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The main problem I'm having with figuring out how to add more eldar stuff is Orks with the krew mechanic are turning out to be RIDICULOUSLY fun to play, both as and against.

So far, we've done the most testing with the Great Gargant and Slasha, which are basically the Warlord and Reaver size-class equivalents, with Orkanauts and Gargantuan Squiggoths as simple Knight-class supporting units.

Orks are slow, ponderous, but have enough weapons to wreck your absolute shop if you let them get a bead on you. they have TONS of shields and hull points, but super low armor so critical damage (and killing krew) happens way sooner than with other titans.

I think the GG is going to have to end up more expensive than a Warlord after weapons, because it's really difficult to square 4 arms+Belly Gun+Auxiliary weapons with the general warlord cost without making the weaponry really unsatisfyingly weak. We've been fudging on an extra 60-80 points on a warlord in the last couple tests and it feels pretty good.

the Boiler mechanic where the reactor starts in the middle and various actions heat up or leach power from the boiler with a Bad Thing that happens at the top and the bottom of the track is a fun little sub-game that rewards you for building an Orky gargant with a wild variety of weaponry. There is also a joy to be found in trying to use hyper-specialized silly gargants that trundle towards the enemy while you frantically quench the boiler because once that 4x Flame Frazzla+Blaze Belcha+Scorcha Turret great gargant hits 8" away you're going to see some gak and one shot does overheat your boiler instantly if you're not 2 squares away from the bottom of the track.

Similarly to Reavers and Warbringers, Slashas and Greats are basically just a scale upgrade, they share the same weapons the Great just gets 4x arms to the Slashas 2 and the Great has more armor, more structure, more boiler, more krew etc. Then there's a Mekboy close to Warhound scale that has weapon options with the Repair trait (can be used to make a Repair roll in the combat phase on a friendly unit in range, some can also be used as melee weapons against enemies in combat), a Stompa which is kind of a mini-titan that starts with no shields, can be Squadroned, and has a lesser weapon-set. Squiggoths, Battlefortress tanks and Orkanauts will make up the knight-class units

You should bear in mind that the shoulder weapons and head on the GG are more akin to tank weapons than Titans in the older rules so you have no more upper firepower than a Warlord overall.
The shield flattening of the belly gun makes up for their own shields not coming back.

jprp wrote:
You should bear in mind that the shoulder weapons and head on the GG are more akin to tank weapons than Titans in the older rules so you have no more upper firepower than a Warlord overall.
The shield flattening of the belly gun makes up for their own shields not coming back.

Yeah, I have somewhat flattened out the various auxiliary weapons systems. Basically, one of the things you can do with your Krew worker placement minigame is send them to your Auxiliary weapons, and most Auxiliary weapons systems will have an X somewhere in the profile that corresponds to the number of Krew currently manning the aux weapons.

Aux weapons also don't have the default "Aim" action available to them, so they hit on 5s. So the fact that the Supa-Kannonz aux weapon is strength 7 is somewhat misleading - it'll generally only be hitting on 5s or 6s, and usually you have more pressing matters to attend to with your krew, like aiming your arm weapons, manning the legs to let you boost maneuver or speed, quenching or pumping the boiler, or repairing damage.

The Belly Guns are also supremely powerful, but they are all Corridor and all the non-melee weapons are Gets Hot (an ork-specific trait that is essentially the same as Draining for imperial titans, but I renamed it because Orks have to worry about the boiler going both too far up and too far down, and Draining moving the boiler track up would be confusing.) so to make use of them you have to line your extremely slow gargants up perfectly and usually get pretty close.

Generally, only the GG has been any kind of a challenge to balance vs the warlord, for a lot of the same reasons the warlord is tough to balance himself. Because it's this big brick of a thing with enough firepower to instantly obliterate an enemy titan in one round if it gets a bead on them, but it's so slow and hard to maneuver that a group of smaller titans can basically encircle it and auto-win. The GG takes that and just amplifies it, because it's got 2 extra arm weapons and it can have stronger aux weapons than the Ardex cannons (the ardex cannons are just nice because they're automatic, they don't require you to allocate resources to them)

They are still just gloriously orky, though. The fellow who came up with the boiler management mechanic and the krew mechanic on the internet was just brilliant. The fact that the most efficient way to manage your power is by equipping your titan with the correct weapons that move the track up and down so that the best way to heat your boiler up again if you've drained it by powering your shields is by firing off some flamethrowers is just wonderful.

