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Okay, so I just got one of those cerastus knight lancers in the mail, and this is the first super heavy I've ever owned, or even fought against for that matter, so I have a couple of rule questions for using the guy:

Strikedown:

Okay, so super heavy walkers have strikedown with their melee attacks, but strikedown no longer halves your initiative, it just makes you move in difficult. Is this as useless as I think it is? Does it really have no effect other than, say, you wound a monstrous creature, it kills you, and then next turn it moves like it's in difficult? Or of you're fighting something that has multiple wounds and hit and run, like, gak, Dante? And you hit him for one or two wounds with your destructor weapon, and then he runs, now he's in difficult? Is that really the only time this would even do anything? It really just seems like melee attacks with strikedown are pretty pointless these days.

Tar-pits:

Is it really easy to tarpit a super-heavy walker in hand to hand? Do they really have no way to get out of hand to hand combat other than killing the squad they're stuck in with? Just seems a little odd that a model with the stomp rule couldn't walk away from some marines or plague zombies whatever. Like, this is less of an issue for something like the knight lancer, but shoot, like a warhound titan with it's ONE attack? You could just charge that thing with 10 marines and it would take FOREVER for it to kill them, even with stomps.

Power fist:

Also not a knight lancer question, but does the power fist on the reaver really blow or is it just me? So you lose some crazy awesome gun, just to make your piddly TWO melee attacks that strike at WS2 I1 go from being S10 AP2 to SD AP1?
That's terrible. Do you at least get a +1 attack bonus or something? Am I reading this right?

Anyway, thanks in advance for helping out this rookie princeps. I look forward to stomping many heretics, xenos and demons in the name of the emprah

1) Some units take dangerous terrain checks when they move through difficult terrain (such as bikes and calvery) so it would force them to take dangerous terrain checks on pile-in moves

2) Yes they get locked in combat. That means you have to actually think about how you use it instead of just running on a rampage with no consequences. Its called game balance

3) Walkers ignore unwieldy so swing at initiative and SD is a lot stronger then S10

 CrownAxe wrote:
1) Some units take dangerous terrain checks when they move through difficult terrain (such as bikes and calvery) so it would force them to take dangerous terrain checks on pile-in moves

yeah, but no multi-wound model would make a pile in move, if you already wounded it, it's probably already in base to base contact with you, I mean, I guess you could theoretically be in hand to hand with like, I don't know, multiple smashfuckers where one was in a blob and a wound managed to carry over to the one in back, but jeeze man, that sort of fits into what I was initially saying, strikedown in hand to hand actually mattering is like a 'million-to-one' type of circumstance
might as well not even have it

2) Yes they get locked in combat. That means you have to actually think about how you use it instead of just running on a rampage with no consequences. Its called game balance

not saying it's not balanced, just saying it's a little silly, but point taken


3) Walkers ignore unwieldy so swing at initiative and SD is a lot stronger then S10

I know they do, but reavers are still I1. Ah well, I guess it's got its uses if you're trying to bang up other gargantuan-creatures or AV14 vehicles at close range.

Anyway, thnx.

Reavers aren't meant to be in melee anyway. And you can't even use its DCCW against non-super heavies(in which case its either awesome or very bad)

The PF option for the Reaver is really just a fluffy option. and its really sexy looking.

The reason walkers can't just walk away from infantry punching it is the same reason tanks can't let infantry punch them in the first place.

It's a case of "you'll definitely die if you don't defend yourself." Tanks can't, but have other strengths. If you can, you should, because you'll die.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Reavers aren't meant to be in melee anyway. And you can't even use its DCCW against non-super heavies(in which case its either awesome or very bad)

The PF option for the Reaver is really just a fluffy option. and its really sexy looking.

Actually, that's not the case any more. Super-heavy walkers make their attacks against infantry in the exact same fashion as a normal walker does (and with the smash rule, no less), they just also get their stomp attacks.

Makes way more sense than the old titan hand to hand rules, where they could only hand to hand other titans and against all other infantry targets like, electrocuted everyone base to base or something stupid and unwieldy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
The reason walkers can't just walk away from infantry punching it is the same reason tanks can't let infantry punch them in the first place.

It's a case of "you'll definitely die if you don't defend yourself." Tanks can't, but have other strengths. If you can, you should, because you'll die.

I'm not going to lie, I literally have no idea what you're talking about.


Automatically Appended Next Post:


Those guns are fifty feet off the ground. Having the feet of that thing surrounded by infantry who somehow magically stop them from firing, is, whether balanced or not, a little silly. I don't really feel like that's a bold statement.

Anyway, I really don't care much one way or another, my lancer can crush anything in hand to hand, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything when I read over the rules.

 Walnuts wrote:

I'm not going to lie, I literally have no idea what you're talking about.


Automatically Appended Next Post:


Those guns are fifty feet off the ground. Having the feet of that thing surrounded by infantry who somehow magically stop them from firing, is, whether balanced or not, a little silly. I don't really feel like that's a bold statement.

