Doom of Molech supplement discussion

[Zhiv]

So apparently Vulcanum I is black / teal (?) and Vulcanum II is black and green.

 

Now which one to do...

[RedFurioso]

So apparently Vulcanum I is black / teal (?)

Similar color scheme to the Ordo Sinister...

[Dark Bjoern]

Got my book today. I was totaly disappointed by the quality. Some pages stick togehter and had been damaged, print errors. I had rejected the book. Now i have to wait for a new one

[Reyner]

That's poo :( might be able to grab one on Saturday from my local store

[Macrossmartin]

Many thanks to LetsYouDown for risking your eyesight for the benefit of many. 

 

A little disappointed by the theme emerging for Legio Crucius; they seem to be primarily concerned with repairs and technological aspects. I thought that curious given their Low Gothic name is 'Warmongers'. I had hoped for something a bit more, well, aggressive!

 

'Black Banner' sounds interesting... I'm hopeful this will give just cause for me painting up an actual, black banner to add to a Warlord's carapace. 

[Sherrypie]

Well, got the book, skimmed through, mixed feelings. Pretty positive overall, some brainfarts just burned into my eyes. It's more Legios, more stratagems, more missions and all that jazz, so that's good.

 

Will write a longer essay in a few days, but for now the standouts seem to be some army-wide stratagems that allow for new strategies to come up. I especially like the idea of using Vulpa with War Lust (+2" to boosted speed and +2 to Full Stride orders) on first turn followed by Bloodthirst (+2 to Charge orders and +2 to hit within 2") on the second. Especially with the new Ferox maniple, that gives them basically free +1 to Armour rolls as you're going danger close anyway.

 

Many support stratagems are also nice, like fighter bombers that draw lines of d3 Str 5 hits over the whole board every turn. Or artillery that scatters your opponents squadrons, turns their Knights' ion shields off for a turn and what not. Spotters for Barrage weapons is a nice touch, too.

 

New tertiary objectives are also pretty usable, like Hold the Centre (2 cp) which gives you 2 VP for your engines within 12" of the centre, +5 if no enemy is there. Relevant points, worth considering.

 

On the brainfart side, though, why on Earth would anyone give their Knight commanders the ability to have their Banner reroll 1's with Melee weapons when they already have that ability in their bloody rules (except the Seneschal has an even better one). Or why the Knights' mission Valiant Defiance only gives you paltry victory points for dying to your enemies death throes and nothing else at all? Is it supposed to encourage you to load up on tertiary objectives, because your main one is literally the worst in existence? This has to be a mistake, they couldn't have done something that bad on purpose.

[Perry]

The Vox strat that cancels all orders will be evil to many Legios that need a good order round to set up their force

[Atia]

Also Legio Astorum Warhounds can now teleport for 4 points thanks to "designer's note: legio specific stratagems" 

[Sherrypie]

Also Legio Astorum Warhounds can now teleport for 4 points thanks to "designer's note: legio specific stratagems"

Do you mean the "take other Legios things for +1 point cost"?

[Atia]

 

Also Legio Astorum Warhounds can now teleport for 4 points thanks to "designer's note: legio specific stratagems"

Do you mean the "take other Legios things for +1 point cost"?

Yep

[Sherrypie]

It's an interesting one, though a bit of a can of worms at the same time. As an optional rule it of course does not have to be used unless all parties decide it's awesome and the fact that CP's are not readily available limits the possibly funky interactions that could come up (want to wreck face / run Cargo or force the enemy to kill you entirely to get Hold the Line? How about Astorum melee force with Mortis' March of the dead crossing the whole board by turn two?).

 

Still, not sure about using that too often. Unless the opponent wants to do it for style, like the teleporting Warhound would be, then sure :P

[The boater]

My apologies folks, I actually misread Fortidus's Lost Sons trait as letting them replace Warhounds with Reavers.

 

It's actually that they can alter ONE mandatory component Titan in any or all of their maniples to any other Titan, and that Titan counts as whatever it replaced (the example given is that if you swap a Warhound in a Venator Maniple for a Reaver, that Reaver will still count as a Warhound for that maniple's special rule). So they have that and then basically Fearless from Children of Mars.

