Principia Titanicus

[Fajita Fan]

Definitely, I struggle to put them in lists despite kitbashing a few of my own. Castigators and Archerons might have a place in a knight household force where combined strike would make their weapons hurt but until Epic is released and you need flamers or Gatling guns lancers are good for the points. I magnetized the Gatling arms I made then actually magnetized shield arms to make them lancers, glad I had the foresight.

 

Archerons might be okay against other knights with a S7 template but even then the points make lancers more attractive.

Edited August 13, 2020 by Fajita Fan

[noigrim]

Problem with knights is that they die just by the foe giving them a mean look, unless they're acastus of course

[1ncarnadine]

So I ended up passing on Legio Lysanda. The rules felt too circumstantial. Now I'm motivated to start up a Loyalist Titan Legion again. At the moment, I'm looking between Osedax and Crucius, but by Crucius, I really mean the custom rules. Let's look at Osedax first:

1) Osedax! New kids on the block. I really like the color scheme and the background, but the rules seem a little disjointed. Let's take a look, shall we?

• Reforged in War - fair enough. It's word for word the "Fearless" half of one of Fortidus's rules. Mortis is popular and I'm seeing a bit of Magna being painted up on facebook so I guess this is nice to have, though I'm not jumping for joy over it
• Relentless March - stratagem that gives a turn of ignoring Difficult/Dangerous terrain and Full Stride. Also fine, 1 point, not too exciting but nice to have in the toolbox. Has a potentially cruel combination with a Princeps Trait that I'll go into later, but keep it in mind.
• Blood Begets Blood - kind of the unfortunate cousin of Offensive Surge. Pros, extra shots are always welcome, it can be out of combat phase, and affects every Osedax titan in your force instead of a single maniple. On the cons side, it's a lot of strat points, the 2 point reactor advance hurts when you look at Offensive Surge's 1, your targeting options are limited, and it could be a pain to get this to trigger at an opportune time. It's not the only reason that I think Osedax would like to build towards multiple minimum maniples (nice PTraits!), but it's a factor to consider. There's also a conflicting pressure due to the heat penalty, where the Titans that get best advantage of this are probably Reavers and up. But if I want to benefit from this ability not being limited to 1 maniple then I need more smallfries to cram 2 maniples into a list... So I'm thinking this stratagem is kind of a trap under 2k, and may be best reserved for larger games.
• Plasma Channels - forgo a move to vent D3+1 plasma immediately, counts as activation. Passing up a move isn't great, but maybe it has its uses with a backline Warbringer/Warlord. You're probably not going to get shots with your carapace weapon that turn, though. In tandem with Perpetua it may actually make that maniple trait worthwhile, but I'm still skeptical.
• Natural General - hard pass
• Lightning Assault - goonhammer seemed excited by this but I'm less sure of its general utility. It could be mistaken for a March of the Dead but I think it really hurts that the move is before determining First Player. Though it's still a deployment adjustment and obviously great for Titans that want to close.
• Careful Planner - wow. Some of the 1-point stratagems are really powerful, so getting them twice... the potential looks crazy. You can also, if you hate your opponent, use this in combination with Scatterable Mines to put down two minefields in one turn, and I guess you could trigger Relentless March to ensure scatter can't mess with your own plans. This trait can only get more powerful as more generic 1 point stratagems are released. Consider:
  -two Blind Barrages, Concealment Barrages, etc
  -trigger Long Retreat for two turns so you get to Corsair crab-walk if/when things get brawly
  -use it like a free stratagem point and re-use a stratagem that you could buy multiple of anyway
  -and you can load up with 1 point stratagems and flexibly decide which you want to use in a match

I can look at the rules and analyze each one like that, but I'm struggling to get a clear idea of where to go with list-building. So, what's the community's perspective on them? How would you folks rate the rule set, and how would you build these guys out to 1500 & 1750 in particular?


2) Crucius! I like everything about them but the rules. One of the equipment pieces looks particularly unhelpful, and the other marginal. And I'm convinced the effect of both of their reactor management Legio Traits combined is less effective than Astorum's single Veteran Princeps trait, let alone Elite Magos. At the very least, the math on re-rolling 1s vs just getting a single repair die re-roll is not good. AND it expires after two rounds. At least some of the Princeps Traits look ok?

