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Whatever Mandragola, you're certain you're right, I'm certain you're picking and choosing unrealistic scenarios so your mathhammer will support the conclusion you've already drawn based on a sentiment that Knights shouldn't be able to threaten Titans as anything other than a Light Brigade bum-rush. Agree to disagree.

Yodhrin, Mathhammer has its limitations, but in this case it reveals that the Acastus weapons are *extremely* powerful for their points costs and chassis compared to what we've seen in the game to this point. There are certainly other factors and game contexts to consider, but I think my previous statement is pretty hard to contradict. So I don't think it's outrageous to say that an outlier like that is a little concerning for game balance at this time. Note that's a different thing than proclaiming that 'the game is broken now'.

Time will tell. If it turns out that they're genuinely abusable, then the worst abuses will take place within Knights armies, where they can be spammed. That seems somewhat limiting, and both gaming groups and events will be able to implement controls to rein them in. Of course, my hope is that they aren't abusable.

 xttz wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
Well, if anyone was like me and didn't jump on the stratagem cards right away, they're now sold out.

This is not how you grow a game or support vets, Gee Dub.

Yes, the best way to grow a game is to... have less demand than supply

Ideally supply should equal demand. It's true there's no point having warehouses full of cards that can't be sold, but neither do you want disappointed would-be-customers all over the world who can't buy your products.

Demand is somewhat predictable. You could look at how many copies of other products you'd sold in the past to get an estimate of the player base.

The problem seems to be that the supply chain is very slow. Apparently we can't produce cardboard here in the UK - it has to be shipped from far away, very slowly and with very long lead-in times. I'm not convinced this needs to be the case.

And the packaging of stuff is weird. Why sell every terminal in packs of five, for example, when hardly anyone needs that many? The screamingly obvious solution is to put the terminals in the boxes with the models.

The upside with these stratagems is that you don't really need them. That's not the case for the knight ones, which have unique stratagems that aren't written down anywhere else. I still can't quite believe they didn't write the households' stratagems into the Molech book.

Anyway in the absence of all of that, if you want AT stuff you have to preorder it on day one, preferably in the morning. Shouldn't be that way, but it is. The same thing will definitely happen when the new carapace weapons finally land as well.

 gorgon wrote:
Yodhrin, Mathhammer has its limitations, but in this case it reveals that the Acastus weapons are *extremely* powerful for their points costs and chassis compared to what we've seen in the game to this point. There are certainly other factors and game contexts to consider, but I think my previous statement is pretty hard to contradict. So I don't think it's outrageous to say that an outlier like that is a little concerning for game balance at this time. Note that's a different thing than proclaiming that 'the game is broken now'.

Time will tell. If it turns out that they're genuinely abusable, then the worst abuses will take place within Knights armies, where they can be spammed. That seems somewhat limiting, and both gaming groups and events will be able to implement controls to rein them in. Of course, my hope is that they aren't abusable.

But my point is exactly that - there are other factors to consider, and just "math'ing" some arbitrary gun vs gun scenario in total isolation doesn't tell us anywhere near as much as some people have been insisting. It's like the folk who insist the Arioch claw is fine and great and doesn't even need the Megabolter that it should clearly have, because, hey, it's good in close combat, while completely ignoring how rare CC is for a Warlord and the opportunity cost of having one less Warlord-grade ranged weapon.

To illustrate what I mean, come at the issue from the other direction: your goal is to create a Knight that can threaten Titans at range sufficiently that a small number can act as a deterrent/board control and a large number(by the game's standards), played well, can make actual engine kills. It can't be as survivable as a Titan, but it has to be survivable enough that it doesn't drop dead if a Titan farts in its general direction. It has to have a point cost that makes it worthwhile to take compared to just spending the same amount of points on more zergrushing Quaestoris. How would that Knight differ from what we've got here in the Acastus?

If its ranged firepower is weaker, Titans can just ignore it and so it's not worth the cost even if it were discounted. If it were less resilient its opportunities to actually fire would drop to virtually zero. If it were more expensive you'd be better off just reverting to Bannerspam.

You could probably find another balance of the various elements such that the Acastus was a bit weaker, a bit cheaper, a bit this or that etc, but then people would just be complaining that 3 Acastus can do XYZ instead of 2 of them.

The core issue is that Acastus are designed to do one thing - threaten Titans at range - and a lot of people(not saying this is yourself, just a general observation about the "debate" so far here & elsewhere) don't think Knights should be allowed to do that thing at all. No version of the concept will be accepted, because they object to the concept itself, and the mathhammering is just a way to avoid acknowledging that.

