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My understanding is the general consensus is that most players agree that the Titans are all over costed since the FW nerf. However, even before the nerf I feel there was some debate as to the most appropriate point costs for the titans because they seemed arbitrarily point costed.

When voting consider the effectiveness of other armies' options that are regarded as appropriately costed or undercosted. Try not to compare the warhounds to other horribly nerfed and overcosted selections like the falcion or the hierophant bio titan when you decide how much they cost.

Most also agree that they are primarily designed for use in apocalypse sized games. The poll assumes an apocalypse size game so please factor that into your vote. I am interested to hear what people think they should cost in a normal game as well if there's any difference to them, so please post what you think they should cost in a normal size game if you'd like.

The reason I've given ranges is also to allow room for differences in weapon loadouts. Some might believe that a turbo laser should cost more than the inferno cannon, or vice versa, whatever the reasoning may be.

A Warhound should probably cost as much as 3 Knights, a Reaver should cost as much as 2 Warhounds, while a Warlord should cost as much as 2 Reavers.

SJ

I think initial print of the index warhound with turbo lasers was probably playable. Other weapons were overcosted but warhound at least had access to macro weapons which can be devastating.

Poor revenant though titan with anti vehicle weapons that arent macro costed 1200 and now 2k.

I pointed the warhound at 1100 with those turboasers its going to eat knights and really should be balanced around there most people run at least 1 turbo laser on previous edition warhound and it's still the best 8th weapon and probably most common.

Warhounds should be around 750 but the weapons are extra. Back in 5th-7th the only weapons people ever took were Dual-Turbos, and they were significantly more powerful than the Vulcan for example.

I would base it at 700, make the weapons the following.
- Vulcan - 50pts
- Plasma - 75pts
- Inferno - 75pts
- Turbos - 100pts

Lot less than 1500 pts.

They and all titans also need rules rewrite. In particular void shields that don't work at ALL how they have always worked and results in way to deal with titans that is pretty much opposite of how it has been and there's not even any real reason for such a drastic change.

tneva82 wrote:
Lot less than 1500 pts.

They and all titans also need rules rewrite. In particular void shields that don't work at ALL how they have always worked and results in way to deal with titans that is pretty much opposite of how it has been and there's not even any real reason for such a drastic change.

I'd take void shields over holo shields this edition revanant cant even shoot if it wants its max invulnerable.

It's not whether they are good or not but because they don't work like void shields and results in illogical way to deal with titans. There's no reason to have them work differently to how they have worked always past 20 or so years..

I see at least 6 people apparently think warhounds should cost 2k or more in an apoc game. Are these just the usual dakka trolls, or is there some kind of reasoning?

Maybe it's the "GW can do no wrong" camp so since GW upped the price to 2k that's obviously what it should cost.

tneva82 wrote:
It's not whether they are good or not but because they don't work like void shields and results in illogical way to deal with titans. There's no reason to have them work differently to how they have worked always past 20 or so years..

That's been bugging me for some time too. A degrading save is not fitting for a void shield, whereas an array of layered wound barriers isn't even at odds with the core engine of 8th. A shield layer could be a T8 W10 target (or somesuch, just spitballing numbers here) that you'd have to chew through. That way you'd have to spend an inordinate amount of small arms fire or several bigger guns to deal with them before you can annihilate the machine behind them.

I quite like the way the shields work in the latest Adeptus Titanicus, adapting a similar framework for 40k shouldn't be too hard either: you hit, you wound the shield, the shield makes an "integrity save", a shield might flicker and die. Perhaps you could restore one dead layer per turn, requiring the opponent to focus on it if they don't want the machine to stabilise when they finally punch through? More layers the heavier your class is.

Yeah I realized what's wrong with it when I took the classic pair of turbo laser destructors and 2 volcano cannons versus identical twin. Traditionally you would have used the TLD's to knock down shields down and THEN send in volcano cannons. First knock down shields with weapon designed for that, then send in titan busting weapon.

With 40k? It's reverse. TLD's don't do much more than tickle the titan while if you start with volcano's you then cause serious dent weakening void shields thus increasing TLD's damage output as well!

Volcanos have never been particularly useful at dealing with void shields yet now it's better than TLD's which have been weapon of choice generally? Riiight.

GW/FW flip flopped how Titans work in 8e from previous. They should probably fix that, but most likely won’t.

For real Titan on Titan combat, it’s Adaptus Titanicus, which is scalable up to the 40k scale models.

SJ

 chrispy1991 wrote:
I see at least 6 people apparently think warhounds should cost 2k or more in an apoc game. Are these just the usual dakka trolls, or is there some kind of reasoning?

