make a difference.

leopard wrote:
was only the base game the times I've played it, as usual the point values felt like little more than a token effort

but every game came down to who got a lucky shot first winning, when you only have two or three units in a game, one getting hammered is basically game over

Yeah quite swingy, a lot of games felt over by turn 3.

I remember being under the impression that weapon weight would play a part in Titanicus, but that never happened.

the earlier editions with "grades" on the hardpoints was nice, and the ability to vary them - like strip down a Warlord for greater speed, how the Reaver without the carapace mount could have heavier arm mounts etc

There's a good point; does a Reaver have to take a carapace weapon in Titanicus? I've not noticed anything that says it must.

Don’t think Titans pay points for weapons, so there’s no reason not to?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Don’t think Titans pay points for weapons, so there’s no reason not to?

I was asking about Titanicus, not Legions.

SamusDrake wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Don’t think Titans pay points for weapons, so there’s no reason not to?

I was asking about Titanicus, not Legions.

Yes. At the beginning of the rulebook, where they go over the anatomy of the terminals, it is stated that titans must have a weapon in all slots available.


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leopard wrote:
Titanicus seemed to be decided by whoever landed the first solid blow with little real way to come back from it, encouraged sitting on shoot orders behind buildings such that anyone who moved to get a shot would be shot first

That is very far from my experience, having played a lot of Titanicus. Sitting tight and letting the other side run the maneuvering is a pretty surefire way to lose almost any mission.

 Sherrypie wrote:


Yes. At the beginning of the rulebook, where they go over the anatomy of the terminals, it is stated that titans must have a weapon in all slots available.

Page 28, last two paragraphs...yup. Cheers for that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sherrypie wrote:

That is very far from my experience, having played a lot of Titanicus. Sitting tight and letting the other side run the maneuvering is a pretty surefire way to lose almost any mission.

Same here. Quite a few times my Titans have refused to go slightly into the night...

 Sherrypie wrote:

SamusDrake wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Don’t think Titans pay points for weapons, so there’s no reason not to?

I was asking about Titanicus, not Legions.

Yes. At the beginning of the rulebook, where they go over the anatomy of the terminals, it is stated that titans must have a weapon in all slots available.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

leopard wrote:
Titanicus seemed to be decided by whoever landed the first solid blow with little real way to come back from it, encouraged sitting on shoot orders behind buildings such that anyone who moved to get a shot would be shot first

That is very far from my experience, having played a lot of Titanicus. Sitting tight and letting the other side run the maneuvering is a pretty surefire way to lose almost any mission.

Ya but that's the problem, titanicus's missions were awful. And the tagline for the open engine war cards was like "no two games ever need be the same again" and I can't help but feel that's titanicus's problem, it's impenetrable and when it did try to do match play it made magic card hands a core component. I loved the models and the setting but AT just is difficult to love, much happier with LI even in it's half released state.



What I'm loving about LI is its much more fluid when it comes to orders and actually playing, and a lot less demanding on sideboard space, I can't stress how much of a big deal that is in terms of getting in new blood, telling friends the 130 dollar warlord titan box didn't even come with a thick card terminal and they'd have to buy those separately was like watching most potential players interest in AT die in real time.

AT was, and is fun, though the point on cards being "extra" and, invariably, out of stock basically killed it locally. a few have it, doesn't get played much and seems a game you need to play a fair bit to get the hang of

but also then when you have played a fair bit, someone who hasn't has no chance

leopard wrote:
AT was, and is fun, though the point on cards being "extra" and, invariably, out of stock basically killed it locally. a few have it, doesn't get played much and seems a game you need to play a fair bit to get the hang of

but also then when you have played a fair bit, someone who hasn't has no chance

The strat card thing was what made the decision in the matched play book to have hands of cards so baffling, like outside of the starter strat cards, making a core game mechaninc like reliant on cards no one can get, it just seemed like everything was done to ensure it remained the nichiest niche game to ever niche. LI I can basically gift a friend some tokens and he's a third of the way there to being able to play.

yes have printed a few sets of tokens off here, really not a fan of cards, heck its why Flames V4 isn't a game I play..

"optional" command cards without which many forces flat out don't work or are not even possible.. where the details are not in the book

reference cards are fine, when all the information is in the damned book

I think AT was crippled by the "oh look, X Wing sells!" mentality, except GW being GW took the cards out of the box and made them virtually impossible to get hold of

Necromunda is similar with the tactics cards, its annoying

leopard wrote:
yes have printed a few sets of tokens off here, really not a fan of cards, heck its why Flames V4 isn't a game I play..

"optional" command cards without which many forces flat out don't work or are not even possible.. where the details are not in the book

reference cards are fine, when all the information is in the damned book

I think AT was crippled by the "oh look, X Wing sells!" mentality, except GW being GW took the cards out of the box and made them virtually impossible to get hold of

Necromunda is similar with the tactics cards, its annoying

At didn't know what it wanted to be, it ran a lot better stripped down more like a board game at like 3-7 activations, to add all the bloat on top of a game that is random af when titans die like all the faction rules, pretending knights were a faction and then book after book of paint swatches and slight rules updates when the more significant things really were the new weapon releases or unit releases.


LI for all its faults still feels like a fairly weel oiled machine, if you take away secondary objectives from most missions/scenarios they're fairly high speed low drag in terms of deployment or pre game stuff, the only downside of fixed objective locations is it can make board setup a bit stale/limited but it's nice and fast for events. AT, a lot of events used the open engine war cards which, as cool of an idea as they are, if you used like 7 cards for a mission it was just silly, even with the cards on hand as a reference it was like a lengthy choose your own adventure take on mission making, some planet effects or missions had paragraphs of stuff to read just on one card. LI is immediately much more accessible and if it shares any limitation with AT it's new players needing to get their hands on enough small scale terrain.

we have adapted the objectives to say no building can be within 3", to prevent infantry camping in a building claiming them

and yes the AT cards for tertiary objectives were odd, it wasn't a bad idea, but didn't seem to fit the size of the game

That's a shame you can't do that as I'm games of Epic I always liked placing objectives on specific things that meant something: factories, a runway, buildings, hill overlooking a valley etc. or perhaps on mini diorama counters. Rather than having 'patch of grass B' it felt it added some cool visual narrative to the game.

SamusDrake wrote:
There's a good point; does a Reaver have to take a carapace weapon in Titanicus? I've not noticed anything that says it must.

Page 53, all card slots on terminals must be filled.

 Pacific wrote:
That's a shame you can't do that as I'm games of Epic I always liked placing objectives on specific things that meant something: factories, a runway, buildings, hill overlooking a valley etc. or perhaps on mini diorama counters. Rather than having 'patch of grass B' it felt it added some cool visual narrative to the game.

oh it can be done, and when more stuff is out it will be, just at present infantry in a building take a bit of shifting, once more options land and stuff is back in stock.. easier

 lord_blackfang wrote:

SamusDrake wrote:
There's a good point; does a Reaver have to take a carapace weapon in Titanicus? I've not noticed anything that says it must.

Page 53, all card slots on terminals must be filled.

Well done. Its rather amusing how the paragraph, on page 53, refers to page 53 of the manual.

But it never crossed my mind before as it seemed bizarre why one wouldn't take at least the missile launcher. Its just the idea of adding a weight feature, and how a Reaver might lose some to become faster. And even if one could, I suppose one would have to add some detail to the top to cover up the connection, where a magnet may reside...

But yes, cheers for that.

 Crablezworth wrote:

Ya but that's the problem, titanicus's missions were awful. And the tagline for the open engine war cards was like "no two games ever need be the same again" and I can't help but feel that's titanicus's problem, it's impenetrable and when it did try to do match play it made magic card hands a core component. I loved the models and the setting but AT just is difficult to love, much happier with LI even in it's half released state.

Can't agree with that at all, really. I know your local scene has a particular taste on mirrored missions, whereas I find the variation and asymmetry in AT missions great in general and moreso in accordance with the way that game in particular is designed to operate in as situations develop on the table. As for the impenetrability, eh. AT is an involved game from the get-go, but for missions you just pick one of the multiple ways to generate a mission and go, I can't see how that's particularly hard. You don't need to know whether to pick the rulebook or the deck or the campaign book or the matched play guide, they all work. I've never had a problem with a new player not being able to give their opinion on what to play by just proposing this or that.

Now I’ve got my infantry painted and based, I can better visualise what a Formation might look like.

Man, the Demi-Company is really restrictive compared to what I have and what’s commercially available.

Definitely going to have to field a Legion Armoured Company I think.

 Sherrypie wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:

Ya but that's the problem, titanicus's missions were awful. And the tagline for the open engine war cards was like "no two games ever need be the same again" and I can't help but feel that's titanicus's problem, it's impenetrable and when it did try to do match play it made magic card hands a core component. I loved the models and the setting but AT just is difficult to love, much happier with LI even in it's half released state.

I can't see how that's particularly hard.

It's actually a massive ask, I get the benefit of endless, limitless mission variables and tertiery's ect but this borders on asking me to build a game for them. This is the sandbox problem, this is the problem of video games like arma 3, if there's no limit to scope or guidance, it really just a collection of stuff/assets/models and maps, and that's arma's problem, for the limitless possibilities it represents, few people are making a game out of it, most mods are just assets, there have been great mods in the past like dayz, but sadly a game few play is what happens with sandboxe's . For weekly or semi regular gaming, the scope needs to be realistic. LI is much more grounded in that regard, there's only 12 missions/scenarios currently.

LI you can summarize what happened over the course of a battle faster than you could read a titanicus mission, I made custom missions with the open engine war cards with fluff descriptions and even I hate them, it took 5 minutes to read the damn mission/scenario and even longer to comprehend it. LI you can look down, see the deployment map of objectives and the scoring and you're rolling dice. Don't get me wrong, I fear LI has perhaps thrown the baby out with the bathwater compared to AT in terms of missions, the lack of much variance in deployment maps is something I don't love about LI, AT didn't lack for creativity and options in that area, it just had way way too much.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Now I’ve got my infantry painted and based, I can better visualise what a Formation might look like.

Man, the Demi-Company is really restrictive compared to what I have and what’s commercially available.

Definitely going to have to field a Legion Armoured Company I think.

May humbly suggest fielding as many kratos as possible, they're great

Oh I have eight of those. Well. Four built, four to be built today.

Second box was a proper blessing. FLGS’ system said they had no stock, yet I found one on their shelf. So naturally I snaffled it.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Oh I have eight of those. Well. Four built, four to be built today.

Second box was a proper blessing. FLGS’ system said they had no stock, yet I found one on their shelf. So naturally I snaffled it.

Accurate hull lascannons are great.

I’ve gone with Autocannons to make my Kratos nice all-rounders.

This may prove folly in the future, but I don’t really care

eight Kratos...

bully...

Just buying what I can get my digits on!

Kratos are evil...

this opinion is in no way shaped by an opponent who runs a detachment of four that tend to obliterate whatever they are pointed and and have enough dice to be a very good flak battery too

First list scrawled, based on what I now have assembled.

Whilst infantry are dirt cheap, I’m impressed by how quickly they tot up. Also, the Demi-Company is not as restrictive as I first thought. And I’ve some space left to squeeze in the next eight Tactical Legionaire bases that are waiting to go. Think I’ll add in Plasma Gunners and Missile Launcher as their upgrades, and then expand the Terminators and Assault Marines which currently stand as Support detachments in their own right.

I’ll also admit to having been a bit dubious about how you expand Tactical Detachments with bells and whistles. But visually, I now really really like it!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
First list scrawled, based on what I now have assembled.

Whilst infantry are dirt cheap, I’m impressed by how quickly they tot up. Also, the Demi-Company is not as restrictive as I first thought. And I’ve some space left to squeeze in the next eight Tactical Legionaire bases that are waiting to go. Think I’ll add in Plasma Gunners and Missile Launcher as their upgrades, and then expand the Terminators and Assault Marines which currently stand as Support detachments in their own right.

I’ll also admit to having been a bit dubious about how you expand Tactical Detachments with bells and whistles. But visually, I now really really like it!

the tactical bodies are largely ablative wounds for the more useful rocket launchers and plasma guys, though can do work up close. you don't need many more than your opponent but you do want to out number them when assaulting.

there is certainly going to be a balance point where more bodies doesn't really help but fewer means breaking easily, not found it yet

running eight stand units here, which I think are a bit small, I do have a couple more but need more Rhinos to run them, or to have one unit on foot but to date the mobility, and ability to shrug of small arms is useful

 Sherrypie wrote:
Can't agree with that at all, really. I know your local scene has a particular taste on mirrored missions, whereas I find the variation and asymmetry in AT missions great in general and moreso in accordance with the way that game in particular is designed to operate in as situations develop on the table. As for the impenetrability, eh. AT is an involved game from the get-go, but for missions you just pick one of the multiple ways to generate a mission and go, I can't see how that's particularly hard. You don't need to know whether to pick the rulebook or the deck or the campaign book or the matched play guide, they all work. I've never had a problem with a new player not being able to give their opinion on what to play by just proposing this or that.