Availability has become a game within a game. Although I don't field Warlords, I was keeping an eye on the quake cannon and gatling blaster for a friend. In the UK, you guys had periodic 'blips' of availability that usually ended almost immediately. In the US, we went for 6(? or 8?) weeks with zero available. Every day refreshing the page. This after our prices got jacked and we were told how we'd benefit from a US-based warehouse. That's also no way to operate, although I still cut them some slack since resin production is what it is.

Honestly, I'm not raging about any of this (although I may get more rage-y if I struggle to procure Ursus claws when they're released ). But for the items that come through GW, it's baffling to me why they don't have a better handle on demand one year later.

In wonder if we get the options on simplified Rules for Infantry and Vehicles instead of Epic.

RazorEdge wrote:
In wonder if we get the options on simplified Rules for Infantry and Vehicles instead of Epic.

That would be awesome, and fine by me. A rare case where drip-feeding rules lets one game be many different things for many different people! Maybe rock-papper-scissors it so that tiny Devastator Squads blow away Knights easily, but literally can't touch Titans, etc... Take that Poryphrion!

 Yodhrin wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
Yodhrin, Mathhammer has its limitations, but in this case it reveals that the Acastus weapons are *extremely* powerful for their points costs and chassis compared to what we've seen in the game to this point. There are certainly other factors and game contexts to consider, but I think my previous statement is pretty hard to contradict. So I don't think it's outrageous to say that an outlier like that is a little concerning for game balance at this time. Note that's a different thing than proclaiming that 'the game is broken now'.

Time will tell. If it turns out that they're genuinely abusable, then the worst abuses will take place within Knights armies, where they can be spammed. That seems somewhat limiting, and both gaming groups and events will be able to implement controls to rein them in. Of course, my hope is that they aren't abusable.

But my point is exactly that - there are other factors to consider, and just "math'ing" some arbitrary gun vs gun scenario in total isolation doesn't tell us anywhere near as much as some people have been insisting. It's like the folk who insist the Arioch claw is fine and great and doesn't even need the Megabolter that it should clearly have, because, hey, it's good in close combat, while completely ignoring how rare CC is for a Warlord and the opportunity cost of having one less Warlord-grade ranged weapon.

To illustrate what I mean, come at the issue from the other direction: your goal is to create a Knight that can threaten Titans at range sufficiently that a small number can act as a deterrent/board control and a large number(by the game's standards), played well, can make actual engine kills. It can't be as survivable as a Titan, but it has to be survivable enough that it doesn't drop dead if a Titan farts in its general direction. It has to have a point cost that makes it worthwhile to take compared to just spending the same amount of points on more zergrushing Quaestoris. How would that Knight differ from what we've got here in the Acastus?

If its ranged firepower is weaker, Titans can just ignore it and so it's not worth the cost even if it were discounted. If it were less resilient its opportunities to actually fire would drop to virtually zero. If it were more expensive you'd be better off just reverting to Bannerspam.

You could probably find another balance of the various elements such that the Acastus was a bit weaker, a bit cheaper, a bit this or that etc, but then people would just be complaining that 3 Acastus can do XYZ instead of 2 of them.

The core issue is that Acastus are designed to do one thing - threaten Titans at range - and a lot of people(not saying this is yourself, just a general observation about the "debate" so far here & elsewhere) don't think Knights should be allowed to do that thing at all. No version of the concept will be accepted, because they object to the concept itself, and the mathhammering is just a way to avoid acknowledging that.

I see what you’re saying but I’m not seeing what you’re seeing from my side of the “debate”.

I’ve got no problem at all with a knight that can shoot titans dead at range. Every model in the game should be capable of doing its job. An Acastus is nearly the size of a warhound and not as quick, so it would be reasonable for it to have roughly a warhound’s firepower. I don’t have any problem with it’s durability either - it’s meant to be chunky. I think it should probably have only about a 4-6” move and limited turns though - and definitely fire arcs - but that’s not how FW have decided to go with this.

But it shouldn’t have far more firepower than a warhound. It’s guns, which are smaller than turbo lasers, powered by a weaker reactor and weaker in every other format (30k, 40k and apocalypse) should not be much more powerful than a warhound’s. Its missile launcher, which is roughly equal to a whirlwind in 40k, should not be more powerful than a reaver’s apocalypse missile launcher in AT.

