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Hi all,

I was so happy when Adeptus Titanicus was announced and am excited with the models and rules (with the exception of the missions). For a long time it was my favorite tabletop.

Unfortunately, the current development worries me, too many books, rules, unusable stratagems, but no new models.

Stupidly, the rules from "Ryza" mean that in our group almost only play maniples with three or more warlords, all played with rocket launchers, two mori-canons and gyroscopes. The games are so very boring, because the models do not have to move or turn. Unfortunately you don't have a chance against it with any other manipel. What do you think, has the meta changed for you too?

I hope the Reaver and Warhounds will be strengthened again in the future, until then we are currently playing without Legion rules.

Greetings

Alex

Well there aint mutch more new imperial models they can add apart from variations of existing stuff. And as cool as it would be, i doubt we will be getting an emperor class titan release.
AT is HH and in that setting exenos are not fokused on, so the models you have is what the game is stuck with.

Sounds more like to me that your community needs to ease of the competative gas and chill down, perhaps start casual week, where every other week you guys play only maniples from say the first 2 books, or do knight household only battles.

There was a tease of the next book a month or so ago where this maniple will appear, perhaps that can pursuade some in your group to drop the triplewarlord maniple?

habedekrai37 wrote:

Unfortunately, the current development worries me, too many books, rules, unusable stratagems, but no new models.

The pandemic has hit the schedules, given they have to prioritize 40k and AoS when everything got shut down for a while in the spring we'll probably be feeling that for a bit. The great thing about the rules is that you don't need any of the extra books to play unless you want them. I play quite hard and am of the opinion that beyond the Acastus being a bit silly, there's nothing in any of the extra books that couldn't be countered by the earlier texts.

habedekrai37 wrote:

Stupidly, the rules from "Ryza" mean that in our group almost only play maniples with three or more warlords, all played with rocket launchers, two mori-canons and gyroscopes. The games are so very boring, because the models do not have to move or turn. Unfortunately you don't have a chance against it with any other manipel. What do you think, has the meta changed for you too?

I would eat those lists for breakfast. Seriously, while the Extermigus is undoubtedly a powerful and fun maniple, it is also very vulnerable to outmaneuvering, being outactivated and harrassment via stratagems. It's dead in the water under 2000 points against an aggressive opponent that will not sit still and take it on from the front. What missions do you guys play and how much terrain do you use? Having mostly Warlords means they are pretty incapable of performing Retrieval or Vital Cargo, you can deny Hold the Line by hiding a smaller engine in their lines and unless both players have Engage and Destroy, it shouldn't really IMO be used above 1500 points because it scales unlike the other Matched play objectives. Try not to play purely destructive scenarios, if both sides don't have to move to do their thing something is already going wrong.

As an example, if I were in that kind of meta, I would go in for a headlong charge with souped up Ferrox maniples of plasma/bolter Hounds in squadrons of two led by Reavers that are armed either for close combat or midrange Melta death. Using the first turn to Full Stride through the line in a two pronged attack from both flanks they'd have to decide where they are focusing and you'd already be close enough they'd both lose the bonus from the missiles and get a -1 penalty to their Mori hits. Using stratagems like Blind Barrage (on one of their engines for the -2 to hit) or Blind Bombardment (to create a full on 5" LoS block zone) to hamper their shooting as you close you can take some edge off from their alpha strike. Smoke Launchers are also a great tool if you're going for a custom legio yourself, if you can take support Reavers to launch those to take singular Warlords out of the shooting game for a turn. Other shenanigans, like Quake Shells in their midst to throw the 'Lords off from their careful positions can also do wonders every now and then. The workhorse in this strategy is the plasma Warhound, because by turns 2/3 it can flank the Warlords under their shields and can potentially outright kill them with good plasma hits. Not usually, but often enough to be a real threat and even if it doesn't, a pair of them will chew the Lord into pieces as the Ferrox bonus, flanking bonus and Coordinated Strike bonuses start to rack up. Depending on your legio choice, things like Tempestus getting to shoot again when they die, Crucius et al having better plasma reactors to facilitate your initial movement and shield pushing as you close, Astorum running in even faster while repairing etc. can also support your chosen strategy.

