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I ask because I'm going to be playing in a very high points game later in the week where Superheavies are quite likely to show up, and reading the relevant rules and stats I'm not feeling like I'm all that terribly threatened.

For reference, it's 6k points a side, and the thing most likely to show up against me is a Warlord Titan.

Clocks in at 2.5k points. 6 AV13 void bubbles to bust through. 9 Hull Points after that, with every Explodes result giving me an extra D3 HP knocked off (though the odds of that are slim). Packs a heck of a punch, to be sure, with 4 ordnance level weapons mounted up.

But, at the same time... 2500 points could get me something in the neighborhood of 15 Leman Russ tanks. 15 Ordnance strength weapons. 45 Hull Points. A whole lot more tactical flexibility. That Titan seems like it's just begging for me to blow it away with a necron Stormcourt, or hit it with a couple deep striking melta suicide squads... And even if someone decided to bring one into a low point game, it's represent at least half his army. I feel like if I didn't have a good way to kill it I could at least tie it up or avoid it or at the very worst eat a couple big scary weapons while claiming objectives.

So what makes a Superheavy more absurd than something like a 200-300 point Wraithknight sized monster? At what point are you taking an elephant gun on a mosquito hunt?

They are not OP in big 6K matches but compare that to a 1500-2500p match. A baneblade or a titan can oblitirate the enemy if they are not preperad. If they are preperad then they are just realy good.
Think like this. if i took a baneblade against my friends in a 2000p without telling them then i would almoast guarantee that i win because they aren't prepered for something that big in such a smal game but
even if they are preperd then it will take alot from the opposing side to take it down. And when it's down i then it has taken down half the enemys army and i have 1500p left to take the rest down.

There's only really two things that make SH generally OP (one or two exceptions like the Revenant Titan and T-C'Tan) which are D weapons and surprise inclusion in smaller games.

With specific regard to a Warlord? A 10 man Combi Melta SG squad in a Pod can really ruin it's day. How many of those can you field for 2.5k?

 Azreal13 wrote:
There's only really two things that make SH generally OP (one or two exceptions like the Revenant Titan and T-C'Tan) which are D weapons and surprise inclusion in smaller games.

With specific regard to a Warlord? A 10 man Combi Melta SG squad in a Pod can really ruin it's day. How many of those can you field for 2.5k?

Resolving Invisibility on a Titan is crazy powerful. Resolving Invisibility on the equivalent number of MSU is crazy expensive in comparison.

Ok, well, if we're playing virtual hammer, all my Sternguard are prescienced.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Ok, well, if we're playing virtual hammer, all my Sternguard are prescienced.

How many WC does it cost to put Invisibility on the Titan vs all of your MSU?

Part of what makes SH OP is the power multiplier of buffs from psychic powers, etc. and that those power multiplier are equivalent in cost across the board.

Generally speaking, in order to take them out, you need to gear up for them. In large games like the one your looking at, you will have the tools to handle one effectively. The issue people have with them being OP is when they are crammed into much smaller games where you generally wont have the means without specifically tailoring for it.

col_impact wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Ok, well, if we're playing virtual hammer, all my Sternguard are prescienced.

How many WC does it cost to put Invisibility on the Titan vs all of your MSU?

Part of what makes SH OP is the power multiplier of buffs from psychic powers, etc. and that those power multiplier are equivalent in cost across the board.

What if the Titan is fighting alongside a bunch of Orks, Necrons and Dark Eldar?

Dismissing something because of other things that might happen is a never ending, circular conversation I'm not really interested in indulging in.

Not all superheavies are overpowered. Most people won't find a Stompa or Baneblade overpowering in a 2000pt game typically. Most armies, if they can deal with a trio of Russ tanks, can deal with a Baneblade just as easily, they're pretty interchangeable in terms of firepower and resiliency. Not too much to write home about there. A Stompa is roughly equivalent to two knights in terms of Cost and HP's, lacking the inbuilt invul save. Those things aren't too bad and a well built Take All Comers list should be able to deal with that, or at least stand a chance.

The issue is with superheavies mounting D weapons, or that are just *really* big. D weapons, despite being toned down, are still extremely powerful. On top of that, GW has done a fairly poor job in costing the bigger models, making stuff like Reaver Titans, Transcendant C'tan, Heirophants, or Harridan's significantly more cost effective per point invested than lighter units, essentially creating an economies of scale issue where the bigger the unit the bigger your bang for your points investment. A Tyranid Heirophant costs less than 2 Bandeblades, but is probably a good match for 4 Baneblades on an actual table, and you get a similar situation with something like a Reaver Titan, costing about as much as 3 Baneblades but probably a good match for 5 of them, maybe 6.