That's not painting a great picture. But hear me out: What about using the Custom Legio rules to "fix" them? I'd probably combine Elite Magos and Plasma Rifling to cover the Ryzan reactor/plasma specialty bases, and then fill out with anything that reflects their Titan-on-Titan wargames, their large size, newer production, scattered deployments, etc. Their current rules completely skip a lot of that and it's disappointing. I could always jump back to the standard rules if anyone feels like I cherry-picked the custom rules, too, or, because one reason I want a Loyalist Legio is to be able to demo games, I could run them soft vs new players.

So the question here is, how would you folks complete the ruleset from those first two picks? I want them to have rules that are characterful and in line with the faction's fiction, while still expecting to make reasonably competitive use of most of these rules in most games. I'll acknowledge that Plasma Rifling may already be a gimped pick, but there's no other rules that represent advanced plasma weaponry on the table unless we get into some creative interpretations, and one marginal rule out of 4 feels acceptable. I'll start off with a few ideas:

• Duty and Honor - this could be used to represent their planning, but I'm not sure how exciting or helpful two uses of Adaptive Tactics actually is?
• Engines of War - probably picking Warlords here, but I think this would reflect that they're in excellent supply with newer equipment. Warlords are supposed to be the mainstay of most all Titan Legions during the Heresy, anyway. They're never mentioned as being heavy in Warlords, but they sure do seem to have a lot of Emperors, which gives me the impression of a heavy Titan Legion.
• Marked Prey - Crucius has analyzed structural weaknesses to exploit in their fellow Titan Legions in the dire event that Titan-on-Titan combat does come to pass. It's a simple, powerful effect.
• Power Reserves - leaning more into the special reactors again, easy to do. The real question is if it's worth a pick over the other options.

[Mandragola]

I think I'd run Osedax as an Extermigus maniple with only Warlords. Stick plasma channels on all of them. Use lightning assault to get moving and hurt things. If you get into the orange you can use your plasma channels. Only issue here is that anyone who wants to could just do repair orders to have pretty much the same effect.

 

Crucius are basically just slightly worse Astorum. Pride of Ryza is a fairly bad trait because you'll often want to use any 6 you might get to reignite shields or fix a crit, rather than cool the reactor, so it's not that likely to be useful. Bi-folded power containment is kind of useful, especially for something like a warbringer with two volcano cannons.

 

Personally I don't think I'd want to use the custom traits to "fix" an existing Legio. Just make up your own Legio. Obviously this is a matter of personal choice but in my experience a lot of people feel like you should use the rules for the models you have - especially in a narrative-driven game like AT.

[Uberlord Gendo]

What's the thinking on Dominus maniples?  The idea of the sensor scrambling sounds like fun, but I'm not so sure that investing the 630 points for 2 full squads of knights, before even adding another 150 for missile launchers.  It's a lot of strength 5 for taking down shields, but I'm not feeling good about the durability.  What do you all think?

 

So far as legio tactics goes, I'm thinking the reaver pairing looks like a solid one and I really like the idea of diabatic missiles.  What are thoughts on those?

[noigrim]

I dunno osedax looks like malinax 2.0

They are the colours of Xana tho

[Marshal Loss]

I dunno osedax looks like malinax 2.0

They are the colours of Xana tho

That's Vulturum, not Osedax. Osedax look like Novamarines on steroids

[Mandragola]

What's the thinking on Dominus maniples?  The idea of the sensor scrambling sounds like fun, but I'm not so sure that investing the 630 points for 2 full squads of knights, before even adding another 150 for missile launchers.  It's a lot of strength 5 for taking down shields, but I'm not feeling good about the durability.  What do you all think?

 

So far as legio tactics goes, I'm thinking the reaver pairing looks like a solid one and I really like the idea of diabatic missiles.  What are thoughts on those?

