Next AT supplement: Crucible of Retribution

[1ncarnadine]

EDIT: having compared the pictures of the new knights with the existing kit, I'm pretty sure it's not an upgrade set given the leg pieces (which are identical on both the 28mm questoris vs: mechanicum knights) are different, *however*, given the amount of detail on the mechanicum knights (extra rivets & indented sections on the knees/ thigh plating) I'm suspicious that they might still be resin rather than plastic, just as a complete kit rather than upgrades for the original sprue.

Looking at the detail on some of my standard Questoris models, I don't think this is significantly more or less detailed from what they managed with that plastic kit. I'm guessing it's fully plastic. The shoulders look like they're two pieces each, where they may have been one complete piece in resin. The upper plate and cog rim is one, and then it looks like there's another piece that's the lower two layered plates, a little bit like the Lancer kit's shoulder pieces. I think it's more noticeable on the Styrix. Fingers crossed...

[Iron Hands Fanatic]

I think there's definitely a possibility that they could be plastic, but it'd require the models to be broken into more parts than the questoris kit which is already a pretty packed sprue (although they could always have just two on a sprue and double them up like the acheron/castigator kit) - there's also the weirdness of 3D prints sometimes being used as the display model and whether it's 100% accurate to the release version, so definitely still fingers crossed it's plastic (and that we'll see them & the atropos soon). 

 

EDIT: also the fact they have cabling from their ranged weapons and that they are both fixed in a straight forward position might be another point on the plastic side - if they were resin, it's likely the display models would've been re-positioned into slightly less formulaic poses by heating the resin cables (which would likely be supplied as straight rods).

Edited October 24, 2020 by Iron Hands Fanatic

[Mandragola]

Those knights are definitely new models, not just bits to go on existing ones. Questoris aren’t really made with many separate armour plates in the first place.

 

I can’t tell at all whether they’re resin or plastic. The posss are very static though, which is a bit of a shame. For some reason that makes me think it’s a single resin model rather than a sprue of plastic ones, where they’d do a few poses.

[Mendi Warrior]

In my humble opinion, this is a plastic kit. The chassis seems to be the same as the one from the existing questoris knights. If you look closely the feet are the same, the back of the legs, the pistons at the groin level, the plating of the torso, the ornated name plate (just below the head), and the exhausts are also the same. Take a questoris model from your collection and compare it to the pics. The curved armour plates will likely consist of several parts, like for the current Acastus knights.

 

As I previously said, I wouldn't be surprised at all to see a Mechanicum knight household battleforce with 3x knight Styrix, 3x knight Magaera, 4x Cerastus knight Atrapos, and 2x Acastus knight Porphyrion Asterius being the Christmas battleforce for Adeptus Titanicus.

 

My reasoning is that knights are hugely popular, FW Mechanicum knights being quite pricey smaller plastic ones could appeal to many who can't afford to build a FW Mechanicum knight force, we haven't seen much info released about potential new models (besides some plates in the last 2 books), thinking "wow" factor here, even if I would love to see new titans, the existing chassis means less time required to design the components and sprues, and since Christmas battleforces are temporary things I would see such a Mechanicum knight household box like the initial release of the new battle sisters.

 

Now, I can be totally wrong about it, that would not be the first time I am foolishly believing something 

Edited October 24, 2020 by Mendi Warrior

[Marshal Loss]

For peeps who, like me, choose to spend a large chunk of their free time with their eyes glued up against a screen trying to read the pages, this review (video version of the S&B article) is way better than the GMG one:

 

[1ncarnadine]

I just want all of the Knight releases to finally finish up so we can move on to new Titan classes, preferably before the demand for Chaos Titans gets too overbearing. Rapier Titans or similar, scale 7 anything, that probably inevitable Bellicosa Warbringer kit, etc. Knight models are neat but have been given too much attention in the production schedule imo. As long as they sell well they might be helping to fund what I'd like to see though, so there's that.

 

Heck, I'd even be more interested in seeing very different new Knight classes or perhaps the Dominus or Armiger in the game over these Mechanicum variants, which are more likely to just compete with Questoris. And those already don't compete well with Cerastus a lot of the time.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

Dominus has to be coming, but I'm not so sure about Armigers, I just feel like they're just too small to really fit in this game. Like Frigates trying to pretend they're line of battle ships.

[Noserenda]

I suspect we will see armigers eventually, i mean most of the knights are fairly ineffective in AT already :D  Im just wanting more titan love tbh, i like knights but they dont change up the game the way a new titan chassis/type would.

[1ncarnadine]

Keep in mind Questoris are scale 3, so they've at least planned for things at scale 1 & 2 even if they may not follow through on adding it any time soon.

I'm reading through more of the captions and the Forge World backgrounds from the much clearer Sprues & Brews vid, and yes, more of this, thank you. Really excited for this book! I haven't been all that enamored by the campaign sections in these so far (not great, not terrible), but I'm really enjoying some of the stories here.

