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It would be a step in the right direction on balancing out knights if TITANIC keyword provided -to hit when targetting non-vehicles and those targetting it gains +to hit against it.

I think they should be limited to large scale apocalypse games only. You can't undo the introduction of superheavies into the game, nor should we want to invalidate armies and models, and make people feel like they've invested time and money into models that could just be pulled from the game. Especially when Games Workshop made Imperial Knights a stand alone army, and promoted it as such. You can't take that away from people fairly. Instead, such models should be very expensive points-wise (require building around, not just spamming) or should be limited to played in Apocalypse only. Also, giving all of these Heavy Vehicles invulnerable saves was the worst move Games Workshop have made in this edition, and the sole reason I have little faith in their ability to actually sort this mess.

 skchsan wrote:
It would be a step in the right direction on balancing out knights if TITANIC keyword provided -to hit when targetting non-vehicles and those targetting it gains +to hit against it.

it is interesting that a guardsman has the same 50% chance to hit a nurgling at max range as something the size of several city buses

Seeing all this discussion makes me feel better about attempting Stormlord-Banehammer-Banehammer with lots of infantry for 2k game.

Darsath wrote:
I think they should be limited to large scale apocalypse games only. You can't undo the introduction of superheavies into the game, nor should we want to invalidate armies and models, and make people feel like they've invested time and money into models that could just be pulled from the game. Especially when Games Workshop made Imperial Knights a stand alone army, and promoted it as such. You can't take that away from people fairly. Instead, such models should be very expensive points-wise (require building around, not just spamming) or should be limited to played in Apocalypse only. Also, giving all of these Heavy Vehicles invulnerable saves was the worst move Games Workshop have made in this edition, and the sole reason I have little faith in their ability to actually sort this mess.

Right. You can't say a weapon is a AV weapon and tell you "oh, well this huge model that clearly needs AV weapons to be damage can't reliably be damaged by AV weapons, so your best luck is high strength, low AP weapon!". It is idiotic at best, upsell scheme at worst.


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 G00fySmiley wrote:

 skchsan wrote:
It would be a step in the right direction on balancing out knights if TITANIC keyword provided -to hit when targetting non-vehicles and those targetting it gains +to hit against it.

it is interesting that a guardsman has the same 50% chance to hit a nurgling at max range as something the size of several city buses

Right?Under this pretense, I have the same chance at hitting a wombat with a blaster as I have against shooting at Jabba the Hut.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

DeathKorp_Rider wrote:
Seeing all this discussion makes me feel better about attempting Stormlord-Banehammer-Banehammer with lots of infantry for 2k game.

This is lot more manageable because it follows a logical template on what a big bad unit should be - it has 1 main gun that wrecks stuffs to smithereens and handful of side guns for smaller stuff. It doesn't come with 3~4 main guns optimized for ALL SORTS of units. It would be a different story if that Stormlord-Banehammer^2 was in fact, a Stormhammerbanelord, a single model that has the gun of the three superheavy tanks while only priced at 1.5x a single one. Oh wait, I just described a castellan.

They're 40k models that has rules... of course it should be allowed in 40k.

 whembly wrote:
They're 40k models that has rules... of course it should be allowed in 40k.

Well, you're not wrong there. I remember when Age of Sigmar was announced, and that they were going to discontinue my main army (Tomb Kings) I was pretty mad. I don't think players should have the same feelings about their choice of army or units in 40k either.

Rob Lee wrote:
They exist in lore, it would be odd not to have them in some form in 40k.

That's a preposterous statement.

The Planet Killer exists in the lore too, should it be in 40k?

 whembly wrote:
They're 40k models that has rules... of course it should be allowed in 40k.

With that logic, just purchase a cyclonic torpedo bombardment and skip the game - you can even do that just with CPs.

Superheavies have their place, and I own more than my fair share of them, but they shouldn’t be in bog-standard 40K games outside of special scenarios. There instead should be a separate game level that is devised for their proper use. I think something akin to Bolt Action’s Tank War would be appropriate - let everyone leave the lightweights behind and have rumble where tanks, superheavies, and knights can shine (possibly with the occasional “take down the beast” scenario vs. a Titan). That also leaves Adeptus Titanicus for battles against truly monstrous war machines, and maybe Epic for those truly large scale battles with everybody and the Emperor’s sink thrown into the fray.