The Dominus is a slightly odd one. I haven't tried it out myself yet. I find the idea of knights protecting titans from incoming shots slightly odd, as usually you'd want to do things the other way around. However, the ability of knights to intercept shots from low-strength weapons like apocalypse launchers is quite interesting. It means it's virtually impossible to put a titan's shields down while there are knights nearby. These low strength attacks won't do a lot of damage to knights.

 

I think it's a maniple that could have potential in the right set up. One thought I had was to run it as Solaria, exchanging the Reavers for Warhounds and putting Cameleoline on all of them. The enemy would then have -2 to hit the Warhounds while they were near knights. Normally it'll be a maniple that works best with quite an aggressive set up, with melee reavers and knights advancing together.

 

The wording of the rules are important. Knights can't benefit from obscuring cover, and none of it works unless the target can see both the knights and the titans. So if you drop the LoS-blocking smoke stratagem on the knights, the titans lose any benefit. However there's nothing stopping you from playing the blind barrage strat on your knights to give all incoming shots -2 to hit. This would be fine to use on lancers on turn one. Give them full stride orders and have them activate towards the end of the combat phase (if any live that long) to move again, after they've intercepted a bunch of shots.

 

I think lancers are the best knights for the job. Their improved shield saves make them even less vulnerable to apocalypse missiles, especially in a banner of 3+, as they get a 2+ save against anything strength 1-6. If you're using Questoris then I'd strongly recommend keeping their cost down. All they'll really do is force your opponent to kill them off in turn one.

 

There might actually be a useful trick to pull with battlecannon questoris loitering behind your titans. You could potentially have them out of range of stuff like plasma blastguns and melta cannons but still in range to give a penalty to hit against you own engines and to soak up mega bolter hits. I can imagine that giving you quite a big advantage in early turns, where you'd be able to shoot at your opponent's reavers and warhounds but they'd struggle to hit you back.

 

I've probably talked myself into giving this a try now.

[Sherrypie]

Eh, I still find the Dominus a hard sell in any setup.

 

The fact that they have to be visible for any of this to kick in hampers their normal activities as cover to cover rushing skirmishers and as an opponent I'd usually anyway start by getting rid of the knights, nullifying most advantages of their existence in the force. A titan rarely dies or loses combat effectiveness after first round fire too badly, while shooting knights reaps very tangible rewards of cutting down enemy activations and active units. The maniple also cannot include more than two Banners, so if you want more you have to fork out for another three mandatory titans instead of spamming cheap bubblewrap units around heavy titans which could actually work (though even then, they are maniple locked). And that's before getting into the opportunity cost, because the titans behind those debatably useful ablative knights aren't getting any other benefits.

 

The idea of keeping a few knights behind your engines for early game negatives is maybe the first possibly useful tactic I've seen, but even then that's not a very good use for the knights themselves, as they aren't positioning further into the terrain ahead and contesting the area. You're basically declaring "here's my artillery castle, come get some" while not taking ground, which in turn allows the enemy to advance behind terrain: if they aren't getting good shots, then they might not take them but maneuver harder instead. Alternatively, if you are advancing but keeping the knights back, chances are you're still in range of the plasmaguns and such by turn two.

 

Ehh. I guess I might have to challenge myself into using the Dominus one day just to see if some experience at the table would change this outlook, but I'm not too hopeful when compared to other maniples that actually provide both mechanical benefits and a push towards a working strategy that doesn't either cede the field to the opponent or require some 4D chess positioning to get any proper benefit.

 

Edit: okay, one benefit: on a mostly barren desert table where the opposition is bringing lots of big guns and can sit still while you advance into their guns. There I could see buying a pair of suicide knight banners just to ensure your meanest titan can live beyond the first salvo, but even there Regia or Fortis would probably serve you better.

Edited August 19, 2020 by Sherrypie

[Mandragola]

I do agree with all that. It's a very difficult maniple to sell. As you say, it's no big advantage to force your opponent to target your knights, when that's probably what they want to do anyway - and this maniple makes it easier for them to do that by denying the knights cover.