Just came back from a 1850 pts game of AT (it took 3 times as long as a 1500 pt game of LI on the table opposite)

Have to say, as a community who are just getting into AT it's pretty confusing, nobody online seems to be playing quite the same rules, the book that sounds like it would be the definitive matched play document is out of print, and nobody can give me a straight answer on how many stratagem point I get.

Yep, sounds like the typical "specoalist" game in the modern day after a few too many rulebooks.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’ve gone with Autocannons to make my Kratos nice all-rounders.

This may prove folly in the future, but I don’t really care

Autocannons are ok, but the range band doesn't mesh as well with the battlecannon at 20 inches, the lascannons are ideal because they do. The autocannons are still decent, but i wouldn't recommend them for all kratos. I'd avoid bolters unless you're doing the melta turret. I'd especially avoid bolters in the hull if you're doing battlecannon, the autocannons or las in the hull have the accurate trait where as the bolters in the hull do not, you can always take bolter sponsons but just keep in mind the hull ones really do compete with superieror choices in the auto/las because they're effectively twin-linked, you re-roll misses.




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chaos0xomega wrote:
Yep, sounds like the typical "specoalist" game in the modern day after a few too many rulebooks.

AT can be a great game sorta stripped down, but its in some ways an objectively sillier game, like how knights work is just overly punitive to knight banners, you can like see 1 knight of 3 and kill all 3 on account of how activations and weapons fire are resolved, LI is actually much more gradiated and thoughtful in terms of wound pools and los.

Well, that serves me right for missing the Accurate trait. I’ve put bolsters on the hull and lascannons on the sponsons. Oh well. I’ll just have to cope.

MarkNorfolk wrote:
Well, that serves me right for missing the Accurate trait. I’ve put bolsters on the hull and lascannons on the sponsons. Oh well. I’ll just have to cope.

Is there still time to rip off the las and put bolter sponsons? At least all bolter works well with melta turret, especially for clearing infantry out of structures.

 Crablezworth wrote:

MarkNorfolk wrote:
Well, that serves me right for missing the Accurate trait. I’ve put bolsters on the hull and lascannons on the sponsons. Oh well. I’ll just have to cope.

Is there still time to rip off the las and put bolter sponsons? At least all bolter works well with melta turret, especially for clearing infantry out of structures.

Nah. All set in place. I’ll just make do with a suboptimal load out.

 ingtaer wrote:
Been looking at putting together a detachment of command and tacticals, tacticals, missiles in 3x Storm Eagle. 8x Assault in TH, 4x Contemptor in TH and having two fire raptors run interference/fire support. All the planes can act like skimmers so can use the terrain as cover. Major downside I can see is obviously points but can anyone think of other weaknesses? Maybe need some redundancy or trade 2 Eagles in for another TH?

your biggest problem is going to be getting shot down. you can do pop up attacks with skimmers. i dont remember is dedicated transports can do that. but a TH is scary if it can.


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 Crablezworth wrote:

SamusDrake wrote:
Finally had a flick through of the core book and the rules for the Knights appear to be better implemented this time around, and should have been a primary force. Titans feel slapdash and would keep their use to a minimum, if used at all, as they're far better implemented in Titanicus.

Might be having a game on Sunday to give it a whirl, but it would have to be open play with AT and AI models as I can't get hold of any LI kits at this time, unless its a bunch of Melta-Reavers.

Thinking of 1K points of 4x Thunderbolts, 2x Cerastus and a Warhound. The second force would be 2x Acastus and 3x Questoris.

Knights are far far far better than in AT and much closer to the prowess they show in like 30k/40k, but that's also where I'm gonna totally disagree and say a knight only faction in LI wouldn't only be boring, but massively broken. I'm not just saying this to say it, the core problems of LI are unit costing in general, especially not costing most weapons, knights make a mockery of this, even with weapons/upgrades they pay for. I'd go as far to argue that they largely outshine the titans, they're that good. Even an armiger has 2 wounds, a shooting attack with demolisher and engine killer and a cc attack with rend for like 60pts. That's the smallest knight unit and it's still insanely strong. Moriax and styrix have cc weapons with ap -5 rend and wrecker (3), like who needs a titan when a knight can like one shot a structure. The atrapos's cc weapon is just as insanely good and is also a gun lol, and it has macro extinction protocols, giving it re-rolls to hit against titans knights and super heavies AND it can re-roll a dice of its choice very fight.

i one shot a knight with 3 of the marine fighters. 12 dice hitting on 4s half with rerolls. -1 AP. but to be fair it almost 300 points in AC against 180 in knight


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leopard wrote:
personally I prefer the way Flames of War handles closing fire

this is a game that has no overwatch, no reaction fire mechanic

essentially unit "A" charges unit "B", they move up, make contact. unit "A" then gets to shoot at them. using normal shooting rules (which rules out using area effect barrages etc due to proximity). hits resolved as normal, if more than five hits (or now eight for larger units, used to be ten, and slightly different for armour) are scored the assault is pushed back 2" and the combat never occurs

this is combined with a "pin" mechanic that reduces rate of fire

works quite nicely and is quick

anti aircraft fire is likewise quick, a unit declares its firing AA, it is resolved, it is then marked up as having fired and doesn't get to fire again. and not all weapons can fire in an AA role, and quite a few that can are reduced to a single dice

i love flames. they also have the best missions.

Well that's about average. And yes still too lethal(should be 540 pts) but it's common in GW games that things are overly lethal. 300 vs 180 to in average one shot is actually on good side in terms of durability for a GW game.

GW don't seem to have a decent handle on how durable things should be or how deadly they should be, this applies in virtually all their games really

And that generally bleeds to players who look at can X point one shot Y and if not they complain how X is bad...

Well guess it's bad in terms of GW games but that just shows how twisted GW game lethality is...

tneva82 wrote:
And that generally bleeds to players who look at can X point one shot Y and if not they complain how X is bad...

Well guess it's bad in terms of GW games but that just shows how twisted GW game lethality is...

yes does seem to be "this can't one shot X, therefore this is terrible", regardless of cost, and when it can its "overpriced"

trouble is the real issue is stuff doesn't scale right

one Vanquisher round with a 50% to hit and a 66% to kill may not seem over powered, and indeed against a tank squadron of a similar size its not too bad given its only one shot. Some of the cannons are twin shot which becomes more problematic, but then you have your Titan out for a quite stroll, minding its own business and comes across roughly its points in Vanquishers, 6 of them and now there is more of a problem as they have a not unreasonable chance to one shot the thing. and to be fair with suitable weapons it can potentially return the favour.

to me thats out of whack, yes a proper anti tank round should be able to kill a tank, no question there, however 300+ points of X should not be able to kill 300 points of Y in a single round with any reasonable probability, even doing it over two rounds sucks

if not careful you have "Team Yankee" syndrome, where if its seen, its dead (probably) so the game becomes about not being seen, and eventually that bush you hide behind gets shot at.

pretty much all GW games are the same, Yahtzee with models, roll enough dice, it dies, especially when you remove the modifiers that Battlefront added, e.g. harder to hit at longer range, a target that itself isn't firing can be harder to hit, cover or concealment makes you harder to hit, and more than a 6 needed and you cannot be hit

weirdly it works, its not that easy to get to the magic 7+ to hit, Team Yankee makes it harder, Flames is easier as TY lets armour ignore a lot of the modifiers for range, smoke etc

however here stuff dies, too quickly, movement is a bit weird but if you want a five turn limit (which with progressive scoring is needed unless you can what you can pick up from any objective on its own) but it works, I think the number of dice rolled needs to scale in a non-linear way though, or the chances of a kill needs to be reduced (though not with 3+ saves on all infantry), potentially more wounds on things, but also maybe tag with the save roll, so for "anti tank" weapons firing at armour, a save roll of a "1" means it does an extra wound. now if a normal tank has two wounds you can still one shot them, maybe, but are more likely firing the six shots, getting three hits and maybe killing one and damaging one, not killing two

then larger stuff gets more wounds, not vastly more, the aim is to increase survivability, not make models immune to damage, they will grind down, it just takes longer

as things stand why would any faction in the game universe invest in a tank? when one group with a few rocket launchers are likely far cheaper to recruit and train than the tank is to build and its crew to train and in a lot of cases the infantry are better?

infantry and light stuff like scout walkers get one wound, ditto weapons platforms, armoured dreadnaughts and medium tanks get two, heavy tanks like the Kratos and Land Raiders maybe three. super heavies 4-6 depending on that they are, or more, e.g. Capitol Imperialis. then titans more - but with various weapons able to do more than one point of damage, e.g. via the "engine killer" rule

small stuff can grind down armour, just takes longer, heavier stuff becomes the best choice to take on heavier stuff, and armour can support an infantry advance without evaporating, making anti infantry armour viable

 ashlevrier wrote:


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 Crablezworth wrote:

SamusDrake wrote:
Finally had a flick through of the core book and the rules for the Knights appear to be better implemented this time around, and should have been a primary force. Titans feel slapdash and would keep their use to a minimum, if used at all, as they're far better implemented in Titanicus.

Might be having a game on Sunday to give it a whirl, but it would have to be open play with AT and AI models as I can't get hold of any LI kits at this time, unless its a bunch of Melta-Reavers.

Thinking of 1K points of 4x Thunderbolts, 2x Cerastus and a Warhound. The second force would be 2x Acastus and 3x Questoris.

Knights are far far far better than in AT and much closer to the prowess they show in like 30k/40k, but that's also where I'm gonna totally disagree and say a knight only faction in LI wouldn't only be boring, but massively broken. I'm not just saying this to say it, the core problems of LI are unit costing in general, especially not costing most weapons, knights make a mockery of this, even with weapons/upgrades they pay for. I'd go as far to argue that they largely outshine the titans, they're that good. Even an armiger has 2 wounds, a shooting attack with demolisher and engine killer and a cc attack with rend for like 60pts. That's the smallest knight unit and it's still insanely strong. Moriax and styrix have cc weapons with ap -5 rend and wrecker (3), like who needs a titan when a knight can like one shot a structure. The atrapos's cc weapon is just as insanely good and is also a gun lol, and it has macro extinction protocols, giving it re-rolls to hit against titans knights and super heavies AND it can re-roll a dice of its choice very fight.

i one shot a knight with 3 of the marine fighters. 12 dice hitting on 4s half with rerolls. -1 AP. but to be fair it almost 300 points in AC against 180 in knight

.

180 points of SM missile launcher will one shot that knight. Or 150 of TH will probably do it too so...

Missiles yes, th 2 wounds(remember -3 makes saves on 5+ and armourbane ignored with ion shield so it's flat save of 4+)

Still swatting up for this evening's game, and loving the fact that the order symbols are also featured on the AT order dice...

...are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?

SamusDrake wrote:
Still swatting up for this evening's game, and loving the fact that the order symbols are also featured on the AT order dice...

...are you pondering what I'm pondering, Pinky?

keep in mind orders need to be placed in secret though..

the counters the game comes with are both rubbish and far too few in number

Of course, not for a proper 2-player mode. But it might be the beginnings of a solo mode...

leopard wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
And that generally bleeds to players who look at can X point one shot Y and if not they complain how X is bad...

