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https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hw_7FYeJ7_rMgxDoMVAs7vk9mDSud0mNUDGxBtdAeRE/edit?usp=sharing

What's going on here:

In apocalypse, unlike in 40k, the damage dealt by a unit is a fixed quantity, since there is no comparison between strength and toughness. Since many weapon options appear to be balanced around the total damage numbers they put out vs Infantry and Vs Tanks (A 7+ 7+ missile launcher for example is considered roughly equivalent to a 10+ 4+ Multi-Melta) I've done the following calculation to determine damage output and durability:

1) Total potential damage output of a unit with a Shoot action and a Fight action.

Example: A 5-man tactical squad in rapid fire range would be 2*0.66*(0.5+0.33)

2) Durability Rating as expressed by the total number of blasts required to reasonably ensure destruction. To use the 10-man tactical squad again, their durability rating would be 5. .83 damage from the first large blast, .83 damage from the second, and .41 damage from the final small blast, with 0.11 damage from Morale due to their re-roll.

Then I used the units' costs to determine how many blasts they put out per Power Level in shooting and melee, and how many Power Level they give up for each blast placed on them.

3) The final consideration was "Can this unit attack with its most powerful offensive profile on the first turn?" If it was equipped with weapons greater than 24" range, or was a melee focused unit with greater than 13" move, or had Infiltrators/Deep Strike/Some other equivalent rule I rated it "y". If it was equipped with ranged weapons with 24" or less range, Rapid Fire weapons, or was a melee unit with 12-13" range, I rated it "sr" for short range - it will most likely attack turn 1, but possibly with a diminished profile and probably with decreased choice of targets. If it will be incapable of attacking turn 1 unaided by transports/abilities unless an enemy unit comes toward it first, I rated it "n".

In the final column, I noted any additional abilities that don't factor into direct offense or defense, such as Terror Troops, auras for allied troops, etc. Any direct defense/offense abilities are factored into Durability and Attack numbers.

Limitations on this math: It assumes that any unit will be attacked with focused fire. This creates a couple of weird edge case scenarios, the best example of which is Ork Gretchin. Gretchin take an average of 1.66 damage from a single small blast but if you focus fire to try and kill off a unit of 30 they become the single most absurd thing in the game. They may still be a balance problem, their numbers are REALLY high in the 20 and 30-man unit sizes, but it just illustrates that I don't really show anything but "What it takes to kill this in one round".

The math also assumes every unit is basically in an open field, walking forward toward enemies 24" away. Certain shorter range units may be mitigated by your opponents by simply deploying a few inches back. Particularly this applies to melee units with 12" move, who rely on opponents placing something directly on the line of scrimmage to get to B2B turn 1.

"What the heck kind of weird crazy unit list is this? Where's my army?"

The armies I add to the spreadsheet are basically going to be determined by my own curiosity, and the armies that I own and want to use in apoc.

"How do I know if a unit is good or bad?"

It seems like the average unit that can attack turn 1 has about 0.2 blasts/PL of shooting, and 0.17 blasts/PL of melee. I chalk this discrepancy up to melee being able to effectively lock down shooting-only units in some circumstances. Durability wise, giving up about 1.7-2.0 PL per blast seems to be the average unit. Anything above a 3.0 is a glass cannon, anything hovering around 1 is a tarpit type unit (and you should double check if it's a unit that is better handled by giving it a single blast each turn)

Added Grey Knights, Deathwatch, Orks (GW), Admech (GW/FW), Craftworld Eldar (GW/just the FW titans), Knights both Chaos and Regular since they're the same (GW), Drukhari (GW/FW), Harlequins.

Your column headers need explanation.

 DarknessEternal wrote:
Your column headers need explanation.

Unit name, Cost in pl, self explanatory I assume.

Total damage potential for shooting and melee is ballistic skill * chance to wound SAT and SAP combined * number of shots.

Then blasts/PL is the total damage columns divided by total cost.

Durability is the number of blasts required to reasonably ensure destruction of the unit through concentrated fire.

