Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

It's been suggested (heavily) that I scratch build a DE Titan for a tournament in December. I'm in no way adverse to the idea and the more I think about it the more I want to do it.

So this thread isn't, I hope, going to end up as a debate of what the DE would use, more a discussion that leads to a realisation of what the Dark Kin DO use!

I've been brainstorming this afternoon as to what would make a good DE Titan equivalent, as I don't want to do a spiky Craftworld Titan, and here's what I've come up with so far. I've had a million other ideas though these are the only ones that I've been, so far, able to recall on to paper.

- It'd likely be some kind of craft that's capable of space travel (ie, not just in the webway) to enable them to fight off world. Currently the DE are only known to fight on land as they never had a mass release in BFG, so I think this would help to plug that gap.

- I can see it as being some kind of massive prison ship. I'm picturing a giant talos (until I get a better design down, this is just early stages remember) with an underslung prison section, or even multiple small 'capture cages' that fling out to snare infantry (in all likelihood, small cages that capture individual members as opposed to massive squad grabbers) and take them up to the ship

- Mid level transport section for Kabalites. Aesthetically it would be entirely open sided, rule wise I think it'd be fair to have the void shields (or rather, titanic shadow fields) negate any negative effect of this rule, until they'd been wiped out (I'm new to Titan rules, remember this is just brain storming)

- Upper most level would be a gladiatorial arena. Open air, or domed, not sure.

- Such a monstrosity would likely be used as a personal mount for an Archon (or Haemy, or Succubus - more on this later). I see them as being hardwired into the mainframe themselves to better absorb the life essences that are being snuffed out around them.

- It would act as some kind of conduit, drawing in and amplifying pain back out to terrify their victims, and to invigorate the DE. I can see it as being as resilient as a Talos, with the army benefits of a cronos combined. Magnified!

- It wouldn't walk like it's Craftworld counterparts, it'd either be a skimmer, or move on tentacles. Maybe even a mix of both.

- Built in WWP

Other cool things I thought could be included

- Agonisers! Seriously, a titan dual wielding mega whips of torturous destruction - what's not to love?!
- Heavy liquifiers! For every (model / unit?) captured, get an extra liquifier shot (debate - straight from the gun barrel, or anywhere on the model? Gun barrel prevents piss taking, anywhere on the model seems fluffier)

For those of you that know me in anyway, you're probably thinking something along the lines of " feth me, he's planning ANOTHER 'awesome' project?!"

I can only apologise lol, this time it's genuinely not my fault!

I suppose the next question is how are you going to make this? The answer - to be confirmed. I have fired off an email to a couple of casting companies that work in prototype toy development to see if they're in any way feasible; we'll see. If it's cheaper than buying a Phantom then great, I'd really rather do something different, if not, well... we'll see where this takes us.

So, any thoughts? What you agree with and disagree with, and why? What have I missed?

I would probably go for some kind of atmospheric capble jetbike/venom aircraft carrier spaceship with built in portals big enough to deploy raiders/ravagers out off.

Like that, like that a lot - I'd not thought about vehicle transportation, just infantry units, kinda stupid to have forgotten that lol, cheers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm thinking that the DE wouldn't want something that'd outright kill their opponents, so big cannons capable of destroying everything in one shot wouldn't be the armament...

I'm trying to figure out the role that a DE "Superheavy" would fill, I'm thinking either to detroy fortifications from a far with big concussive blasts that crumbles walls and other defences to the ground, and generally wrong foots the opposition, or a rapid and mass deployment type vehicle that can absorb a gak load of punishment whilst it descends on top of the enemies base, before a thousand grav vehicles pour out of a hundred WWP's, putting the DE exactly where they need to be.

Any thoughts on that?

I'm thinking of a Thunderhawk sized Raider with better armor and weapons.


Give it a good sized transport capacity, closed topped but has the assault vehicle special rule. Maybe it can carry 40 models with 3 access points(front and 2 side)

Then it should have some heavy weaponry. Maybe a couple TL-void lances and some regular dark lances. Maybe it can sacrifice transport capacity for a hull mounted Pulsar.


I like the idea of it shooting out WWPs.

Something like this.

The (insert name here) is armed with 6 Webway portal launchers, 3 on each side. They fire at the following profile.

Range 24" Str* Ap* Heavy 1, One shot, Portal Gun*

Portal Gun: When firing the Webway Portal Launchers you make pick any point on the table within the weapons maximum range. Scatter as if for a blast weapon, subtracting BS as normal. At the target location, after scatter, place a Webway Portal.