The Gutbuster solid shot round could have Shieldbane, as a nod towards its old super powerful ability of downing all shields. As a single shot, Shieldbane I don't think would be overpowered.

The Space MRine Epic 2nd edition Mekboy Gargant's main distinguishing features were a different menu of Mekboy weapons, and the Mekboy kustom force field. It basically gave it a 2++ on turn 1, worsening by 1 every turn as it overheated and grew more unstable until it burned out completely after worsening beyond 6++. That in theory was to make the Mekboy Gargant want to finish the job quickly instead of bogging down into slugging matches.

Overall as already mentioned the Gargant shoulder weapons were basically tank equivalent weapons to help with downing shields and hitting unshielded targets. The Mega-Gargant was basically more of the same. Though it had its arm weapons and a few other specialized weapons, a good chunk of its firepower came from a big battery of tank equivalent guns in the main body. The special weapons were a Deth Ray (basically a lascannon that ignored void/power shields), a few one-shot Kruz Missiles, Supa Lifta Droppa and a Weirdboy Tower that generated a variable number of shots. The arm weapons were a Krusha close combat arm and a Skullkrusha Mega-Kannon (firing either armor piercing or HE rounds). As with all the Gargants, the main trick was to get maximum value out of them before they got degraded to uselessness. The one time I actually tried using a Mega-Gargant myself, it got reduced to a flaming wreck pretty quickly due to it being a fire magnet. Though it wasn't fully destroyed for a full 2 turns after it was turned into a towering inferno, it was essentially incapacitated with spreading fires and only a few weapons (the body gun decks) spitting out a few ineffectual last shots.

the_scotsman wrote:
I've been massively enjoying Adeptus Titanicus recently, and what's amazing to me is that it's the very first GW game I've ever played where I LOVE the very core of the gameplay system, and don't love the game because of the many various bells and whistles attached to it. If anything, in my eyes the maniple bonuses, stratagem system, warlord traits, and titan legion bonuses cheapen what starts as a really great tactical game by adding unduly to the strategic layer.

That's a pretty fair assessment of the game overall and I tend to agree with it. The core game is great but the bells and whistles are a mixed bag. The tertiary objective stratagems stuff to me are the worst part.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Malika2 wrote:
Xenos Titans...

Without terminals it'd be weird.



I like the idea of supporting elements on par with knights, so long as they don't over take the focus. Xenos stuff might be better as like scenario stuff, like the macro flaura/fauna that attacks both players or rare allies, like traitors allying in ork freebootas or loyalists allying in some eldar corsairs. Stand alone factions seem better suited to epic where they get equal support. AT isn't even done fleshing out the models for a mono faction game. Wish I had faith in gw adding xenos but I think it'd pull away from some of the core strengths the game has.

The one thing that's awkward but sorta works well about some of the current battlefield assets is that, they're a bit absurdly resilient to ranged weapons, like even titan hunter infantry are basically little bunkers in terms of punishment that can take, but like all the other assets, if a titan ends it move on them they're very likely dead. I think that's a mechanic that works well in game because of how much these things can mess with activation (the titan hunters, because they activate in combat phase) at least some of the other assets like the macro or missile bunkers fire before the big guys. But I do worry about stacking up too many "small activations". I agree the baseline of knights seems about right, but I find even too many knights can sorta muck things up, never liked the idea of them as a stand alone faction. Core games works best with titans on both sides IMO.

 Crablezworth wrote:

the_scotsman wrote:
I've been massively enjoying Adeptus Titanicus recently, and what's amazing to me is that it's the very first GW game I've ever played where I LOVE the very core of the gameplay system, and don't love the game because of the many various bells and whistles attached to it. If anything, in my eyes the maniple bonuses, stratagem system, warlord traits, and titan legion bonuses cheapen what starts as a really great tactical game by adding unduly to the strategic layer.