Yeah, there's reasoning.

Lets start with the offensive profile. Each turbolaser is considerably more powerful than a Shadowsword of Knight Castellan's armament. Comparing the turbolaser to the volcano cannon:
The Turbolaser is Macro, doubling it's damage output against super heavy targets. It's also BS2+, so it can stick all its hits to make up for the extra D3 shots the Volcano Cannon get. Each arm is easily twice as powerful as a Volcano Cannon or Volcano Lance-Plasma Decimator pairup.

Then we've got the defensive profile. The titan is T9, which is a big deal compared to the Knight or Baneblade's T8, since it pretty much neutralizes Missiles and Meltaguns, only takes it's own return fire on 3+'s instead of 2's, and takes less hurt from Lascannons. Considering there are very few S10 AT weapons compared to S9 and S8, the jump from T7 to T8 is weaker than the jump from T8 to T9. Then, the Titan has a better starting invulnerable save than the Knight's invul, though the Knight can surpass it with a relic and strategem and doesn't lose it as it degrades. The baneblade doesn't have any invulnerable save.

Speaking against the titan is it's rapid degredation rate, and not having access to strategems like Rotate Ion Shields, Machine Spirit Resurgent, and Overlapping Fields of Fire, which makes up some of the ground for the Knight but not really for the Baneblade.


A Shadowsword is 400 points and a Castellan is about 600, and if we judge it about 4-5 times the shadowsword and 3 times the big knight, that places it around 1800 points. I'd rather err high, too, since the Shadowsword is easily established to be under-costed, and the Castellan is super competitive.


That said, I also think that eliminating the Macro rule and bringing it down to like 1000 points is a better solution. The giant guns are obviously a problem, since a titan with twin VMB's isn't particularly threatening beyond it's toughness, while a titan with turbolasers is absurdly powerful. Establishing from the VMB and the Plasma Blastgun's presence that the Warhound Titan carries a weapon that should be roughly the strength of a Baneblade's main weapon on each arm, the Macro weapons are clear outliers.

And despite that even 1500 pts was automatic i lose...

See stat's aren't be all and end all. Things aren't as simple as +2s is worth x pts

How much should a Warlord cost? About three-fiddy.


Realistically though, I think it'd be hard to fairly points cost. Make it power level only and keep in open play instead.

The premise that titans should be balanced for Apocalypse is badly flawed. Apocalypse is not a game, and should receive zero balance consideration. A unit like a Warhound should have a point cost appropriate for a normal game, adjusting its stats if necessary so that it fits.

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
A Warhound should probably cost as much as 3 Knights, a Reaver should cost as much as 2 Warhounds, while a Warlord should cost as much as 2 Reavers.

SJ

Only if you can prove a warhound titan is triple the effectiveness of a Knight,

Thinking of Warlords, anyone else think it'd be kind of cool to set a Kill Team game atop one of those things?

BrianDavion wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
A Warhound should probably cost as much as 3 Knights, a Reaver should cost as much as 2 Warhounds, while a Warlord should cost as much as 2 Reavers.

SJ

Only if you can prove a warhound titan is triple the effectiveness of a Knight,

That's not hard.

It has 2 Macro 2d3 S16 AP3 D2d6 guns. The only thing close is the Volcano Lance, which is about a quarter as powerful as one of those [Specifically, one turbolaser will average 45 wounds per turn while one volcano lance averages 12]. Of course, it's so far ahead of the Thundercoil harpoon that the latter might as well not exist.
Alternatively, there's the Flamestorm Cannon, which compared to the Conflagration Cannon has double the damage, an extra die worth of shots, and +1 AP.

And then there's the toughness, it's T9 with a 4++ compared to T8 with a 5++. Sure, the titan degrades to having a 5++ and being BS3+ fairly quickly, but it's still T9, and in that state its other stats are equal to the knight. Also, it moves 24", while the knight moves 10". It's easily triple the cost of a Knight.



All things considered, the ridiculous damage output is a major drawback for it, because it makes it super overkill in any normal sized game to the point where it's wasting all its potential. But if your opponent has titans, or even an army of Knights or Baneblades or whatever, it'll do well within it's expected parameters [that is to say, if it moves first, it wins handily, if it moves second it dies before doing anything, because that's what happens when all the titanic units bear firepower capable of outright eliminating each other in one round].

Warhounds have only 2 range weapons and can only stomp, which means outside of melee it can usually kill two models per turn. 3 Slam Captains will One-Turn a Warhound. Three Knights can kill more that 6 models a turn, and take the same effort to kill. That makes them close to equal in effectiveness. Three Castilians are around 1800pts, which is about where a Warhound should be. Warhounds are 2000pts in 8e, and that’s close enough to 1800 to be about right.