 

I'm still letting the ramifications of Lost Sons settle in but dang that seems potentially quite powerful...

 

There are 3 powerful uses of this rule that came to mind immediately:

1) replace the Reaver in a Fortidus Venator maniple with a Warlord

2) replace either the King/Queen in Regia or the Courtier with a Reaver

3) replace a Warhound in Lupercal with a Reaver (or Warlord, but I think Reaver is best as it stands a chance of keeping up with Warhounds) as it lets you form/reform the Titans in the maniple into Squadrons

 

2 & especially 3 have some funky rules interactions regarding squadroning and sharing shields, but could be pretty cool. #1 is very mean and clearly works under the rule, though.

I got a better one for you:

Replace a warhound in a venator with a warlord. Equip said warlord with Gatling Cannons all round. Equip reaver to deal out punishment, watch your opponent cry as your warlord shreds shields each turn.

[Sherrypie]

For maximum funsies, have a Warlord with Quake cannon be the leader of that Venator and just watch them dance :D

[Mandragola]

Yeah Fortidas offers some fun options, and the Venator Quake option does seem like a lot of fun. That said, I'm not sure it's actually all that much better than a reaver with a melta hitting things.

 

The quake cannon does have a major advantage with range though, and it’s obviously a lot harder to get rid of the guy.

 

I’m actually considering building an army like this, but the rules are bizarrely unclear on whether it’s legal. I’ve got enough knights to form a lance of questoris, plus a couple of lancers, and it would be really fun to paint them up as Tanaris (which I play in 40k) with a Fortidas maniple in support, fighting on Mars. The book simply doesn’t say whether you can combine titan maniples and household forces though.

 

I could still build the list of course, with the knights just taken as support banners. I just wish the book actually said what the rules are. It doesn’t feel like too much to ask!

[Sherrypie]

My take is that Titan Legios and Household Forces are distinct, aka you choose one as your main and the others can only be taken as additional supports.

 

This is based on pages 34-35 of DoM on what constitutes a Household Force, the Stratagem rules saying "Households choose from this list, Titan Legios from the other. No mixing, shoo" and the fact that the first narrative mission says "the knight player cannot have any supporting Titans".

 

Thus, you must normally be able to field both titans and knight banners in support of your Lances/Maniples, but you can only have either side of those main formations which dictates what stratagems you get. In casual play, of course, just go as nuts as you wish to.

[Mandragola]

I think that's a very reasonable interpretation of what the rules might be. I'd just love to see it written out in black and white!

 

I've got 11 knights and to be honest I doubt I want all that many more. I could build quite a nice little army of Tanaris knights with a few Fortidas titans. I can do it with a maniple and supporting banners anyway if I want I guess.

[orz]

Legio Interfector rules question- 2 of the results on the Madness table cause the Titan to "gain an order" in the Movement phase. What happens if it already had an order?

[Mandragola]

Weird one. I expect this should override the old order. But it would be odd if the Titan was on shutdown.

[orz]

Seems a little game-y with Emergency Repair orders if it does override- you get the repair, then get a chance to remove the restrictions and do some other stuff. Maybe intended, since Madness isn't guaranteed to work out how you'd like.

[1ncarnadine]

Weird one. I expect this should override the old order. But it would be odd if the Titan was on shutdown.

 

A unit with Shutdown orders can't be activated in the Movement phase, and that's a condition for rolling on Creeping Madness. So at least that part is clear. If you already have other Orders, you probably just won't roll on Creeping Madness most of the time. It is voluntary, after all.

 

 

So I have a lot of of questions regarding the Vulcanum rules:

 

1.) Compare the new FAQ to Vulcanum's Two-Faced God trait -

 

Q. Can you have more than one maniple in a Battlegroup? Does each maniple have a Princeps Seniores?

A. Yes and yes. The minimum number of maniples is one, but there is no limit on the maximum number

 

Legio Trait: Two-faced God - When fielding a Legio Vulcanum battlegroup, a player may nominate two Legio Vulcanum Titans to be commanded by a Princeps Seniores (see page 55 of the Adeptus Titanicus rulebook). These Titans may not be part of the same maniple. If one of the Princeps Seniores' Titans is destroyed, for the remainder of the game count the other Princeps Seniores' Titan as having suffered an unrepairable Princeps Wounded damage effect.

