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Just finished the latest Macharius novel, the Fist of Demetrius.

Opinions about the novel aside, there was a description that perked my interest. The following doesn't give any plot away:

clively wrote:
Just finished the latest Macharius novel, the Fist of Demetrius.

Opinions about the novel aside, there was a description that perked my interest. The following doesn't give any plot away:

Spoiler:

In chapter 20: fighting going on between IG and DE.

Size and description:
..I saw a scuttling form loom, a gigantic arachnid figure with clicking claws. It reminded me of a Titan, although it was smaller ...

There were men in the grip of those claws, ...

Weapon
The man seemed to be shrinking, dwindling, like a deflating balloon..

armor
It gripped them like a drunk holding his last bottle even as the Baneblade and [i/Leman Russ[/i] within our camp sent blast after blast stabbing into its body.

So, we have a DE monstrous creature that looks like a giant spider that can withstand hits from a Baneblade and Russ while staying alive. It appears to have a spirit leech weapon like the talos... I wonder if this will be part of the apoc summer release.

It's a Talos.

The only new kits coming with Apoc this summer is the Khornemower and the new monolith from what I understand.

Yeah, that's just a Talos.

That's what I thought at first. But the talos was never as big as described. The current talos is more like a hovering body, not really like an arachnid.

I would think a brand new book would describe the current model range, not one 2 years old...

The arachnid part is what confused me

It's hinted at the there are many pain engines, not just the Talos and Cronos. This could be a variant on the Talos design.
In Path of the Incubus, there is a Talos and a Chronos, but these are mentioned to be smaller than the traditional design and they are also completely made out of metal. So it seems there are probably several traditional designs which the heamonculi put there own design tastes to when they create them.

The old talos was significantly more spider like IMO.

The old Talos looks way more like a Scorpion than anything else...the new one still looks more like that than a spider.
Also, there's no way a Talos would be able to survive the onslaught of a Baneblade *or* a Russ pounding "shell after shell" into it, let alone both.

That said - it's not likely that GW will pick up a new unit to throw into Apocalypse based off a small part of a Black Library book. They have a team of designers to do that kind of thing.

 Super Ready wrote:
The old Talos looks way more like a Scorpion than anything else...the new one still looks more like that than a spider.
Also, there's no way a Talos would be able to survive the onslaught of a Baneblade *or* a Russ pounding "shell after shell" into it, let alone both.

Part of the confusion comes in with the term arachnid. An arachnid is a type of insect with, among other characteristics, 8 legs. A scorpion *is* an arachnid. So it looking more scorpion like than spider like is meaningless when the term arachnid is used since they both are arachnids.

As for surviving the onslaught of a baneblad or russ pounding shell after shell into it, haven't you ever played those games? Heck I had daemon possessed walkers hit and penetrated by rail guns multiple times every turn against Tau with them rolling 1s and 2s on the penetration table every time. Those walkers would just stroll across the table while taking a constant pounding of shell after shell, walk up to the broadsides firing them and rip them apart. Not as likely to happen now with hull points, but in the previous edition it happened all the time for me. Lots of penetrating hits, but not doing any real damage with any of them.

Skriker

 Skriker wrote:
Heck I had daemon possessed walkers hit and penetrated by rail guns multiple times every turn against Tau with them rolling 1s and 2s on the penetration table every time. Those walkers would just stroll across the table while taking a constant pounding of shell after shell, walk up to the broadsides firing them and rip them apart. Not as likely to happen now with hull points, but in the previous edition it happened all the time for me. Lots of penetrating hits, but not doing any real damage with any of them.

That's a combination of a different unit, and a lot of luck... under the old rules before hull points, every 3rd hit or so on average should ruin its day. And daemon walkers can ignore the 1's and 2's, a Talos can't. So that's potentially another turn of it getting fired at.

But Talos are MCs IIRC.

 Super Ready wrote:
The old Talos looks way more like a Scorpion than anything else...the new one still looks more like that than a spider.
Also, there's no way a Talos would be able to survive the onslaught of a Baneblade *or* a Russ pounding "shell after shell" into it, let alone both.

That said - it's not likely that GW will pick up a new unit to throw into Apocalypse based off a small part of a Black Library book. They have a team of designers to do that kind of thing.

I agree that the designers wouldn't pull a description out of a book, but I was thinking it might be the other way around. That the author might have seen a design at the studio and wrote it in. It's happened before in recent books where a book described a unit that later appeared as a model. Ill have to track some of those cases down.

Yes, the talos is a monstrous creature. But it's smaller than a dreadnought. Not really anything that deserves to be compared to a Titan.

 Super Ready wrote:
The old Talos looks way more like a Scorpion than anything else...the new one still looks more like that than a spider.
Also, there's no way a Talos would be able to survive the onslaught of a Baneblade *or* a Russ pounding "shell after shell" into it, let alone both.

That said - it's not likely that GW will pick up a new unit to throw into Apocalypse based off a small part of a Black Library book. They have a team of designers to do that kind of thing.

The guard player clearly rolled a lot of ones

When it comes to novels, it's pointless to apply game logic; the author will add multiple layers of plot armor to get the story across. I believe there's already a thread about this in the background section.

There's DE artwork (I think in the Codex) that depicts a talos as being gigantic and dwarfing the DE around it.

Isn't the size of the talos variable according to the fluff? I was under the impression that a talos was a haemonculous's mad science project.

The problem is that the aesthetics of the Dark Eldar mean that resin models are incredibly fragile, meaning FW has to put off on making more. GW though could release some for a new Dark Eldar codex.

 Grey Templar wrote:
But Talos are MCs IIRC.

Yar, T7

...whhhhhhoops. Ok, so they could potentially survive a good few hits. The size still tells us it's not a Talos, though.