Which means Reaver at 3600-4000 is about right, and the 6000pt Warlord is probably fair.

SJ

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
A Warhound should probably cost as much as 3 Knights, a Reaver should cost as much as 2 Warhounds, while a Warlord should cost as much as 2 Reavers.

SJ

Only if you can prove a warhound titan is triple the effectiveness of a Knight,

That's not hard. .

And again you just go for stats so making rookie game developer mistake.

3 knights in an army doesn't mean you automatically lose.

Warhound? Yes. Opponent doesn't even have to bother shooting at it. All THAT accomplishesh is slow down the game before you win.

If warhound is 3x as good as knights why you can have army with 3 knights and win but 1 warhound and automatically lose? Answer: Warhound isn't worth 3 knights.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
Warhounds have only 2 range weapons and can only stomp, which means outside of melee it can usually kill two models per turn. 3 Slam Captains will One-Turn a Warhound. Three Knights can kill more that 6 models a turn, and take the same effort to kill. That makes them close to equal in effectiveness. Three Castilians are around 1800pts, which is about where a Warhound should be. Warhounds are 2000pts in 8e, and that’s close enough to 1800 to be about right.

Which means Reaver at 3600-4000 is about right, and the 6000pt Warlord is probably fair.

SJ

6k warlord fair? How big game you think for that? 6k and warlord is even more of autolose than warhound at 2k. You would need to up the game size ridiculously AND not up the board size/scenario to match...

Lol. Warlord is one of the worst models in the whole game followed by reaver and warhound, eldar titans etc.

i have a Warhound, a Reaver and a Warlord.

When we play apocalypse, we play PL because its easier, and when you juggle 500-600pl pr player around, you dont care about a unit having 2 plasma guns.

I think pretty much all FW titanic units are point wise overprized, which is sad.
I dont want titans to be a part of the competetive scene, but at least make the fellblade worth taking, or bring the typhon down to a playable level.

tneva82 wrote:

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
A Warhound should probably cost as much as 3 Knights, a Reaver should cost as much as 2 Warhounds, while a Warlord should cost as much as 2 Reavers.

SJ

Only if you can prove a warhound titan is triple the effectiveness of a Knight,

That's not hard. .

And again you just go for stats so making rookie game developer mistake.

3 knights in an army doesn't mean you automatically lose.

Warhound? Yes. Opponent doesn't even have to bother shooting at it. All THAT accomplishesh is slow down the game before you win.

If warhound is 3x as good as knights why you can have army with 3 knights and win but 1 warhound and automatically lose? Answer: Warhound isn't worth 3 knights.

Because fielding 1 model in a wargame that has 2 guns, no matter how obscenely powerful, is a dumb idea.

I already addressed this. You can dramatically overkill any 2 lesser units, but that's it. Two units a turn is not beyond the call of most super heavies.

However, the titan can deal devastating damage, enough to one-shot pretty much anything [and if not kill it, cripple it], while a Shadowsword or Knight cannot come close. Obviously, you must pay for the stupid overkill on small units, and if you bring a unit with giant guns for shooting at really big things, then you can't really expect to win against a horde of more targets than you can possibly engage.

We could scale this down to a Shadowsword in a SHAUX at 500 points. It can delete any single 1 unit in a turn, but that's it. If my opposition fields 8 60 point IG squads with a Lascannon in each, I will not win, no matter how hard that Volcano Cannon tries. Obviously, that doesn't mean the Shadowsword is critically overpriced. That's why you have an army capable of confronting a diverse array of targets and not just a Titan [and why it shouldn't be wandering around without support in a 2k game].



In fact, if we set the Titan up against an equivalent army of Shadowswords or Knights, we get some interesting results:
4 Shadowswords [~1650] can actually beat the titan if it takes the first turn. It's a bit of a uphill battle, but the titan can't kill them fast enough because there are 4, and either one will survive to deal the deathblow, or two crippled ones may get lucky, since the titan only averages about 22 damage to the second pair.
However, versus 3 Knights [~1850], if the Titan takes the first turn, it'll be able to wreck 2 in the first turn, take the third's salvo [and doesn't really care], and then obliterates it, even when degraded. The lone knight won't win.