The hard part is getting GW to recognize this; splitting play out into the likes of Kill Team, Combat Patrol, Combined Arms (general 40K), Lords of War and Apocalypse would, in their mind, dilute the player base and make a headache of supporting several rule tiers of play - but I think it would be best for the player base and allow collections to grow into use for each of the various game sizes and play styles.

Just to point this out your all complaining that oh a 500 point model shouldn't have an invulnerable save, they shouldn't have 2 weapons, which is actually what most knights have, if your gona complain about a Castellen (as usual) atleast be honest.

You know what happend to non-invulnerable save superheavies, they sucked and sucked even harder when GW increased their points. Any model over 700 points without an invulnerable save in 8th edition is always dead long before it has a chance.

For vehicals to actually be useful in 8th they need an invulnerable, hit modifiers or FNP rule.

But counter argument that your all missing in your quest to return to 2nd edition scale games is that as much as you hate super heavies, the worst army to face across the board is the horde spam army, hppe you have a full day otherwise it's turn 2 at best you'll be seeing in a 2 hour game.

Ice_can wrote:
Just to point this out your all complaining that oh a 500 point model shouldn't have an invulnerable save, they shouldn't have 2 weapons, which is actually what most knights have, if your gona complain about a Castellen (as usual) atleast be honest.

You know what happend to non-invulnerable save superheavies, they sucked and sucked even harder when GW increased their points. Any model over 700 points without an invulnerable save in 8th edition is always dead long before it has a chance.

For vehicals to actually be useful in 8th they need an invulnerable, hit modifiers or FNP rule.

But counter argument that your all missing in your quest to return to 2nd edition scale games is that as much as you hate super heavies, the worst army to face across the board is the horde spam army, hppe you have a full day otherwise it's turn 2 at best you'll be seeing in a 2 hour game.

If a 500 pt model soaked up at least 50% of enemy's potential fire power, that's 500 pts well spent. Guess who's left alive after you focused all your firepower bringing down 1 model? The rest of the army.

As far as balance is concerned, a 500 pt model should pose enough threat to divert the opponents attention to it because it can deal significant damage to your army if left alone, but not so powerful that the game is lost if you can't bring it down in turn 1. If knights went down in its offensive capabilities, you still think it will be the 1st and foremost priority in taking it down?

I do agree that hordes pose a bigger issue than knights but this is a post regarding super heavies is it not?

 skchsan wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Just to point this out your all complaining that oh a 500 point model shouldn't have an invulnerable save, they shouldn't have 2 weapons, which is actually what most knights have, if your gona complain about a Castellen (as usual) atleast be honest.

You know what happend to non-invulnerable save superheavies, they sucked and sucked even harder when GW increased their points. Any model over 700 points without an invulnerable save in 8th edition is always dead long before it has a chance.

For vehicals to actually be useful in 8th they need an invulnerable, hit modifiers or FNP rule.

But counter argument that your all missing in your quest to return to 2nd edition scale games is that as much as you hate super heavies, the worst army to face across the board is the horde spam army, hppe you have a full day otherwise it's turn 2 at best you'll be seeing in a 2 hour game.

If a 500 pt model soaked up at least 50% of enemy's potential fire power, that's 500 pts well spent. Guess who's left alive after you focused all your firepower bringing down 1 model? The rest of the army.

As far as balance is concerned, a 500 pt model should pose enough threat to divert the opponents attention to it because it can deal significant damage to your army if left alone, but not so powerful that the game is lost if you can't bring it down in turn 1. If knights went down in its offensive capabilities, you still think it will be the 1st and foremost priority in taking it down?

Literally the only Knight with that kind of power is the Castellan, when using Cawls and Order of Companions. Don't complain about all Knights when you specifically mean just the Castellan.

 Horst wrote:

 skchsan wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Just to point this out your all complaining that oh a 500 point model shouldn't have an invulnerable save, they shouldn't have 2 weapons, which is actually what most knights have, if your gona complain about a Castellen (as usual) atleast be honest.

You know what happend to non-invulnerable save superheavies, they sucked and sucked even harder when GW increased their points. Any model over 700 points without an invulnerable save in 8th edition is always dead long before it has a chance.