The Webway Portal launcher cannot damage any units, friend or foe. If the portal scatters on top of any unit, move it the minimum distance needed to avoid the unit.

That's awesome! I think you're there with the sizing, I've been looking at both Thunderhawks and the Tau ships that FW do.

I've got some source material including DE, BFG, Romulan space craft, knives and swords etc and am looking at getting a CGI rendition of this image in my head made up. But yeah, thunderhawk or maybe a little bigger. I'd love to be able to fit 2 raiders side by side inside the hull, maybe even with a couple of venoms in front and Incubi gunners manning Ravager style DL's on the open air / shadow shielded sides.

I can see the Raiders and Venoms etc exiting at the rear of craft, similar to how airdrops are achieved out of C-17's etc, so this massive ship soars over the top of the enemy and bombards them with WWP's and skiffs - then the enemies totally surrounded from the air and the ground.

This sounds like a meaty as hell unit the more people that add to it lol


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Does anyone have the thunderhawk hull dimensions (ecluding wingspan)?

Being a super heavy transport it could legally transport Raiders and other vehicles(taking up 10 slots each)


So here is a rough draft I've just smashed together.


Slavebringer Assault Boat(name taken from BFG): 1500 points

Unit Type: Super Heavy Flyer

BS:4
Front: 12
Side: 12
Rear: 10

Access points: 3(one on the front, 2 on the sides)

Transport Capacity: 40 models

Equipment: Flicker Fields, 2 Twin-linked Void Lances(nose mounted), 4 Twin-linked Dark Lances(side mounted), 6 Webway Portal Launchers*

Webway Portal Launchers

Range 24" Str* Ap* Heavy 1, One shot, Portal Gun*

Portal Gun: When firing the Webway Portal Launchers you make pick any point on the table within the weapons maximum range. Scatter as if for a blast weapon, subtracting BS as normal. At the target location, after scatter, place a Webway Portal.

The Webway Portal launcher cannot damage any units, friend or foe. If the portal scatters on top of any unit, move it the minimum distance needed to avoid the unit.

Special Rules: Assault Vehicle,

Upgrades: The Slavebringer may purchase a hull mounted Pulsar(front facing) for 100 points. If it does this its transport capacity is reduced by 20 and it no longer has the forward access point.

The Titans I've been making for my DE are from the Haemonculi court.

Massive Biotitans, good old fleshy gargantuan creatures.

The left one is my Magnatesque, the base is a large-blast template. It's basically a talos on steroids with heavy-liquifer guns (Str5).
The right one (wip) is the Felis Panthera, a massive titan-hunter, fast, with a hellstorm-template gravis liquifier gun (str6), and StrD cc attacks.
Also purchasing one (or 3) of these:

To turn into more gribblies.

If you're interested, I can dig out the rules for both. (And even tell you where to get the stuff to make them xD)

@ Grey Templar - you just pulled all that together? Damn man, that's ace lol. I've just downloaded the BFG Xenos ships resources from the GW site, though there are a lot of files - do you recommend any of them in particular?

@ Ovion - PICTURES MAN! I was thinking of doing an giant and 'inflated' Talos at first, a semi living space going construct that the DE use to travel real space. The more I thought of it though the more it seemed too Tyranid-y. I think the design has merit, though explaining it away could be a PITA. Would really like to know more about your work though, do you have a plog on them?

-- Edited original post with pics etc.

Forgeworld has stated they want to make a DE superheavy slave-barge at some point.

Also floating around in my extended codex draughts I have a gargantuan creature transport.

I've also been toying with an idea for a very up-scaled razorwing type thing as a DE assault ship, and a design for a Haem research-ship (my coven is based in the Thaxar Rift, as theyire experiments are deemed FUBAR even by their kin. Also it means they can torture psykers and such.)

I also have sketches of a DE scourge titan somewhere I can probably dig up and scan in tommorow if you like. (I really want to build it at some point... kind of like a cross between a phantom titan, and something with wings / sickles for legs...)

Absolutely, please do! It'd be cool to see your ideas (and I promise not to assimilate them!)

TBH, you're welcome to steal use my ideas - I'm (slowly) putting together my DE Extended codex for just that reason - 2 parts my own insanity and enjoyment, 1 part so others can use it

I'll dig out the rules for the Magnatesque, Felis Panthera, MagnaToastalos and such in the morning, and see if I can find the concept art for the Scourge titan.

