http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/69.page JForum - http://www.jforum.net
I only found out about Godbreaker Clash on sunday, and fortunately was able to grab the last hard copy of White Dwarf in my local store.
If you haven't heard about this, I advise you to get hold of a copy, as it's essentially something I and quite a few people I know have been hoping for for some time - a detailled superheavy-on-superheavy duel 'mini-game'.

Rules are included for Imperial Knights (at least anything produceable from the plastic kit) and the Stormsurge. It wouldn't be hard to produce appropriate target sheets and weapon stats for a Gorkanaut and a Wraithknight, though:



It's for single-duel engagements, where both players spend three action points per turn, and the frontal elevation of the target takes damage - blowing off weapons, leg sections and targeting systems in a way that superheavies and gargantuans don't suffer in normal 40k. Essentially, you pick your target point, then roll scatter to see where the hit actually lands, make an armour save (if possible) then apply damage. Once a location has taken enough damage, it's destroyed and anything significant in it is also destroyed. Once enough locations have been destroyed, that's an engine kill, and back to the barn for tea and medals.

Different shots (snapshot/standard shot/aimed shot) scatter different amounts, and an imperial Knight's melee weapons don't scatter - even on snap shots - at all (that's it's not-so-secret weapon in a Stormsurge/Knight matchup - get up close and start chainsawing bits off the ballistic suit)



So...tactics?

Well, essentially there are two bits of tactics: Choosing your actions and choosing your target point for weapons fire.

The Knight's actions are highly variable because it has a million fighting configurations.

The maximum firepower you can put out is Snap Attack+Standard Attack or Aimed Attack. Don't fall too much in love with Snap Attacks - despite the size of the sillouhettes, it's surprising how much fire will miss. That goes double when shooting at a knight and triple for a knight without a carapace mount. Secondly, just landing hits doesn't matter - well, it does, but most of the time you need to hit the same location twice or three times to kill it, and only location kills really matter.

By comparison, a Gallant wants to Advance & Charge to close the gap as fast as possible.

A Stormsurge will generally want to be putting out an aimed attack or using snap attack and back-up to backpedal away from some monkey swinging an oversized carving knife. Target Lock is.....so so. -1 Save sounds good, but since the Knight only has a 5+ save, and a lot of big guns have a -1 save modifier, it's largely irrelevant. If a knight uses his ion shield, then that's a 4+ save - starting to get inconvenient - but since you can't use target lock as a reaction, I'd probably rather snap fire for the action point and maybe land an extra hit.


If you're in a stormsurge and a knight is coming to attack in combat, go for the legs The knee joint locations give a good cluster of possible targets whichever way you scatter, and are likely to take out leg sections which slows it down.

If you're in a knight and make it up close to a stormsurge (or a knight with no melee weapon), your first target is the targeting array or the head. Because you can hit it with your reaper chainsword with a snap attack and destroy it automatically, you push the ballistic suit into either falling back or shooting at you - at which point it's trapped and it becomes a close-quarters slugging match that you should win.

If it's another knight with a melee weapon....you probably want to kill that first. It'll require two swings to disable, unfortunately, but the sooner you start, the sooner it's not hitting you back.









]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/667676/8201659.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/667676/8201659.page GMT 40k game, these big things can have their mini duel at the same time? ]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/667676/8201972.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/667676/8201972.page GMT
The movement rules and shooting rules are distinctly different - for example, you can potentially fire multiple times per turn (at a risk of not hitting anything meaningful) and a 'move' is only 6" despite both being super-heavy units, and many weapon ranges have 'shrunk' a bit.

Equally, the weapons don't quite line up with their 40k performance - a knight's heavy stubber and a stormsurge's twin burst cannon, for example, have the same stats, and are capable of [strike]damaging[/strike] mildly irritating a knight - hit the same location three or four times and it can take out weapons or similar.

Finally, whilst a knight (which dies after 6 locations are destroyed) could easily 'carry on' after winning a duel - chalk off one hull point each and assume the weapons start working again, the same number of kills are needed to stop an 8-wound (in 40k) stormsurge.


Personally, I'd suggest running it as a seperate game. ]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/667676/8202083.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/667676/8202083.page GMT http://www.blacklibrary.com/downloads.html]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/667676/8202095.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/667676/8202095.page GMT

Standard fare for gw. Provide "free" information that dosent actually contain anything useful and is really only an advertisement or enticment to go buy something else. In this case 10$ on the useless mag, and another 160$ on a model kit. And where are the rules for including wraith knights, stompas, or other super heavys? ]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/667676/8202523.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/667676/8202523.page GMT
The rules....frankly I'm okay with £2.50 for the game rules. It is, more importantly than anything else, fun

I doubt you'd see stompas - simply because this has been done a bit on the back of a cigarette packet, and is using the existing artwork that they've got lying around from publishing. That flat-panel-colour frontal elevation image exists (as far as I know) for the Knight, the Wraithknight, the Gorkanaut, and the Stormsurge. Seeing the other two would be nice, and I may well try and produce some and/or poke some people I know.

Focusing on the knight-scale engines (rather than anything bigger) is nice because whilst big they're not stupidly big, and for a one-on-one duel you only need one of them.

Mostly I'm just happy to see superheavy-on-superheavy fights with the right sort of degree of granularity to them.

Mechwarrior had ridiculously over-the-top niff-naff, Warmachine has about the right level of damage tracking and detail but ruins it by making that detail irrelevant because jacks one-shot each other so bloody often that tracking damage feels like a redundant exercise, and (normal) 40k has less detail in a titan-on-titan fight than a tank-on-tank fight because you can't knock out weapons.

This isn't really a relevant discussion for the tactics forum (hell, arguably the whole thing isn't, but I wasn't sure where else to put the original post). ]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/667676/8203993.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/667676/8203993.page GMT GW drone. Begone with your Hersey!

You shall not pass!]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/667676/8204789.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/667676/8204789.page GMT
But since we're not likely to get Adeptus Titanicus back anytime soon (which is a shame as it's an awesome game) this is not a bad start as a substitute. I like this precisely because I dislike how little detail there is in a current superheavy walker fight.

It's not a complete game. To be a real 'complete game', we need sheets for the other equivalent engines and rules for many-on-many fights. But if people try this, and like it (and we did) and poke their respective GW contacts, maybe they might pick up on this. ]]> http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/667676/8206948.page http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/preList/667676/8206948.page GMT