For vehicals to actually be useful in 8th they need an invulnerable, hit modifiers or FNP rule.

But counter argument that your all missing in your quest to return to 2nd edition scale games is that as much as you hate super heavies, the worst army to face across the board is the horde spam army, hppe you have a full day otherwise it's turn 2 at best you'll be seeing in a 2 hour game.

If a 500 pt model soaked up at least 50% of enemy's potential fire power, that's 500 pts well spent. Guess who's left alive after you focused all your firepower bringing down 1 model? The rest of the army.

As far as balance is concerned, a 500 pt model should pose enough threat to divert the opponents attention to it because it can deal significant damage to your army if left alone, but not so powerful that the game is lost if you can't bring it down in turn 1. If knights went down in its offensive capabilities, you still think it will be the 1st and foremost priority in taking it down?

Literally the only Knight with that kind of power is the Castellan, when using Cawls and Order of Companions. Don't complain about all Knights when you specifically mean just the Castellan.

I was under the assumption that I was pretty clear about that I'm complaining about castellan. If not, I'm talking about castellans.

Going forward I will be more direct about castelland and not knights.

Ice_can wrote:
Just to point this out your all complaining that oh a 500 point model shouldn't have an invulnerable save, they shouldn't have 2 weapons, which is actually what most knights have, if your gona complain about a Castellen (as usual) atleast be honest.

You know what happend to non-invulnerable save superheavies, they sucked and sucked even harder when GW increased their points. Any model over 700 points without an invulnerable save in 8th edition is always dead long before it has a chance.

Just how many 700pt+ models in the game *aren't* trash-tier? It's a really small number.

For vehicals to actually be useful in 8th they need an invulnerable, hit modifiers or FNP rule.

Is that why the WaveSerpent was so badass in the Index days? The fact that you could pay points for a 6++ (but no invuln or hit modifiers)?

How many Invulns/FNPs/Modfiers did Razorbacks have when they were top dog?

The IK "needs" an Invuln because, without it, it can't soak the firepower of a list tailored to kill it. With it, only certain builds have the firepower to kill one at range. And "fight it in CC" would be a thing if it were a pushover in CC - there are many units that can trump it, but there are whole factions without such options.

Look at the WK: it has to trade half it's firepower for a 5++, otherwise gets none of the above. How do Ork Knight-class options do? (hint: badly)

IK are clearly the outlier.

But counter argument that your all missing in your quest to return to 2nd edition scale games is that as much as you hate super heavies, the worst army to face across the board is the horde spam army, hppe you have a full day otherwise it's turn 2 at best you'll be seeing in a 2 hour game.

I'd rather face a full horde than a full IK list. I might only get 2 turns in 2 hours (I highly doubt it), but at least I get 2 turns. Against a Knight list, only a fraction of my list can actually do anything. And I don't really have many choices with them, either; shoot Gundam Wannabe #1 or #2?

To be fair, a Baneblade is harder to replace than a Company of Astartes. If we go by lore, Baneblades are as much if not more revered than say Grey Knights. It's silly to go by lore about these sorts of things. Because we'd never see Knights, Baneblades, Farseers, Grey Knights, Deathwatch, or Titanic Imperial vehicles like Astraeus or Leviathans. Because they are exceedingly rare and require Chapter Master level approval to move into battle.

So, if we went by lore, it would be 9 million guard, a few platoons of SMs, vs everything else. Maybe a Predator or a Rhino.

Bharring wrote:

Ice_can wrote:
Just to point this out your all complaining that oh a 500 point model shouldn't have an invulnerable save, they shouldn't have 2 weapons, which is actually what most knights have, if your gona complain about a Castellen (as usual) atleast be honest.

You know what happend to non-invulnerable save superheavies, they sucked and sucked even harder when GW increased their points. Any model over 700 points without an invulnerable save in 8th edition is always dead long before it has a chance.

Just how many 700pt+ models in the game *aren't* trash-tier? It's a really small number.

For vehicals to actually be useful in 8th they need an invulnerable, hit modifiers or FNP rule.

Is that why the WaveSerpent was so badass in the Index days? The fact that you could pay points for a 6++ (but no invuln or hit modifiers)?

How many Invulns/FNPs/Modfiers did Razorbacks have when they were top dog?