FW (and GW for that matter) always state that they want to do this, that and the other, but they're frequently held back by normal business constraints so I doubt we'll see anything for the DE again until they come to the IA14 or 15 which is rumoured to be the dark kin (would have been sooner, but it was too big and too cool to rush the job through, so they're getting their own major book later).

That's when we'll see their titans.

However, I won't put money on that as no doubt they'll read this post and do something just to prove me wrong

When I was talking to the fw guys at games day last year, they said they had no plans for any DE titans, but they had a couple of tantalus+ sized ships and a superheavy slavebarge on the drawing board.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
When I was talking to the fw guys at games day last year, they said they had no plans for any DE titans, but they had a couple of tantalus+ sized ships and a superheavy slavebarge on the drawing board.

Don't think about putting venoms inside put them on the outside, think remoras attached to a shark ;-)

I had wondered about this, as it'd ift the DE 'parasite' imagery of smaller beings feeding off of a larger one, though I can't seem to grasp how I can keep the ship looking as sleek as it needs to whilst adding these extra little bits.

Shape-wise, I've found an excellent picture of a punch blade that I'm 80% set on using as the basic structure, crossed with some some Star Trek Romulan style 'wings', sadly my artistic ability is incredibly lacking so trying to realise this on paper is providing to be difficult!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Fluffy-weapon-wise (ie, if this thing were to have it's own rules created for it, and not counts as) I'm just about set that this thing wouldn't have much in the way of truly destructive weaponry for use on planet (it'd have torpedoes and the like for space battles).

I was thinking that its anti tank weapons could have some kind of auto glance, that auto incurrs a crew stunned result, but it cannot do any further damage at all, ever. My reasoning is that the DE would want to get to what's inside to torture it slowly and savour their pain, as opposed to destroying it from afar and getting little or no benefit from the outright destruction of its contents.

I'm thinking Land Raiders / race equivalents would be immune though, due to potms or their equivalent SR

Just go for plenty of ball turret mounted haywire blasters for close in ion cannon like defence. Bit like hurricane bolters on a storm raven. If you want a main weapon steal the phantom Titan d-cannon, essentially web way portals for from transport to offense mode. As for the portals themselves you can shamelessly rip off the necron one, just give it half a dozen of those.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for the venom attachment you fix them keel side to the hull so the wings match the hull curvature and have a half blister behind them to continue the line back into the hull and allow for loading of troops.

Ovion wrote:The Titans I've been making for my DE are from the Haemonculi court.

Massive Biotitans, good old fleshy gargantuan creatures.

The left one is my Magnatesque, the base is a large-blast template. It's basically a talos on steroids with heavy-liquifer guns (Str5).
The right one (wip) is the Felis Panthera, a massive titan-hunter, fast, with a hellstorm-template gravis liquifier gun (str6), and StrD cc attacks.
Also purchasing one (or 3) of these:

To turn into more gribblies.

If you're interested, I can dig out the rules for both. (And even tell you where to get the stuff to make them xD)

Giant spider women... real "shnicka schnaka!" (one for the Doctor geeks)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I like the idea of underslung cages... lots of grapling metal hands and things swinging from the underbelly!

Some sort of haemonculi barge to collect troops and turn them into abominations right there on the field would be cool. Make it spawn stuff from corpse tokens or throw out pain tokens from the collected troops.

Thinking about stuff in the codex, when the Duke steals some Archons Flagships and jets out of the place.

Id love to see what one of those Flagships looks like.

I imagine it would have a pretty big transport capacity and plenty of guns.


The other cool idea I saw in this thread was the floating haemy lab, that would be pretty epic. Perhaps it could be capable of bolstering nearby haemy type units like wracks and such, similar to how the necron barge does.

It could be capable of trasporting Talos and Cronos engines, I imagine them hanging off the bottom of the ship.

Alternatively the haemy lab could be a ground trasported thing pulled by masses of slaves.

@ Surtur, absolutely - we're thinking the same thing! Not sure how we'd be able to actually get that approved for game use (tyranids spawning little termagants is one thing, however grotesques etc is quite another thing!) It might be possible to create a rule in which ocne the ship has captured "x" number of enemies, it can turn them in to an "x" model. You might have to balance it out by ensuring that the killed unit doesn't give kill points though, just to make it a bit fairer... but then that's not the DE way, so sod the rules

@ Xeriapt, I'd completely forgotten about that! The only reference we have (that I know of) is the DE BFG Corsair & Torture Class ships, and they aren't all that great imho. Very craftworld eldar, WITH SPIKEY BITS. Kinda yawn, but yes I agree; I'd love to get an idea of what DE space craft would look like, as their ground vehicles are so different to their craftworld cousins that their space craft looking so similar seems such a shame.