PL/Blast is the cost divided by durability. How many PL you lose per blast inflicted on a unit.

Higher damage and higher PL loss per blast results in a glass cannon. Low both results in a tank (see TH/SS terminators.)

I combined offensive outputs because "what should I shoot my gun at" is pretty clear from the profiles, but "how good is this unit at this job actuslly" can be a bit difficult to see.

Added T'au.

A troubling trend I've noticed is that extremely low-cost models and units seem to be power outliers. Pound for Pound without factoring in any buffs, Kroot Hounds and Krootox are the most brutally effective units in the Tau roster. Now, they don't get any buffs, and Kroot Hounds are one of the very few Tau units that don't get to attack right off the bat, but I'm definitely finding any unit that has 1 or 2 as the unit cost differential tend to be the ones that are a little funky.

Standout units for Tau: Riptides and big Crisis Suit units are tough and solid, Stormsurges bring a hell of an alpha strike for a superheavy, Piranhas and tooled up Commanders bring the best glass cannon type units, and honestly Tidewalls look pretty good. Anything Kroot is pretty good, love the kroot.

Poor units for Tau: Anything stealth isn't looking awesome, with their high cost making them average durability at best. In particular Ghostkeels look...not good at all. Razorsharks once again get shafted though Sunsharks seem perfectly usable, blatantly stealing the ork burna-bommers shtick. Vespids stink.

Ta. It won't change what i field in a couple of weeks, but it is nice to know I am screwed mathematically

Vespids have a 6+ 6+ gun with a good speed and fly and deepstrike. They can take out a tank just as easily as infantry. I don't think vespids are that bad. Granted, I don;t have any and haven't played them yet. But their gun is pretty great.

 Lance845 wrote:
Vespids have a 6+ 6+ gun with a good speed and fly and deepstrike. They can take out a tank just as easily as infantry. I don't think vespids are that bad. Granted, I don;t have any and haven't played them yet. But their gun is pretty great.

If anything, my math is tilted towards units with target-agnostic guns, but Vespid are still quite horrible. A unit of tactical drones deals more damage, has the same abilities and gets buffs from the HQs and stuff.

THat's not even mentioning something like 5x Krootox, which will deal many times more damage.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Added Necrons. TIME TO DUST OFF ANYTHING YOU HAVE THATS LARGE PLASTIC AND TRIANGULAR.

Tesseract Vaults and Necron Monoliths looking like hideously efficient units.

The biggest challenge for any Necron player: Drawing any cards ever. IMO, just feth 'em. Play max sized units. Slap Catacomb Command Barges into your detachments and sprint them up the board to receive contingents of deep strikers if you want that.

Walking your stuff is definitely an option (Take sword and board Lychguard to absorb shots to your vital buffing commanders) and can get you plenty of cards, but a whole army of stuff like 10-man scytheguard squads and 20-man warrior blobs showing up out of deep strike turn 1 is terrifying.

Leave the Flyers at home, only unit that seems just super bad.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Added custodes. Units with individual weapons have the funkiest balance especially hurricane bolter bikes. In general custodes skew super durable and deal slightly more damage at range than in melee.

Added tyranids. These guys might be a bit broken. Lots of INCREDIBLY efficient units when you have synapse going and a lot of efficient synapse givers. Don't get the hate for lictors - they deal slightly less damage than other deep strikers but have a smaller footprint. Ripper swarms seem pretty bad.

So a good unit has a high number in columns F or G and a low number in column I, correct?

 DarknessEternal wrote:
So a good unit has a high number in columns F or G and a low number in column I, correct?

Yep. The other consideration is the Attack First Turn column. Many very potent units like wraithblades are offset by the fact that they can't attack as reliably.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Added Sororitas. Probably the best balanced list overall we've seen so far. The only totally not useful options IMO would be the Flamers on Dominions (Storm Bolters do more damage more safely) and the flamers on Retributors, though you could make an argument for loading them into a Repressor for the open top.