 

I'm looking for common consensus, here. Does this imply...

A. A Vulcanum player gets one extra Princeps Seniores total but it has to be a Titan that has no maniple

B. For every maniple you select that generates a Princeps Seniores, you get one more as long as it's outside that maniple

C. Or if you take "...a player may nominate two Legio Vulcanum Titans to be commanded by a Princeps Seniores." very literally, it could refer to picking any two as long as they're in different maniples and aren't the Princeps Seniores that you get per maniple. Which sort of makes sense if they're cloning all their great Princeps and piecing their minds together with clone tapes and stuff?

 

This rule and the FAQ feel like they were written up by two different people...

 

2.) OK, so what about Twinned Machine Spirits? There doesn't seem to be a limit to what can take them, so can these be used to "hack" a Titan into a squadron? What about interactions with maniple traits that allow shield sharing?

 

3.) Janus missiles let you split off missiles from your main target to another target within 12" of the first one, within range and line of sight. The rules don't mention requiring that second target to be in arc, which could be very important for Warlord apoc launchers. Does this seem intentional? It could represent missiles changing trajectory in flight, but could be a mistake.

[Sherrypie]

On Vulcanum, my take would be:

- You gain an extra Senioris, aka n+1 where n is your number of maniples, who can be in a support titan or part of some other maniple than their twin is. Given that the penalty for the clone dying is quite severe, though, so I would not really be too aghast if someone wanted to play with the interpretation that you get 2*n Senioris. It's a bit better, but it does imultaneously grant your opponent an easy way to hurt your ability to do things by killing those multiple targets to spread bad problems among your other engines. Both seem fine, at least until tested thoroughly for lolz OP shenanigans with six Senioris or something on the field :P

 

- You can twin many engines, but as we remember from the main Squadron rules, to Squadron you need to be from the same maniple. No shenanigans there.

 

- Janus missiles are normal attacks, it just allows you to split in a different way without doing Split Fire (different way being that it's the same weapon that can be split). You can't fire at targets that are out of your arc and range, the basic rules seem to override this concern.

[RipOffProductions]

On Vulcanum, my take would be:

 

- You gain an extra Senioris, aka n+1 where n is your number of maniples, who can be in a support titan or part of some other maniple than their twin is. Given that the penalty for the clone dying is quite severe, though, so I would not really be too aghast if someone wanted to play with the interpretation that you get 2*n Senioris. It's a bit better, but it does imultaneously grant your opponent an easy way to hurt your ability to do things by killing those multiple targets to spread bad problems among your other engines. Both seem fine, at least until tested thoroughly for lolz OP shenanigans with six Senioris or something on the field

 

- You can twin many engines, but as we remember from the main Squadron rules, to Squadron you need to be from the same maniple. No shenanigans there.

 

- Janus missiles are normal attacks, it just allows you to split in a different way without doing Split Fire (different way being that it's the same weapon that can be split). You can't fire at targets that are out of your arc and range, the basic rules seem to override this concern.

 

or you meant to declare that the normal Senioris from two of your Maniples are linked clones, with the rule for generating a new Senioris outside of the first's Maniple being meant for armies that lack a second Maniple, but do have a loose supporting Titan?

[Gorlak]

 

 

Also Legio Astorum Warhounds can now teleport for 4 points thanks to "designer's note: legio specific stratagems"

Do you mean the "take other Legios things for +1 point cost"?

Yep

 

 

I have looked through the Loyalist Strategems and can only see Solaria's 'Fog of War' which be the one your referring to. Was it that stratagem or is there another?

[Sherrypie]

She means Tempestus' combat drop. That can deep strike a scale 6 or less Titan on the field, which would fluffwise be teleporting for Astorum.

[Gorlak]

She means Tempestus' combat drop. That can deep strike a scale 6 or less Titan on the field, which would fluffwise be teleporting for Astorum.

 

Ah, got it, thank you. I was using the 1d4chan tactics summary as I am at work, away from my books. That summary doesn't include Tempestus, strangely.