One idea I've had since the start is either interchangeable bits to represent a haemonculi coven, kabal or wych cult. This could be on board operating rooms, a ridiculous number of weapon halls, or a gladiatorial arena, that can then be catered for when building rules for it.

Alternatively, why not include all 3?! My Kabal of Shattered Souls was always intended as being a space faring kabal, so obviously they'll need a mothership with everything on board. Doing so could also open up all kinds of modelling opportunities - too many to list here though I'm sure you can imagine the sort of thing you'd find!

Only problem with that is, a Manta Sized ship is going to be roughly 1/10th the size of a DE flagship (if not smaller) so you're not going to fit a full blown ship on the table

After I do dinner I'll put up rules for:
Felis Panthera Flesh Hound (The giant tiger.)
Magnatesque (The giant blue thing next to the tiger)
Magnoster of Damnation, Pain Chamber (Massive Gargantuan creature transport.)

Also the experimental rules for:
Arrak'i Decimator (Will be made out of the giant spider.)
Kabalite Slave Barge (kabalite superheavy skimmer.)
Wych Cult Arena (wych superheavy skimmer.)
Haemonculi Crucible (coven superheavy skimmer.)
Scourge Corriga (a light superheavy walker.)

I can see two very distint sets of war machines, some would be shambling monstronsities that were probably grown / assembled in giant surgery bays and who the DE derive as much pleasure and pain from their very existance as from what they actually do.
Some one the other hand would be fast very heavily armed walkers and fliers that were manufactured in factories. They should be sleek but not have the grown organic craftworld feel . That doesnt mean they need to be spiky. I do like the idea of them being kind of unbalanced. like they are caplable of running very very fast.

When thinking of larger DE craft are we all picturing larger barges, like jabba the hutts barge with sharper lines?

I like Exergy's unbalanced mechanical titan idea. And it lends itself to converting the eldar titan rules easier, all be it with a change of wargear.

I see Romulan ships, not titans in the traditional sense.

Eldar have big ass titans to destroy their enemies that don't do what they want them to do. Dark Eldar though would be all about stealth and capture tactics, so they'd need to move fast, and to incapacitate the opposition as opposed to killing them outright.

I'd say big ass skiffs, like Jabba, however I see the Tantalus as kind of filling that niche, which is why I'm looking at Romulan Bird of Prey's as a good source of inspiration

Not sure if you ever watched Robotech, but the large ship in that (SDF-1) had arms that would punch into ships and unload mechs as boarding parties.
Dark Eldar Titan might have a similar delivery system. Like a barbed grappling hook that doubled as a drop pod.
Along those lines with grappling hooks, the Forge World Chaos Blood Slaughterer Impaler cannon has interesting rules for pulling enemy models to it. DE Titan could have nets that pull entire units closer to it.

that's a brilliant idea - especially for use against other titans or space craft! Could be a titan CC weapon, maybe one that gets tied in with the underslung capture cages?

Kick ass update - there's a dude of lad on Dakka called Anton that's doing the CGI on this project for me; I've just sent a load of source material to him and will be sketching out the basic shape of how I see this beast shortly. I'm not artist though so we'll see how that goes!

Archons are very self-absorbed and prone to delusions of grandeur. I can easily see one building a Titan-sized Raider or war machine simply to show off how powerful he is.

DE tactics and objectives make use of Titans inefficient, but Archons can often have their egos get in the way of efficiency.

The first one sounds like a giant version of Jabba the hut's luxury ship.

Here's a couple of top-down hull shapes that I'm toying with.

Told you I'm not artist!

kitch102 wrote:
Eldar have big ass titans to destroy their enemies that don't do what they want them to do. Dark Eldar though would be all about stealth and capture tactics, so they'd need to move fast, and to incapacitate the opposition as opposed to killing them outright.

DE use misdirection and stealth to their advantage but when it does come to fighting they bring the maximum pain to the smallest possible area. They dont want to kill everyone but at the same tiem they dont want to leave everyone alive. I see huge lasers that cut anything they touch in half. Sort of a slicing action that digs a big pit in the ground when it reaches dirt. Fear is powerful and DE would definilty use intimidation to get people to run away. The pursuit phase is the best part of battle.