All four melee units offer interesting tradeoffs, Crusaders being durable, Arco-flags being damaging, and Repentia being middle of the road and having the Sisters keyword allowing them to get buffs from Canoness, Imagifier and Dialogus. and Penitent Engines don't require rhino transport, which is nice.

Celestine is useful without being OP and isn't <order> locked, her buff affects all sisters. All the basic sisters infantry has reasons to be used. All the different transports have pros and cons. I'm a fan.

Added Guard. Ugh, so many tanks. Purely numbers-wise, it looks like the Shadowsword edges out the other superheavy options efficiency-wise by a hair, though obviously you want to look at what role you want your Baneblade to fulfil when looking at which one to pick, and some of them do have transport capacity and open-topped.

Conscripts look to be the biggest potential balance issue, in line with other high-wound low cost units like Plaguebearers, Gretchins, and Gants. A large detachment of Conscripts with a Lord Commissar just squirreled away in a Taurox or something would seem to be BRUTALLY durable for the cost while still putting down considerable firepower - your best answer would be to tie them up with a bunch of small melee units and just grind them down a turn at a time. Get those guys to Lead 7 with the faction ability and you're just never going to kill them efficiently.

Added Blood Angels.

Sanguinary Guard are a weird one - I think they were probably intended to have X2 on their weapon or A:2 base, their damage is REALLY REALLY low for their cost, compared to other options.

Luckily, Death Company seem to have that covered for you. Sanguinor+Astorath with a big block of either Vanvets or DC with DC weapons is a TERRIFYING prospect to deal with, because they will drop a huge alpha strike on you and with a 6+ sv and 5+ ignore damage they will take a lot of killing to remove.

Its just a shame Brother Corbulo can't have a jump pack. That guy's insane for his points cost.

Added Thousand sons and CSM.

Yabbadabbadon is CRAZY durable, thanks to his always roll 12s on a 3+sv rule, and his 2 wounds. Luckily he's fairly low damage but basically he's an unstoppable force so just feed him junk to slog through.

CSMs seem to be more inclined to take up rhinos and ride into close range than their non-heretical brethren, since they can be equipped with a heavy for each 5 and they have access to the Reaper Chaincannon which is better than all other heavies but has shorter range. Cultists are good but tend to give up 2 wounds for each single blast unless you do something to bolster their morale. If you want to slog up the field and trade fire, cultists are strictly better at doing that than CSM's.

Mutilators earn the womp womp award for csm. Deep strike, pays for deep strike, cannot charge out of deep strike.

Venomcrawlers are similarly really lackluster. Dunno why I'd ever consider one over an excellent maulerfiend or melee build helbrute. All daemon engines in general seem quite good, discolord gives a great buff and infernal regeneration with a 5+ save means your opponent has to be SURE they're dead and if they unexpectedly survive, they shrug the damage the next turn.

Also added Tsons. Magnus is a beast. Tzaangors only have a reason to be compared to cultists if you take a shaman, so take a shaman. Take discs anywhere you can take a disc. Rubrics and SOTs both seem solid, but don't take anything that is a warpflamer: Rapid Fire on inferno boltguns means they outperform Warpflamers damagewise and obviously rangewise, and if you take a heavy warpflamer on SOTs they can't aim the turn they come in.

Also Added Deathguard. Really good stuff across the board to be honest. You probably want to rhino up with death guard squads and equip with either blight launchers x2 or just nothing and make them primarily a melee unit. Poxwalkers seem like an awesome anvil unit, I would not bother trying to bring Mortarion along with them as his buff is not a big deal, if you want to bring mortarion just deep strike him in with some terminators.

Nothing really stands out as terrible besides a couple of the non-synergistic builds with some of the daemon engines. Mortarion is similarly good. Myphitics and PBCs with Entropy cannons are good. I would take Bloat Drones only with the flamers or fleshmowers, preferably fleshmowers. Everything's very durable across the board, offset by DG's generally poor ability to kill things turn 1 - exactly what you'd expect.

the_scotsman wrote:

...if you take a heavy warpflamer on SOTs they can't aim the turn they come in.