The IK "needs" an Invuln because, without it, it can't soak the firepower of a list tailored to kill it. With it, only certain builds have the firepower to kill one at range. And "fight it in CC" would be a thing if it were a pushover in CC - there are many units that can trump it, but there are whole factions without such options.

Look at the WK: it has to trade half it's firepower for a 5++, otherwise gets none of the above. How do Ork Knight-class options do? (hint: badly)

IK are clearly the outlier.

But counter argument that your all missing in your quest to return to 2nd edition scale games is that as much as you hate super heavies, the worst army to face across the board is the horde spam army, hppe you have a full day otherwise it's turn 2 at best you'll be seeing in a 2 hour game.

I'd rather face a full horde than a full IK list. I might only get 2 turns in 2 hours (I highly doubt it), but at least I get 2 turns. Against a Knight list, only a fraction of my list can actually do anything. And I don't really have many choices with them, either; shoot Gundam Wannabe #1 or #2?

Not to mention that castellan can literally neutralize everything that can potentially pose a threat to it in 1 round of shooting.

In a narrative or casual setting, it's not an issue. That is the type of environment where you should be having a chat with your opponent anyway. You are free to adjust scenarios, etc. that can easily balance out the "offending" parties. So that's not a real issue. At that level if they're extremely imbalanced or unfair that can be addressed by talking with the group, etc. A common question in our games is simply "Hey, you taking anything big or crazy?". Basically any big Knights, Forgeworld models, etc. Sometimes it's the opposite "hey let's take all the big bad stuff".

In tournament gaming, that's entirely different, and I do think the game does not balance the units well enough. Stratagems affect large models much more strongly than they do smaller ones (Daemon Forge being far stronger on a Khytan than a Defiler, etc.). Imperial Knight relics are far and away stronger than anything in any other book. GW generally does very poorly this edition in balancing the scaling of special abilities/buffs/auras/stratagems.

That, unfortunately, puts the onus on the TO's to consider maybe trying to balance them in the future. We'll see.

Yes; a pure IK list is a skew list. If my army is built around specialists that each do one thing well, then I fall apart against a skew list that basically ignores table position.

Those championing for the discontinuation of Super Heavies are aware that a knight army isn't really all that great, right? There are tons of things hugely more effective than IK lists that fall into the infantry+tanks size range.

The only real boogeyman list that involves a knight very specifically only uses one, and a very, very specific one at that. A castellan with cawl's wrath, the 4++ relic, the raven strat up, and the 3++ strat active is insanely powerful, but a list with even two knights suddenly is immensely worse, as you can't double up on any of those things. And without the guard giving them a huge pile of CP to run those very expensive strats every round, an actual knight army would only be able to pop them on turn one. Chaos armies aren't crushing with renegade castellans, so it's not even an issue with the base castellan, just that one specific combo.

Really, the issue is the sharing of CP between books designed to generate and use CP differently. Guard were obviously intended to have tons of CP but use them providing minor buffs to individually ineffectual units (+1 to saves on a single unit of guardsmen isn't going to rock the game board) while IK were meant to have a small pool of CP but use them to provide impactful buffs on expensive, powerful models (getting a 3 wound knight to fire at full capacity is a big swing). If you limit the ability to share CP (whether to within individual books or even all the way to requiring the same chapter/hive fleet/etc.), the issue would go away.

Personally, I think knights and the like are much easier to rationalize on a 40k board than flyers, anyway. I can see how the pivotal point in a larger battle (which is what we're normally playing out, in theory) might feature such machines as defensive linchpins or offensive line-breakers, but why is that stratospheric bomber or supersonic fighter jet hanging around on a 6x4 table? Why can my genestealers or (apparently very motivated) guardsmen keep up with one on foot? Why can't I walk underneath a plane that is presumably, you know, flying? How did this hand-flamer become my best AA weapon?

It'd make a lot more sense to me to have those sorts of things represented by strats or purchased abilities, with only the "hover" vehicles actual on the board. Obviously this is also a ship that's sailed, but at least you could clean up some of the sillier aspects while not invalidating collections (it'd only take a single sentence tacked to every flyer to let people move through, but not end on, their bases, for example).