That's a pretty fair assessment of the game overall and I tend to agree with it. The core game is great but the bells and whistles are a mixed bag. The tertiary objective stratagems stuff to me are the worst part.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Malika2 wrote:
Xenos Titans...

Without terminals it'd be weird.



I like the idea of supporting elements on par with knights, so long as they don't over take the focus. Xenos stuff might be better as like scenario stuff, like the macro flaura/fauna that attacks both players or rare allies, like traitors allying in ork freebootas or loyalists allying in some eldar corsairs. Stand alone factions seem better suited to epic where they get equal support. AT isn't even done fleshing out the models for a mono faction game. Wish I had faith in gw adding xenos but I think it'd pull away from some of the core strengths the game has.

The one thing that's awkward but sorta works well about some of the current battlefield assets is that, they're a bit absurdly resilient to ranged weapons, like even titan hunter infantry are basically little bunkers in terms of punishment that can take, but like all the other assets, if a titan ends it move on them they're very likely dead. I think that's a mechanic that works well in game because of how much these things can mess with activation (the titan hunters, because they activate in combat phase) at least some of the other assets like the macro or missile bunkers fire before the big guys. But I do worry about stacking up too many "small activations". I agree the baseline of knights seems about right, but I find even too many knights can sorta muck things up, never liked the idea of them as a stand alone faction. Core games works best with titans on both sides IMO.

I mean the thing with me is I'm printing stuff, and the OOP Epic models are completely freely available. I have really great STL files to print:

-Ork Stompas, Squiggoths and Gargants of all shapes and sizes
-Eldar Wraithknights, superheavy tanks, and all 3 titan classes
-Tyranid biotitans and other big monsters
-Guard superheavies
-Mechanicum ordinatus superheavies
-Marine superheavies
-Necron superheavies

Chaos superheavies like the Brass Scorpion, KLOS, etc are a little tougher to find - presumably people mostly gravitate to chaos titans - but for everything else it's just a matter of designing the rules that I like, because I've already got all the models.

In terms of limiting the number of 'small activations' any unit smaller than the current minimum-size squad of Questoris knights has some kind of mechanic to make it work extremely sub-optimally if not activated in tandem with something else, or taken at a larger size squad. For example, a unit of Armiger-class knights can activate at the same time as any non-armiger Knight-class unit within 6", but if it begins its turn outside of that radius it must make a command check as if it had lost models in the previous turn or become Shaken. Artillery, similar to how it worked in Epic, combines its fire into a single shot rather than having multiple small guns, so if you field a min-size guard earthshaker battery it's only firing a single very weak blast. That way, the potential to 'power game' by adding tiny low-point units to bump up the number of activations you have is possible, but results in you having a bunch of easily destroyed, very combat-ineffective units on the field.

In other cases, like with Leman Russ tanks, I just bumped up the minimum squad size to the point where the minimum points value is equivalent to a minimum knight squad. So you start off with 5 leman russes minimum.

What models would you like to see GW add to flesh out the core factions? New titan classes, like the Rapier and Carnivore? What kind of mechanics would you want those to bring to the table?

Let's talk for a moment about The Large Lad: How would you best add the Imperator-class of titans in to AT18?

Of all the systems I've played with from GW, AT18 does by far the best job in incorporating extremely large units into the game in a way that's not unhealthy. Warlord titans don't feel ridiculously overpowering in games where you're basically running them against a compliment of smaller-size units (quite the opposite in fact, your opponent can very handily outmaneuver you most of the time) but they feel suitably impressive in larger games where they have supporting elements guarding their flanks and allowing them to set up kill shots.

That said, I think the system starts to creak a little when you look at adding in the Imperator.

Challenge number one: Scale. By rights, the Imperator should be at LEAST scale 14, if not 16 or 18 compared to the Warlord's 10. But that makes the minimum range of the bulk of its weaponry extremely large and easy to exploit. Particularly given the size of board that you typically have in AT, that would make most of the weaponry have to have unrealistically extreme range for what it probably would end up being (Reaver-class weaponry most likely, rather than the "lascannons" and "Autocannons" it is described as in the original epic rules)

Challenge number 2: What guns are actually on this thing?