What keeps the SoT from shooting the Heavy Warpflamers when then come in? They Deep Strike 9" away and move 4", that easily lets the Warpflamer shoot at something

BomBomHotdog wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

...if you take a heavy warpflamer on SOTs they can't aim the turn they come in.

What keeps the SoT from shooting the Heavy Warpflamers when then come in? They Deep Strike 9" away and move 4", that easily lets the Warpflamer shoot at something

The damage increase you get over the Soulreaper Cannon is more than offset by the damage you lose by not having +1 to hit (if you deep struck in and used Aimed Fire with a Soulreaper+Hellfyre)

you can use it, but there's not much of a reason to do so, especially since overwatch is not a thing in apoc and their damage in melee is the lowest of any terminators (at least, vs Heavy targets). So you don't really want them to move closer and they don't have the option to engage a target in melee like other terminators can do (Usually sacrificing a bit of damage to stop something from shooting).

It's like the choice between Deathshroud and Blightlord for DG - Blightlord would appear to be the worst choice just strictly speaking, since Deathshroud get the bodyguard ability, cost less so they're effectively more durable, and better at melee while being about the same damage in shooting, but the Blightlords get a big firepower boost from being able to show up and Aim, since all their weaponry is effectively 12" range or more. So there's a legitimate choice there between damage and utility/durability.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Added Agents, including data for the EPIC MONKEY FLEX DETACHMENT

Vanguard Detachment (Faction: Jokaero)

Valkyrie 8PL
Inquisitorial Retinue X10, Storm Bolters, 10x Jokaero 15PL
Single Jokaero 2PL
Single Jokaero 2PL

For 27PL, this detachment flies forward, drops out of its valkyrie, and then gets 2 D3 rolls on inconceivable customization to try and get the dual-wielding ultrachimps Rerolling to hit and to wound with their 10x digital weapons and Storm Bolters.

And then they die. horrifically. But statistically speaking, they should give you a blast for every power level you spent on the monkey retinue.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And Dark Angels have been added, that's the last GW proper studio faction in the list! Again like BA and SW I didn't reprint any entries that appear in the standard marine list (which I do actually have to go back and add some to) and I don't put in entries for obvious support characters who don't add much in combat like Captains, Lieutenants, libbies and apothecaries, only units who seem like they might be promising combat units or who have interesting abilities.

DA seem like they're structured the way they are in 40k: Big Castletastic gunline with oodles of auras in the Green, fast fire support in the black, and deep striking melee alpha strike from the white. Their gimmicks are strong but reliant on aura characters who are much less likely to stick around in apoc, so expect to field a lot of Company Veterans just to eat wounds for your key warlords like Azrael.

Titan Thursday! I realized that having neglected the FW sections, I haven't been analyzing that many of the big toys of the various factions, so I'm going through and rectifying that.

So far, the Titan Legions (which is the same as Chaos Titan Legions), Fogeworld Knights, and Tyranid Titans have all been added to the spreadsheets.

TLDR: Certain Warlord builds look really good so far, SM superheavy tanks and planes in general are nice, Tyranid Titans are a slightly mixed bag that really have to get to melee range to really start pulling their weight, but they do have access to some nice buffs.

the_scotsman wrote:
Added Thousand sons and CSM.

Yabbadabbadon is CRAZY durable, thanks to his always roll 12s on a 3+sv rule, and his 2 wounds. Luckily he's fairly low damage but basically he's an unstoppable force so just feed him junk to slog through.

CSMs seem to be more inclined to take up rhinos and ride into close range than their non-heretical brethren, since they can be equipped with a heavy for each 5 and they have access to the Reaper Chaincannon which is better than all other heavies but has shorter range. Cultists are good but tend to give up 2 wounds for each single blast unless you do something to bolster their morale. If you want to slog up the field and trade fire, cultists are strictly better at doing that than CSM's.

Mutilators earn the womp womp award for csm. Deep strike, pays for deep strike, cannot charge out of deep strike.