The result is a knight with firepower equivalent to a reaver Titan, if not better. And the platform it’s on really isn’t fragile enough to call it a glass cannon. A shot from a bellicosa has less than a 50% chance of killing one of these guys - worse than that if it’s in cover. They are extremely resilient against anything with less strength than that. Lacking any facings or damage bonuses for damage means they will tend to lose less structure points than a Titan would against anything that doesn’t kill them outright. I think their toughness against a typical all-rounder list is probably about equal to a warhound - though weaker against some guns and tougher against others. I guess you’d fire the volcano cannons at these things and the lighter guns at other stuff - though guns like Vulcan mega bolters aren’t very good against any knights.

And that might still be ok if their points cost reflected their power. It doesn’t, in my opinion. It seems to me that this unit is neither believable or balanced.

We had our game, and I loaded up with the best weapons available. Sorry to say but it was a straight up massacre.

That said, my opponent was very lucky in his rolls for initiative and location hits. On turn two all three knight banners lit up the Reaver like a christmas tree - all weapons knocked out and scored directly on the legs, leading to the worst possible outcome - catastrophic meltdown. Yet, two played at that game and my two hounds hammered the lead banner( three knights ) and destroyed one, and almost had a second. With the luck of the devil, he once again won the initiative on the third turn and I lost both of my hounds as a result.

This is certainly not the kind of game we'll be playing in future as I only have a single box of Acastus on order and will definitely leave it there. Our next game will have the following house-rule for points...

Banner 90, extra 80.
Porphyrion 35, Asterius 45.
Twin Lascannon upgrade 15.

...and it will be just the one Porphyrion in a household force, acting support alongside a Warhound.

On the glass-half full side - and going with the offical point cost, a single Acastus is a fantastic point filler. Don't go into battle without one!

As a light-hearted idea for funsies on Acastus hunting, aka how to burn up real damn fast:

- take a custom Legio with Multiple Warhead Launchers (upgrades Apocs to fire thrice at much with Str 3)

- take a Warlord with double Sunfuries and Apocs (plasmas to make sure the next step works)

- use the Experimental Weapons stratagem to make those Apocs Maximal Fire

- optionally, also use the other stratagem to change that MF bonus to +4

- deploy over 30" away for that sweet 2+ hit chance

- let rip with 30 Str 5(7) missiles, cause 25 hits and get 5 heat from MF

- a singular Acastus actually has real bad saves, taking 17(21) hits in and suffering 6(14) points of damage out of the 7 required for a kill

- combine with a trait/stratagem from Defensor/Fureans, smash that First Fire / Emergency Repairs button and hope there is a plasma station nearby stopping you from blowing yourself up

- ???

- profit?

That Warhead thingy might also actually be a good place to try out the Warmaster's Beneficence for +1 Str on the first volley, not necessarily in this context but damn if those 25 hits aren't going to shred some Voids nicely if you want to go for a long range alpha strike with Volcanoes and such. Suck that, Fortis maniple


Automatically Appended Next Post:
More musings on the Custom Legio rules and making melee great again.

So, the current plan for getting those Warlords into melee (next level tactical genius, yo) is:

- Splinter Legio (Astorum) to get extra speed, turn traitor.
- Motive Mastery to ensure most of your line, not just Seniores, will consistently push forwards and Charge everything.
- Warchest to buy Vulpa's +2 Str disruption fields.
- War Doctrine to maybe buy Mortis' March of the Dead for more speed or Fortidus' Red Skies for proper nuclear blasts when you die. Really this can be almost anything to finetune your list to suit the battle or fluff you like.
- As other stratagems, now that we are traitors War Lust and the Charge bonus ones are pretty nasty.

So even before we consider Maniple bonuses, our first turn movements can be easily over half the field. Say we deploy 6" from our table edge.
- Warlord moves 4" (MoD) + pushing for 6" (plus 2" from Astorum and another 2" from War Lust) + pushing Full Stride for another 10". This is a Warlord. It is now 30" from your table edge, very much ready to make 8" Charges next turn.
- Reaver takes the same thing with 6"+13"+13" and is now 10" from the ENEMY table edge.
- Warhound can burn itself for 8"+16"+16" and be 2" away from the ENEMY table edge. If the deployment allows 8", you can score Vital Cargo on your first turn.

This paintrain WILL crash against the opposition on turn 2 and some Charges will go off. Supplemented with some Cerastus to herd enemy fallbacks so you can still Charge or hit again in Combat phase there is some nice potential to bring RIP AND TEAR back to the fore. Also, as the obligatory anti-Acastus mention, we are now close enough they might scatter blasts on their own lines if they want to chuck those 20+ Blasts around. Profit!

SamusDrake wrote:
We had our game, and I loaded up with the best weapons available. Sorry to say but it was a straight up massacre.