Artwork, rules and information regarding what actually goes ON an Imperator varies greatly. In some versions of the rules, they are an ill-understood form of titan that always has the same configuration of weaponry. On others, each one is a unique battle-fortress.

Personally, I think it makes the most sense for each of these ancient machines to be relatively unique, after millennia of war, particularly when it comes to the crazy array of weaponry you see poking out of the carapace. It'd get some kind of rule for the tertiary defensive weaponry mounted on it similar to the Ardex-Defensor Cannon on the warlord and warbringer, and then you'd have a number of carapace hardpoints you could use to mount weaponry or other support systems.

Then you'd have 4 arm weapons: the Plasma Annihilator (probably given some different superlative to differentiate it from the Warlord's Sunfury PA), the Bellicosa Hellstorm Cannon (an upgunned Gatling Blaster), a Doomstrike Missile Battery, and a Vengeance Cannon.

the actual body of the Imperator is basically just a Warlord+1, most of the height difference comes from the huge cathedral-towers, so in terms of defensive stats it doesn't have to have an absurd number of extra structure points or armor.

https://www.moddb.com/groups/warhammer-40k-fans-group/images/imperator-titan-detailed

The upper body of the Imperator had 4 gun towers with cannons basically like Leman Russ cannons. The secondary weapons were a bunch of autocannons and bolters. The main battery was like a giant bombard artillery piece. The Anti-Air/Anti-Orbit Defence Laser was basically a Warlord Volcano Cannon.

For ranges, 100cm was the range of the Defence Laser, aka Volcano Cannon, so you can use that as a scale to base the rest off of.

The embarked infantry squads could fire if they were in the red outlined squares.

Defensively, there were 12 void shields, and the sensorium dome gave a psychic save.

Taking it out in the old Epic/Titan Legions rules was actually easier than might seem, though it would still probably be costly. Hits to the Head, Reactor, Engine, Gyro, Legs could all inflict potential 1 hit kills. Failing that, hitting the primary power coupling could offline one arm weapon, and in the maximum damage result, tear off that arm permanently and cause a flashback explosion to the head. I think from certain angles or the rear there was also a plasma link hit location. Hitting it could cause plasma to leak out (draining 1 plasma counter) and causing a hit to an adjacent location, or maximum damage result could cause a flashback to the reactor location. Hits to the Bastion locations in the legs could still cause a kill if you totally destroyed a horizontal row of Bastion locations, causing the leg to fail and the Titan to collapse to the ground (which counted as destroyed).

I recall taking out 1 Imperator via the primary power coupling to the Plasma Annihilator, ripping off the arm and causing a flashback damage roll to the head which knocked out the Titan, which then collapsed onto some of the enemy's other units. My opponent's big centerpiece point expensive model had ended up gutting a good section of his own army, and I think he conceded the game after that.

Iracundus wrote:
https://www.moddb.com/groups/warhammer-40k-fans-group/images/imperator-titan-detailed

The upper body of the Imperator had 4 gun towers with cannons basically like Leman Russ cannons. The secondary weapons were a bunch of autocannons and bolters. The main battery was like a giant bombard artillery piece. The Anti-Air/Anti-Orbit Defence Laser was basically a Warlord Volcano Cannon.

For ranges, 100cm was the range of the Defence Laser, aka Volcano Cannon, so you can use that as a scale to base the rest off of.

The embarked infantry squads could fire if they were in the red outlined squares.

Defensively, there were 12 void shields, and the sensorium dome gave a psychic save.

Taking it out in the old Epic/Titan Legions rules was actually easier than might seem, though it would still probably be costly. Hits to the Head, Reactor, Engine, Gyro, Legs could all inflict potential 1 hit kills. Failing that, hitting the primary power coupling could offline one arm weapon, and in the maximum damage result, tear off that arm permanently and cause a flashback explosion to the head. I think from certain angles or the rear there was also a plasma link hit location. Hitting it could cause plasma to leak out (draining 1 plasma counter) and causing a hit to an adjacent location, or maximum damage result could cause a flashback to the reactor location. Hits to the Bastion locations in the legs could still cause a kill if you totally destroyed a horizontal row of Bastion locations, causing the leg to fail and the Titan to collapse to the ground (which counted as destroyed).