Well guess it's bad in terms of GW games but that just shows how twisted GW game lethality is...

yes does seem to be "this can't one shot X, therefore this is terrible", regardless of cost, and when it can its "overpriced"

trouble is the real issue is stuff doesn't scale right

one Vanquisher round with a 50% to hit and a 66% to kill may not seem over powered, and indeed against a tank squadron of a similar size its not too bad given its only one shot. Some of the cannons are twin shot which becomes more problematic, but then you have your Titan out for a quite stroll, minding its own business and comes across roughly its points in Vanquishers, 6 of them and now there is more of a problem as they have a not unreasonable chance to one shot the thing. and to be fair with suitable weapons it can potentially return the favour.

to me thats out of whack, yes a proper anti tank round should be able to kill a tank, no question there, however 300+ points of X should not be able to kill 300 points of Y in a single round with any reasonable probability, even doing it over two rounds sucks

if not careful you have "Team Yankee" syndrome, where if its seen, its dead (probably) so the game becomes about not being seen, and eventually that bush you hide behind gets shot at.

pretty much all GW games are the same, Yahtzee with models, roll enough dice, it dies, especially when you remove the modifiers that Battlefront added, e.g. harder to hit at longer range, a target that itself isn't firing can be harder to hit, cover or concealment makes you harder to hit, and more than a 6 needed and you cannot be hit

weirdly it works, its not that easy to get to the magic 7+ to hit, Team Yankee makes it harder, Flames is easier as TY lets armour ignore a lot of the modifiers for range, smoke etc

however here stuff dies, too quickly, movement is a bit weird but if you want a five turn limit (which with progressive scoring is needed unless you can what you can pick up from any objective on its own) but it works, I think the number of dice rolled needs to scale in a non-linear way though, or the chances of a kill needs to be reduced (though not with 3+ saves on all infantry), potentially more wounds on things, but also maybe tag with the save roll, so for "anti tank" weapons firing at armour, a save roll of a "1" means it does an extra wound. now if a normal tank has two wounds you can still one shot them, maybe, but are more likely firing the six shots, getting three hits and maybe killing one and damaging one, not killing two

then larger stuff gets more wounds, not vastly more, the aim is to increase survivability, not make models immune to damage, they will grind down, it just takes longer

as things stand why would any faction in the game universe invest in a tank? when one group with a few rocket launchers are likely far cheaper to recruit and train than the tank is to build and its crew to train and in a lot of cases the infantry are better?

infantry and light stuff like scout walkers get one wound, ditto weapons platforms, armoured dreadnaughts and medium tanks get two, heavy tanks like the Kratos and Land Raiders maybe three. super heavies 4-6 depending on that they are, or more, e.g. Capitol Imperialis. then titans more - but with various weapons able to do more than one point of damage, e.g. via the "engine killer" rule

small stuff can grind down armour, just takes longer, heavier stuff becomes the best choice to take on heavier stuff, and armour can support an infantry advance without evaporating, making anti infantry armour viable

The reality is formations control very little and you can spam basically any unit you want. This isn't ideal but thankfully rule of cool has seemingly kept skew lists to a minimum as only have a few unit types doesn't even look hat cool imo.

But, if one wanted to, like with highlander back in the day, could easily agree to change certain unit caps or halve them ect. Right now detachment of leman russes go to 10, kratos to 6, those could be halved and I don't think I'd have any problem tbh. You also need to limit formatons for that to really mean anything but it'd be a start. I think where epic will be a problem for everyone is when someone wants to field just too many of one units and nothing currently really prevents that at all. Much like nothing prevents marine armies from looking like crayola crayon boxes if players want to max out legion benefits by formation.

personally the "support" vehicles, e.g Vanquisher, that could be a problem should be "support" options, not able to fill "core" slots

leopard wrote:
personally the "support" vehicles, e.g Vanquisher, that could be a problem should be "support" options, not able to fill "core" slots

Well there is a high likelyhood bordering on certainty that more russ optons for turrets are on their way, pics in rulebook of twi autocannon turret and plasma turret, So maybe that will help bring a bit of choice into the mix. And I can totally see an event or genre like highlander with hard caps on detachments, like cutting the max in half or reducing by 2-4 or more. Big tank detachments feel weird to me, like more than 3 super heavies together would feel off, and does sorta feel off with kratos.

Now having three Infantry boxes worth of, erm, erm, Infantry?

Must Grumble!

Dreadnought Talons. Start at a 4 count, which is fine. For that is the contents of One Box. And we can expand a given slot. And each expansion adds 2 Contemptors. Lovely!

But…I can only expand by three choices. Which means I now have 2 Contemptors on the Subs Bench.

No need!

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Now having three Infantry boxes worth of, erm, erm, Infantry?

Must Grumble!

Dreadnought Talons. Start at a 4 count, which is fine. For that is the contents of One Box. And we can expand a given slot. And each expansion adds 2 Contemptors. Lovely!

But…I can only expand by three choices. Which means I now have 2 Contemptors on the Subs Bench.

No need!

It's quite frustrating that kheres is so much worse than accurate lascannon. Also odd they don't have rending, but for 5 more points you can get 4 leviathans with rending, wrecker and 5+ inv vs 6+.

Now what is cool is you can add leviathans to contemptor squads, and it's in 2's. What like about that is I can do las contemptors and have a couple rending leviathans for combat or taking down structures. But the point costs are weird.

By all indication when the leviathan box comes out you'll get 2 and 2 again like contemptor, cyclone melta/quad autocannon. Same with deredeo, 2 autocannon 2 plasma. I assume it will be the same for rapiers and tarantulas as they'll be in the same box/on the same sprue seemingly.

I’m not overly bothered by in-game efficiency. Like an Ork, the Dice tend to do what I believe they’ll do 🤣🤣

It’s more just….give me an extra pick. Just one. Then. From three Marine Infantry Sets? I can get really close to maxing out a Demi-Company.

But as you kind of point out, at least I can fine tune what I am fielding to predominantly Lascannnon or predominantly Assault Cannon as the fancy takes me.

well keep in mind the tank companies of old were like 10 land raiders, or Leman Russ (they may have been 12 strong?), though in smaller detachments

but then I'm also used to playing Soviet armour in WW2 where in some case units of 16 are not uncommon

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m not overly bothered by in-game efficiency. Like an Ork, the Dice tend to do what I believe they’ll do 🤣🤣

It’s more just….give me an extra pick. Just one. Then. From three Marine Infantry Sets? I can get really close to maxing out a Demi-Company.

But as you kind of point out, at least I can fine tune what I am fielding to predominantly Lascannnon or predominantly Assault Cannon as the fancy takes me.

Kheres aren't the end of the world in that both versions still have the bolter, and it's actually pretty good in that at half range it doubles its shots because of the assault rule and it has point defense as well. Just a shame they don't have rend as its very important in combat. I would have settled for a usr that's like half rend, extra d3 instead of d6 in a fight.


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leopard wrote:
well keep in mind the tank companies of old were like 10 land raiders, or Leman Russ (they may have been 12 strong?), though in smaller detachments

but then I'm also used to playing Soviet armour in WW2 where in some case units of 16 are not uncommon

I just know the folly of activations all being like very dice heavy, it can certainly speed the game up but then it really does start to feel a bit like activation lottery if both sides just have maxed out firepower tit for tat. Msu just feels more fun than both sides goin ham.

MSU works, and works well, but you need a mix between MSU and survivable units - e.g. assault formations and SA formations with slightly worse morale need larger units to test for morale less often and assault units need to be able to take the hits

have a 2k game coming up, just over 1k of which is due to be the SA armoured formation I'm working on now, will have three detachments of six Leman Russ, 16 Vanquishers and the two normal battle cannot hulls I have (one of which likely will end up as the HQ) plus a Baneblade, backed by a pair of lightning fighters

I feel six is probably decent for Leman Russ units, even then they will likely focus fire to actually kill stuff at range, then do their own things once the laser cannon is in range as well.

the other half will be infantry, likely a pioneer formation and maybe another, these will have some small units in for activations

I figure with the fighters it matters to be able to force the enemy if they have air to deploy it first, to then "intercept" upon arrival (or try to)

Hopefully we get more Russ turrets, more Contemptor weapons, maybe more infantry weapons too. sadly I expect the plasma russ to be a total lemon

I regret to inform you all of the loss of two fine Thunderbolt pilots, and a toast in their honour will be held in the Officer's club. My brother's Knight force, on the other hand, went out in the same professional manner as Private First Class William L. Hudson.

Legions is hilariously unbalanced, but so much so that we laughed right up until the end. While I can't see it being taken seriously as a competitive game, it's simple to get started and light enough for wargaming greenhorns.

SamusDrake wrote:
I regret to inform you all of the loss of two fine Thunderbolt pilots, and a toast in their honour will be held in the Officer's club. My brother's Knight force, on the other hand, went out in the same professional manner as Private First Class William L. Hudson.

Legions is hilariously unbalanced, but so much so that we laughed right up until the end. While I can't see it being taken seriously as a competitive game, it's simple to get started and light enough for wargaming greenhorns.

it is amusing to play, and very swingy

first three games I had with aircraft myself and my opponent had access to a pair of Xiphon, both using one, first two games he deployed his, I had more activations then deployed mind, and shot his down in the first shots

third game, he returned the favour with a Kratos squadron splatting both of mine, before a single AS sentinel downed his with overwatch..

It certainly has it's comical moments.

In hindsight - but with only one game under our belt - I do think that Epic 40K fans dodged the bullet on this one, and it's probably for the best that GW played around with the 30K era before tackling the 40K era.

So played today. 1500 points. Results are a marine victory.


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so today was the frist win for marines vs aux. the mission was no mans land.

take away from this game. knights can kill each other real easy. he did a wound to me. i did 3 to him.
i was able to hold most objectives for two turns. this gave me a lead in points that he could not recover from. so we called it at end of turn two. i had 18 VPs to his 3 VPs.

Two pics from the game

Re the kratos autocannons, mathwise theyre the best option to take due to volume of fire and accurate. Ya, the las are 6" longer, but you also already come with an autocannon that breaks that ranged synergy of 20-22". The battle cannon also has the 10" option, so there's a further benefit to pushing up instead of sniping at 20 (on top of los blocking forcing some sort of closer movement to get a shot off anyways. If you build your Kratos with autos, you shouldn't worry at all about that choice.

Contemptors definitely get hosed on the infantry box build, as kheres are complete junk and you're stuck with a couple. The las are really solid, and you're paying 17.5 per model on the initial unit for that on top of it's solid profile. I think them missing rend is kinda deliberate as a result; they're a ranged unit with some melee capabilities to keep them out of trouble. Tacking on rend would make them equivalent to ogryns in terms of dice and modifiers, with an accurate lascannon, a point defence combi, 4+ that nullifies Light AP and allows rerolls, and an invul (plus whatever legion rules), all for 20 points more for the base unit. It's pretty obvious the leviathan is the reverse of the contemptor to force some choice; very short ranged shooting options that are fairly unreliable, but with an extremely capable melee punch. I'd say that you'll usually not choose to use their guns, as they'd probably prefer to march into range or charge once they get there; the volkite bouncing off of the meltas preferred targets doest help. So ya, either mix leviathans in to the contemptor unit to get some dedicated melee in that shooting unit, or take them by yourself if you just want dreads to punch stuff in melee. Contemptors don't need rend (but they do need that lascannon lol).

Re knights and their survivability. Most things in this game die if you put them in front of 18 bases that wound on 4s and can affect their save. Similarly most things die when getting blasted by an airwing lol. As an ally capped at 30% of points and coming in increments of 180, they're very manageable at the moment, as you can respond to the 2-3 that can be taken in 1500-2000 in the same way as a Kratos/baneblade/Russ brick. Dealing with up to 8 knights/4 knights and 12 armigers, all across the board, in 1500 might be a different story though. Light bounces from them, melee mostly fails against them (esp if you're going into double melee quests, Lancers/atrapos, and armigers), they're really fast (18"/16" charges, yay), can hit stuff in buildings with most classes, can get barrage on quests, and more. Them being so hideable doesn't help their ease of charging either.

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
Re the kratos autocannons, mathwise theyre the best option to take due to volume of fire and accurate. Ya, the las are 6" longer, but you also already come with an autocannon that breaks that ranged synergy of 20-22". The battle cannon also has the 10" option, so there's a further benefit to pushing up instead of sniping at 20 (on top of los blocking forcing some sort of closer movement to get a shot off anyways. If you build your Kratos with autos, you shouldn't worry at all about that choice.

Contemptors definitely get hosed on the infantry box build, as kheres are complete junk and you're stuck with a couple. The las are really solid, and you're paying 17.5 per model on the initial unit for that on top of it's solid profile. I think them missing rend is kinda deliberate as a result; they're a ranged unit with some melee capabilities to keep them out of trouble. Tacking on rend would make them equivalent to ogryns in terms of dice and modifiers, with an accurate lascannon, a point defence combi, 4+ that nullifies Light AP and allows rerolls, and an invul (plus whatever legion rules), all for 20 points more for the base unit. It's pretty obvious the leviathan is the reverse of the contemptor to force some choice; very short ranged shooting options that are fairly unreliable, but with an extremely capable melee punch. I'd say that you'll usually not choose to use their guns, as they'd probably prefer to march into range or charge once they get there; the volkite bouncing off of the meltas preferred targets doest help. So ya, either mix leviathans in to the contemptor unit to get some dedicated melee in that shooting unit, or take them by yourself if you just want dreads to punch stuff in melee. Contemptors don't need rend (but they do need that lascannon lol).

