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Observe this epic depiction of my Necron bunker WIP!



I played a very tight game of PS last night. My friend suggested my bastion might be a little over powered.

My bastion is built on a large piece of impassible terrain with only one staircase up. (represented in my fancy art work as 'green')
Weapons firing at BS 2. No interceptors, just two 360 automated guns that replace the 4gun + quad cannon of an imperial bastion. Armor 14. Its weapons are one twin-linked gauss cannon and one twin-linked heavy gauss cannon, both with 360 FoF. I have no barricades or other fancy stuff, just a really tight bottle-neck in the form of that staircase.

Oh and 4 fire points per face....

To hold him off (He was playing Orks) I used Big D to post up in front of the stair case for as long as possible once my opponent had closed in. He was eventually tank-shocked out of the way. (It's hard to describe but it cost him another turn of movement)



So, would you consider a defensive bastion like this to be over powered?

I think its perfect!

Setting up defensive terrain is designed to be as abysmally terrifying to the attacker as possible. Were I in his shoes as Orks, you can bet that that bunker would get destroyed under a firestorm template though, or one of the other crafty tricks; that would be too difficult to get to and assault.

Yeah he used up all 6 FS's on one of my two 'Liths, and actually destroyed one.

But after the game we talked about him focusing on the Bastion immediatley.

Thanks for the comments Dash, I designed it to be as 'balanced' as I thought but still a competitive defensive piece of terrain.

Generally speaking, the rules say 'bunkers' are able to be assaulted from all sides, like all vehicles and buildings.

Impassible terrain is, generally speaking, what a "building" is if one cannot enter it - amoung other things.

I will just make my "bunker" 100% surrounded by impassable terrain, and walls to block LOS and make you play against it.

Is that fair too?

editing to add - I play on / with a lot of terrain, and perhaps "fair" is not the word you are looking for. Some of the pieces we have used can be much worse than that for "fairness" but are still fun to use. AV14 all around is mean, especially with the strategems and other sillyness of PS - making it basically unassaultable is just wrong. (I play Tyranids)

If you don't think it's a fair piece then just say so, no need for a snarky remark.

kirsanth wrote:Generally speaking, the rules say 'bunkers' are able to be assaulted from all sides, like all vehicles and buildings.

Impassible terrain is, generally speaking, what a "building" is if one cannot enter it - amoung other things.

I will just make my "bunker" 100% surrounded by impassable terrain, and walls to block LOS and make you play against it.

Is that fair too?

As long as the top is open, I can get raptors on top of it, and if I can get raptors on it, I can get all I need on top of it.

SsevenN wrote:

If you don't think it's a fair piece then just say so, no need for a snarky remark.

lol

Is this to be a counts as Bastion? Are the weapons firing at BS 2? Did you include the Interceptor rule with them as well, or were they both meant to replace the Heavy bolts/Las cannons on a normal bastion? I assume it was Armor 14... (no Necron metal special rule). Was this also an objective to control?

If so I'd probably say the Bunker should be assaultable from more then a stair case. But.. you do set the terrain as the defense.

jgemrich wrote:Is this to be a counts as Bastion? Are the weapons firing at BS 2? Did you include the Interceptor rule with them as well, or were they both meant to replace the Heavy bolts/Las cannons on a normal bastion? I assume it was Armor 14... (no Necron metal special rule). Was this also an objective to control?

If so I'd probably say the Bunker should be assaultable from more then a stair case. But.. you do set the terrain as the defense.

It plays as a Necrons version of a bastion. Weapons firing at BS 2 yes. No interceptors, just two 360 automated guns that replace the 4gun + quad cannon of an imperial bastion. Armor 14 yes, and the only objective in the game yes.

Oh and 4 fire points per face....

It's not really a bunker so much as a Bastion. What armor value and BS did you give it?

Your questions are answered in my previous post. ^^

Sorry, my bad. Typical Monday without enough coffee. The fire-points seem excessive, given that it's surrounded by impassable terrain, but you're the defender, and Necrons aren't exactly known for being lenient. It's up to your opponent whether or not he/she wants to play against you. Personally, I'd find a way to obliterate such an affront to the glory of the Imperium.

SsevenN wrote:

jgemrich wrote:Is this to be a counts as Bastion? Are the weapons firing at BS 2? Did you include the Interceptor rule with them as well, or were they both meant to replace the Heavy bolts/Las cannons on a normal bastion? I assume it was Armor 14... (no Necron metal special rule). Was this also an objective to control?

If so I'd probably say the Bunker should be assaultable from more then a stair case. But.. you do set the terrain as the defense.