I recall taking out 1 Imperator via the primary power coupling to the Plasma Annihilator, ripping off the arm and causing a flashback damage roll to the head which knocked out the Titan, which then collapsed onto some of the enemy's other units. My opponent's big centerpiece point expensive model had ended up gutting a good section of his own army, and I think he conceded the game after that.

It definitely seems like Epic has a lot of weaponry that in 40k/AT is translated into much more powerful stuff. Defense Laser = Volcano cannon works fine, the main siege cannon = Quake Cannon, and then I think "Tower Weaponry" will be a separate category of weapon that doesn't follow the core rules for Carapace weaponry and instead works more like the Ardex Cannon on the Warlord, targeting close units independently from the main target of the titan's big guns. Each tower location slot will have 2 arcs (Front/Right, Front/Left, Rear/Right, Rear/Left), and each tower can select a different target when the imperator is activated.

Macro Cannon, Apocalypse Missiles, Gatling Blaster and Laser Blaster towers can be selected at each location.

An idea for addressing the inherent Action Economy issues with the Imperator:

"Lumbering Behemoth: During the movement phase, when a player selects the Imperator titan to act, the Imperator simply declares that it will move. The opposing player then selects 1 more unit to move, and then the imperator must move during the next movement activation after that.

When an imperator is selected in the Combat phase, first all Carapace and Tower weapons fire, then the opposing player selects a unit to activate, then the Imperator must be activated again immediately afterwards to attack with its Arm weapons. Unless the imperator is under a Split Fire order, the imperator's Arm weapons must target the same unit targeted by its Carapace weapons in its previous activation"

This rule has an upside and a downside for the Imperator. The upside is during the movement phase, where you can force your opponent to commit 1 extra move before you have to move the Imperator, and the downside is during the combat phase, where your opponent can choose a unit to act before the imperator can bring its largest weapons to bear - including the unit that was just targeted by the Carapace weapons, potentially getting a final shot before being annihilated.

In terms of relative power, the phantom should sit between a reaver and a Warlord (they used to cost more than the first and less than the second), while the revenant sounds sit between the war hound and the reaver.

Basically the eldar Titans had their own scale, with the revenants better than war hounds and phantoms better than reavers.

Warlocks were the only thing of similar cost to Warlords, and nothing was as powerful or expensive as an imperator (they'd just deploy multiple phantoms).

I see you have the tremor cannon currently as the same as the quake cannon which isn't a bad start.

The Phantom carapace though had 2 weapons that you could choose to use, so technically you could still treat them as either paired or single (you could take a lance or missile battery, or scatter laser battery or two of one).


The fist had a laser battery in its knuckles as well, and the current glass has star cannon in it.

 Hellebore wrote:
In terms of relative power, the phantom should sit between a reaver and a Warlord (they used to cost more than the first and less than the second), while the revenant sounds sit between the war hound and the reaver.

Basically the eldar Titans had their own scale, with the revenants better than war hounds and phantoms better than reavers.

Warlocks were the only thing of similar cost to Warlords, and nothing was as powerful or expensive as an imperator (they'd just deploy multiple phantoms).

I see you have the tremor cannon currently as the same as the quake cannon which isn't a bad start.

The Phantom carapace though had 2 weapons that you could choose to use, so technically you could still treat them as either paired or single (you could take a lance or missile battery, or scatter laser battery or two of one).


The fist had a laser battery in its knuckles as well, and the current glass has star cannon in it.

In Epic it was a lascannon which now would translate to Bright Lance, and a missile launcher which was more like frag missiles. In practice the lascannon aka lance was always the option to take as it synergized with the arm weapons.
The Forge World version now has Bright Lance, Starcannon, or missile launchers now as options.

The Eldar power fist had shuriken cannons in its knuckles. The Forge World version of the CC weapon is now a blade and Starcannon.

Pretty much all the non-Imperial/Chaos factions had better power fists in that they had some secondary weapon and sometimes had bonuses to ripping off parts (Tyranid Razorclaw for example had frag spines and a bonus). I guess that might be power creep and/or also a concession to non-Imperial/Chaos Titans having fewer weapon slots and options.