Re knights and their survivability. Most things in this game die if you put them in front of 18 bases that wound on 4s and can affect their save. Similarly most things die when getting blasted by an airwing lol. As an ally capped at 30% of points and coming in increments of 180, they're very manageable at the moment, as you can respond to the 2-3 that can be taken in 1500-2000 in the same way as a Kratos/baneblade/Russ brick. Dealing with up to 8 knights/4 knights and 12 armigers, all across the board, in 1500 might be a different story though. Light bounces from them, melee mostly fails against them (esp if you're going into double melee quests, Lancers/atrapos, and armigers), they're really fast (18"/16" charges, yay), can hit stuff in buildings with most classes, can get barrage on quests, and more. Them being so hideable doesn't help their ease of charging either.

the kratos autocannons, mathwise theyre the best option to take. i find the heavy bolters to be the best right now.

knights just die. like today. in a knight vs knight fight. one was just shot off the board in a single round of shooting. its only 3 wounds you have to get through and when most AT weapons have -1. they are saving on a 4 most times.

kheres are complete junk. agreed. there pretty bad. i just think of the dreads with the Kheres as body guards for the las dreads. they die first. the dread hand bolter is the most used and best weapon they have.

i dont know how a entire knight army will work. i feel they will die all the same. but even if they dont die. there OC is so low that they cant take objectives. also as they will be bigger than most things even if they are in combat with a unit they can still get shot at.

It might be my familiarity with Epic 40k and Epic Armageddon talking, but... boy oh boy, does this game look like you spend more time removing pieces from the board than actually playing or doing much else.

Is it me, or does stuff don't really stay much on the table?

first turn sees a lot die, if one or both players advance, after the first turn the amount of firepower has dropped significantly

but yes lethality is currently too high, to the point as I've suggested stuff needs more wounds

anything scale 2 should have 2, scale 3 three, scale 4 at least 4 and so on, in effect infantry in the open still suffer, but other stuff sticks about longer

I also think the "all knights/titans" games will see different scenarios so the buggers can actually score, unless GW somehow forgets this bit

Possibly facetious comment? I’d recommend not getting too attached to any given unit. Consider everything disposable, and focus on bagging those early objectives.

To me, Epic should be a blood bath. It’s 40k’s setting writ large (but also smol).

Let me enjoy wiping out a modern Chapter’s worth of Marines with contemptuous ease, only to have my Titan’s Tipped in the next turn.

That what I want to see. That’s what I want to experience. I want that reward of marshalling my surprisingly fragile force to victory. That’s where I get my jollies.

Other opinions are available and just as valid

Yeah, I feel differently myself. I like to see units have effectiveness degradation without having to outright die. You can have a bloodbath AND units gettin pounded so that they can't advance or shoot no more without dying, those two are not really mutually exclusive. But if the only, for sure way of deleting the enemy for realsies is going there and getting your hands dirty (aka close combat/firefights at 40k ranges)... then you have to do it, which makes it more like 40k IMHO.

Maybe my problem is that everyone goes to the slaughter without a second thought, as there's not much if at all in the way of morale.

Incidentally, the way objectives work with/against army morale in Epic 40k feels a lot more... integrated... than simply earning points, IME (the different types of objectives either add or substract points from yours' or the enemy's army morale)

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Possibly facetious comment? I’d recommend not getting too attached to any given unit. Consider everything disposable, and focus on bagging those early objectives.

To me, Epic should be a blood bath. It’s 40k’s setting writ large (but also smol).

Let me enjoy wiping out a modern Chapter’s worth of Marines with contemptuous ease, only to have my Titan’s Tipped in the next turn.

That what I want to see. That’s what I want to experience. I want that reward of marshalling my surprisingly fragile force to victory. That’s where I get my jollies.

Other opinions are available and just as valid

this is essentially how I play, I adopt quite a "Soviet" play style, think its tied to the 5 turns mentality, GW want stuff to be dead, not "crippled and hiding" or having run off

One thing that i thought. If you expect something might overwatch you better tempt him before he activates said detachment. Say 10 russ ahead. Park fliers with comparable range you think he will overwatch(not sure how many but thunderhawk's 30-40"). Ideally so that not every russ in range.

If he overwatch then it's not with everything hopefully. You can migate damage.

Then said overwatching unit isn't shooting at later nor can he move(since you pulled ow before they moved). You can ram your anti-tank weapons in their face knowing they can't move nor return fire.

Basically as OW is once per turn when you move dictate when opponent can OW on YOUR terms.

Incidentally thought about this when I was thinking what to do with thunderhawks if there's no good spot T1 to land without risking too risky OW.

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leopard wrote:

I also think the "all knights/titans" games will see different scenarios so the buggers can actually score, unless GW somehow forgets this bit

Well in titan vs titan it's more easy to be on objective alone at which point you control it regardless of are you titan or not.

One thing we did like was that the Knights have far more to do in Legions, and the anti-aircraft role of the of the Porphyrion's Helios missiles. In this regard its a shame that the Questoris is still lacking the Icarus Autocannons, and the Helverin could have an alternative profile for it's Autocannons which includes sky-fire, to bring it more into contrast with the close-quarter Warglaive which also doubles up as a demolisher.

leopard wrote:
They can also only target a single enemy unit, an objective held by two causes a problem (unless you can get some ranged fire to support them of course), and to be honest eight stands with a 4+ save likely won't last long against the enemies fire.

I miss the terminators with a 75% chance of saving all but the heaviest of shots :(


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tneva82 wrote:
I have list in mind with about 200 plus 60 rhinos to haul them.

Won't get for ages enough infantry to run it though. Beside such skew not being #1 to collect gw can't keep marine infantry available for long.

Surely all those first edition plastics mean you can do it now...

A) don't have them b) they look silly next to current ones so sure as hell not going to hunt them from ebay i rather spend that money getting new models as they come available.

 ashlevrier wrote:

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
Re the kratos autocannons, mathwise theyre the best option to take due to volume of fire and accurate. Ya, the las are 6" longer, but you also already come with an autocannon that breaks that ranged synergy of 20-22". The battle cannon also has the 10" option, so there's a further benefit to pushing up instead of sniping at 20 (on top of los blocking forcing some sort of closer movement to get a shot off anyways. If you build your Kratos with autos, you shouldn't worry at all about that choice.

Contemptors definitely get hosed on the infantry box build, as kheres are complete junk and you're stuck with a couple. The las are really solid, and you're paying 17.5 per model on the initial unit for that on top of it's solid profile. I think them missing rend is kinda deliberate as a result; they're a ranged unit with some melee capabilities to keep them out of trouble. Tacking on rend would make them equivalent to ogryns in terms of dice and modifiers, with an accurate lascannon, a point defence combi, 4+ that nullifies Light AP and allows rerolls, and an invul (plus whatever legion rules), all for 20 points more for the base unit. It's pretty obvious the leviathan is the reverse of the contemptor to force some choice; very short ranged shooting options that are fairly unreliable, but with an extremely capable melee punch. I'd say that you'll usually not choose to use their guns, as they'd probably prefer to march into range or charge once they get there; the volkite bouncing off of the meltas preferred targets doest help. So ya, either mix leviathans in to the contemptor unit to get some dedicated melee in that shooting unit, or take them by yourself if you just want dreads to punch stuff in melee. Contemptors don't need rend (but they do need that lascannon lol).

Re knights and their survivability. Most things in this game die if you put them in front of 18 bases that wound on 4s and can affect their save. Similarly most things die when getting blasted by an airwing lol. As an ally capped at 30% of points and coming in increments of 180, they're very manageable at the moment, as you can respond to the 2-3 that can be taken in 1500-2000 in the same way as a Kratos/baneblade/Russ brick. Dealing with up to 8 knights/4 knights and 12 armigers, all across the board, in 1500 might be a different story though. Light bounces from them, melee mostly fails against them (esp if you're going into double melee quests, Lancers/atrapos, and armigers), they're really fast (18"/16" charges, yay), can hit stuff in buildings with most classes, can get barrage on quests, and more. Them being so hideable doesn't help their ease of charging either.

the kratos autocannons, mathwise theyre the best option to take. i find the heavy bolters to be the best right now.

knights just die. like today. in a knight vs knight fight. one was just shot off the board in a single round of shooting. its only 3 wounds you have to get through and when most AT weapons have -1. they are saving on a 4 most times.

kheres are complete junk. agreed. there pretty bad. i just think of the dreads with the Kheres as body guards for the las dreads. they die first. the dread hand bolter is the most used and best weapon they have.

i dont know how a entire knight army will work. i feel they will die all the same. but even if they dont die. there OC is so low that they cant take objectives. also as they will be bigger than most things even if they are in combat with a unit they can still get shot at.

Heavy bolters are a great anti infantry tool and pair very well with aggressive movement to bring the melta or 10" shot in range. But if you're not using them like that, it's hard to argue with the longer range guns.

Knights can absolutely die, no argument on that. But it's the details that tend to add up; was it a skew of undercosted guns? Almost double it's points? Dedicated engine killing stuff? I'd also ask about terrain, as this game makes it really easy to hide stuff behind obstructing, while also just blasting through with a huge charge. The lancer and atrapos are very strong melee units, with a 3+ ion and nimble to see them through. Armigers are ogryns on crack. Like, people can't simultaneously have issues dealing with ogryns while easily killing knights, as los blocking is what allows both to perform. Their low oc also only really matters if the units haven't died in combat to them, and with huge access to rending weapons and the reach off the lancer, it's pretty hard to survive.

 Albertorius wrote:
It might be my familiarity with Epic 40k and Epic Armageddon talking, but... boy oh boy, does this game look like you spend more time removing pieces from the board than actually playing or doing much else.

Is it me, or does stuff don't really stay much on the table?

everything dies fast in this game. but the problem now is how to stop the run away if someone has the objectives. by end of turn two i had a lead that he could not over come. we talked about that to do and it seams turn one is march everying to the objectives. turn two is charge turn. turn three is hold.

for me i march the Rhinos up to the objective and drop out the troop. if they are on the objective when they get out then i will give them a advance order. if they need more speed to get there a march order. that means my marines can get 18 out of the transports and 15 with a walk. that a total of 33 inches of move in one turn. 12 stands of dudes makes it hard to brake them too.

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:

 ashlevrier wrote:

 Skimask Mohawk wrote:
Re the kratos autocannons, mathwise theyre the best option to take due to volume of fire and accurate. Ya, the las are 6" longer, but you also already come with an autocannon that breaks that ranged synergy of 20-22". The battle cannon also has the 10" option, so there's a further benefit to pushing up instead of sniping at 20 (on top of los blocking forcing some sort of closer movement to get a shot off anyways. If you build your Kratos with autos, you shouldn't worry at all about that choice.

Contemptors definitely get hosed on the infantry box build, as kheres are complete junk and you're stuck with a couple. The las are really solid, and you're paying 17.5 per model on the initial unit for that on top of it's solid profile. I think them missing rend is kinda deliberate as a result; they're a ranged unit with some melee capabilities to keep them out of trouble. Tacking on rend would make them equivalent to ogryns in terms of dice and modifiers, with an accurate lascannon, a point defence combi, 4+ that nullifies Light AP and allows rerolls, and an invul (plus whatever legion rules), all for 20 points more for the base unit. It's pretty obvious the leviathan is the reverse of the contemptor to force some choice; very short ranged shooting options that are fairly unreliable, but with an extremely capable melee punch. I'd say that you'll usually not choose to use their guns, as they'd probably prefer to march into range or charge once they get there; the volkite bouncing off of the meltas preferred targets doest help. So ya, either mix leviathans in to the contemptor unit to get some dedicated melee in that shooting unit, or take them by yourself if you just want dreads to punch stuff in melee. Contemptors don't need rend (but they do need that lascannon lol).

Re knights and their survivability. Most things in this game die if you put them in front of 18 bases that wound on 4s and can affect their save. Similarly most things die when getting blasted by an airwing lol. As an ally capped at 30% of points and coming in increments of 180, they're very manageable at the moment, as you can respond to the 2-3 that can be taken in 1500-2000 in the same way as a Kratos/baneblade/Russ brick. Dealing with up to 8 knights/4 knights and 12 armigers, all across the board, in 1500 might be a different story though. Light bounces from them, melee mostly fails against them (esp if you're going into double melee quests, Lancers/atrapos, and armigers), they're really fast (18"/16" charges, yay), can hit stuff in buildings with most classes, can get barrage on quests, and more. Them being so hideable doesn't help their ease of charging either.

the kratos autocannons, mathwise theyre the best option to take. i find the heavy bolters to be the best right now.

knights just die. like today. in a knight vs knight fight. one was just shot off the board in a single round of shooting. its only 3 wounds you have to get through and when most AT weapons have -1. they are saving on a 4 most times.

kheres are complete junk. agreed. there pretty bad. i just think of the dreads with the Kheres as body guards for the las dreads. they die first. the dread hand bolter is the most used and best weapon they have.

i dont know how a entire knight army will work. i feel they will die all the same. but even if they dont die. there OC is so low that they cant take objectives. also as they will be bigger than most things even if they are in combat with a unit they can still get shot at.