Bharring wrote:
Yes; a pure IK list is a skew list. If my army is built around specialists that each do one thing well, then I fall apart against a skew list that basically ignores table position.

how are you loosing objectives etc to a 5 model army with no obsec outside of a single relic?

When people mention that Imperial Knights require an Invulnerable Save (or maybe Feel No Pain) to be survivable, I don't feel that they're wrong. But the issue this presents is that regular vehicles have less of a role in the edition. I feel these complaints are actually more about the increased lethality in certain weapons in general over the course of 8th edition (especially when it comes to putting ap on everything) that an invulnerable save feels essential to last any amount of time. My proposal is that these vehicles shouldn't have an invulnerable save because they shouldn't need it to last. The amount of ap and damage in the game right now is way too much, and needs some toning down. Not all weapons (and some armies have very little) but a fair amount to be sure.

Ice_can wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Yes; a pure IK list is a skew list. If my army is built around specialists that each do one thing well, then I fall apart against a skew list that basically ignores table position.

how are you loosing objectives etc to a 5 model army with no obsec outside of a single relic?

Because more than 80% missions are kill/wipe based.

Castellan based armies can wipe the table so fast that you won't have enough rounds to accrue objective VP's to win even if you wipe.

While I see the logic for superheavy’s only existencing in apocalypse, I would like to point out there’s next to no chance GW is removing super heavies from regular games. This is for 1 simple reason, super heavies in regular 40k makes GW bucketloads of money. The reason I know this is there once was a time when superheavies where apocalypse only. Since first doing that GW has aggressively moved away from apocalypse only models. It’s easy to guess therefore, that Superheavies have sold more since being moved to regular 40k.

TLDR: GW will keep superheavies in regular 40k because money. These polls are only good for intellectual exercise.

 skchsan wrote:

I was under the assumption that I was pretty clear about that I'm complaining about castellan. If not, I'm talking about castellans.

Going forward I will be more direct about castelland and not knights.

As someone who plays Knights but not Castellans, it just irks me when I see someone say, "Knights are overpowered!"... because my Gallants and Crusaders are good, but they aren't wiping out armies in a single shooting phase. A Krast Crusader with the anti-tank relic will on average kill a Leman Russ in a single round shooting, if it has the Battle Cannon upgrade and Ironstorm pod. It costs 500 points. That seems reasonable, given it's a 500 point model, for it to be able to kill a tank 1/3 it's points in a single round of shooting. For 100 pts more, when you activate the Raven stratagem, the Castellan can on average kill 2 Leman Russ... It's got nearly double the anti-tank firepower. I'd still rather take the Crusader because I think it's a more balanced unit overall, since it can handle hordes better and has better melee ability, but it's the Castellan that's making vehicles useless, and I really hope all the other Knights don't get nerfed into uselessness because of it.

 Horst wrote:

 skchsan wrote:

I was under the assumption that I was pretty clear about that I'm complaining about castellan. If not, I'm talking about castellans.

Going forward I will be more direct about castelland and not knights.

As someone who plays Knights but not Castellans, it just irks me when I see someone say, "Knights are overpowered!"... because my Gallants and Crusaders are good, but they aren't wiping out armies in a single shooting phase. A Krast Crusader with the anti-tank relic will on average kill a Leman Russ in a single round shooting, if it has the Battle Cannon upgrade and Ironstorm pod. It costs 500 points. That seems reasonable, given it's a 500 point model, for it to be able to kill a tank 1/3 it's points in a single round of shooting. For 100 pts more, when you activate the Raven stratagem, the Castellan can on average kill 2 Leman Russ... It's got nearly double the anti-tank firepower. I'd still rather take the Crusader because I think it's a more balanced unit overall, since it can handle hordes better and has better melee ability, but it's the Castellan that's making vehicles useless, and I really hope all the other Knights don't get nerfed into uselessness because of it.

Yes, it would also be nice to not have every strategum in the codex recosted around the you most be taking a battalion/brigade of x so of course the strategums should cost most of a mono lists CP pool.

In ITC Knights are very well balanced. Maybe even weak.

 DarknessEternal wrote:

Rob Lee wrote:
They exist in lore, it would be odd not to have them in some form in 40k.

That's a preposterous statement.

The Planet Killer exists in the lore too, should it be in 40k?