The old Eldar Tremor Cannon had IIRC a rule like that of 40K Vibro Cannons (basically giving a bonus if you had more than 1 firing at the target). In the Tremor Cannon's case, I think it was you auto-hit the legs (or the lowest portion of the hit template), ignoring void shields..

 Hellebore wrote:
In terms of relative power, the phantom should sit between a reaver and a Warlord (they used to cost more than the first and less than the second), while the revenant sounds sit between the war hound and the reaver.

Basically the eldar Titans had their own scale, with the revenants better than war hounds and phantoms better than reavers.

Warlocks were the only thing of similar cost to Warlords, and nothing was as powerful or expensive as an imperator (they'd just deploy multiple phantoms).

I see you have the tremor cannon currently as the same as the quake cannon which isn't a bad start.

The Phantom carapace though had 2 weapons that you could choose to use, so technically you could still treat them as either paired or single (you could take a lance or missile battery, or scatter laser battery or two of one).


The fist had a laser battery in its knuckles as well, and the current glass has star cannon in it.

AT is weird about which weaponry it chooses to model tbh. Knights get rules for a single meltagun and a single grav-gun which just seem asinine at the scale the game's at, and typically we've been leaving anything smaller than like a twinned lascannon out just as an abstraction. The twin assault cannon (?) on the Warlord's arioch claw for example has no rules, and neither do the pair of quad autocannons on the shoulders of the Warbringer.

Weaponry at strength 3 or below is generally below the point of usefulness because it can't affect void shielding and requires a target to be woundable on a 9, which means in the core game experience an Imperial Knight's Chaincannon can only wound the lightest models present in the game on a 6. That's generally informed our philosophy on whether a weapon is impactful enough to include - basically, the breakpoint is when you get a pair of multimelta or lascannon equivalent weapons.

So, Wraithknights can theoretically take a pair of twin Bright Lances, we've put those in there as auxiliary weapons with the idea that if they were instead to take Scatter Lasers or Shuriken Cannons, the weapons would be too small to 'count' in the scale of AT. And if a weapon must be included because just leaving it off would be awkward, like in the case of Land Raider Crusader Pattern, we make the weapon S3 as kind of a "death knell of usefulness" - it exists, but it'll never be the reason you field the model.

I guess that's not always the case, we've put some S3 weaponry in there with the Rending or Voidbreaker to make it useful in some contexts.

Iracundus wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
In terms of relative power, the phantom should sit between a reaver and a Warlord (they used to cost more than the first and less than the second), while the revenant sounds sit between the war hound and the reaver.

Basically the eldar Titans had their own scale, with the revenants better than war hounds and phantoms better than reavers.

Warlocks were the only thing of similar cost to Warlords, and nothing was as powerful or expensive as an imperator (they'd just deploy multiple phantoms).

I see you have the tremor cannon currently as the same as the quake cannon which isn't a bad start.

The Phantom carapace though had 2 weapons that you could choose to use, so technically you could still treat them as either paired or single (you could take a lance or missile battery, or scatter laser battery or two of one).


The fist had a laser battery in its knuckles as well, and the current glass has star cannon in it.

In Epic it was a lascannon which now would translate to Bright Lance, and a missile launcher which was more like frag missiles. In practice the lascannon aka lance was always the option to take as it synergized with the arm weapons.
The Forge World version now has Bright Lance, Starcannon, or missile launchers now as options.

The Eldar power fist had shuriken cannons in its knuckles. The Forge World version of the CC weapon is now a blade and Starcannon.

Pretty much all the non-Imperial/Chaos factions had better power fists in that they had some secondary weapon and sometimes had bonuses to ripping off parts (Tyranid Razorclaw for example had frag spines and a bonus). I guess that might be power creep and/or also a concession to non-Imperial/Chaos Titans having fewer weapon slots and options.

The old Eldar Tremor Cannon had IIRC a rule like that of 40K Vibro Cannons (basically giving a bonus if you had more than 1 firing at the target). In the Tremor Cannon's case, I think it was you auto-hit the legs (or the lowest portion of the hit template), ignoring void shields..

It's one thing that really irritates me about how they've treated the Titans.

They upscaled imperial shoulder weapons and gave Warlord ardex mounts in comparison to the original versions (where most weapons were called bsttlecannons or lascannons) and left the Eldar mounts as basic weapons.