 

The maniple isn't entirely useless and I hope I've provided some ideas for how it might be used. It's an interesting maniple and I might enjoy the challenge of running it, especially since I've only very rarely fielded knights. I'm definitely not saying that it's a powerful option, but I do find it one of the more interesting maniples - more so than Perpetua and Firmus. Perpetua just seems like a bad Fortis maniple and Firmus is kind of like Dominus, except with no penalties to hit and a command check to prevent shots being redirected. Firmus has the same problem as Dominus in that it forces you to fire at the nearest targets - which are very often the ones you want to kill most anyway.

[Sherrypie]

Firmus is an odd one, I'm not entirely sure what it's for. Pushing forwards with Reavers that can take a bit more fire so you can shield the Hounds behind them as they blaze away with plasma guns? Throwing a suicide Hound in front of your force to draw fire? Compared to Dominus, I think it still has the advantage that your bait is a titan that can benefit from a whole host of stratagems unlike the knights. If you really want to go all in with it, you could even use a heavy Reaver as the tip of your spear and pour various tricks on it to enhance it's staying power (ablative armour, out of sequence shield raising, blind barrage...) while the rest of your line pours the pain or you run home with your Cargo / Retrieval objectives.

 

That said, because of the Command Check part, it's still pretty unreliable. Funnier than Dominus in my eyes, still.

[Mandragola]

The command check is my big issue with Firmus. Even if you can find a use for it, a reaver ignores the effect 70% of the time.

[noigrim]

Ah yes, if you paint only blue and white they can also be praesagius

[Sherrypie]

Hmm... a bit of a curveball, but... a Firmus maniple of Vulpa could throw the Warhounds up front and run CCW Reavers behind them in relative safety while closing in for the kill. Razor sharp tongue throws -2 Command penalties out and guides the opposing non-Seniores engines to fire at the Hounds. Legio Magna could also try to affect the Command Checks after the initial gap has been closed.

 

Neither of those looks too promising on the paper, sadly.

[Warsmith Uveron]

The Dominus has its place, I probably over rate it, but I have had success with it using my Knights to screen a very aggressive reaver push.  Its a mix of ablative wounds and shield stripping defense that can catch opponents of guard. That said its utility is probably something that degrades over time as folks get used to fighting it. But its got rules that have an effect, and change the nature of the game... so thats all good.  

 

The Firmus, would be good if you could screen anything in your battlegroup. 

 

The Perpetua has a place as an alternate to the Fortis, if you want to increase table/objective control. That then ties to the missions you are playing, but the maniple does provide increased durability while not forcing you to castle up as much.    

[Sherrypie]

Interesting. How long do your knights usually survive, Uveron? In our games I've pretty much never let my opponents' knights survive beyond turn two if they aren't hiding somewhere being useless.

[Mandragola]

I think that in AT these misdirection abilities are a lot less effective than they might be in something like 40k. 40k has loads of rules to force people to shoot units instead of characters, grots instead of lootas, drones instead of riptides or whatever. These maniples feel like they're trying to do the equivalent for AT.

 

Those rules work reasonably well in 40k because you get a sort of defensive efficiency improvement. A lascannon hit just kills a drone instead of doing D6 wounds to a riptide. Anti-personnel fire that would be a major threat to a character has to be fired at a tank instead. The effect is to make your army more durable overall by forcing the enemy's firepower to hit targets that it is inefficient against.

 

This doesn't work so well in AT. Units' value tends to scale roughly in line with their durability and it's generally easier to kill things that are closer. If you're forced to fire at a knight banner or warhound that's nearby, you'll still damage or kill it. Your opponent still loses about the same proportion of your army and an activation. So it doesn't benefit you as much as all that.

 

However, one other difference between the two games is that there are fire arcs in AT. Both these maniples specify that the knights or titan closer target must be visible, but not that it needs to be in arc. I think this is deliberate because otherwise you could easily nullify the maniples by positioning your titan so it couldn't target them.

 

This means that - at least in theory - you can have some knights where they can't be shot by volcano cannons but they can still intercept shots if you want them to. Similarly, you could run a warhound up a flank on full stride and force people to test or declare it as a target, even though they didn't have any guns eligible to fire at it.

