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Looking for advice on making titans fun in 'apocalypse' 9th ed 40k

I'm helping a group run a large scale ''apocalypse'' game (Just lots of people playing one game of 40k talking 30+)

We've done one of these before to great success and now we're looking to run a more narrative focused one as to engage everyone a bit more.

The issue of titans though comes to be one of our greatest challenges when organizing, in our last game we had a single warlord titan on the board it fought for team A whilst team B had more points (relative balance).
We discovered that the titan was neither fun to play against or play as, for those within it's ''sector''. Outside of that noone seemed to have any complaints even when it was beaming units across the board.
Most players felt as though the titan was pointless to shoot at due to its high wound count.

Any ideas on a fix or making this more fun? the warlord is owned and controlled by the organizers so we can kinda go crazy.
We also might be getting a few other smaller titans in attendance but nothing is certain at the moment

You could split it into several smaller models, so people can shoot at its legs or arms instead of its body to deal reduced damage but more quickly get an effect on the table.

If your players feel it's pointless to try to destroy it (which feels odd to say the least, the game is full of stuff that's plenty capable of ripping chunks off it), how about making them fight for its control? Say, the titan is being possessed through a large ritual of dark magic and objective control in that sector determines who gives it orders next round or something along those lines.

 vict0988 wrote:
You could split it into several smaller models, so people can shoot at its legs or arms instead of its body to deal reduced damage but more quickly get an effect on the table.

if you can find someone with it a copy of the first edition of Adeptus Titanicus, or maybe the later versions within "Space Marine" had pretty good damage systems for managing titans, for nominally a 6mm scale game it had a lot more detail - obviously requires pretty much a re-write but fits the flavour of the first edition of 40k too

basically treat the titan as a collection of "things" each with their own profiles, so say the ability to target specific weapons, maybe the shield generators etc

would actually work nicely for anything "titanic" in scale and since such things are likely few in number paperwork is probably not an issue

 Sherrypie wrote:
If your players feel it's pointless to try to destroy it (which feels odd to say the least, the game is full of stuff that's plenty capable of ripping chunks off it), how about making them fight for its control? Say, the titan is being possessed through a large ritual of dark magic and objective control in that sector determines who gives it orders next round or something along those lines.

Then again you donjt need to kill it. 6k units spamming objectives. He ain't killing enough. Big guns kill max 4 units. Then few lascannon and heavy bolter.


Block it from moving, score points, focus on rest.

Titans is 1 side has 1, it loses.

40k scale breaks down. If you try too small or too big it won't work. Stuff is either lol bad or op and titans are on auto lose category.

Basically you've entered Jack The Giant Killer territory here, and will probably need to improvise the rules and maybe create a multi-game narrative campaign.

For example, GW says that Imperial Knights aren't suitable for Kill Team, but a bit of Inspiration from Samus Returns and an old MB game called Thunder Road, I rigged a fun mission where a team must escape a pursuing Warglaive while being obstructed by newly generated terrain and an opposing team blocking their escape route. Using it's powerful chainfist and meltas, the Warglaive can destroy most obsticles in it's path...

A warmachine might indeed have strong armour and weapons, but should they take a certain amount of damage, they'll be forced to withdraw to make repairs. Tired as they might be, the surivivors will have to give pursuit and finish it off - denying it the option to return and finish them.

An abandoned special weapon, or someway to call in an airstrike, might be able to even the odds...

There's plenty of ideas but at the end of the day Titans are way too big for straightforward games, and along with large armies, is why they belong in Epic.

tneva82 wrote:
/quote]

Then again you donjt need to kill it. 6k units spamming objectives. He ain't killing enough. Big guns kill max 4 units. Then few lascannon and heavy bolter.

Block it from moving, score points, focus on rest.

Titans is 1 side has 1, it loses.

40k scale breaks down. If you try too small or too big it won't work. Stuff is either lol bad or op and titans are on auto lose category.

That's not really the issue here, though. It doesn't matter if the titan would be a liability in a tightly calculated match-up, here it seems that the particular players weren't having a good time due to a perceived (real or imagined) lack of interaction with it. "Just ignore it" is bad advice for improving the fun there, even if it checks out on victory conditions. "We played a game, he shot and I won" isn't a desired outcome in this case.

 Sherrypie wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
/quote]

Then again you donjt need to kill it. 6k units spamming objectives. He ain't killing enough. Big guns kill max 4 units. Then few lascannon and heavy bolter.

Block it from moving, score points, focus on rest.

Titans is 1 side has 1, it loses.

40k scale breaks down. If you try too small or too big it won't work. Stuff is either lol bad or op and titans are on auto lose category.

That's not really the issue here, though. It doesn't matter if the titan would be a liability in a tightly calculated match-up, here it seems that the particular players weren't having a good time due to a perceived (real or imagined) lack of interaction with it. "Just ignore it" is bad advice for improving the fun there, even if it checks out on victory conditions. "We played a game, he shot and I won" isn't a desired outcome in this case.

this is exactly the issue we encountered, the balance wasn't a problem it was the lack of fun interaction, some of the others in this thread have suggested breaking it into multiple parts which could be good but explaining to 30+ people might be tricky

think explaining it probably follows from how you split it up, I'd consider less the physical bits of the thing, but more the functions as being the targets

e.g. for a warlord say as follows:
- individual weapons, which if damaged loose shots or strength and destroyed obviously don't fire
- shield generators, which degrade then drop shields or the ability to repair shields
- legs, damage slowing movement and the ability to turn
- head (probably hardest to hit and best protected) damage degrades all functions, destroyed and the thing "falls"
- body (easy to hit, hard to hurt), has the power reactor and main structure, damage degrades movement and weapons (to avoid shock loads and power drain), but can go bang.

think though about the sort of stuff you have buzzing about, fliers/bikes/speeders? add maybe the ability to do a suicide ram from a flier destroyed while on approach, and the ability to try and dodge such

infantry? maybe ways to climb the legs and do irritating things to the diodes down the side etc

if its one titan get a whiteboard or a bit of a4 card and draw the thing on it and use that to track damage, make it visual and easy to see from range

get it right and the titan becomes an interactive part of the battlefield, the smaller stuff should be things it struggles to deal with up close, and they should be able to bring it down, maybe, over time