Heavy bolters are a great anti infantry tool and pair very well with aggressive movement to bring the melta or 10" shot in range. But if you're not using them like that, it's hard to argue with the longer range guns.

Knights can absolutely die, no argument on that. But it's the details that tend to add up; was it a skew of undercosted guns? Almost double it's points? Dedicated engine killing stuff? I'd also ask about terrain, as this game makes it really easy to hide stuff behind obstructing, while also just blasting through with a huge charge. The lancer and atrapos are very strong melee units, with a 3+ ion and nimble to see them through. Armigers are ogryns on crack. Like, people can't simultaneously have issues dealing with ogryns while easily killing knights, as los blocking is what allows both to perform. Their low oc also only really matters if the units haven't died in combat to them, and with huge access to rending weapons and the reach off the lancer, it's pretty hard to survive.

i posted a picture of the game. both knights where the same set up. battle cannon, chain sword, rocket pod.

i play the marines agressively so the heavy bolters do lots of work. got to get on those objectives fast and hold them. marines dont have the range of the Aux.

a knight might win in combat. but your knight is fighting one unit. what do you do about the other 3 on the objective taking it from you. i will refur to pics of my last battle

If enemy rush to objective you can still shoot the units off there. Only so much you can cram into the objective...And when you are in objective you are in open and ready to be blown apart.

So yeah rush to objectives early is good but that's going to cost you a lot as you need to expose to shooting lots of units as enemy will be blowing those detachments in range of objective.

assuming the objective doesn't have some terrain deployed masking it from fire from one direction or another

or doesn't have a decent sized building within 3" of it

so far rushing objectives has done me quite well, usually takes 2-3 turns to be removed from them (remembering that reinforcements can move up) and with luck thats 3 turns and the game is mine even if they are lost for the last two

its practically early WW2 Eastern front or WW1 trenchline stuff, human wave assaults and "we have reserves"

just need more bodies than they have bullets for just long enough

Progressive scoring is just not good for this game, infiltrate makes a mockery of it as well.

leopard wrote:
assuming the objective doesn't have some terrain deployed masking it from fire from one direction or another

or doesn't have a decent sized building within 3" of it

Well if you set terrain like that don't be surprised if game goes.

No garrison here inside 3" and los block covers only some directions so move&shoot doesn't make units invincible.

Tradeoffs and decisions. Do you keep units safe or vp's. No have cake and eat it too.

have adopted no structures within 3" here, may revise when more stuff comes out but for now its sensible

however masking terrain doesn't have to be too close, a wooded area between one objective and where the enemy wants to sit is enough, only have to mask some firepower (or distract it) to work.

however not everything and every location on a table will have a clear shot at anything sat on any objective

trick is to put the stuff scoring you points never quite in the position of "I can kill that in one shot" and also never higher than #2 on the enemies "thats got to die and die now" list

works quite well

also works nicely with terrain going down before scenario is rolled for

1d3+1 bits per quarter, players alternate in picking something and placing it - stuff then moved back to be more than 3" from objectives

 Albertorius wrote:
It might be my familiarity with Epic 40k and Epic Armageddon talking, but... boy oh boy, does this game look like you spend more time removing pieces from the board than actually playing or doing much else.

Is it me, or does stuff don't really stay much on the table?

Part of this is deliberate, they're expecting 3000 as a baseline and doing all they can not to discourage the spamming of any one unit for the most part, but speed of play would be drastically affected if both side were arguing % of cover constantly. Stuff does die very easy, but a fix could be as simple as letting units of infantry burn their order tokens to "go to ground" like the 40k mechanic, basically self pin and gain a cover save/-1 to hit. Tanks and vehicles could similarly burn orders tokens to use counter measures like popping smoke.

This is also an artifact of alternating activation in a game where the most common order allows just about any detachment to move its full movement stat and fire at full range. Like titanicus, sadly for all the strategy and tactics sometimes it does feel a bit to predicated on winning that initiative roll. The tit for tat destruction possible at like 3000-4000 points with fully maxed out units just seems a bit nutty, but GW is like a casino, they of course want this game to skew more towards larger battles and armies than smaller skirmishes because it sells more models, to their defense they could have gone much more cynical by not limiting knights and titans but thankfully they did and the game is better for them only accounting for 30%. A lot can be done to reduce the deadliness of each activation, very easy to force a bit more msu by reducing detachment's max sizes or even changing their min sizes. The good news for the games simplicity there is its very easy to do and might reduce the deadliness of each activation.

The last straw is just playing with a tonne of area terrain with very healthy cover saves/hit modifiers.

GW also skew towards randomness being more important that skill, both matter but the skew makes it easier for a new player, in theory, to pick up

and then the units they put out cancel it out

SamusDrake wrote:


In hindsight - but with only one game under our belt - I do think that Epic 40K fans dodged the bullet on this one, ...

I wonder why you think that....


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leopard wrote:
first turn sees a lot die, if one or both players advance, after the first turn the amount of firepower has dropped significantly

but yes lethality is currently too high, to the point as I've suggested stuff needs more wounds

anything scale 2 should have 2, scale 3 three, scale 4 at least 4 and so on, in effect infantry in the open still suffer, but other stuff sticks about longer

I also think the "all knights/titans" games will see different scenarios so the buggers can actually score, unless GW somehow forgets this bit

I would suggest to remove "6s always hit" for 7+, 8+ & 9+ mechanic.

tneva82 wrote:
If enemy rush to objective you can still shoot the units off there. Only so much you can cram into the objective...And when you are in objective you are in open and ready to be blown apart.

So yeah rush to objectives early is good but that's going to cost you a lot as you need to expose to shooting lots of units as enemy will be blowing those detachments in range of objective.

did you not see the pics of the game i posted. he tried to shoot me off of the points. but i had 18 VP to his 3VP.


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tneva82 wrote:

leopard wrote:
assuming the objective doesn't have some terrain deployed masking it from fire from one direction or another

or doesn't have a decent sized building within 3" of it

Well if you set terrain like that don't be surprised if game goes.

No garrison here inside 3" and los block covers only some directions so move&shoot doesn't make units invincible.

Tradeoffs and decisions. Do you keep units safe or vp's. No have cake and eat it too.

your argument is basicaly. if terrain is not right game is broken. yah that sounds like a good system. how many games have you played. i want to see pics of your games


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 Crablezworth wrote:
Progressive scoring is just not good for this game, infiltrate makes a mockery of it as well.

i think we are going to try and use the flames of war missions next time. they will at least make more narative sense.

 Crablezworth wrote:
Progressive scoring is just not good for this game, infiltrate makes a mockery of it as well.

Progressive scoring has over DECADES proven to be better though. With end game there's no reason whatsoever to go to objectives. All that would then archieve is losing your units FOR NO GAIN. There's no benefit for exposing your army to maximum damage output.

Opponent will just shoot at your units at objective, charge, kill your units faster than you and then at the end when your army is dead take one objective. Your army dead=0 vp, he scores something=he wins.

This has happened again and again and again over cause of decades. End game isn't some new untested system. It's been used and it results in static gunlines again and again and again. Not surprising since there's no incentive to move and lots of penalty from going forward...

For end game to have any reasonable chance you would need game to have lethality down so much that at least 70% armies are still on board toward the end...

Guess your army is long range armoured company that wants to spend most of game first firing. As only static gunline armies prefer end game scoring.

Just learn to play vs infiltrate. Shoot at units at objectives. And charge front line. Player who goes army front will struggle to have army LEFT after 2nd round. 2 round scoring vs 3 round scoring...

Also you can transport stuff forward. Every army has transports. Multiples even.

tneva82 wrote:


Just learn to play vs infiltrate.

That's not an argument.

Tneva, the game that this is based on (Epic Space Marine) did not have progressive/cumulative scoring for objectives though, which is perhaps the more important point. So in SM2 you had a VP 'benchmark' that you needed to hit for victory which was based on the total points value of each army. You got VPs calculated at the end of each turn (5VP per objective marker, plus VPs for breaking units) and the first person to hit that total won the game, otherwise it was a draw. This meant very mobile armies could go racing forward (Marines, Eldar etc.) and grab as many objectives as they could, but they then had a race to 'hold on' and try and break some units while the more ponderous but powerful armies (Orks, Chaos, Imperial Guard etc.) came back at them by damaging them and eventually force them back off objective markers (you then lost those VPs). I think it was a really balanced dynamic and more often that not you ended up with very close games and coming down to the last roll of the dice.

The designers of Legions, whoever they might be, have decided to go with a different approach here. I won't say it's better or worse until I have thoroughly playtested, but it definitely produces a different type of game. The picture I am getting is of massive armies (and this is why the 3k points comes in), smash together in the centre of the table over the objectives (the increased movement and firepower means this new game is extremely deadly and most of that mass of soldiers/tanks are destroyed) and it's 'smash and grab' as quickly as you can. I suspect it is an attempt to create the extremely brutal warfare described in the HH books and the like as the marines annihilated each other. But, it's definitely a design decision, and where the designers have moved away from the work of Rick Priestley, Andy Chambers, Jervis Johnson etc.

There are many ways to skin the "how do I win?" cat

GW like a victory point based system for most of their games, though how you score them varies.

Flames has it as "sudden death" - capture the objective and you win, with then a points system based around your losses

some games do it based on damage scored or a ratio of damage scored and damage taken

have also seen a wonderful WW2 air combat system that has no point values, each aircraft is worth "1" victory point, you can bring whatever sized force you want, to win you need to score victory points equal to half the size of your own force.. so bring too much and winning could be impossible, whereas a small force need only ping a bit of a larger one to win - with some extra points laid over this for doing specific things

GW seem to have moved to progressive scoring over time (Middle Earth being the exception here, you have a defined win condition to end the game, and then score), largely to avoid the game turning into a static fire fight with a last turn dash which has hurt earlier editions of some games and bled over into others.

what would probably be useful for Legions is to have different scenarios score differently, so some are progressive some are pure win/lose, or potentially lose/lose (something Flames 3 had and was excellent), some based on doing specific things, some based on casualties

heck throw in asymmetric games too, you both build your army but maybe one side only gets half their force, but is fighting a delaying action or something

across the gaming world there are a lot of scenarios and a lot of ways to win, a decent game system can cope with using several

I'm a handful of games in, maximum 1500p yet. So far liking it a lot even though it has its issues.

Here are some quick lessons our group has learned so far (only Astartes vs Astartes yet).

-Playing tactically for the Scenario at hand is rewarded
-Going overly aggressive to score VPs turn 1 is punished by Divide & Conquer and the other player has so far swing round and won for us (not yet tested infiltrate, this is with turn 1 March/air deployed assault marines. Infiltrate is stronger, so looking forward to facing that, except maybe in Retrieve & Forward Push)
-Overwatch is crucial, it's much easier to stop Infantry/transports BEFORE they can garrison
-Buildings within 3" of an Objective are a death trap. They go down easily. So far I've stayed maximum 1-2 turns in a Garrison, using Transports to redeplpy before it collapses
-Point Defence is a strong ability both in Overwatch & firing out of sequence/split fire
-Flyers deal pain but are taken out easily by weight of fire since everything can shoot at them (boo)
-Reaver is a bit too strong at 1500p, where not enough detachments are available to strip its Shields & overwhelm it. We'll probably leave it to 2000+ and go for a Warhound next time round.
-Knight Questoris are pretty deadly but also far from Invulnerable
-A & B weapon choices for the same points cost aren't balanced at all. Case in point Contemptors, TLLC is crazily betterer than AssCans.

Here's my review & Comparison with EA30K/EpicAU 30k that I really like.

I will update after bigger games and any Erratas and if course once we get more complete army lists with core transports & artillery.


Rules 8/10
Balance 5/10
Weighted 7.5/10

+Good terrain rules that really affect gameplay, same as EA30k, but also terrain that you can affect (by targeting structures)
+Balancing mechanics built into Army building, Formations limiting what you can take to limit spam & Strategic assets being limited
+Detachments with higher initial cost and reduced expansion cost forces you to choose if you want more activations or larger Formations/Detachments that are harder to break
+Multiple Victory Condition scenarios
+Objective Control/Tactical Strength values is a good mechanic
+Scale rules, larger units can shoot and/or leave cc and move over smaller units
+/- The USP of LI, its Hybrid phase/alternating activation system. Orders locked in start of turn forces you to think ahead but at the cost of reactivity during the turn. Subphases of taking turns activating vs true alternating activations. Means no possibility to move after everything has shot.
Also activations are not necessarily alternating, if player 1 has chosen fewer or no prders for a certain phase player 2 potentially gets to do lots in a row
+/- Legion Traits add flavour, but at the cost of balance as the power level is very unequal. Could have cost points per Formation to balance them?
-A bit slow. Very granular with (too) many special rules and traits for large games. CC with one vs one pairing also slows the game.
-No supression/pinning mechanic. Just focus fire to kill and hope to break as there is no pinning units you can't kill enough of to break. Morale plays little role over all as even broken formations' units can be ordered to Move & Shoot & charge
-No degradation of Multi wound units as they are damaged. Together with lack of supression this means everything is at full capacity until dead. Which will again reward larger/tougher units and make it sometimes pointless to shoot at things you can't finish. e.g. a Warlord Titan with 1W remaining is as dangerous to you as an undamaged one.
-Bad internal balance. A&B weapon choices for the same points where one is clearly statistically better. Also Titans in particular gain more in power level than points increase, bigger is stronger per point
-Everything gets to shoot at flyers

Here images from our last games for terrain density reference, if your group has come to other conclusions. We are working on more scatter, obstacles & obstruction area terrain.