 

In reality I think this stuff would be very difficult to achieve, but it's possible. You can of course just drop blind barrage on your front titan, so anyone forced to fire at it does so at -2 to hit.

Edited August 19, 2020 by Mandragola

[Sherrypie]

Eargh. It is true that as written, Firmus could troll the opposition by running Warhounds to flank them while marching melta-Reavers in their face and occasionally have them just fail to get any shots off, but I highly doubt it will survive the next FAQs if someone were to raise that to GW. If it actually is meant to work like that, it gives the maniple an actual place in the game because you could then use it to throw a suicide wrench in the opposition's works by running behind them.

 

That would actually be pretty damn fluffy for a legio like Magna, who are borderline psychopaths to begin with. Gun a Hound or two upfield, just blaze Full Stride past the opposition and get behind them without a care if you explode damned sould screaming Command penalties while the Reavers get into a killing position midfield and let rip.

Edited August 19, 2020 by Sherrypie

[1ncarnadine]

I think I'd run Osedax as an Extermigus maniple with only Warlords. Stick plasma channels on all of them. Use lightning assault to get moving and hurt things. If you get into the orange you can use your plasma channels. Only issue here is that anyone who wants to could just do repair orders to have pretty much the same effect.

 

Crucius are basically just slightly worse Astorum. Pride of Ryza is a fairly bad trait because you'll often want to use any 6 you might get to reignite shields or fix a crit, rather than cool the reactor, so it's not that likely to be useful. Bi-folded power containment is kind of useful, especially for something like a warbringer with two volcano cannons.

 

Personally I don't think I'd want to use the custom traits to "fix" an existing Legio. Just make up your own Legio. Obviously this is a matter of personal choice but in my experience a lot of people feel like you should use the rules for the models you have - especially in a narrative-driven game like AT.

At least you'd have the benefit of Lightning Assault over a similar list... yeah, I don't know. I'm still scratching my head, but they're generalized enough that I might just have to throw in and figure it out for myself.

 

I don't know if I agree with Crucius being just slightly worse. For comparison's sake, let's look at some math...

Let's say we have an Axiom maniple of each (good distribution across Titan classes) and see how many re-rolls you get on average:


• Astorum gets 1 re-roll per Titan + 1 extra on its Warlord. 6 rerolls/ turn on average*
• Crucius would get 14 total repair dice and can re-roll 1s for the first 2 turns, so that's... 2.33 average. Less than half the efficacy, even if Astorum had brought a Reaver or something instead of a Warlord. And, again, it works for half or less of the total turns of a game. It's roughly 1/5th as useful.

*I did make a few assumptions there. Astorum can lose out on re-rolls because of distribution of successes vs failures, ie if I activate 2 Warhounds in the repair phase and one rolls 2 successes and the other 2 failures, that's only 1 re-roll. Whereas if Crucius rolls four 1s on a Warlord they get 4 re-rolls. That's just not very likely though.

I agree completely otherwise, especially on venting two plasma on a 6 vs what you'd realistically want to use that 6 on.


 

Hmm... a bit of a curveball, but... a Firmus maniple of Vulpa could throw the Warhounds up front and run CCW Reavers behind them in relative safety while closing in for the kill. Razor sharp tongue throws -2 Command penalties out and guides the opposing non-Seniores engines to fire at the Hounds. Legio Magna could also try to affect the Command Checks after the initial gap has been closed.

 

Neither of those looks too promising on the paper, sadly.

 

I was thinking of pretty much exactly this for a doubles tournament list. Bringing Razor Tongue alongside a Magna player w/ Firmus to stack penalties. But we'd both be trying to close and it'd be really tough to stay out of his Howling auras...

 

But I agree, the way the maniple is described, it doesn't seem like it's intended to allow Firmus to force targeting outside of arc .

Edited August 19, 2020 by LetsYouDown

[Warsmith Uveron]

Interesting. How long do your knights usually survive, Uveron? In our games I've pretty much never let my opponents' knights survive beyond turn two if they aren't hiding somewhere being useless.