With these few models on the table, the first move should win. The Shadowswords situation indicates that it's on the low side of performance, but:
The Shadowswords are actually below the point of critical overkill. They each expect some 35 damage per turn from the titan, while they only have 26 damage to accept. The titan wastes 20 damage, plus another 10 from it's melee, which is enough to kill another Shadowsword but in the end divided between two as overkill.
The Knights are right at the point of perfect set up. The gun average nearly exactly lethal to the Knights, and the melee attacks are certain to finish it off without too much chance of failure.

That indicates that the general value target for a 2x Turbolaser titan is about 3 Knights, which is about 1800-2k points.


However the 2x VMB knight is about as dangerous as a 1k point pair of Stormlords. This indicates that a potentially very noticable problem is that the titan is not worth the same value regardless of loadout, the Macro weapons are astronomically more dangerous and should be much more costly than the bullet hoses. If the macro rule was deleted from the Blastgun and the Turbolaser, it would drop be being, surprise, about appropriate at 1-1.2k points.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:

Because fielding 1 model in a wargame that has 2 guns, no matter how obscenely powerful, is a dumb idea.

Yet you claim they are worth 3x knight...

If they are worth 3x knight then you would be able to win just as well as with 3xknight. But you don't. You automatically lose. Which tells you flat out price of 3xknight IS WRONG! If something is automatic lose it's overpriced junk. That means it needs to be CHEAPER.

That's soooooo abc of game design. If something loses all the time it's too weak. If it's too weak it either needs buffing up while staying same price of dropping in price. Either way it is then clearly not worth 3xknight.


You can go all about "damage output is X" etc but you need to look WHOLE PACKAGE! Points aren't "S10 is worth Y and if you add up all these together that's the price". Indeed anybody doing any kind of formulaic approach to pointing things is flat out wrong, doing it wrong and worth nothing as a game developer. You...need...to...look...whole...package.

If model that costs 3xknight but automatically loses while 3xknight will win game model is not worth 3xknight regardless of what killing power math etc say because GAME IS NOT JUST ONE ON ONE KILLING POWER COMPARISON!

The simple fact warhound loses games instantly tells instantly you are flat out wrong. All your math is irrelevant because you are looking at it by wrong approach.

Now, a shadowsword cannot beat 500 points of guardsmen, is the shadowsword overpriced? Almost certainly not. It's not designed for shooting at Guardsmen, though you can field it in a game at 500 points.

The titan's gun does such a ridiculous amount of single-target damage so as to make it excessive against anything smaller than a Knight Dominus.

By your logic, a Guard heavy weapons battery wielding Lascannons should be cheaper than a heavy weapons battery wielding heavy bolters, because the Lascannon squad will never win a 78 point game. And yes, that's the whole package.


Overkill isn't free, and not every dumb idea needs to be viable as a list. Especially "This one unit is my army," lists. The titan has no purpose in a 2k list, because there are few of it's ideal targets, so it will be bad unless it's cheap enough to be utterly broken at it's appropriate list size. Few units are good alone, that's what makes this a wargame.


Anyway, lets get out of the 2k points versus 1 big unit realm, onto the realm of appropriate game sizes. Lets say the game was 6000 points, with the warhound being a third of the army and the other 4000 points being a mix of other "normal" units, including super heavies and knights and infantry and tanks. The titan wielding list would not be disadvantaged over the opposing list replacing those 2k points with a smattering of lesser super heavies and tanks. The Warhound will have things to shoot at, will have support to neutralize key threats to it, and will be able to absorb sufficient amounts of punishment to make it's death worthwhile.


That said, I don't think that units with the titan's cost and profile should really exist. Toning it down and placing it at half the cost would be far more appropriate approach to making it viable than trying to cost a statline that's ridiculously strong but kind of useless in any normal circumstance.

 Inquisitor Lord Katherine wrote:
Now, a shadowsword cannot beat 500 points of guardsmen, is the shadowsword overpriced? Almost certainly not. It's not designed for shooting at Guardsmen, though you can field it in a game at 500 points.

The titan's gun does such a ridiculous amount of single-target damage so as to make it excessive against anything smaller than a Knight Dominus.

By your logic, a Guard heavy weapons battery wielding Lascannons should be cheaper than a heavy weapons battery wielding heavy bolters, because the Lascannon squad will never win a 78 point game. And yes, that's the whole package.


Overkill isn't free, and not every dumb idea needs to be viable as a list. Especially "This one unit is my army," lists. The titan has no purpose in a 2k list, because there are few of it's ideal targets, so it will be bad unless it's cheap enough to be utterly broken at it's appropriate list size. Few units are good alone, that's what makes this a wargame.