Knights are another interesting problem. Their AV13 isn't the toughest thing in the world, but it's tough enough that most of the HP stripping guns can't hurt is much (e.g. Autocannons) and that invul save helps a lot. On top of that, its sports a D strength close combat weapon. Now, one of these isn't so bad. Most armies can deal with that, especially with multivectored threats. The problem is when there's a full army of 5 of them on a board, they may only have the guns to deal with two or three over the course of a game, and the Knights just get stuck in with those D attacks, and simply overwhelm and crush their opponents by turn 3 or 4.

TL;DR "D" weapons are hard to deal with, GW hasn't bothered to balance the bigger superheavies and GC's, making them usually worth 150-300% what they're actually costed at.

Your stats are wrong. The void shields are only AV 12, but it has 9 STRUCTURE points, not hull points. That's a leftover from the old Apocalypse rules (the Warlord has not been updated since 5th edition), and in modern terms each SP is equal to 3 HP. So once you bring down the void shields you actually have 27 HP to get rid of. And remember, the titan will be supported. It will probably be invisible (so you can't shoot at it with blast weapons and everything else needs 6s to hit) after its owner's first psychic phase, and it will probably be surrounded by maximum-coherency-distance meatshield squads of cultists/guardsmen/etc to prevent you from deep striking within melta range. Meanwhile its four guns are probably removing four units per turn from the table, so it isn't going to take very long for it to kill 2500 points worth of stuff.

The only good side is that IIRC the Warlord does not have any rules allowing it to be a LoW choice. So unless you're playing Apocalypse or allowing unbound armies it isn't a legal choice.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Ok, well, if we're playing virtual hammer, all my Sternguard are prescienced.

It's not "virtual hammer", it's just basic titan strategy. You always make sure you have meatshields around it to screen it from deep striking melta and prevent it from being locked in combat, and you always have psykers to buff it. If talking about how the titan is likely to be invisible is "virtual hammer" then so is talking about how Rhinos are likely to have passengers inside.

Way to fixate on the specific point and miss the general Perrie!

 Azreal13 wrote:
Way to fixate on the specific point and miss the general Perrie!

What general point is there? You posted a strategy that does nothing to a Warlord titan, and called it "virtual hammer" when someone pointed out why your strategy would never work in a real game.

Super Heavies are not OP. Just like how Heavy Support or Flyers are not OP.

Its just another unit type.

Individual models might have OP rules, but that is nothing new. The Riptide being OP doesn't mean a Carnifex is OP.

A bunch of them seem to be pretty balanced out, it just would also depend on the army you'd bring and what it can take. For example Tyranids would probably struggle more than guard.

Mainly its people who have never played against them freaking out because they seem scary on paper.

 gmaleron wrote:
Mainly its people who have never played against them freaking out because they seem scary on paper.

Seeing an IK explode in turn 1 helps getting away from this.

Superheavies are OP because they're immune to Entropic Strike, but not Haywire.

Fricken cheating haywire... let my Scarabs have some fun, damn you!

On the other hand, prize for the most underpowered SH goes to?...

Well, not all superheavies are overpowered seen from my perspective to play apoc games on a regular basis.
In fact, Baneblade pattern tanks go down rather early when targeted.
Superheavy creatures are generally tougher to take down
and they can dish out more damage like the Revenant Titan or a Trans. C'Tan.

 God In Action wrote:
On the other hand, prize for the most underpowered SH goes to?...

Probably the Hellhammer. Only thing it's got going for it is ignores cover, but its only something silly like a large blast autocannon.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 God In Action wrote:
On the other hand, prize for the most underpowered SH goes to?...

Probably the Hellhammer. Only thing it's got going for it is ignores cover, but its only something silly like a large blast autocannon.

? The Hellhammer cannon is Str 10 AP 1. That said, though, its range is laughable compared to its brothers (other than the Stormsword whose gun in the exact same except for it being an Apocalyptic Blast instead of a Massive Blast) and it is pretty terrible. I'd say that it and the Stormsword are strong contenders for the title of 'worst super-heavy'.

Nononono.

The worst superheavy is not a baneblade chassis.

Look no further than the might Malcador. Really any of its variants are pretty trash. Weak weapons on a platform hardly more durable than a Russ, for much much more in points.

Truly the king of gakky superheavies.

One thing to ask. For those who think the category SH is OP, what is the minimum we could do to address it? The answer to this question actually directly answers the OP question in the clearest way possible.

For me, if you take the category SH and ban the Warhound, the Revenant Titan, and the Transcendant C'Tan, and add a house rule that restricts SH from being the recipient of psychic blessings then the OP problem of SH has been fixed.

Put superheavies back into Apoc only.

col_impact wrote:
One thing to ask. For those who think the category SH is OP, what is the minimum we could do to address it? The answer to this question actually directly answers the OP question in the clearest way possible.