 

It depends on what exactly my opponent is planning. Normally they are removed in the first two turns.... but by that point we have titan deaths ripping apart the table, so its all about that initial few turns and rounds of shooting. 

 

 

Those rules work reasonably well in 40k because you get a sort of defensive efficiency improvement. A lascannon hit just kills a drone instead of doing D6 wounds to a riptide. Anti-personnel fire that would be a major threat to a character has to be fired at a tank instead. The effect is to make your army more durable overall by forcing the enemy's firepower to hit targets that it is inefficient against.

 

This doesn't work so well in AT. Units' value tends to scale roughly in line with their durability and it's generally easier to kill things that are closer. If you're forced to fire at a knight banner or warhound that's nearby, you'll still damage or kill it. Your opponent still loses about the same proportion of your army and an activation. So it doesn't benefit you as much as all that.

 

Kinda.. it's not so much about the pens to hits, it's about the noble sacrifice. The ability to let the knights absorb the low S hits that they can deflect with Iron Shields is way better than letting them strip shields. If the shields stay up when the High S weapony comes to hit the titans it's just lost into the shields. 

 

Edit: and yeah they can just shoot into your knights or split fire... but that does mean your starting to influence the choices your opponent is making, and as soon as you can start doing things, that cause someone to react in a known way building a battle plan becomes easier, as you gain more control of the flow of the game. 

 

Its nothing as good as some maniple traits, but it has depth, and in the hands of a skilled player will provide really good results.  And its also harder to make a complete mess off like the Extrergimus which again is very powerful in hands of a player who knows what they are doing, but its suicidal in an amatures hands.  

 

In a way all the maniples in the DoR are like that, they have a place but you will need to be an advance player to see any benefit over maniples in the past books. 

Edited August 19, 2020 by Warsmith Uveron

[Mandragola]

 

In a way all the maniples in the DoR are like that, they have a place but you will need to be an advance player to see any benefit over maniples in the past books. 

 

That's an interesting point about this book. I agree I think, for most of the maniples. They're things that you might be able to make work, rather than power houses.

 

I don't quite think Extergimus fits that pattern. It's not that hard to decide not to put your Warlord into the orange. Or at least it shouldn't be hard. I think this is kind of a no-brainer as an alternative to a Myrmidon maniple, as Warlords don't particularly need the bonus to order checks.

[Uberlord Gendo]

To a certain extent, I think Extergimus opens up some neat builds for Titans, since it's sort of like giving all of your weapons the potential to get maximal. I think the winner there is the Quake cannon, the option to boost it makes it into a better Belicosa. Outside of that, it just lets the weapons you already took do some bonus damage once shields are down, though I think on something like a Macro-Gatling, the Sunfury will be better. It should cut costs a bit, I think? Maybe I'm missing something, but a double quake warlord with missiles seems pretty solid. Maybe one or two of those and then one with plasmas or gatlings or even a pair of laser blasters for called shots?

 

Related, I'm not totally sure how to arm a Warbringer. In general, the idea of sticking one in an Arcus and giving it seismic sensors so it can bombard anything the Warhounds spot for it from out of line of sight strikes me as hilarious, but generally, the ranges on the Quake cannon conflict with the arm weapons. I'm thinking of the arm weapons as something you use if things are going not as planned and someone has gotten close or as a late-game push, unless I'm being overly cautious in avoiding the Volcano cannon. I can see using the Volcano Cannon in a Ruptura or an Arcus, but not an Extergimus.

 

(Turns out this is 1745:

2 Warlords with 2 Quakes, Apoc Missiles

Warlord with Macro-Gatling, Arioch Claw, and Laser Destructor

Warbringer with Quake and 2 Gatlings

 

The Claw Warlord wants to be close, so the 2 extra shots are probably worth it despite the penalty at range? And the Warbringer is able to get close if more called shots are needed? I can also trim some points on the Clawlord by changing the carapace weapon to give the Warbringer a volcano cannon or a laser blaster, though with the range stuff/blast, neither of those is helping with called shots.

Presagius might be pretty solid on this list.)

Edited August 20, 2020 by Uberlord Gendo

[Mandragola]

That’s some great analysis Gendo. Thanks.