It plays as a Necrons version of a bastion. Weapons firing at BS 2 yes. No interceptors, just two 360 automated guns that replace the 4gun + quad cannon of an imperial bastion. Armor 14 yes, and the only objective in the game yes.

Oh and 4 fire points per face....

As the only objective, I think it should be a bit more approachable. However, PS is meant to be fun. A challenge like this could be good. If you set terrain, He gets to pick is drop zone and can DS a ton of stuff in.

I appreciate the feedback guys.

To those who think it's over powered, would adding one more stair case on the adjacent side be a reasonable solution?

What about fire points? I really like the idea of immortals blasting from inside the bunker, would 3 fire points per face be more reasonable?

it looks difficult, but not impossible. not at all. I don't know much about the rules for these things, but how many units can you put in it? if you limit that, it's definitley fair. it's a good alamo-style point. Just grab what's left of your broken forces, put the most vulnerable (but useful) in it, put your most survivable units in front of the door, and the rest around it.

I use the standard bastion capacity. One squad + IC is the max it can hold.

I think it would make more sense and be less gamey to make the terrain dangerous rather than impassible. Thus he would still have a rough time climbing up the rocks or whatever but it wouldn't completely stop him if he drove enough units through it.

jtw1n wrote:I think it would make more sense and be less gamey to make the terrain dangerous rather than impassible. Thus he would still have a rough time climbing up the rocks or whatever but it wouldn't completely stop him if he drove enough units through it.

I like this idea.

The terrain piece is rough, but using a StarGod to hold the top of the stairs makes it a little OTT.

RustyKnight wrote:

jtw1n wrote:I think it would make more sense and be less gamey to make the terrain dangerous rather than impassible. Thus he would still have a rough time climbing up the rocks or whatever but it wouldn't completely stop him if he drove enough units through it.

I like this idea.

That's what I'll do, spikey bits all around the edge and play it as dangerous terrain.

Thanks for the inspiration.

dietrich wrote:The terrain piece is rough, but using a StarGod to hold the top of the stairs makes it a little OTT.

I hear you, but against Orks, what else (for 'crons) doesn't crumple in CC?

From what I've seen in the PS book, if you have more than, or the equivalent of more than, four heavy bolters and a lascannon plus one fire point per side and a balcony then you need to make it worth more than one objective. You could make a bastion with 100 bolters attached to it (reminiscing over tales of the old vehicles design rules here) but then I'd make you play it as 20 objectives.

Just play around with the numbers (of guns, objectives, firepoints etc.) until it works to everyones satisfaction.

Interesting results on what people consider OTT in planetstrike.

I think the use of the impassable terrain PLUS the bottleneck designed to exploit the C'tan combined is over the top.

One of the Planetstrike "Dirty Tricks" Stratagems is the Drop Zone Denial which makes one side of the Battlefield inaccessible... essentially impassable terrain. It's costed at 3 Stratagem points. There is only one Stratagem more costly and it's 4 points. Most are one and two points.

My feeling is what you are essentially doing is building 2-3 points of Stratagem into the Bastion in the form of the impassable terrain.

I was about to say the same thing. The fact that the Bastion is permanently situated in impassable terrain, with a single, bottle-necked approach as the only means to reach it is over the top.

@Green Git, good points.

I'm going with either an extra staircase or played as dangerous terrain.

decisions decisions....

Both?

Either or... Depends how I finish modelling it tonight.

Little known fact.

Hitler actually decided to re-build all of his machine gun bunkers off the coast to the "mark 2 almost impregnable fortress" from the "Mark 1 super unimpregnable uber fortress"

Because in his own words: "They were totally lame and unbalanced, and his opponents wouldn't have any fun"

[/sarcasm]

Actually as an aside, no I don't think it's unbalanced at all. He just ought to think of ways he has in his arsenal to defeat it. Turns out there are a few.

You might try thinking a little harder than. It should be comparable to the standard bastion, which does not have the benefit of being unassailable save for one easily defended, narrow chokepoint (and that being guarded by the Deciever, especially bad since some of the ork's most effective ways of dealing with AV 14 is HtH)

SsevenN wrote:Either or... Depends how I finish modelling it tonight.

Both would be the best solution. Then there are two easily defended clear routes, or he can risk models scaling up the sides. It's not appropriate for a standard bastion to automatically be that heinous a nut to crack. Impassable terrain makes the whole piece automatically DS proof, which is one of the ways of bypassing defensive lines. For a balanced bastion, it'd be risky to try dropping in that close, not just default impossible.

I'd like to add that as defender you can actually PLACE impassable terrain around your bastion, leaving a single easily defensible approach. It only makes sense for a defended position to be in a tactically sound place. Not that every position that needs to be defended is tactically ideal, but surely 'bastions' are built with an eye towards defensibility.