For me, if you take the category SH and ban the Warhound, the Revenant Titan, and the Transcendant C'Tan, and add a house rule that restricts SH from being the recipient of psychic blessings then the OP problem of SH has been fixed.

Sounds legit. I would add "Superheavies cannot be more than 30% of the total points value of your army".

Honestly, I'm not that worried about my own impending encounter with a SH. It's a big mishmash game with SM and Tau on one side and Orks/Mechanicum/Necrons on the other. I'll just stack my force with multiple ace in the hole anti tank options and not worry too much about it.

Aren't that many points considered an Apoc game anyway? If so, that's the games that they were originally designed for, and wouldn't be OP.

1. Our houserule, which works wonders, is: Superheavies cannot be affected by any ability other than straight up damage results, including blessings, unless the source of said ability is ALSO a super heavy.

2. I own a reaver titan. I know its weakness, as well as the weakness of other like titans, like most of the imperial ones. Big walkers with guns. If you think you can kill it, great. Go for it. Do NOT go half-heartedly about it. Either down it in one or two turns or don't bother. A super heavy with 1 hull point shoots just as well as when it came on the board.

On average, my reaver can pay for himself in about 3-4 rounds of shooting (depending on available targets,) so if it takes you that long to blow it up, you didn't really come out ahead. If you don't think you can down it in a couple rounds, send some suicide guys at it. With just a couple WS 4 attacks and d3 stomps, a fairly numerous or durable squad can get stuck in pretty well. Orks can mob rule to pass the morale as long as bosspole nob is still up, and tactical marines can shrug off all but the 6 results on stomps. Now that you have a couple guys nibbling at his ankles, he can't SHOOT. Use this time to wipe out the rest of his army, which is undoubtedly smaller than the rest of your army. Feed the titan more guys when needed. He absolutely will not chew through his point value in melee unless you make the game go way past normal game length. Also as a side-note, I know my reaver can't target little guys really close to him. I'm betting the warlord has the same issue, so even if you can't assault yet, you're actually pretty safe near his feet.
As a side note, I had to loan my reaver to an opponent just to prove this stuff. He was convinced using it as a LOW in a 2k game made it an auto win. At the end of the game, I had 5 objectives, warlord kill, linebreaker, and he just had a titan still trying to kick marines off his legs. He got first blood, but that's pretty easy.
I also got to borrow a friend's last edition dark eldar and completely demolished him with it. He was in melee on turn 2, fell to 2 combats of haywire wyches, and was tabled on turn 4. The wyches even came out mostly intact thanks to a nice scatter from the explosion.

3. Transports. A laser blaster shooting 3 str D shots at a rhino is probably a dead rhino, but not only can it survive, but the passengers will, at worst, suffer a typical vehicle explosion. He'll have to waste another weapon to take out the squad that fell out. Any transports carrying potential snackrifices for titan melee should move and flat out straight for it.

4. DON'T put things all close together. If you send 3 rhinos or trukks or what-have-you up to get some tarpitters in his face, don't have them running side by side where a 3 shot large blast D weapon could scatter some and hit all 3 with at least one shot each. Treat D large blasts just like vindicator demolisher cannons. Don't group hug your dudes. I swear something about a titan being on the table makes people forget the basic tactics they already know.

Yes, the thing can do a lot of damage in one turn, but like is said above, the amount of damage it does in 1 round pales in comparison to how much army they could have had in its place. A 1500 point army from Tau, Eldar, or IG could probably beat it in a damage race.

niv-mizzet wrote:
1. Our houserule, which works wonders, is: Superheavies cannot be affected by any ability other than straight up damage results, including blessings, unless the source of said ability is ALSO a super heavy.

That one's really good. I'll suggest it to our group and we'll try it

the problem with SH is the problem with most large deathstar units, certain other abilities/powers give them a ridiculous force multiplier over normal units. ie invisibility.

when you can cast 1 wc2 power and make 600-1000pts of your army much much better, the power is broken, not necessarily the unit you spent the points on.

really blessings/maledictions should have a sliding scale of cost based on what they are being cast on, but that is not in the game of course. Ie WC cost based on total wounds, or total HP of unit affected.

Destroyer weapons and Stomp. Neither of which are exclusive to super-heavies, but those are the only problems with them.

Baneblades, for example, feature neither, and aren't any kind of overpowered.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

mane11354 wrote:

Think like this. if i took a baneblade against my friends in a 2000p without telling them then i would almoast guarantee that i win because they aren't prepered for something that big in such a smal game but

A Baneblade costs slightly more than 3 Leman Russes, and has much less than 3x the firepower and survivability. Are your sure that's a guarantee?