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Played a game today where the advantage to going first was painfully obvious. Each of us had shooting style titanic units, and it honestly felt like the game was decided after we rolled to see who goes first. Are there any ideas to combat this? One thought I had was the strategem below for Lords if War

"This strategem can only be used during the first battle round. If your Lord of War is destroyed, it may either fight as if it's the fight phase, or shoot as if it's the shooting phase." 3CP

This would allow the side that went second a chance to somewhat even the odds before losing a ton of their firepower before their first turn.

Riggs wrote:
Played a game today where the advantage to going first was painfully obvious. Each of us had shooting style titanic units, and it honestly felt like the game was decided after we rolled to see who goes first. Are there any ideas to combat this? One thought I had was the strategem below for Lords if War

"This strategem can only be used during the first battle round. If your Lord of War is destroyed, it may either fight as if it's the fight phase, or shoot as if it's the shooting phase." 3CP

This would allow the side that went second a chance to somewhat even the odds before losing a ton of their firepower before their first turn.

Place said Lord of War into reserve with the Tallarn strategem. There's a Knight strategem to do the same thing, I think.

Alternatively, even better, don't depend upon the Lord of War. Make sure it isn't your only source of antitank or anti-infantry, and make them pay for the effort they put into destroying it.

But yes, losing a Lord of War is a lot of your planned power in one go in a way losing a Leman Russ and a few infantry squads isn't, but plan for that eventuality, because someone will kill it.

Umm- don't use Titans?

They've never been suitable for standard 40k and have been jammed into a game that's not scaled for them.

"Just don't take them" not really the point of this thread, generally speaking when someone asks how to fix a balance issue, make a rule more competitive, or change a unit, they are by definition not hoping to just not take that unit

Riggs wrote:
"Just don't take them" not really the point of this thread, generally speaking when someone asks how to fix a balance issue, make a rule more competitive, or change a unit, they are by definition not hoping to just not take that unit

But Grimtuff is right. Even LOS-blocking terrain suitable for big models like Land Raiders won´t help you mitigate the first turn advantage against units that are TITANIC.

What kind of Titanic unit?

Knights have a household stratagem where if they get destroyed, they can stand back up 75% of the time after re-rolls.

Titans and Titanic Units are not the same thing. Titanic units like Baneblade and Knights are, like it or not, a core part of the game now and if they are sold and presented as such need to be balanced into the game.

First turn advantage is a big issue, the OP's experience is just one example of the issues it causes. Not taking Titanic Units does not solve the problem of the first turn advantage by any means.

Stux wrote:
Titans and Titanic Units are not the same thing. Titanic units like Baneblade and Knights are, like it or not, a core part of the game now and if they are sold and presented as such need to be balanced into the game.

First turn advantage is a big issue, the OP's experience is just one example of the issues it causes. Not taking Titanic Units does not solve the problem of the first turn advantage by any means.

I meant Titanic unit of course. OP doesn't even mention what he or his opponent were using or what kind of game it was, so we have literally no idea what he's talking about.

For clarification it was my Castellan Knight against his two Shadowswords, but there are a number of units and combinations where this problem exists

Yeah, getting your Knight destroyed by two Shadowswords presumably rocking sponsons is not terribly surprising. Shadowswords are an anti-LOW LOW, and this guy brought two of them. His army did what it was supposed to do.

House Taranis has a good shot at keeping you alive there.

Otherwise - yeah, your Knight list will have problems with someone taking multiple LOW-class units designed to kill Knights. You brought paper and his army is all scissors.

Riggs wrote:
For clarification it was my Castellan Knight against his two Shadowswords, but there are a number of units and combinations where this problem exists

While Sally Forth doesn't work on a Knight Castellan, you can have it be Taranis, get it back on it's feet 75% chance, and then fire at full profile using Machine Spirit Resurgent for one final hurrah, which you can use to kill pretty much anything.

In addition, you should not make your army so dependent upon a single unit that you can't win if it dies. He took 2 Shadowswords, it WILL die, going first won't let it live versus them, the surviving Shadowsword will kill you with its supporting troops. That's redundancy

The iconic Necron Monolith has the Titanic keyword, why, I don't know.

Yeah Shadowswords are designed to kill Titans. They were gross(ly fun) in Epic and are ridonkulous in 40K after the Codex buffs. Shadowsword players *hope* you bring all Knights and Titans!

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Yeah Shadowswords are designed to kill Titans. They were gross(ly fun) in Epic and are ridonkulous in 40K after the Codex buffs. Shadow sword players *hope* you brall no Knights and Titans!

And castellan is designed to bust things like shadowswords. Here it worked becausn shadowswords were 2 and they went first. 1 on 1 castellan can go 2nd and still win without super bad luck. Obviously if it goes first thus 2 shadowsword lose...

So in short, shadowsword vs castelln castellan wins. 2 shadowsword vs castellan who goes first wins(barring sufficiently big los blocker)

They had a really well designed Epic game in the early 2000s. Well designed well balanced, reasonibly quick to play.

Players took turns moving and shooting. I move a unit then you move a unit, until all moving was done, then take turns shooting. Assault still went army wide (I think),

really the only way to tone down first turn bias is with something like that. Even deep strike doesn't negate it, it just moves it. Advantage goes not to the fisrt turn, but the first successful ambush from deep strike. Which would be fine if you set up your ambush on the board, but you don't you set it up in a white room with a spread sheet.

Welcome to a super broken game! The best part is you will be blamed by the community for being dissatisfied with a lazy product!