Venomcrawlers are similarly really lackluster. Dunno why I'd ever consider one over an excellent maulerfiend or melee build helbrute. All daemon engines in general seem quite good, discolord gives a great buff and infernal regeneration with a 5+ save means your opponent has to be SURE they're dead and if they unexpectedly survive, they shrug the damage the next turn.

Also added Tsons. Magnus is a beast. Tzaangors only have a reason to be compared to cultists if you take a shaman, so take a shaman. Take discs anywhere you can take a disc. Rubrics and SOTs both seem solid, but don't take anything that is a warpflamer: Rapid Fire on inferno boltguns means they outperform Warpflamers damagewise and obviously rangewise, and if you take a heavy warpflamer on SOTs they can't aim the turn they come in.

Also Added Deathguard. Really good stuff across the board to be honest. You probably want to rhino up with death guard squads and equip with either blight launchers x2 or just nothing and make them primarily a melee unit. Poxwalkers seem like an awesome anvil unit, I would not bother trying to bring Mortarion along with them as his buff is not a big deal, if you want to bring mortarion just deep strike him in with some terminators.

Nothing really stands out as terrible besides a couple of the non-synergistic builds with some of the daemon engines. Mortarion is similarly good. Myphitics and PBCs with Entropy cannons are good. I would take Bloat Drones only with the flamers or fleshmowers, preferably fleshmowers. Everything's very durable across the board, offset by DG's generally poor ability to kill things turn 1 - exactly what you'd expect.

I also want to note that the greater possessed’s buff effects demon engines too. Demon engines are pretty great over all and certainly an effective archetype to play in to

On the astartes heavy tanks, I really like the fact that since super-heavies don't get bogged down in melee, you can drive closer with Spartans, unload their cargo midfield and charge the large boxes in the opposing line to prevent Russes or other fire elements from shooting while blasting away yourself. With Hellforged, the Spartan can even kill something once in a while by driving over it with 4+ WS.

 Sherrypie wrote:
On the astartes heavy tanks, I really like the fact that since super-heavies don't get bogged down in melee, you can drive closer with Spartans, unload their cargo midfield and charge the large boxes in the opposing line to prevent Russes or other fire elements from shooting while blasting away yourself. With Hellforged, the Spartan can even kill something once in a while by driving over it with 4+ WS.

Considering the VAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAST amount of buffs the astartes tanks have available to them, up to and including RR all hits and all wounds from Guilliman, they are looking like some of the strongest superheavies in the game IMO. Their base stats are very solid compared to other supers, they benefit greatly from the marine army trait (which turns a bottomed out morale check from a 17% chance of success to a 31% chance of success, a very common thing to need if you're a superheavy and will most likely be seeing tons of big blasts put on you in a single turn) and since they're mostly shooting focused but still have the titanic rule, you don't have to try and cram them into the frontlines to get the most use out of them but you can still not be tied up by enemy melee deep strikers.

Otherwise, I really like the Stormsurge, the Stompa and the Castellan, because one use weaponry giving you a big spike of damage turn 1 is going to be very helpful in apocalypse.

I think a Warlord Titan is kind of ridiculous, because it is almost unkillable over the 5-6 turns of the game.

 Astmeister wrote:
I think a Warlord Titan is kind of ridiculous, because it is almost unkillable over the 5-6 turns of the game.

In a "Just a titan vs 154PL of something not a titan" I definitely agree unless you tailor toward anti-heavy. But in like a 600-800PL per side game where the titan is a reasonable sized chunk of one army, you could probably down it in a couple turns.

You'd need a pretty nutty army setup or a huge game to blow one away in a single round, that's for sure.

Well I calculated that a Warlord with the best At weapons possible take 6 turns on average to kill another Warlord. That seems a way too much imho.

 Astmeister wrote:
Well I calculated that a Warlord with the best At weapons possible take 6 turns on average to kill another Warlord. That seems a way too much imho.

I mean, the warlord pays for its defenses and the fact that most of its guns are equally good at killing light and heavy targets and the fact that all its guns have a billion inches of range.

