So....
I only found out about
Godbreaker Clash on sunday, and fortunately was able to grab the last hard copy of White Dwarf in my local store.
If you haven't heard about this, I advise you to get hold of a copy, as it's essentially something I and quite a few people I know have been hoping for for some time - a detailled superheavy-on-superheavy duel 'mini-game'.
Rules are included for Imperial Knights (at least anything produceable from the plastic kit) and the Stormsurge. It wouldn't be hard to produce appropriate target sheets and weapon stats for a Gorkanaut and a Wraithknight, though:
It's for single-duel engagements, where both players spend three action points per turn, and the frontal elevation of the target takes damage - blowing off weapons, leg sections and targeting systems in a way that superheavies and gargantuans don't suffer in normal
40k. Essentially, you pick your target point, then roll scatter to see where the hit actually lands, make an armour save (if possible) then apply damage. Once a location has taken enough damage, it's destroyed and anything significant in it is also destroyed. Once enough locations have been destroyed, that's an engine kill, and back to the barn for tea and medals.
Different shots (snapshot/standard shot/aimed shot) scatter different amounts, and an imperial Knight's melee weapons don't scatter - even on snap shots - at all (that's it's not-so-secret weapon in a Stormsurge/Knight matchup - get up close and start chainsawing bits off the ballistic suit)
So...tactics?
Well, essentially there are two bits of tactics: Choosing your actions and choosing your target point for weapons fire.
The Knight's actions are highly variable because it has a million fighting configurations.
The maximum firepower you can put out is Snap Attack+Standard Attack or Aimed Attack. Don't fall too much in love with Snap Attacks - despite the size of the sillouhettes, it's surprising how much fire will miss. That goes double when shooting at a knight and triple for a knight without a carapace mount. Secondly, just landing hits doesn't matter - well, it does, but most of the time you need to hit the same location twice or three times to kill it, and only location kills really matter.
By comparison, a Gallant wants to Advance & Charge to close the gap as fast as possible.
A Stormsurge will generally want to be putting out an aimed attack or using snap attack and back-up to backpedal away from some monkey swinging an oversized carving knife. Target Lock is.....so so. -1 Save sounds good, but since the Knight only has a 5+ save, and a lot of big guns have a -1 save modifier, it's largely irrelevant. If a knight uses his ion shield, then that's a 4+ save - starting to get inconvenient - but since you can't use target lock as a reaction, I'd probably rather snap fire for the action point and maybe land an extra hit.
If you're in a stormsurge and a knight is coming to attack in combat, go for the legs The knee joint locations give a good cluster of possible targets whichever way you scatter, and are likely to take out leg sections which slows it down.
If you're in a knight and make it up close to a stormsurge (or a knight with no melee weapon), your first target is the targeting array or the head. Because you can hit it with your reaper chainsword with a snap attack and destroy it automatically, you push the ballistic suit into either falling back or shooting at you - at which point it's trapped and it becomes a close-quarters slugging match that you should win.
If it's another knight with a melee weapon....you probably want to kill that first. It'll require two swings to disable, unfortunately, but the sooner you start, the sooner it's not hitting you back.