The balance can be improved by Erratas & house Erratas.

Its also early days, incomplete game without assault/core transports & artillery.

100% agree on scatter terrain being needed, stuff to slow movement, obstacles that can provide cover

For sure. We realized early we are lacking in that department. But one can only paint so many things in a given time, so they will be added as soon as we can get some painted. We're pretty good on LOS blocking though IMO. Big terrain painting effort coming up I sense. Buildings, scatter, obstacles, area terrain.

the tables look very good. I've got some 3d print buildings aimed for Titanicus, they largely sit on raised plinths which provide nice obstacles to hunker down behind. printing some Jersey barriers

think also barricades, burnt out wreckage etc will be good

also pondering industrial areas that can be considered area terrain with pipework etc over it so good for infantry to lurk in and while passable for vehicles slows them down

Sounds good, we are planning for industrial pipelines, barrricades, ruins, wrecks.

Plinths are an interesting idea, hadn't thought about that.

the files come with three heights of them, end up about 8" square or 8"x4" roughly, the lowest is enough for infantry generally to be out of sight behind, the highest will hide tanks, medium lets turrets fire over but thats about it

not got enough for a large area done yet but they look decent and give defined roadways that can then be further blocked

have also noted the lowest as an obstacle for vehicles and the other two as impassable, the highest impassable to all but infantry. medium and low have stairways for walkers etc

I’m really hoping the next wave of LI is soon.

I feel a nearly maxed out Demi-Company is a good start for infantry. But whilst I could certainly go another, I want different Dreadnoughts, and some Tarantula or Rapiers to mix up my tactical options some.

I'm dying for some drop pods and jetbikes for my blood angels

high speed stuff and hopefully flanking stuff is going to mix the game up a fair bit, especially drop pods

I know I gave some of y'all a lot of crap over all the bitching about some of the stuff like drop pods and bikes/land speeders, etc. not being part of the core rulebook... but I've come to the conclusion that most of the second wave content should have been included in the first wave.

In my efforts to try to build thematically and fluffily appropriate lists for multiple legions, I've hit various roadblocks due to the absences of various key units (how are you supposed to build a white scars army without bikes!?). Insofar as I can tell, once this next wave releases that should no longer really be an issue (though not having things like recon marines or breacher marines, etc. is still a bit disappointing) and there will be enough variety to actually start getting into specialized formations and the like, but the first wave I think was overly limited and vanilla.

I'm pondering if we will ever see Breacher teams, despoilers etc

I have to imagine that we will, eventually. If GW can make a model of it and sell it, they eventually will, especially long term once they've run through a lot of the vehicle options.

Hopefully we’ll get a Recon Company. That’d be pretty cool.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Hopefully we’ll get a Recon Company. That’d be pretty cool.

and with sniper abilities pretty useful too, small, likely easily killed unless they get something like they cannot be targeted outside a certain range

hmm. I've actually got some Mk II recon dudes in 28mm that could perhaps print to 8mm, not game purpose as yet except maybe as an objective marker

I was meaning Scouty Type Gubbins. Speeders, Bikes, Jetbikes, Speeder Bikes, Bikejets, Speeder Jets and that.

I honestly don’t know if we’ll see Breachers and Destroyers. I wouldn’t say No to them, but at this scales would it work? Not just in the units acting distinctly enough, but being visibly different on the board.

I’ve already painted the rim of the Plasma Gunners to stand out more, so I’m not opposed to that approach. But I do have concerns the game itself just isn’t suited to such specialist infantry.

maybe not, I am looking forwards to speeders, jet bikes, bikes and other such light recce stuff

and wondering what the "light armour" slot will end up with

@Mad doc: Both Breachers & Destroyers have models to print, and rules in EA30k. Breachers are easily identifiable on the board, Destroyers not so much.

I have some on my desk, awaiting LI rules. Might play them as tacticals/Ass Marines until then, just because they are cool.


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leopard wrote:


and wondering what the "light armour" slot will end up with

Sabre light tanks. Small, cool af imo. Available to print already, probably coming in plastic later since they have that slot.

I can see Breachers being rules suited to clearing out buildings, as that’s about as close to a boarding action as we’ll likely get for LI’s scale.


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And I guess Destroyers could be Assault Equivalent, but able to render area terrain Dangeous or something with Rad Bombs or what have you.

Phosbex rule for breachers would accomplish that one

SU-152 wrote:

I wonder why you think that....

Well, y'know...because reasons, dude!

The 40K audience is far greater than that of 30K, and the effort thus far would have attracted far more scrutiny and scorn. I honestly don't believe we'd have enough cheese for that amount of whine.

The other reason is that 30K tends to be more popular on the narrative side, where players are generally more forgiving. Thats at least how I find them...

leopard wrote:
100% agree on scatter terrain being needed, stuff to slow movement, obstacles that can provide cover

One key thing to keep in mind that's actually pretty crucial about the obstacle rules is the units having to make base contact. One thing the obstacles rules sorely lacks is a method to split the wound pool like with area terrain between models getting and models in the open. The area terrain rules are not perfect but expedient, you basically as attack get to decided to only target the models in the detachment in he open, limiting the wound pool, or they all get -1 to hit. It's not a perfect solution but it keeps it consistent with area terrain. Also combats the sillyness of 1 base out of 16 touching and behind an obstacle gifting -1 to 15 models in the open


For my own boards I'm focusing building/acquiting barricade style obstacles. Basically the ruin box came with 3 little sections of defense line, and I want more stuff like that, basically low cover/walls style stuff you'd see in 40k/30k just smaller.

Right now the meta, because the most common order is advance and first fire is a bit lacking, is basically hide behind los blocking terrain, pre measure a lot, when you think something might be in your range, move out and hope to activate frist when it comes to shooting.

But a lot of reason for not seeing first fire in our games, other than it not being the only order that lets you overwatch as it should be imo, is that other than tanks, there's very little reason to rank up and move your infantry other other shorter to mid range units into a line. This is also why Iaugh about static play because half the armies in the game don't even have ground transports yet and the most common order is move and shoot lol. But other than the lack of longer sections of low cover ideal for infantry and tanks to get a -1 to hit on my boards currently, there aren't really any weapons that require a detachment to not move, so that also sorta skews terrain more towards playing peekaboo with los blocking terrain.

I think we're actually fortunate to alll see the game at a phase where many only have predominantly civitas structures to make a board. Because it shows the folly of that too, of not having like a healthy mix of terrain types. The terrain rules are interseting like that, as its a much older approach this isn't quite telling players to make their own terrain, but it's obvious for all to see that things like area terrain are not 100% slam dunks the way gw would have you play them, making weird implied areas of terrain delineated by ruin corners. I've seen the odd game using the occasional piece of area terrain but it hasn't been common because outside of the aos trees that are way too tall, gw doesn't really sell area terrain. It's more of a battlefield in a box thing.



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 westiebestie wrote:
@Mad doc: Both Breachers & Destroyers have models to print, and rules in EA30k. Breachers are easily identifiable on the board, Destroyers not so much.

I have some on my desk, awaiting LI rules. Might play them as tacticals/Ass Marines until then, just because they are cool.


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leopard wrote:


and wondering what the "light armour" slot will end up with

Sabre light tanks. Small, cool af imo. Available to print already, probably coming in plastic later since they have that slot.

I think your review is pretty spot on, I'd only take one exception and that's that the formations don't actually limit very much without limiting the total number of formations a player can take. This is because they're very loose, example, I could field a formation for solar aux that is all of 70pts, just to get an extra commander, conversely I could field a single detachment that is over 3000 points and its made up entirely of baneblades and leman russes. Some formations are broken in conception, the pioneer company just lets a whole swathe of solar aux infiltrate. You're absolutely correct that the legions traits aren't created remotely equal, well that formation basically make solar aux able to be raven guard. Limiting formations won't fix all the other issues, especially the a and b options stuff, which you are definitely correct is a glaringly obvious problem esp with contemptors and prtending kheres is anywhere near an accurate lascannon.


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SamusDrake wrote:

SU-152 wrote:

I wonder why you think that....

Well, y'know...because reasons, dude!

The 40K audience is far greater than that of 30K, and the effort thus far would have attracted far more scrutiny and scorn. I honestly don't believe we'd have enough cheese for that amount of whine.

The other reason is that 30K tends to be more popular on the narrative side, where players are generally more forgiving. Thats at least how I find them...

I honestly am very glad it's not 40k and multiple factions, gw never could fight the temptation to make xenos have some sorta janky nonsense that just messses a little too much with the core rules, A great example, i'd have been fine with bfg only ever being imp vs chaos/traitors, it was when the eldar and necrons showed up that they just were too damn broken or had far to involved rules like eldar ships and the sun edge ect.

The real benefit of the 30k setting and limited factions with a lot of overlap is like with titanicus, the whole player base generally gets to benefit from a new book/release. A lot less jealousy because any new unit that performs well, isn't locked away from anyone, it's an allie chart away from being taken in their own army.

 Crablezworth wrote:

 westiebestie wrote:



I'm a handful of games in, maximum 1500p yet. So far liking it a lot even though it has its issues.

Here are some quick lessons our group has learned so far (only Astartes vs Astartes yet).

-Playing tactically for the Scenario at hand is rewarded
-Going overly aggressive to score VPs turn 1 is punished by Divide & Conquer and the other player has so far swing round and won for us (not yet tested infiltrate, this is with turn 1 March/air deployed assault marines. Infiltrate is stronger, so looking forward to facing that, except maybe in Retrieve & Forward Push)
-Overwatch is crucial, it's much easier to stop Infantry/transports BEFORE they can garrison
-Buildings within 3" of an Objective are a death trap. They go down easily. So far I've stayed maximum 1-2 turns in a Garrison, using Transports to redeplpy before it collapses
-Point Defence is a strong ability both in Overwatch & firing out of sequence/split fire
-Flyers deal pain but are taken out easily by weight of fire since everything can shoot at them (boo)
-Reaver is a bit too strong at 1500p, where not enough detachments are available to strip its Shields & overwhelm it. We'll probably leave it to 2000+ and go for a Warhound next time round.
-Knight Questoris are pretty deadly but also far from Invulnerable
-A & B weapon choices for the same points cost aren't balanced at all. Case in point Contemptors, TLLC is crazily betterer than AssCans.

Here's my review & Comparison with EA30K/EpicAU 30k that I really like.

I will update after bigger games and any Erratas and if course once we get more complete army lists with core transports & artillery.


Rules 8/10
Balance 5/10
Weighted 7.5/10

+Good terrain rules that really affect gameplay, same as EA30k, but also terrain that you can affect (by targeting structures)
+Balancing mechanics built into Army building, Formations limiting what you can take to limit spam & Strategic assets being limited
+Detachments with higher initial cost and reduced expansion cost forces you to choose if you want more activations or larger Formations/Detachments that are harder to break
+Multiple Victory Condition scenarios
+Objective Control/Tactical Strength values is a good mechanic
+Scale rules, larger units can shoot and/or leave cc and move over smaller units
+/- The USP of LI, its Hybrid phase/alternating activation system. Orders locked in start of turn forces you to think ahead but at the cost of reactivity during the turn. Subphases of taking turns activating vs true alternating activations. Means no possibility to move after everything has shot.
Also activations are not necessarily alternating, if player 1 has chosen fewer or no prders for a certain phase player 2 potentially gets to do lots in a row
+/- Legion Traits add flavour, but at the cost of balance as the power level is very unequal. Could have cost points per Formation to balance them?
-A bit slow. Very granular with (too) many special rules and traits for large games. CC with one vs one pairing also slows the game.
-No supression/pinning mechanic. Just focus fire to kill and hope to break as there is no pinning units you can't kill enough of to break. Morale plays little role over all as even broken formations' units can be ordered to Move & Shoot & charge
-No degradation of Multi wound units as they are damaged. Together with lack of supression this means everything is at full capacity until dead. Which will again reward larger/tougher units and make it sometimes pointless to shoot at things you can't finish. e.g. a Warlord Titan with 1W remaining is as dangerous to you as an undamaged one.
-Bad internal balance. A&B weapon choices for the same points where one is clearly statistically better. Also Titans in particular gain more in power level than points increase, bigger is stronger per point
-Everything gets to shoot at flyers

Here images from our last games for terrain density reference, if your group has come to other conclusions. We are working on more scatter, obstacles & obstruction area terrain.