Pure Warlords is folly, it will not fly far in this game even if it's fun. It can be played around too easily even if they have their top guns with 90 deg arcs. Sure they can hit you hard, but they have to.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also, regarding models, we know the team wants to introduce "between" classes in the future, like another Scout titan (Rapier has been mentioned) or something a bit lighter than a Reaver (Warrior / Carnivore) and so on.

While Xenos have not been confirmed, Andy Hoare has also not been against the idea of an expansion like, say, War of the Beast with Orks in it after they have put out a couple of years worth of other things (like abovementioned new imperial classes).

Well there aint mutch more new imperial models they can add apart from variations of existing stuff. And as cool as it would be, i doubt we will be getting an emperor class titan release.

Well...there are still a few Knight variants that still need models. And if GW really want to milk that out, they could always add the Armiger and Dominus bodies.

As for (Imperial) Titans, there are still a whole bunch of other variants GW has been hinting at recently they could still have models:
1) Rapier (light scout Titan)
2) Carnivore (Battle Titan)
3) Warrior (Battle Titan)
4) Punisher (big three legged Titan)
5) Reviler (light scout Titan, basically an Inferno cannon platform)
6) Apocalypse (a very big Titan, not sure if it's between a Warlord and Imperator or bigger than the Imperator)
7) Siege Titan (bigger than a Warlord)
8) Mirage (Battle Titan)
9) Komodo



Automatically Appended Next Post:
And then there's of course still the big list of (weird) weapons that could still be designed for the various Titan classes. I still want a Corvus Assault Pod for example. Or what about Volkite weapons?

Devotional bells, land speeder landing pads,.weapon heads and chaos titan tail.weapons.

@ Sherrypie: Thanks for the detailed answer!

Sure, warlords can be outmaneuvered and outactivated, but only as long as they don't have gyroscopes. Warlords with gyroscopes and placed in a corner can fire at almost the entire field without having to turn. 3 WL can fire 60 missiles at each target in the first round without line of sight with First Fire. At least with another warlord you don't have a chance, he is reliably lost in the first round. Sure, the Lightmanipels can try to rush forward quickly and undermine the missellauncher, but I regularly miss the command test so the warhound stop in the open field and will be destroyed.

We play with the original terrain, i.e. a WL can see over everything. Hiding is hardly possible there. I have no chance to get there, as soon as a unit dares to venture out of the cover, it goes down in one firing phase. The blind bombardment is banned here, but we will have to reconsider that, thank you for the hint! We play the standard missions, so the chance of a suitable mission is high for the WL player.

In any case, I think the gyroscopes make no sense. The Warlord is strong enough without them, the limited fire arc of the carapace weapons was a major weakness in my eyes. I'm going to play without the gyroscopes for now and hope that GW will debuff them.

In addition to the gyros, my concerns also went to the fact that, in my opinion, there were too many special rules that were spread over too many books. I hope that there will be more models and fewer rules released in the future.

No prob, glad to be of help.

From your description I feel there is a bunch of factors in your meta that contribute to making the games less fun that are more related to the group than the game itself.

1) Gyroscopes are an opportunity cost because you're spending one of your four custom traits on them instead of using another possibly powerful trait or existing legio rule. It doesn't directly add to your firepower, it just makes it a bit easier to do something you could already do with proper positioning. It means it's safer to go full Warlords because you aren't as easy to dodge, naturally, because that's what they are there for, but that's it.

2) If you repeatedly have games where people sit in the corners and somehow still see something, why hasn't the terrain setup been altered? Is this a people problem, like do those Warlord players insist on not having terrain or something? If all players are considerate of each other, when such a drop in fun or tactical considerations happens it should be trivially easy to fix by changing up how you set your tables. Examples follow.