Anyway, I really don't care much one way or another, my lancer can crush anything in hand to hand, I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything when I read over the rules.

Read one of the books about Titans. The infantry don't swarm around its feet, they climb all over it, sticking meltabombs into knee joints and themselves into gun barrels and vents.

Well, I guess in the far flung future, every half-trained guardsman with a lasrifle is that kid from shadow of the colossus. War is hell.

Actually the Reaver's rules explicitly say it cannot use its DCCW against non-super heavy/gargantuan targets. It was not a general rule of super heavies.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Actually the Reaver's rules explicitly say it cannot use its DCCW against non-super heavy/gargantuan targets. It was not a general rule of super heavies.

No way dude, check the most recent Apocalypse book. I didn't see anything of the sort. That is an outdated rule.

The Reaver isn't in that book IIRC. So you still need to use the older Datasheet for it. And the Reaver has a rule preventing the use of its DCCW against non-super heavy targets.

Have the book in front of me right now, and it is. The apocalypse 2013 book. It has a chaos reaver on the cover.

Ok, didn't know they had reprinted the Reaver's rules.

I feel like a lot of people are forgetting stomp attacks. If you don't tarpit a walker with 20 tp 30 models which are very nicely spread out, he's going to make quick work out of combat.

Also... Knight Castigator. Dayum that's one sexy anti-horde machine.

DaPino wrote:
I feel like a lot of people are forgetting stomp attacks. If you don't tarpit a walker with 20 tp 30 models which are very nicely spread out, he's going to make quick work out of combat.

Also... Knight Castigator. Dayum that's one sexy anti-horde machine.

He only gets a D3 stomp attacks and if you spread out your models initially when you charge him they will be so far away that he can hit 2 or 3 models with each stomp at most. So they will last 3 turns of combat, which is all you need out of a 120 point gaunt unit.

So he will go through them, but his 3 attacks in CC just do not cut it against a hoard of T3 models.

It depends. Stomps are kinda unreliable. They're not scary at all unless you have a 4+ save or worse. And you can definitely spread your tarpit out around the Knights base to make sure he can't get very many under the templates.

With the "Pile In" move, how do you "space out" models to midigate Stomps?

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
With the "Pile In" move, how do you "space out" models to midigate Stomps?

SJ

by circling around the knight the more models in B2B the harder it is to get many of them under each template.

Given that your 3" pile must first try to get in base contact if possible, you can only really spread out if you get the charge on the Knight and roll high enough.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
With the "Pile In" move, how do you "space out" models to midigate Stomps?

SJ

By circling the gaunts around the Knight's base where the gaunts are not touching bases and have about a .95 inch gap so no other gaunt can fit there.

You can only fit about 12 or so gaunts around the knight base using that technique and the blast will at most only hit 2 models.

Pretty sure a savvy Knight player would cause the pile in to clump ... because that's what I do when I charge my Knight.

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
Pretty sure a savvy Knight player would cause the pile in to clump ... because that's what I do when I charge my Knight.

SJ

The knight player has nothing to do with it. If the horde player piles in leaving almost enough but not enough space between the piling in models to fit another model then they can be spaced out around the IK's base and only 12 or 13 models can fit around the base,

There is nothing that the "savvy Knight player" can do to cause clumpage.

Actually givne you have to move as close as possible if you cant make base, you dont get to spread out unless you can make base - you start to generate a second layer of gaunts, who next pile in can potentially spread around the base, and so on

nosferatu1001 wrote:
Actually givne you have to move as close as possible if you cant make base, you dont get to spread out unless you can make base - you start to generate a second layer of gaunts, who next pile in can potentially spread around the base, and so on

sure, but even then there are only a limited number of gaunts you can have under a single blast marker.

and if the gaunts are conga lined to start then you are at most getting 2 with each stomp.

If your opponent is piling in correctly, you can average 3 small bases per stomp, for 3-9 each turn. Even on a bad charge on a small unit of large based models, you will cover 2 per blast, for 2-6 models each turn. Since the only blast that must be placed in BtB with the Knight is the first, the the remainder are placed within 3" in the first, you have an excellent opportunity to literally cover every model in a unit that followed pile in rules correctly. If your opponent is spacing their models out on a pile in, their are cheating.

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
If your opponent is piling in correctly, you can average 3 small bases per stomp, for 3-9 each turn. Even on a bad charge on a small unit of large based models, you will cover 2 per blast, for 2-6 models each turn. Since the only blast that must be placed in BtB with the Knight is the first, the the remainder are placed within 3" in the first, you have an excellent opportunity to literally cover every model in a unit that followed pile in rules correctly. If your opponent is spacing their models out on a pile in, their are cheating.

SJ

(Emphasis mine)

The underlined is not 100% true.

you can pile in and contact the IK's base and leave a .9 inch gap between the piling in models base and the base of a model that made a pile in move before him, as long as both models are in base contact with the IK, it is spread out a bit and legal.

If you're fighting gaunts with titans, you're doing something wrong. SHW are tough but they're not supposed to win you games all alone (surprise!).