The balance can be improved by Erratas & house Erratas.

Its also early days, incomplete game without assault/core transports & artillery.

I think your review is pretty spot on, I'd only take one exception and that's that the formations don't actually limit very much without limiting the total number of formations a player can take. This is because they're very loose, example, I could field a formation for solar aux that is all of 70pts, just to get an extra commander, conversely I could field a single detachment that is over 3000 points and its made up entirely of baneblades and leman russes. Some formations are broken in conception, the pioneer company just lets a whole swathe of solar aux infiltrate. You're absolutely correct that the legions traits aren't created remotely equal, well that formation basically make solar aux able to be raven guard. Limiting formations won't fix all the other issues, especially the a and b options stuff, which you are definitely correct is a glaringly obvious problem esp with contemptors and prtending kheres is anywhere near an accurate lascannon.

Thanks. Yes I agree with you, the Formations themselves are very loose and not limited in maximum number. I was more talking in principle. If they were to introduce Formations with fewer Option slot, or we as players limit which and how many Formations a player can take, we somewhat balance army building. Legion Demi-Company is a pretty balanced building block for example. Restricting Pioneer company if one wants can also be done, and probably will be done.

Since GW won't provide point costs for weapon options which means the balance can never be as good as we/I like, I am toying with a group/house Erratas that introduces point costs for A&B options where they are the most different. Kheres/LC, Vanquisher/BC, Titan weapons etc. But we are awaiting more games and with the more complete lists after the expansion drops before considering that.

Right now I just laugh at my silly 6 Kheres Contemptors accomplishing nothing in shooting, while my main gaming buddys 2x8 LC Contemptors spew out Accurate AT. We tried considering the one attack dice a typo and gave it 2 dice similar to the HB in our last games, it's still really weak but at least can take out a few models with weak saves then.

Re: Obstacles I am building the pipes from the Manufactorum set, and got some FW barrricades incoming. Waiting for the GW ruins to come in stock so we can build matching ruin areas and have some more patches of difficult terrain.

For the next board, I purchased Lazy Forgers awesome new modular industrial stl's and his research complex. Walls, gates, pipelines galore. Can almost make a Zone Mortalis with that. Might be a year off though given the painting backlog.

 westiebestie wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:




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 westiebestie wrote:
@Mad doc: Both Breachers & Destroyers have models to print, and rules in EA30k. Breachers are easily identifiable on the board, Destroyers not so much.

I have some on my desk, awaiting LI rules. Might play them as tacticals/Ass Marines until then, just because they are cool.


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leopard wrote:


and wondering what the "light armour" slot will end up with

Sabre light tanks. Small, cool af imo. Available to print already, probably coming in plastic later since they have that slot.

I think your review is pretty spot on, I'd only take one exception and that's that the formations don't actually limit very much without limiting the total number of formations a player can take. This is because they're very loose, example, I could field a formation for solar aux that is all of 70pts, just to get an extra commander, conversely I could field a single detachment that is over 3000 points and its made up entirely of baneblades and leman russes. Some formations are broken in conception, the pioneer company just lets a whole swathe of solar aux infiltrate. You're absolutely correct that the legions traits aren't created remotely equal, well that formation basically make solar aux able to be raven guard. Limiting formations won't fix all the other issues, especially the a and b options stuff, which you are definitely correct is a glaringly obvious problem esp with contemptors and prtending kheres is anywhere near an accurate lascannon.

Thanks. Yes I agree with you, the Formations themselves are very loose and not limited in maximum number. I was more talking in principle. If they were to introduce Formations with fewer Option slot, or we as players limit which and how many Formations a player can take, we somewhat balance army building. Legion Demi-Company is a pretty balanced building block for example. Restricting Pioneer company if one wants can also be done, and probably will be done.

Since GW won't provide point costs for weapon options which means the balance can never be as good as we/I like, I am toying with a group/house Erratas that introduces point costs for A&B options where they are the most different. Kheres/LC, Vanquisher/BC, Titan weapons etc. But we are awaiting more games and with the more complete lists after the expansion drops before considering that.

Right now I just laugh at my silly 6 Kheres Contemptors accomplishing nothing in shooting, while my main gaming buddys 2x8 LC Contemptors spew out Accurate AT. We tried considering the one attack dice a typo and gave it 2 dice similar to the HB in our last games, it's still really weak but at least can take out a few models with weak saves then.

Re: Obstacles I am building the pipes from the Manufactorum set, and got some FW barrricades incoming. Waiting for the GW ruins to come in stock so we can build matching ruin areas and have some more patches of difficult terrain.

For the next board, I purchased Lazy Forgers awesome new modular industrial stl's and his research complex. Walls, gates, pipelines galore. Can almost make a Zone Mortalis with that. Might be a year off though given the painting backlog.

Nice the complex is probably one of the best sets you can get for li. The walls if kept unbasted can be destructible to tanks ramming through them, but infantry could be allowed just to move over, so good for ambushes/lurking out los. I could also see the gate houses being a fun place to make some homebrew rules about who control which gate.

I'd also recommend the asian school buildings as they're quite big and branching without being needlessly tall and can fit 25mm's on top.

I think the critical thing is, infantry being only so tall, the design of terrain specifically for them is important because even 1 mm too tall and it can totally blocks los. This also ties into the criteria that units/bases must touch to gain the benefit, otherwise players would be constantly checking/arguing over cover saves. I feel this was a very deliberate decision on the designers part. Also I think why pre measuring for everything is allowed because distance and los are basically the only determinants of what models are in and out of a wound pool.

 Crablezworth wrote:

The real benefit of the 30k setting and limited factions with a lot of overlap is like with titanicus, the whole player base generally gets to benefit from a new book/release. A lot less jealousy because any new unit that performs well, isn't locked away from anyone, it's an allie chart away from being taken in their own army.

Absolutely. The Imperial aesthetic isn't for everyone but its awesome when the opposing player might say "well, I got a spare Reaver you can use for our game, being as you're some points short".

It also makes balance a lot better, as everyone has more or less the same army building options.

Sure, we’ll still get some duff match ups here and there, but that’s down to a specific list and not because, say, Pete Haines wrote your Codex

There's that as well.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there are a lot of Legions threads on the go. I still think a 30K section, with it's 4 games, is worth consideration.

another game, 2k+ warhound

enemy was marines, armour & demi, with a pair of thunderhawks eating a good few points

I have Auxilia, armour & pioneed, plus marine garrison

so yes..

- Thunderhawks can be annoying when you only have -1 AP firing at them, but not half as annoying as a pair of lightnings removing one in "intercept" mode with decent dice
- Vanquishers are broken, yes I had 16 of them out of 18 Leman Russ, one unit of six one shotted his warhound, another deleted most of a block of nine predators.
- having assault marines, on charge orders as a reserve in place is wonderful for dealing with enemy who think they have gotten a charge off against armour only to find friends drop by to say hello
- thudd guns are evil little sods

by turn four we called it, as by then while we were equal on points I had half my army to the marines having basically nothing so the 5th turn was mine, and I was on all three objectives. I also had my secondary and he didn't to add in

I think the big stuff is seriously over costed for its robustness

Looking at the Demi-Company.

We’re as yet without Vanguard and Light Armour things to choose. And the only Transport option are Rhino, which we also, more importantly, can have as Dedicated Transport freebies.

This needs to change. Pronto.

I’ve nearly maxed out my Infantry options. All I’m short of are two bases each Heavy, Plasma, Assault and Terminators, all of which are comfortably covered by Just One More Box.

Oh, and Bastion, we need Bastion. But the models for that are coming in the form of Deredeo and Tarantulas.

I would have had tarantula tonight, they are still sitting on my desk where I left them

*rage*

though as it turned out my opponent was quite glad I lacked four more skyfire units

certainly need more units, and different units able to do different things

marines need an assault transport, Auxilia need a decent transport, the various marine scouting units will make a different too I think, especially if stuff like land speeders are reasonable points with an anti tank option

Yeah. Until we’ve a wider suite of options, I think it’s safe to say we’re not seeing the game at its full potential


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For instance? Whilst they seem destined to be a Bloody Menace, I wonder how curtailed Vanquishers will be once Marines have Speeders, and Drop Pods. Something which lets them really move up the table rapidly.

Same with the Xiphons come to think of it, as they pack a decent AT punch. I think. Whilst none of the above are simply a Delete button, it’s all stuff things like Vanquishers won’t want to act incautiously around. Like Little, Smiling, Wrinkly Old Bald Man.

Which is of course Rule 1. Rule 19 being a to ask yourself “how come Rule 1 exists?”

totally, only have to look at the Heresy lists to see the scope of capabilities currently missing

Auxilia armour will be a lot less dangerous when marines have fast moving stuff that can flank it to get past the armour for one thing

can see a marine v Auxilia game coming down to marines hitting, and hitting hard for two turns with strike units, if the Auxilia survive they win, otherwise they will be broken, but only then will their own slower moving assault units come into play

should be an interesting dynamic

Tarantula and similar will make for good speed bumps, dangerous enough you have to kill them, but then that slows the advance down

Or allows the Marine to cede a flank for a turn or two by leaving some unpleasantness, reinforcing it as needs be with Drop Pods and/or Rhino mounted infantry.

I am hoping Land Raiders and Spartans fall under Transports. That’d be cool.

guessing if they do it right Land Raiders will fall under armour, with some formations able to take them as transports or some detachments as dedicated transports

Spartans the same, though maybe slightly more restricted

wondering on the stats, 2+ armour at a guess, and for the basic land raider a hull heavy bolter and a pair of "accurate" las-cannon sponsons, perhaps lacking the "Arc (Front)" rule

issue is the Spartan if they give it four "accurate" las cannon will either be too expensive or over powered in game, personally I'd give it three "accurate" dice

could go with a 1+ save on them as well, so a 2+ if you flank them, or a 2+ with a note they do not suffer the -1 from the rear


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thoughts on some of the tank weapons options, have a "base" tank and then "variants"

you have up to one in three in a "core" detachment as the variant or can take variant options as full platoons in non-core choices

so say a Solar Auxilia Armoured Company runs two detachments of Leman Russ, with no more than one in three as a Vanquisher, or they are full battle cannon units and the "optional" slots can be pure vanquishers

potentially with a note that an "option" slot cannot have more models than a "core" slot of the same type

so now 2x4 Leman Russ then 2x8 Vanquishers

basically put the "variant" tanks in as the minority

leopard wrote:


I think the big stuff is seriously over costed for its robustness

Well, yes and no, I think if people want to do close in skirmishers knights are a far better way to go, like one questoris with3 melta/ccw armigers is a way better way to go than a close range warhound. The builds I'm looking at for hound are all like maxing the 35 inch range so I an just huge the middle of the board and hopefully keep deep strikers and tanks way away from me or just out range them with movement.

The reality though is something like a reaver that can take 8 40 inch ranged very high ap shots when played similarly is very very very good, they have to commit a lot to kill it, vanquishers can certainly do it but its really just an activation game then because it can just as readily outrange and destroy them wholesale.

Bottom line though I feel like for cc it's more about questoris/laners/atrapos/styrix/magaera and especiall armigers and moirax. Armigers in particular are insanely good for the 60pts a piece you pay,

But ya, titans seem best when putting out silly amounts of dice hopefully at a decent range. It's nice to be able to damage structures and remove obstacles, but I feel like they're ideal to just max on long range and own whole section of the board. Skirmishing up close is how they get swamped, it really is a knights game for mid to close imo. When people play with a bit more natural impassable terrain like rocks/cliffs and really start having to deal with gap/breach fighting, they'll realize how strong something like the lancer is up close, reach can save a lot of time if you're only able to make contact with a few bases of infantry or tanks. Very very strong.

I’m hesitant to suggest restrictions until we’ve got more Toys to play with.

Vanquishers are of course nasty, and short of a FAQ/Errata will continue to be so.