 

For extermigus, I think the weapons that benefit most are probably those with 3-4 shots. That’s where you’ll see the biggest amount of extra damage relative to the heat you gain. Zach off Goonhammer recently one-shotted a Reaver With a S14 Sunfury using the overcharged cannon strat on a reaver, for example.

 

Lasers also really benefit I think. Going from S8 up to 10 is a really big threshold. It’s where knights lose their saves and you can get crits on all titans.

 

In general adding 2 to strength is likely to turn a direct hit into a devastating hit, and a devastating hit into a crit.

 

Quake cannons are great but they don’t give you multiple hits to a single location. In Extermigus it becomes a weapon that can break a hole in something’s armour and leave it vulnerable, but I think you’ll still want something to land targeted shots and finish the target off. You’re right to say praesagius would be a good option here, to land accurate quakes in damaged locations. I routinely run a warlord with double quake and missiles but I think two of them might not be ideal. Games vs knights would be brief and completely pointless.

 

I honestly hadn’t considered getting the warbringer in at 1750. But ok! Here’s how I’d do this:

 

Warlord with Sunfury, macro Gatling, missiles: 475

Warlord with macro Gatling, Fist, VMBs: 460

Warlord with double quake, missiles: 440

Warbringer with double Gatling, Quake: 375

 

I think this is probably the meanest 1750 list I’ve ever come up with. It might be even nastier to swap the fist and VMBs for missiles and another macro Gatling. I do like having some kind of melee threat though. The cheaper guns in general tend to have lower strength, so Extermigus kind of makes them into the next most expensive gun - generally with a lot more shots.

 

I agree with you about the warbringer‘s guns. The arms want to be close but the carapace wants to be far away. Laser arms would be great but that’s only affordable with two double-quake warlords, and that seems kind of trolling to me, and not overall better. I think a Legio that could swap in a reaver instead of the warbringer might be even better. It gives you more points to work with so you can bring more lasers. The reaver would be really useful for missions and you’d have the option of a melee weapon.

Edited August 20, 2020 by Mandragola

[Sherrypie]

Warbringer is in a bit of a weird spot with its arms. Only guns that really synergize with the ranges of Mori are Volcanoes, and then that engine has no shieldbreaking power of its own. I've ran mine with double laser blasters in there for range and had decent success with it, but that depends on supporting engines doing the prep work (though Extermigus makes laser weapons quite good, as the 8 -> 10 shift in Strength is perhaps the most significant as Mandragora mentioned).

 

Bellicosa + arm Gatlings would probably be a better bet on its own, but that's up to what role you want it to have on the field.

[depthcharge12]

What is the breakdown on weapons that occupy and occasionally overlap carapace slots? Specifically warlords, and to a lesser extent, Reavers.

 

I’m talking about Vulcan Mega Bolters vs Gatling blasters vs AMLs.

 

AMLs seem to have the on paper benefit - long range that complements the slow speed of the warlord with easy to hit bonus if you already have a ranged warlord . Simple, cheap, effective.

 

VMBs have the shortest range of the three options but get extra and exploding dice. Is 20” enough to start hitting early on though? I’d say so against aggressive movers like Mortis, Astorum, and Audax, but getting those first round shots might be tough. One of the benefits of Warlords I usually look for is the ability to quickly strip shields so that Reavers/Warbringers can take advantage of their big punchy guns to exploit any holes the warlords make.

 

Gatling blasters get S5 (S7 with extermigus!), two extra dice over AMLs, and 4” range over VMBs. Not to mention ordinance that can work in conjunction with open components and extermigus. The 2” drop between these and VMB for the +1 to hit is largely negligible unless you are facing off warlord to warlord...I mean if you can get two warlords that close in a game, hats off to you.

 

 

I originally defaulted to AMLs because they were cheap and far reaching, but Gatling and VMB jive better with the common Sunfury/macro combo and are beneficial against aggressive maniples & legios. I think Gatling tends to edge out VMBs with the extra range on the criminal 10” shooting window that they have, plus all the bonuses afforded by extermigus and +1 native Strength and ordinance.