I've found that you don't even need to have Titanic units on the table to be at a great disadvantage if you go second. You can easily lose 300-500 points on the first turn, so it's effectively a 2000 pts vs 1500 pts game on your turn. The gap snowballs even further pretty fast.

Only remedy I can think of is a full revamp of the IGOUGO turn structure to an alternating activation system.

 Weazel wrote:
I've found that you don't even need to have Titanic units on the table to be at a great disadvantage if you go second. You can easily lose 300-500 points on the first turn, so it's effectively a 2000 pts vs 1500 pts game on your turn. The gap snowballs even further pretty fast.

Only remedy I can think of is a full revamp of the IGOUGO turn structure to an alternating activation system.

While i agree with you, the alpha strike thing was purposefuly pushed up to 11 because games that last too long are “problematic” in GW eyes.

I think GW will have to remove IGOUGO at some stage. It's a pretty outdated mechanic at this stage, or at least in the nuance-free way GW implement it. The problem with GW is they have the manoeuvrability of an oil tanker. It'll take about five years for them to actually implement it. Goodness knows why.

Yeah, first turn advantage is really a thing. There's no real good way of dealing with it in current 40k, save hoping for bad dice to screw your opponent or maximizing your durablity.

Did you give your Castellan a 3++ against the Shadowswords with the Warlord Trait and Rotate Ion Shields?

 Blndmage wrote:
The iconic Necron Monolith has the Titanic keyword, why, I don't know.

Maybe...its because its one of the largest non-LoW units in the game?

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 Blndmage wrote:
The iconic Necron Monolith has the Titanic keyword, why, I don't know.

Maybe...its because its one of the largest non-LoW unit in the game?

And larger than some LOWs (compare a Valdor Tank Hunter to a Monolith...).

There's plenty of ways for IK's to survive shadowswords, but the first turn alpha is still devastating. Statistically, 2 cadian shadowswords shooting at a knight with everything (including 4 sponsons each) will knock off 24 wounds from the knight even with a 3+ invul save. This doesn't factor in the Cadian overlapping fields of fire stratagem, but you get the idea. At the same time though.. 2 knight crusaders with gatling cannons, stormspears, and thermal lances, are going to do an average of 25.68 unsaved wounds to a shadowsword. I would agree with others that it's easiest just to make sure there's plenty of other anti-tank in your army, or take questoris knights and use the Sally Forth Strategem.

Change your terrain. Easy.

 Weazel wrote:
I've found that you don't even need to have Titanic units on the table to be at a great disadvantage if you go second. You can easily lose 300-500 points on the first turn, so it's effectively a 2000 pts vs 1500 pts game on your turn. The gap snowballs even further pretty fast.

Only remedy I can think of is a full revamp of the IGOUGO turn structure to an alternating activation system.

The only way to balance out the current levels of alpha that turn 1 advantage gives and still have IGUG is to have a slightly wierd turn structure.

Turn 1 Player 1
Turn 1 Player 2
Turn 1 Scoring
Turn 2 Player 2
Turn 2 Player 1
Turn 2 Scoring
Turn 3 Player 2
Turn 3 Player 1
Turn 3 Scoring
Turn 4 Player 2
Turn 4 Player 1
Turn 4 Scoring
Etc

This is based upon trying to learn AoS but finding it has some issues aswell.

 chrispy1991 wrote:
There's plenty of ways for IK's to survive shadowswords, but the first turn alpha is still devastating. Statistically, 2 cadian shadowswords shooting at a knight with everything (including 4 sponsons each) will knock off 24 wounds from the knight even with a 3+ invul save. This doesn't factor in the Cadian overlapping fields of fire stratagem, but you get the idea. At the same time though.. 2 knight crusaders with gatling cannons, stormspears, and thermal lances, are going to do an average of 25.68 unsaved wounds to a shadowsword. I would agree with others that it's easiest just to make sure there's plenty of other anti-tank in your army, or take questoris knights and use the Sally Forth Strategem.

It's hard to survive, especially if the shadow sword is vastoyan, averages 21 wounds on a 4++ knight and 14 on a 3++ knight iirc

 Backspacehacker wrote:

 chrispy1991 wrote:
There's plenty of ways for IK's to survive shadowswords, but the first turn alpha is still devastating. Statistically, 2 cadian shadowswords shooting at a knight with everything (including 4 sponsons each) will knock off 24 wounds from the knight even with a 3+ invul save. This doesn't factor in the Cadian overlapping fields of fire stratagem, but you get the idea. At the same time though.. 2 knight crusaders with gatling cannons, stormspears, and thermal lances, are going to do an average of 25.68 unsaved wounds to a shadowsword. I would agree with others that it's easiest just to make sure there's plenty of other anti-tank in your army, or take questoris knights and use the Sally Forth Strategem.

It's hard to survive, especially if the shadow sword is vastoyan, averages 21 wounds on a 4++ knight and 14 on a 3++ knight iirc

If you include the sponsons, it's 18 unsaved wounds on a 3++ knight using vostroyan strat.

Agreed though, the point is that it's hard to survive on both ends. 2 shadowswords kills a knight, 2 knights kill a shadowsword. It's just a matter of who goes first, and whether the model is on the board to be shot at.

Thing is a knight with 18 wounds is as good as dead, it's crippled so badly with a degrading bs

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Thing is a knight with 18 wounds is as good as dead, it's crippled so badly with a degrading bs

They have a stratagem that lets them ignore that.

 Crimson wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Thing is a knight with 18 wounds is as good as dead, it's crippled so badly with a degrading bs

They have a stratagem that lets them ignore that.

Oh I know, but if you do that to 2 of the knight