But even so, a twin power claw warlord dumpsters another warlord in three turns...what takes six? All the guns? I'll run thru a lascutter build too bur I think that won't be quite as good.

My calculations say that a Warlord with 2x power claws needs 5+rounds to finish another Warlord. He only hits on 4+!

 Astmeister wrote:
My calculations say that a Warlord with 2x power claws needs 5+rounds to finish another Warlord. He only hits on 4+!

One claw attacks 8 times, hits 4 times, wounds 3-4 times, each wound does 4 blasts. There's two claws. Say it makes 7 wounds, which causes 14 large blasts. Both claws also incorporate megabolters, which cause about two blasts more per. Up at 16 large. Then we have the four defensor guns, taking us to about 17 large one small. Then there are the top guns on its back, say we have twin megabolters for fun as our Fisty McFistyourface is a brawlery titan, so four blast more for 19 large one small. Some kicking also happens for 1-2 blasts, let's take the conservative one. So, 20 large blasts on very average rolls.

Voids take one large off, 19 4+ saves and we have 9-10 damage caused. The titan will fail its morale, so one more damage. 10-11 damage is about one third of the Warlord's 36 wounds, so it takes 2-4 rounds depending on the hotness of your rolls to take out one of your kind.

EDIT: there's probably a mistake in the datasheet, because I doubt you can take twin vulcan megabolters on both of your shoulders (though that's the current RAW and seems appropriately pointed for so), but if you do that's two large blast and thus one damage more so 11-12. One third gone. Numbers are pretty similar if you instead put laser blasters or gatlings on the shoulders, so eeh maybe it's intentional.

 Astmeister wrote:
My calculations say that a Warlord with 2x power claws needs 5+rounds to finish another Warlord. He only hits on 4+!

Your calculations are wrong, I'm sorry.


Turn 1: Titan has to Assault, so we'll disregard any shooting.

1.33 blasts from feet.
26.666 blasts from claws.

6.5 unsaved wounds (one big blast shrugged by Void Shields)

Turn 2: We can Advance, which means we get a shoot action and a fight action. I'm arming him with all megabolters because it makes the math quicker.

Same 28 blasts from melee.
12.3 blasts from megabolters.
3.3 blasts from the auxiliary guns.

10.5 unsaved wounds (one small blast shrugged by Void Shields.

Turn 3, same thing, titan is dead on average.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Astmeister wrote:
My calculations say that a Warlord with 2x power claws needs 5+rounds to finish another Warlord. He only hits on 4+!

Your calculations are wrong, I'm sorry.


Turn 1: Titan has to Assault, so we'll disregard any shooting.

1.33 blasts from feet.
26.666 blasts from claws.

13 unsaved wounds (one big blast shrugged by Void Shields)

Turn 2: We can Advance, which means we get a shoot action and a fight action. I'm arming him with 4 twin megabolters because it makes the math quicker.

Same 28 blasts from melee.
12.3 blasts from megabolters.
3.3 blasts from the auxiliary guns.

So that's 21 blasts on average, with a small getting shrugged by the void shields.

Average rolling leaves the other titan with 2 wounds with average rolling on turn 2, hence why I say "2-3 turns" to be charitable - if you roll slightly above average, or both titans are going for the longer range weaponry so you don't have to Assault turn 1, it's very easy to get a 2-turn kill.

Also....Even looking at the damage output from the gun loadouts, you're way off on how long it takes to kill.

Assuming two Sunfury Plasma annihilators and two Reaver Laser Destroyers, a warlord deals 13 unsaved wounds to another warlord just with standing and shooting, not trying to melee. That's a 3-turn kill.

Are you forgetting to give it two of each weapon, by any chance?

So are yours, Scotsman. Battletitan Voids always take a large blast first, you'd only have 3 twin megabolters since the ones on claws are normals and the Warlord has 36 Wounds. You're also doubling the effectiveness of those blasts in melee. 16 attacks, 8 hits, ~7 wounds is 14 large blasts which means 7 unsaved wounds. Tsk tsk.