3) Why is the Bombardment banned? Because those Warlord players don't like it when they's have to actually react to the game state instead of winning by default? If it's about how it is unfair that you can just fire it off in the Shooting phase to prevent one of their engines from working, well guess what, that's why it was FAQ'd to be employed in Strategy phase instead so they can react to it by moving like normal people. (FAQ is here in case you haven't read it: https://www.warhammer-community.com/faqs/#the-horus-heresy)

4) If the games feel stale because there is always a wall of Warlords blasting away, maybe try smaller games? In my experience, the best games are either huge megabattles for funsies or sharper, tight games between 1250-1750 points. Just like it has been sad to see 40k tournaments shift from 1500 to 2000 points as the norm so that people can bring everything intead of forcing decisions, I prefer the 1750 mark for AT so you have an actual decision of bringing one heavy or two light maniples and are not trivially capable of covering all holes in your plans from the get go.

5) If the games feel stale because the opposing side does nothing but sit and shoot, maybe ask them to try some of the other objectives instead? Like I said before, the math gets way too much in E&D's favour when the points go above 1500 points that either both players or neither one should have it.

6) Maybe try the narrative scenarios for a change? I've played plenty of those and enjoyed the heck out of it.

Now, coming back to the point on terrain... get more. Drown the table with it in some games, use less in some, have features that vary in effect. Forcing maneuver and decisions, allowing for surprise attacks through destroyed parts and so on is among the best features of the game. The mileu should always, always be the third army in a war game. This is something GW as a company has struggled massively with for the last decade or so, both because of their desire to push expensive plastic on consumers and because many of their staff are simply not keyed into the mindset of a tight game. They did a halfarsed article on terrain density on WarCom a while back, but that was laughably detached from the needs of reality. Most events I've been to or seen online have also usually been on the sparser side unless they've used very dense urban environments with high rise buildings (often cardboard skyscrapers from Dropzone Commander sets).

Some example tables I've set up (a couple were for Epic Armageddon, but similar enough):




Notice the large cliff that towers over the titans circling it, dividing the table into two main routes? Cheap as chips to produce too.



Using hills and steps to raise your buildings can easily add dimensions to your table.





Using swamps, acid pools and other features that hamper movement can direct the flow of battle while using lots of shrubs, woods or other plant based scenery can offer most of the table -2 to hit unless the participants decide to force it into the open. We've been running those bushes as not-Difficult but obscuring, as an example.




The table itself doesn't have to be flat either, here our megabattle had almost a Reaver's worth of height difference between some parts of the table in combination with many features mentioned above.




The same is visible here, though this time because we played on a pile of cardboard boxes that didn't rank up neatly

And some more:





Just to stress the point, everything seen above is MODERATE terrain that offers some full LoS block and lots of -2's and -1's to hit. You could very well play on a denser urban sprawl full of buildings taller than Warlords and that would be a-OK.

As for some more game tips: if you're worried about Command tests, remember that squadrons can take the same Order with a single roll and it gets easier the more engines you have. Three Warhounds would all Full Stride on a one roll of 3+, as an example (squadrons give a +1 to the roll for each model after the first), there are stratagems and legio traits that can make such moves more reliable if you see a need to lean into it. With custom legios, using Vanguard Fighters or Motive Mastery is also a possibility and so on. Sharing shields and using Voids to Full! rules for 2+ saves in a pinch every now and then can make Warhounds surprisingly resilient against the early salvos. Remember, it matters not if you're running hot and burning in places when you reach them, as long as you still reach them and can bring back the pain. Sometimes running red and exploding in their rear on purpose is the right thing to do.

Go get 'em!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Another thing that springs to mind is also using tricks like Vox Blackout, Vox Scream, Vulpa's Razor Tongue, Sabotage and other similar tricks to disrupt or outright deny the opposing side's small model count army their all-important First Fire orders, which will increase your ability to hold shields up tremendously in combination with the added terrain already cutting down some of the incoming fire.