Thanks for doing the batrep, it’s useful to have some real-world experience to go on.

There are obviously a lot of ways the game could have gone differently. Still, to have killed all three titans by turn three, for the loss of only one knight, certainly adds to the case that the knights are seriously powerful things.

Mandragola wrote:

Thanks for doing the batrep, it’s useful to have some real-world experience to go on.

There are obviously a lot of ways the game could have gone differently. Still, to have killed all three titans by turn three, for the loss of only one knight, certainly adds to the case that the knights are seriously powerful things.

You're welcome!

It was a comical game and I think more dedicated players would have gone further, but I reckon there is going to be an errata very soon for slight tweaking in the points. For the time being, though, now is a great time to be a knight player!

Is there any possibility that this is simply a misprint? Or multiple misprints?

The fact that the guns are not only super-strong (on paper), but unfluffy (e.g. why do the lascannons have blasts? and why are they the same price as the obviously superior beamers?) makes me wonder if it's not a case of poor playtesting but rather a simple copy-paste mistake. We have the precedent of the incorrect fire arc on the Warlords' gatling carapace card.

The similarity of the magna lascannons and the conversion beamers looks suspiciously like something's been misprinted somewhere.

Of course it could be both.

Or maybe the image of the terminal on GW's site is incorrect / a beta pic, and we're all panicking over nothing, and the actual terminals have different stats and costs?

@Yodhrin: I too had high hopes for an artillery Knight that could lend support at long range, and was eagerly awaiting the Acastus release. I'm not sure why you think we naysayers have an ideological opposition to Knights being anything other than cannon fodder. An all-Knight force obviously needs to be able to duke it out with a Titan battlegroup for game balance purposes. The Acastus was presumably meant to fill that gap.

I just wasn't expecting... this. Although reports of overpowered, undercosted stuff in other Forgeworld rulesets did make me a little wary. As did the news that the rules team for AT now is not the rules team who did the core game.

As well as worries about power and points cost, I'm also concerned that it may well make the enjoyable AT core gameplay, which is BFG-like in its strategy and tactics, largely irrelevant and thus not much fun. You can just sit back and blaze away. Job done. It reminds me a little of the turret problem in FFG's X-Wing (speaking from hearsay here). A game designed around movement and planning ahead, due to limited fire arcs, suddenly had the fun sucked out of it when you put 360 degree shootiness like the Millennium Falcon on the board.

Still keen to hear more actual experiences.

Fortunately, the mirrored factions of AT mean it's in every player's interest to agree on house rules that provide balance. Otherwise the other guy will just show up with the same trick next time and turn the tables to prove the point. If the Acastus prove to be as game-breaking as some of us think, we should be able to limit their abuse.

Maybe they got the gakky little intern who wrote Gang War 1 and 2 without playing a single game of Necromunda to do the new knights.

Zenithfleet wrote:
Or maybe the image of the terminal on GW's site is incorrect / a beta pic, and we're all panicking over nothing, and the actual terminals have different stats and costs?

This is a possibility. Have a look at the Traitor Titans of Legend cards - the group shot has them all saying "Left Arm" whereas the closeup of Hammer of Tyrants has "Belicosa Volcano Cannon", not "Left Arm".

But we're clutching at straws now...

So as a brand, brand new player... i'm super confused by some of the releases for this game, and with everything seemingly so prone to selling out I keep having this FOMO sense that I need to just blind buy stuff?

Am I correct that these new Titans of Legend are completely new content that didn't appear in any book? Essentially just a way to get some "new" units into the game that don't require models? That sounds like a good value-added item if it lets you use your existing models in totally new ways. Am I understanding that correctly?

How about the strategem and resource cards? Were those in any of the books released to date, and now are just getting handy printed cards, or is this likewise all new content?

Finally is there a resource that at least lists ALL strategems, and where they appear? I've heard that the strategems are spread all over the place, but from batreps it seems like those and battlefield resources/assets add so much to the games longevity.

By the end of the week i'll have two Axiom Maniple bundles for the wife and I, one rules-set, and the two expansion books, but I feel like there's still so much I should get to see the full picture of the game, and bunches keep selling out if I don't over-spend right now.

There’s very little content outside of the core and expansion books. So far as I know, these two stratagem card packs don’t include any strats that aren’t already in the books. The knight stratagem cards do include some house-specific stratagems that aren’t anywhere else.

These special titans don’t appear anywhere else, so they are new content that only appears on cards.

Ultimately all the rules you need are in the three books, the rule set (with its weapon cards and terminals) and the online terminals you can download (for the Cerastus knight and hopefully the Acastus). These special terminals are decidedly optional.