At least when they released the phantom at fw originally they gave it a similar upgrade in weapons to how they've treated Warlords. I'm still annoyed they decided that ardex.super bolterz and lascannons are fine but a longer ranged starcannon with 4 shots was too much.

If you go by these original rules, the glaive should have heavy 8 twin starcannons attached and the chest should have a heavy 4 starcannon attached. Both replaceable with pulse lasers.

But apparently only imperials gets a billion versions of all their weapons, despite the starcannons that come with the phantom being modelled differently and larger than normal ones...

I wouldn't say it was deliberate malicious neglect so much as people using their creativity when it comes time to Imperial stuff, but then just phoning it in when it comes to non-Imperial stuff. That's how you get all sorts of ridiculous things happening with the non-Imperial stuff, because nobody cared enough to spot the gaping loopholes in the rules (both those that lead to overpowered stuff and underpowered stuff).

I have used the example before but Eldar Titan Holofields in Apocalypse were a case in point. When Destroyer weapons ignored invulnerable saves, Holofields were initially made as invulnerable saves, and that went to print. Only afterwards, did someone realize (or had it pointed out to them) that that meant Eldar Titans were completely without any form of defensive protection against Destroyer weapons. Belatedly the Holofields had to be changed to grant a save that was like an invulnerable save but that wasn't classed as one so that Destroyer weapons did not ignore them. It was such an obvious gaping error that should never have made it past the editor.

 Hellebore wrote:

Iracundus wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
In terms of relative power, the phantom should sit between a reaver and a Warlord (they used to cost more than the first and less than the second), while the revenant sounds sit between the war hound and the reaver.

Basically the eldar Titans had their own scale, with the revenants better than war hounds and phantoms better than reavers.

Warlocks were the only thing of similar cost to Warlords, and nothing was as powerful or expensive as an imperator (they'd just deploy multiple phantoms).

I see you have the tremor cannon currently as the same as the quake cannon which isn't a bad start.

The Phantom carapace though had 2 weapons that you could choose to use, so technically you could still treat them as either paired or single (you could take a lance or missile battery, or scatter laser battery or two of one).


The fist had a laser battery in its knuckles as well, and the current glass has star cannon in it.

In Epic it was a lascannon which now would translate to Bright Lance, and a missile launcher which was more like frag missiles. In practice the lascannon aka lance was always the option to take as it synergized with the arm weapons.
The Forge World version now has Bright Lance, Starcannon, or missile launchers now as options.

The Eldar power fist had shuriken cannons in its knuckles. The Forge World version of the CC weapon is now a blade and Starcannon.

Pretty much all the non-Imperial/Chaos factions had better power fists in that they had some secondary weapon and sometimes had bonuses to ripping off parts (Tyranid Razorclaw for example had frag spines and a bonus). I guess that might be power creep and/or also a concession to non-Imperial/Chaos Titans having fewer weapon slots and options.

The old Eldar Tremor Cannon had IIRC a rule like that of 40K Vibro Cannons (basically giving a bonus if you had more than 1 firing at the target). In the Tremor Cannon's case, I think it was you auto-hit the legs (or the lowest portion of the hit template), ignoring void shields..

It's one thing that really irritates me about how they've treated the Titans.

They upscaled imperial shoulder weapons and gave Warlord ardex mounts in comparison to the original versions (where most weapons were called bsttlecannons or lascannons) and left the Eldar mounts as basic weapons.

At least when they released the phantom at fw originally they gave it a similar upgrade in weapons to how they've treated Warlords. I'm still annoyed they decided that ardex.super bolterz and lascannons are fine but a longer ranged starcannon with 4 shots was too much.

If you go by these original rules, the glaive should have heavy 8 twin starcannons attached and the chest should have a heavy 4 starcannon attached. Both replaceable with pulse lasers.

But apparently only imperials gets a billion versions of all their weapons, despite the starcannons that come with the phantom being modelled differently and larger than normal ones...