But once Artillery and other stuff is in play rules wise, and for me commercially available, it just seem too early to call.

was thinking more how a Thunderhawk is a 2+ save with just two wounds in a world of "always hits a on a six AP-1 laser cannons"

also a warhound being turned into evaporated milk tins in a single volley

as for restrictions, I'm only really thinking of such for now, it needs to be re-evaluated with each new book released which provides more options

e.g. stuff that can get on the flank of 2+ armour makes pushing 2+ armour forwards more risky, in turn making it harder to score with them, changing their worth

the game tonight though I had three units of six Leman Russ @ 260 points each, as noted, one one shotted a warhound

I also had 100 points of baneblade that did practically nothing, and then died

the LR are 43 points per wound they have, the Baneblade 50, which is crazy when you consider the firepower

comes down to the usual with GW: the points system is screwed, I also suspect its not actually going to be changed due to the way they have arranged the books

I also had a warhound, it survived, because my opponent lacked 30"+ range weapons, but to be honest a 4th Vanquisher unit for less points would have been vastly more useful

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I’m hesitant to suggest restrictions until we’ve got more Toys to play with.

Vanquishers are of course nasty, and short of a FAQ/Errata will continue to be so.

But once Artillery and other stuff is in play rules wise, and for me commercially available, it just seem too early to call.

+

Well its not just vanquishers, its that they're on very good chasis with 2+ save and decent speed, add to that they can be taken in 10's, which to leopard's remark about a warhound being destroyed by I believe a detachment of just 6. So many detachments if maxed out have very large amount of firepower, like 6 baneblades/10 russes are just very strong.


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leopard wrote:
was thinking more how a Thunderhawk is a 2+ save with just two wounds in a world of "always hits a on a six AP-1 laser cannons"

also a warhound being turned into evaporated milk tins in a single volley

as for restrictions, I'm only really thinking of such for now, it needs to be re-evaluated with each new book released which provides more options

e.g. stuff that can get on the flank of 2+ armour makes pushing 2+ armour forwards more risky, in turn making it harder to score with them, changing their worth

the game tonight though I had three units of six Leman Russ @ 260 points each, as noted, one one shotted a warhound

I also had 100 points of baneblade that did practically nothing, and then died

the LR are 43 points per wound they have, the Baneblade 50, which is crazy when you consider the firepower

comes down to the usual with GW: the points system is screwed, I also suspect its not actually going to be changed due to the way they have arranged the books

I also had a warhound, it survived, because my opponent lacked 30"+ range weapons, but to be honest a 4th Vanquisher unit for less points would have been vastly more useful

I think for gamse where both sides are going pretty light on air power, either that fight ace idea i mentioned where both sides either get or can purchase the ability to take both armour and jink when possible.

Another idea I had was ditching, allowing plains to immediately go back into reserve if overwatched but they burn their whole turn. I also would much prefer if deep strike scatter had a simple mishap table, where instead of just auto dead there's a likelihood of being delayed or placed by opponents. Even with a shorter scatter and deep strike being so strong, it doesn't feel like the correct way to balance it, especially with the added control players have of when and where they come in unlike other games that usually had an element of rolling for reserve.

On the vanquisher stuff, its sorta nutty how many you can have in a single formation. 50 russes and 12 baneblades and its still under 3k by 35pts, break point of 31 too....

 westiebestie wrote:
@Mad doc: Both Breachers & Destroyers have models to print, and rules in EA30k. Breachers are easily identifiable on the board, Destroyers not so much.

I have some on my desk, awaiting LI rules. Might play them as tacticals/Ass Marines until then, just because they are cool.

I did some Destroyers, they are pretty easy to represent due to the colouring.


I always thought Destroyers were one of the biggest missed opportunities in AoD 30k. You have all of these amazing descriptions of nuke/chemical weapon-carrying marines and all of this other crazy stuff, and then the model came out and was armed with.. pistols.
So I went OTT with mine; have rules which are fairly short range but high AP/CAF and able to avoid cover and things like that. You could also add some fun stuff that there is a chance the unit detonates when destroyed and takes out nearby units.

We played one scenario once where the Destroyers have to escort a nuclear-bomb vehicle to a point in the board. The rest of the World Eaters force had to withdraw, the Destroyers were expected to remain with the bomb and not return.

one other I was thinking of was to allow aircraft with "Interceptor" to be taken as part of a unit of aircraft without it, and gain the "Escort" special rule

this requires them to remain within 4" of the aircraft they are escorting, prevents them from attacking non-flier targets, but allows them to use their "Interceptor" to get the jump on anything trying that against the escorted craft.

as in your move your escorted flight and escorts, I bring in an interceptor flight to attack it, but the escorts will get to fire first

also allows hits scored on the group to be assigned to the escorts, rolling against their saves etc first.




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also while Six Vanquishers did drop a warhound, they had some lucky rolls to do it and the warhound fluffed its saves

leopard wrote:

also while Six Vanquishers did drop a warhound, they had some lucky rolls to do it and the warhound fluffed its saves

Well that's given Average is 3 lascannon hit and 3 vanguisher.

That leaves 1 vanguisher to be saved(obviously warhound will tank the vanguisher cannon to void shields) for 75% chance and 3 lascannon so 1.75 wounds in average out of 4.

That's assuming warhound isn't hugging terrain for -1/-2 to hit by hiding part of the titan out of sight. Which scout titans with their manouverability generally should aim to do. They are also small enough that the -2 to hit isn't even super hard to get.

tneva82 wrote:

leopard wrote:

also while Six Vanquishers did drop a warhound, they had some lucky rolls to do it and the warhound fluffed its saves

Well that's given Average is 3 lascannon hit and 3 vanguisher.

That leaves 1 vanguisher to be saved(obviously warhound will tank the vanguisher cannon to void shields) for 75% chance and 3 lascannon so 1.75 wounds in average out of 4.

That's assuming warhound isn't hugging terrain for -1/-2 to hit by hiding part of the titan out of sight. Which scout titans with their manouverability generally should aim to do. They are also small enough that the -2 to hit isn't even super hard to get.

it was a clear shot, he positioned it to be partly in cover, then added "first fire" orders, I moved the tanks to get a clear shot

six lascannons got four hits, slightly above average but not unexpected, dropped both shields and got lucky to do a damage point

six vanquishers got three hits and two more failed saves and good night Mr Wobbly was nice knowing you, this after it fired at a bunch of rapier laser cannons, which actually wasn't a bad choice, it wiped most of them and in turn protected an objective, just got unlikely

have more terrain in the works including more larger buildings specifically as LoS blockers, some industrial stuff that blocks sight but cannot be occupied is also in the works.

my Warhound lived by hanging back out of range for the most part - which is another issue with the Vanquisher, the long range, though here I had moved up to get the laser shots and hardly used the range


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oh, and had it survived there was another six waiting.. which ended up without a viable target on the first turn, so in effect while only six killed it, it "took" the fire of twelve

Yeah let's wait about 4 weeks so we see the full army lists with Artillery and assault transports, Drop Pods and Fast Attack as well as SA core transports before tweaking points or lists shall we? Those things will shake up what's good a fair bit and introduce counters to mainly Gun lines.

Vanquishers are a bit OP currently for sure, but soon (TM) we can approach and charge them out of Land Raiders & Spartans, or Drop Pods around them and throw Dreads at them.

Already you can Turn 1 charge them out of a Thawk which is pretty survivable to Overwatch without Skyfire. SA needs air cover to protect them from that.

I thought it was only Assault marines that could turn 1 charge as I thought you had to change to Skimmer in the end phase only. But Paragraph 4 of the Embark/Disembark rule p97 states Flyers w Hover can touch down during their move to disembark troops, immediately changing to Skimmer. Disembark Terminators or Contemptors on a Charge order. What survived Overwatch should be able to take out those Vanquishers tanks. Then the Thawk changes to Flyer in the End phase and flies off, becoming a useful strafing Gunship for Turns 2+. Assuming it survived. This means Astartes can charge out to 25+1+10 = 36" Turn 1. Glass Cannon, but deadly. Works best with multiple Thawks as you might loose one or its contents. People brag about taking out a full Armoured Comp with a twin Thawk Turn 1 Charge.

At the very least it forces Tank players to think about their deployment.

Anyway Drop Pods soon bring this to a lot of units and anywhere on the table, presumably for cheaper.

leopard wrote:
guessing if they do it right Land Raiders will fall under armour, with some formations able to take them as transports or some detachments as dedicated transports

Spartans the same, though maybe slightly more restricted

wondering on the stats, 2+ armour at a guess, and for the basic land raider a hull heavy bolter and a pair of "accurate" las-cannon sponsons, perhaps lacking the "Arc (Front)" rule

issue is the Spartan if they give it four "accurate" las cannon will either be too expensive or over powered in game, personally I'd give it three "accurate" dice

could go with a 1+ save on them as well, so a 2+ if you flank them, or a 2+ with a note they do not suffer the -1 from the rear

I am Thinking

LR Transport, 1W 2+, 2 Accurate (TL) Lascannons

Spartan Transport/Heavy Armour, 2W, 2+, 4 Accurate LC shots or 2x Laser Destroyers (4 Shots)

Spartan should be balanced by point cost, its a strong, survivable vehicle.

oh for restrictions I'm just thinking that as a stop gap for now that I'm going with myself

charging is another one where the activations game matters, you bring in your Verminators and manage a charge on the tanks, which may or may not overwatch, more likely their escort unit will overwatch (i.e. something nearby specifically there for the purpose)

if you have the number of activations to wait for the tanks to activate, or they are on first fire, its gravy. if not the tanks are not pinned by the infantry and can just back off (unless you can surround them of course)

so its not perfect, especially if you are burning points on expensive assault transports, and even if you are thats a lot of points to kill a unit of tanks

unless you are also grabbing an objective or key part of the board in the process naturally

will be more stuff soon though thats going to make rear area and flank defence a lot more important and allow marines to do what they are meant to be doing, working as shock troops

Yup, but I don't consider the Thawk cost a Tax as its pretty great IMO. And yeah you have to play the activation game, as always. Come in last, target something that has already advance moved so it can't drive out of CC, or is on FF. It pretty much forces the SA player to dedicate escorts, and stay back, avoid the best lanes of fire, and avoid FF. Which means objectives are yours. A threat in being. Terminators also bring a lot of TS so once there, they can threaten any objectives. 80pts of Terminators very likely take back 2-3x their cost by taking out a big SA tank detachment even if taken out immediately after.

Anyway for now it's expensive, soon anything in a LR can Assault out to 16+1+10 = 27" from your DZ.

Drop Pods anywhere you like Turn 1. LC dreads getting rear arcs and/or charges. Wonder what the Dread Pods will cost in points.

This will drastically alter what's possible.

Also note that Vanquisher Russ squadrons have very few shots, if powerful. So in a game of rock, paper, scissors they come out a lot worse on Overwatch then let's say a Sicaran against a rush charge. Russ roll 2 dice each, Sicarans throw out 3+2+1/2 sponson dice, so 6-7 each. 2/4 of which are on 5+ instead of 6+. Suddenly those OP Vanquishers are only OP if allowed to do their thing.

A rounded list once we get complete lists will have to contain fast threats. To chop the shooty. And balance defensive capability to shoot the choppy.

Heck even Knights get to 32-36" with a turn 1 March & turn 2 Charge.

I can't see any army really counting on avoiding melee by Turn 2.

Lets see how lists look with Artillery, Pods, Transports & Assault Transports.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Yeah. Until we’ve a wider suite of options, I think it’s safe to say we’re not seeing the game at its full potential

This, of course, has nothing to do with GW approaching it as DLCs

I will be very interested on seeing the final opinions when the game is actually complete ^^

is any GW game actually complete?

this is a joke and I know what you mean, I suspect there will be a lot of options but a few rock-paper-nuke lists that work and a lot of stuff thats nice on a shelf

it will however be very different.

and yes Thunderhawks are not a tax unit as they can do work, assuming they last more than until the next activation after they arrive of course (and a unit able to reasonably reliably bring it down will be even more expensive in Intercept mode), they are however very expensive given assault bods especially have a pretty decent move on their own

I think with more area terrain like trees the ability to operate them in skimmer mode for pop up attacks and really only ever face overwatch will be decent

have also seen the Auxila fliers in action now, two flights of two lightnings is far from cheap but they did a lot of work and all four survived, indeed were never even fired at, using 30" range missiles and only closing the laser range towards the end of the game


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what is notable from last nights game is that as usual the first turn was brutal, about a quarter of my models and a third of the enemy destroyed in the turn

also I have previously seen it but my opponent now has as well, sending assault marines after troops in buildings that out number you is a waste of good models, they need to be going in to clean up a crippled unit

apparently in previous games he had been using titans as building demolition tools, he didn't try it here, largely because it didn't live that long but also he noted getting that close was suicidal

also a 100% focus on the way to score points is critical

leopard wrote:

the LR are 43 points per wound they have, the Baneblade 50, which is crazy when you consider the firepower

/quote] /quote]

Haven't you thought about comparing the LR firepower with the TH firepower? because the later seems way more OP than the former.