FWIW I’ve got everything, but that’s due to an unhealthy need for completeness.

Mandragola wrote:
There’s very little content outside of the core and expansion books. So far as I know, these two stratagem card packs don’t include any strats that aren’t already in the books. The knight stratagem cards do include some house-specific stratagems that aren’t anywhere else.

These special titans don’t appear anywhere else, so they are new content that only appears on cards.

Ultimately all the rules you need are in the three books, the rule set (with its weapon cards and terminals) and the online terminals you can download (for the Cerastus knight and hopefully the Acastus). These special terminals are decidedly optional.

FWIW I’ve got everything, but that’s due to an unhealthy need for completeness.

I very much share that need. In particular, I find the greatest satisfaction in tabletop games when I have just loads of options and get to try things from a massive pool.

I was initially hesitant with AT at launch because it was one faction, and at the time only a couple models. What finally got me interested was them hitting a critical mass of decisions/choices. Maniples, Legions, Households, Weapons.... I mean its still a game with essentially six model kits in total, but all those options make it replayable. But its that same reason that makes me also feel that much more compelled to get anything that offers a significant choice.

Probably within the year, the wife and I will have a cross section of all the models in some numbers, and its just not a game where you're really expected to buy models indefinitely... But that makes small-print run rules that much more alluring.

So, anyway, the new custom Legio rules.
Looks good; choose four traits from across four categories, no more than two in one category is a good mix and the traits themselves are all things you’d want to do or have with no outstanding auto-takes or “why would you even”’s.
Honestly though, the best part are the options to *ahem* borrow traits from existing ‘canon’ legios which means first that the system can’t be outpaced easily by the published ones and second that the published legios will need to stay in line lest someone discover a broken combo.
A++, more like this, please.

 Mr_Rose wrote:
So, anyway, the new custom Legio rules.
Looks good; choose four traits from across four categories, no more than two in one category is a good mix and the traits themselves are all things you’d want to do or have with no outstanding auto-takes or “why would you even”’s.
Honestly though, the best part are the options to *ahem* borrow traits from existing ‘canon’ legios which means first that the system can’t be outpaced easily by the published ones and second that the published legios will need to stay in line lest someone discover a broken combo.
A++, more like this, please.

Are those rules from White Dwarf, or elsewhere?

 Mr_Rose wrote:
So, anyway, the new custom Legio rules.
Looks good; choose four traits from across four categories, no more than two in one category is a good mix and the traits themselves are all things you’d want to do or have with no outstanding auto-takes or “why would you even”’s.
Honestly though, the best part are the options to *ahem* borrow traits from existing ‘canon’ legios which means first that the system can’t be outpaced easily by the published ones and second that the published legios will need to stay in line lest someone discover a broken combo.
A++, more like this, please.

Some stuff jumped out at me (keep in mind I play all Warhounds). Elite Magos is a 50% boost in repair dice for Warhounds, plus the boost to ER command checks. That seems really nice. Macro Magazines makes double Vulcan WHs even more fun for shield-stripping. War Doctrine has a lot of potential usages. And Survivors is interesting and something I'll probably experiment with.

Fury of the Fallen jumped out for me in a bad way. It seems unbelievably situational.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:

Are those rules from White Dwarf, or elsewhere?

Yes, White Dwarf. July issue.

Wtf, I need a White Dwarf now for special AT rules?

Seems like the quickest fix is to amend the strength of the Acastus' guns so they're in line with the 40k stats.

 TBD wrote:
Wtf, I need a White Dwarf now for special AT rules?

There's already been a WD Exclusive Maniple (Dominus Battleforce).

 TBD wrote:
Wtf, I need a White Dwarf now for special AT rules?

Well, providing support for the games we own is what White Dwarf is for, and has been for the last 30-40 years. How to paint models, new missions, stories, rules for new characters and even small games, are what it provides.

Quite frankly, WD hasn't covered AT since February and I'd say its high time they did something for it.

I suggest getting the epub version. I've got paper versions of WDs I need for rules and they don't last well - plus it's another book to carry. A copy on your phone is way more convenient.

 TBD wrote:
Wtf, I need a White Dwarf now for special AT rules?

No, you need three pages of a white dwarf for optional custom Legio rules, if you want to use them.
But yeah, how dare they put supplementary game rules in their monthly gaming supplement.

I put some thoughts above about a highly mobile melee Legio with custom rules, any toughts?

 TBD wrote:
Wtf, I need a White Dwarf now for special AT rules?

Welcome to how it was back in 1989/90!