No, that's one for Battle Fleet Gothic, seeing as it shares the same lore as the 40k tabeltop game.

40k is infantry, tanks and walkers or anything else land/planet based. Not space ships. Please don't resort to reductio ad absurdum.

Of course if you want to merge BFG and 40k the tabletop game, into one big game system, then yeah why not, so long as you're not using it in something where it'd dominate the game and nothings else being there would make a difference.

I've often thought that GW's game systems could do with a big grand strategy type system, whereby you play on a map made up like the old WFB Mighty Empires, then you drill down to individual battles that are conducted either in BFG or 40k. But that's probably a discussion for another thread.

Rob Lee wrote:

 DarknessEternal wrote:

Rob Lee wrote:
They exist in lore, it would be odd not to have them in some form in 40k.

That's a preposterous statement.

The Planet Killer exists in the lore too, should it be in 40k?

No, that's one for Battle Fleet Gothic, seeing as it shares the same lore as the 40k tabeltop game.

40k is infantry, tanks and walkers or anything else land/planet based. Not space ships. Please don't resort to reductio ad absurdum.

Of course if you want to merge BFG and 40k the tabletop game, into one big game system, then yeah why not, so long as you're not using it in 1000pt skirmishes.

Having 2 separate boards, where controlling points in BFG grants resources to the 40k game to represent the orbital fight going on at the same time as the planet side fight, could be quite cool.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
The problem, to my mind, with superheavies in general and Knights in particular is that lighter vehicles just become pointless; a Predator, for instance, cannot be anything more than tissue paper in an environment where everyone's armed to fight Knight-Castellans.

I'd argue it goes further than this. Super-Heavies along with an increase in damage output in general make so many units useless. It doesn't matter what weapons I took or armor save I have when someone can roll up with a mini titan which rolls dice and deletes units.

40k is trying to be to many things at once and doing a poor job at all of them.

Ice_can wrote:

Bharring wrote:
Yes; a pure IK list is a skew list. If my army is built around specialists that each do one thing well, then I fall apart against a skew list that basically ignores table position.

how are you loosing objectives etc to a 5 model army with no obsec outside of a single relic?

Because the IK on an objective will just steamrole the one or two squads on the objective in CC. IKs aren't vehicles in the traditional sense - they win CC against most things. Even most of my CC units.

But it's not about being outscored - my complaint isn't about whether I'll win or lose the game. It's about how much of it I get to play. I put my guys on the table, then pull off a bucketload three times a round, and hope I have enough left. I will get to decide what to shoot at for the first turn or two. Aside from that, there's no actual play.


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 Horst wrote:

 skchsan wrote:

I was under the assumption that I was pretty clear about that I'm complaining about castellan. If not, I'm talking about castellans.

Going forward I will be more direct about castelland and not knights.

As someone who plays Knights but not Castellans, it just irks me when I see someone say, "Knights are overpowered!"... because my Gallants and Crusaders are good, but they aren't wiping out armies in a single shooting phase. A Krast Crusader with the anti-tank relic will on average kill a Leman Russ in a single round shooting, if it has the Battle Cannon upgrade and Ironstorm pod. It costs 500 points. That seems reasonable, given it's a 500 point model, for it to be able to kill a tank 1/3 it's points in a single round of shooting. For 100 pts more, when you activate the Raven stratagem, the Castellan can on average kill 2 Leman Russ... It's got nearly double the anti-tank firepower. I'd still rather take the Crusader because I think it's a more balanced unit overall, since it can handle hordes better and has better melee ability, but it's the Castellan that's making vehicles useless, and I really hope all the other Knights don't get nerfed into uselessness because of it.

I should clarify my position.

I'm not saying IK lists are, conceptually, OP. I'm saying they're not fun to play against.

I picked up 40k when I got sick of seeing Gargants in WMH. It wasn't because I couldn't beat a gargant. It was because I couldn't "play against" a gargant. They removed so much of the game just by being there. It ceased to be fun. I rarely lost to them - I found facing armies with them easier than armies without. But there was no fun to be had.

To that end, it doesn't really matter what the balance is like. As long as SuperHeavies function that way, I simply won't enjoy games dominated by them. I'd rather get trounced in a game I can actually "play" than win a game where i don't get to "play".