This is true, and I have definitely not felt constrained in adhering to the power differentials between xenos titans and their imperial equivalents that exist in 40k when constructing my homebrew rules for them. Regardless of whether I call the Phantom's carapace mount a "Bright Lance Array" or a "Heavy Bright Lance" or something, it still remains in game terms a fairly respectable weapon with long range, above average strength and 3 shots. Definitely more broadly useful than the Ardex array.

Comparative to their points values in 40k, I have definitely upsized the Hierophant, Stompa and Phantom to allow them to tangle more readily with imperial titan class units.

Should the phantom also have a carapace-mounted regular pulsar then, the same as the one on the Revenant?

In terms of the quad starcannons on the glaive, I am inclined to leave them off, just because the aux weapon on the warlord CC arm and the ones on the warbringer shoulders also don't have rules. If the baseline for the phantom is "Reaver +1 offense -1 Defense" as a general rule, I think 3 weapons is a good spot for him to be.


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Sidenote: i've done enough playtesting now with Eldar stuff that I feel confident enough to give them some points values.

Vaul's Fury tanks are fairly potent, the fact that they have Distortion fields makes them fairly strong comparative to Baneblade tanks, so the hull costs 60pts rather than 40pts for a baneblade hull, while their weaponry is fairly comparable to Shadowsword chassis. Wraithknights are on average a bit weaker than Questoris, due to having a shield effectively taking up an arm slot.

The warlock's effectiveness is not quite at the level of a warlord despite his psychic powers, he fits in a lot closer to a warbringer in my book. Personally, I think the Ordo Sinister Psi-titan is solidly overcosted currently, and GW overshot. The tenebrae is a very strong gun to be sure, but I think he's over where he should be by around 50pts, and the size of game where he's appropriate to be on the table (~3000pts IMO) he tends to be fairly easy to efficiently focus down for far less than his pt cost value.

Obviously I don't take GW's points values as gospel - you just have to look at Acastus knights to see they can make obvious glaring errors - so I don't think the same points differential is warranted on the warlock titan. Also, I'm not making the psi-cannon a required weapon as you could not take it in Epic.

I have been developing some ideas for different types of eldar titans to fill out their variety a little more.

I've broken them into 4 categories:

Knight Titans
Scout Titans
Battle Titans
Supremacy Titans

With the following:

Knights

Wraithknight
Bright Stallion
Destroyer
Fire Gale

Scout

Revenant - current with additional weapon options (d-cannons, sun cannons)
Ghost - foot-based stealth titan, with multiple distortion fields that make them impossible to detect until really close, equipped with short ranged guns/melee - fusion lances, las cutters, glaives etc
Spectre - Jump pack assault titan, dual glaives, shuriken arrays on the shoulders for close combat. Little ranged fired power

Battle

Phantom - as current with the full weapon options (tremor cannons, heat lances, titan fist with knuckle lasers)
Phantasm - stealth close assault, with short ranged weaponry and anti infantry grenade bursts (ie cherry blossoms) hitting every enemy unit within a certain distance. Sonic lances, fusion sweepers.

Supremacy

Warlock - larger and more powerful than a phantom (rather than just a phantom with a different head - say nemesis equiv)
Nightmare - Huge, taller than an imperator, from the days of the empire. Used to shape other worlds and act as a node for automata armies. Carrying morph weapons powered by a psychic engine at its centre, perpetual energy. Weapons shift to different types as needed, all attacks are warp based.
THese are old and damaged from the psychic backlash of the birth of Slannesh, so while destructive, they are not as reliable.

Well I finally put my thoughts down on paper (through the liberal theft of Scotsmans' templates, thanks for that).


So this is how I kind of envisage eldar titans working within the AT framework. Similar, but not identical to imperial titans.

This is the terminals:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13fukb89ABCFYd5qJ4-GX770fA9un9Pnm7QGCd41QzTY/edit?usp=sharing

And this is the rules and how they differ and interact with the normal rules.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1prucZSSGs69Sh4Ze0IfoQwyeFQxTz2LFBbC3l2QUQWQ/edit?usp=sharing



There are three really big things - the psychic strain on the steersman replacing plasma reactor, the way structure points and damage work and the distortion fields.

While the distortion fields are active, you can only inflict direct or critical hits. When they go down however, you can only inflict devastating and critical hits. They also have less structure points.