Anyway, lets get out of the 2k points versus 1 big unit realm, onto the realm of appropriate game sizes. Lets say the game was 6000 points, with the warhound being a third of the army and the other 4000 points being a mix of other "normal" units, including super heavies and knights and infantry and tanks. The titan wielding list would not be disadvantaged over the opposing list replacing those 2k points with a smattering of lesser super heavies and tanks. The Warhound will have things to shoot at, will have support to neutralize key threats to it, and will be able to absorb sufficient amounts of punishment to make it's death worthwhile.


That said, I don't think that units with the titan's cost and profile should really exist. Toning it down and placing it at half the cost would be far more appropriate approach to making it viable than trying to cost a statline that's ridiculously strong but kind of useless in any normal circumstance.

Yes, a Shadowsword will win against 500 pts of guardsmen if you put sponsons on it. Hands down, every day of the week. Try it out. See, the warhound doesn't have the choice of taking sponsons to deal with chaff and MSU.

I'll play your hypothetical big game though. Say I have 2 kitted out cadian baneblades, roughly 1200-1300 points. As long as those baneblades sit still, benefit from the cadian overlapping fields of fire, and dump all of their weapons into the warhound, (So BS3+ rerolling 1's, not hard to get even without Cadians), they will do an average of 25.47 unsaved wounds to it.

EDIT: That average of 25.47 unsaved wounds doesn't include the demolisher cannons either.

This number of average wounds is NOT factoring the titan's degrading void shield save, which means it's actually likely DEAD or utterly crippled after one round of shooting from 2 regular baneblades. NOT shadowswords, baneblades, which are SUB-optimal choices for taking out a titan. Now, the titan, can turn around and do the same to said baneblades.

Here's the difference though. Those baneblades are useful against just about every target on the board, including MSU, have WAY better overwatch against would be melee attackers. WAY better melee (See "crush them" strat), and together cost 1200-1300 points, while that Titan you seem to be so afraid of costs 2000 points.

This comparison holds true with Imperial Knights as well. Do you REALLY think a Warhound titan will win against 4-5 imperial knights even with turbo lasers? It will lose every time, even though the imperial knights are THE targets its designed to kill.

My point here is that it isn't overcosted because it's ineffective at beating its equivalent point cost in OTHER units. It's overcosted because it takes only 1200-1300 points of the units its designed to kill to beat it or come out equal.

Lastly.. that T9 isn't as crazy as people seem to think. It hurts melta, but guess what still wounds it on a 5+? Anything str 5 or higher. You can easily plink wounds off a warhound with heavy bolters as easily as you can plink wounds off an armored sentinel. That T9 also has the added effect of actually BALANCING the extra cost of the STR10 weapons in the game that no one cares about because there's never anything T9 to shoot at under normal circumstances.

It should cost so much I'd never have to see one outside of apocalypse. And I don't do apocalypse.

 Fueli wrote:
It should cost so much I'd never have to see one outside of apocalypse. And I don't do apocalypse.

agree on the first part. I do play apocolypse and havea few stompas, custom ones and normal GW ones. its fun to play rock em sock em robots, but I dislike seeing huge models liek that in normal or even tournament games. I think knights and the like ahve more and more turned 40k lists into paper rock sissors, it is nearly impossible to make a list that can handle ork green tide and still stand a chance against all knight armies.

 Fueli wrote:
It should cost so much I'd never have to see one outside of apocalypse. And I don't do apocalypse.

I mean that's your opinion I dknt think there is an support for it. Just because you dont like a model doesnt mean it should be gone. I dont like playing against horde armies never have in 3editions of 40k and fantasy doesnt mean they should be gone as long as somethings balanced for play it's fine. The warhound if anything is overcosted as hell and only the turbo laser variant is okay at all. Admittedly macro weapons are very good but it's not the only source of them available or even the cheapest and macro weapons are also litterally half as effective if your opponent doesnt bring titanic targets to shoot at.

Titanicus wrote:

 Fueli wrote:
It should cost so much I'd never have to see one outside of apocalypse. And I don't do apocalypse.

I mean that's your opinion I dknt think there is an support for it. Just because you dont like a model doesnt mean it should be gone. I dont like playing against horde armies never have in 3editions of 40k and fantasy doesnt mean they should be gone as long as somethings balanced for play it's fine. The warhound if anything is overcosted as hell and only the turbo laser variant is okay at all. Admittedly macro weapons are very good but it's not the only source of them available or even the cheapest and macro weapons are also litterally half as effective if your opponent doesnt bring titanic targets to shoot at.

Well, that's the issue. You can't price them as if they don't exist and do their thing, because that will make it rather underpriced when they're used in normal circumstances for their use.

Though, that said, the only thing non-titanic that it might fail to kill is a Land Raider.