 Sherrypie wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:

 Astmeister wrote:
My calculations say that a Warlord with 2x power claws needs 5+rounds to finish another Warlord. He only hits on 4+!

Your calculations are wrong, I'm sorry.


Turn 1: Titan has to Assault, so we'll disregard any shooting.

1.33 blasts from feet.
26.666 blasts from claws.

13 unsaved wounds (one big blast shrugged by Void Shields)

Turn 2: We can Advance, which means we get a shoot action and a fight action. I'm arming him with 4 twin megabolters because it makes the math quicker.

Same 28 blasts from melee.
12.3 blasts from megabolters.
3.3 blasts from the auxiliary guns.

So that's 21 blasts on average, with a small getting shrugged by the void shields.

Average rolling leaves the other titan with 2 wounds with average rolling on turn 2, hence why I say "2-3 turns" to be charitable - if you roll slightly above average, or both titans are going for the longer range weaponry so you don't have to Assault turn 1, it's very easy to get a 2-turn kill.

Also....Even looking at the damage output from the gun loadouts, you're way off on how long it takes to kill.

Assuming two Sunfury Plasma annihilators and two Reaver Laser Destroyers, a warlord deals 13 unsaved wounds to another warlord just with standing and shooting, not trying to melee. That's a 3-turn kill.

Are you forgetting to give it two of each weapon, by any chance?

So are yours, Scotsman. Battletitan Voids always take a large blast first, you'd only have 3 twin megabolters since the ones on claws are normals and the Warlord has 36 Wounds. You're also doubling the effectiveness of those blasts in melee. 16 attacks, 8 hits, ~7 wounds is 14 large blasts which means 7 unsaved wounds. Tsk tsk.

Ninja'd it. I forgot the 4+ save, I did think it was a bit odd how easy a 2-turn kill was compared to when I ran this math yesterday, lol.

I did only do 36 megabolter shots total, not 48, since the powerfist has a single megabolter in it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Yeah, the powerfists do seem to be the only reliable way to have a warlord kill another warlord in 3 turns. The Lascutter/Twin Megabolter build only manages it in 5 because it also needs to get into melee range (it does best when it Advances turn 1 and doesn't get to make melee attacks, instead of giving up shooting and using only melee).

Killing a warlord titan with another warlord titan is basically tabling your opponent, which is extremely rare in apoc from what I've seen. Given that they don't have a ton of actual "Good vs Heavy, Terrible Vs Infantry" guns, I'm not surprised it's tough to pull off in 5 turns.

Heh, happens.

I'm reasonably pleased that such a beast basically causes one third's worth of itself in damage in a single go of mirror match instead of the sometimes inane power discussions (especially in normal 40k circles) where people moan about something being useless if it doesn't gain its points back every time it fires... which is plain insane. This way it is certainly a major player on the field but the question is will your opponent focus pretty much everything they have on it to bring it down before it has had its three turns of destruction or will it get to do what it wants through the game and gain its points back while they kill the other things? And woe on them if they decide to focus everything to get 70+ blasts on the titan only for you to play Armour of Contempt and laugh in d12

Also for funsies, a twin gatling Warlord with carapace bolters spits out roughly 28 blasts against ~5 infantry units at range. Thin that line, yo.

I did just calculate the claws and not the shooting sorry. If you want to take it seriously, you have to also consider the Warlord degrading from backlash of the other Warlord. :-P

 Astmeister wrote:
I did just calculate the claws and not the shooting sorry. If you want to take it seriously, you have to also consider the Warlord degrading from backlash of the other Warlord. :-P

Still reliably a fourth turn kill, even without any outside support. Granted, three or four turns of scratching the enemy that might shoot other things instead isn't necessarily the best display of tactical genius in a game where victory usually lies in controlling the field. I'm okay with that, Warlords are pretty much the apex predators of the galaxy on these fields and having to pour all you have into one to bring it down sounds about right. It takes more than it dishes out, though the pain it brings is nothing to sneer at when it comes to actual tactics on the field. Oh you have important units on an important objective? Let me screw four of them in particular, here you go.