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 Kingsley wrote:
I think a lot of people here have condemned Walkers perhaps too quickly. In my experience, Walkers are actually quite effective. Iron Hands in particular have some options that can make Dreadnoughts very strong.

Walkers are fine as shooting platforms.

In melee, however, they tend to have too few attacks to kill large groups of infantry that can't hurt them and the things that can hurt them are able to weather their attacks and kill them outright.

Even at the same Initiative, a MC vs a Dreadnought is going to result in a dead-nought and a MC down a couple wounds.

Only thing Dreads can kill reliably are vehicles.


Even before all the new hot MC goodness got released Dreadnoughts were pretty much bad unless used as a shooting platform. It was either TL-las/missile or Rifleman dreadnought if you were playing competitively. DCCW and Assault Cannon was really sub-par.

If they had more attacks they might see some minor use as a very durable infantry shredder with some shooting support. 2 attacks is far too few for their point cost.

Why not make them AV14 front 13 at the side....

An armor increase wouldn't be out of the question, but 14 would be a bit much.

I'm thinking 13-12-10 for regular Dreads and 14-13-10 for Iclads.

 Grey Templar wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
I think a lot of people here have condemned Walkers perhaps too quickly. In my experience, Walkers are actually quite effective. Iron Hands in particular have some options that can make Dreadnoughts very strong.

Walkers are fine as shooting platforms.

In melee, however, they tend to have too few attacks to kill large groups of infantry that can't hurt them and the things that can hurt them are able to weather their attacks and kill them outright.

Even at the same Initiative, a MC vs a Dreadnought is going to result in a dead-nought and a MC down a couple wounds.

Only thing Dreads can kill reliably are vehicles.


Even before all the new hot MC goodness got released Dreadnoughts were pretty much bad unless used as a shooting platform. It was either TL-las/missile or Rifleman dreadnought if you were playing competitively. DCCW and Assault Cannon was really sub-par.

If they had more attacks they might see some minor use as a very durable infantry shredder with some shooting support. 2 attacks is far too few for their point cost.

Well, AV12 Dreadnoughts are more or less unusable in melee now, but AV13 melee Dreadnoughts still strike me as quite strong. Only killing 1-2 guys is fine if the opponent can't realistically hurt you-- Dreadnoughts kill big infantry squads through Sweeping Advances, not through number of attacks (Blood Angel Furiosos aside).

9" Movement (for all walkers) and av 13 front and sides and 11 in the back. that allows you to walk them across the board quickly, or allow walkers to Assault out of DS/outflank.

True, AV13 is immune to Krak grenades which is what most infantry are packing to kill vehicles. Except for the occasional dude with a Melta bomb. Of course if the regular dread becomes AV13 then the Ironclad needs to become AV14.

The problem with the SA bit is that everything worth sweeping is either Fearless, ATSKNF, or Stubborn. So really you do have to kill every single dude.

Having a 40k equivalent of Thunderstomp would help MCs and Walkers against infantry. It was a sorely needed Monster buff that should have also come over to 40k.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ninjacommando wrote:
9" Movement (for all walkers) and av 13 front and sides and 11 in the back. that allows you to walk them across the board quickly, or allow walkers to Assault out of DS/outflank.

Lucius Pattern drop pods help a lot. Being able to assault a specific target on turn 1 really helps. And Ironclads just laugh at the Dangerous Terrain test required.

Forge World stuff does help with lots of things.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Lucius Pattern drop pods help a lot. Being able to assault a specific target on turn 1 really helps. And Ironclads just laugh at the Dangerous Terrain test required.

Forge World stuff does help with lots of things.

You do know that the Lucius no longer allows you to assault the turn you arrive right? It just does not require you to immediately disembark.

The problem has been touched on before.

In 40k we have two different types of unit, a unit with toughness/armour save and a unit with armour value. In Fantasy by comparison there are only toughness/armour saves which means every weapon is built around that.

Even a steam tank is toughness 6, with a 2+ armour save, and 10 wounds.

Certainly there are also multiple wound weapons which can cut down those 10 wounds quite quickly, but the basic structure remains the same. In addition a to-wound roll of a 6 always wounds regardless of toughness, so even weak mooks can still beat down a steam tank if they get lucky.

In 40k anything with an armour value is rendered fragile just by the fact that they have no save, can be glanced to death, and a sufficiently strong weapon can just kill them outright with one shot.

Switching to an entire toughness/save/wounds model would solve all the problems with fragile walkers, and giving certain weapons, like lascannon/lances/meltas/heavy gauss cannon/armourbane melee weapons/monstrous creatures, the ability to do D6 wounds (2D6 at half range for melta?) instead of 1 would mean that dedicated anti-tank would still smash tanks down sufficiently quickly that they couldn't be considered overpowered.

Remember that in 2nd a Wraithlord was a walker just like a Dreadnought, so there is precedent.

In terms of where a Dreadnought should sit in relative power, it should be about on par with a Wraithlord, a little slower, but a little tougher, perhaps the Wraithlord should have 4 wounds, and the Dreadnought 6.

A Land Raider (supposedly the toughest tank in the game) could be something like T8, with a 2+ save/5+ invulnerable and 10 wounds. A Sentinel might be T5, with a 4+ save and 4 wounds. With three possible variables a wider range of vehicles can be represented than just armour 10-14.

A Dreadnought might be T8, with 3+ armour and 6 wounds. Ironclads and Venerables could gain a 5+ FnP on top of that.

Would they be more powerful? Perhaps, but if you maintain the same offensive stats (WS, BS, S, I, and A) they won't actually be killy, they'd just be more survivable and more reliable.

Yes, there would be incongruities, like force weapons and sniper weapons, but better that than what we have now.

Just give walkers a 4+. Then lootas, serpents, grenades are less of an auto kill, but all the dedicated anti-tank stuff still works, starting at krak missiles