Also saw that the Kulisaetai Warhound was named "Amrok" for a mythical Inuit wolf, "Amarok." It says they found the name from some old data archive they had, and it got me thinking: how many ancient archives in the warhammer universe are just really corrupted backups of wikipedia? I shudder for the forge that bases its culture on flash drives of _chan message board histories. Actually, that might explain Kalibrax's death cult problems
 

[RipOffProductions]

Dominus has to be coming, but I'm not so sure about Armigers, I just feel like they're just too small to really fit in this game. Like Frigates trying to pretend they're line of battle ships.

I remember seeing an interview about the design/history of Imperial Knights, and how original ideas for Armigers were for them being in a sort of a "squire" type role to the other knights, doing things like ammo resupply and field repairs(and the occasional "look out sir!"), so I could see that coming back in AT scale warfare, spend a few points to add an Armiger to a Bander of larger knights, gives them a buff, and you can sacrifice that buff to divert a wound away from the knights in the banner... or something like that.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

That's a better idea than them being a squad I'm their own right. Outside of knight v knight games.

[TheDreadfulSagittary]

I had no real progress in the last months as I'm still completely undecided which loyalist legion to choose... all my new titans are standing (and gathering dust) on my table because of this for months now. I might pick up this book just for the background, maybe it gives me some inspiration - although I hoped it from the Defence of Ryza...

[Marshal Loss]

Lore seems super cool so far, thoroughly enjoyed the bits I've read - hope they decide to continue doing the extra pages of story/background in future books because it's a really nice step in the right direction.

[Noserenda]

One thing a friend on FB reminded me of when talking about Armigers is that all of their weapons are at least more useful than the Avenger on this scale so theyd work even if they were super killable. I like the idea of using them as support rather than pure units though!

On the databases thing though, i seem to recall from the Mechanicus codex fluff a bunch of weird impressions of what Mules were :D 

[Iron Hands Fanatic]

I'd kinda forgotten about dominus knights, but they'd certainly be an interesting addition - I would love to see armigers in the game (if only to complete the knight range), I do think they could fill a decent niche points wise, as a way to 'top up' lists that are short of max but not by enough for a knight banner/ the underdog margin, slightly under questoris weapon power but much more killable.

 

In terms of Titans, even without fundamentally new chassis (which I'm eager to see), I think there are ways of expanding the roster based on the Titans we already have - the background for the Nemesis Warbringer in it's ruleset for the Age of Darkness system mentions it's one of a number of Warbringer subtypes, and given that 'Nemesis' has been talked about as a classification for Titans that exchange weapons from the class below them for one from the class above them, a Warbinger Battle Titan with a re-structured torso/shoulder that sports a pair of warhound weapons on its carapace would be cool to see.

[schoon]

Doing the Mechanicum Knights in plastic would seem to fit into the FW/AT development cycle.

 

While it's always nice to have more toys to play with, I do find myself wishing for a few more Titan toys (no disrespect to the Knight fans out there).

 

I guess we'll have to wait till the next book comes out before finding out...

[Mandragola]

Yeah I think pretty much everyone would prefer a new titan to new knights at this point. On the other hand, it's kind of inevitable that FW will do the easy thing of miniaturising their existing designs rather than coming up with a whole new thing like a Titan.

 

It might not actually affect the schedule for designing new stuff, but it might. I don't know if it's the same people designing new things as downsizing the existing stuff. 

 

With any luck they'll do a small range of the missing admech knights (including the Asterion - the only missing model that we already have rules for) and then go back to titans.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

From what I know of how things were designed, the titans are designed by a Forgeworld guy in full scale, then it's the AT designer's job to shrink them. He then had to also learn how to convert them into a format which can be moulded on sprue when AT went plastic.

 

So the shrinking guy can be working on knights while he waits for the titan guy to unveil the Rapier, and he then has to shrink it down.

 

Which means we will probably see the Rapier in 40k scale first, before AT. Which may be FW's first commonly seen full size titan.

[Mandragola]

I was thinking something similar: that a true titan which could reasonably be fielded in 40k would be a good seller for GW. It would make sense to build that and subsequently release it for AT.

 

I'm not sure it always works that way though. We've got a number of weapons for titans in AT now that don't exist in 40k, or that existed first in AT. I think it might actually be a simpler process to start with an AT object and add detail as you scale it up, rather than to shrink it and see what you can keep. Or it might be that there's roughly the same level of difficulty  for scaling up or down.

 

There's a slight issue with scale for a rapier in AT. Warhounds are scale 6 and Acastus are scale 5. Is it ok for the Rapier to be scale 5 as well? I guess it could work ok if the Rapier is tall and skinny compared to the Acastus' squad shape, so they have the same mass but different proportions.

[Sherrypie]

The Acastii are pretty chunky, while noted as being the largest plausible mechs before the proper titans. I wouldn't be too surprised if the Rapier would be Scale 5 if it is substantially light, like one gun on legs, but otherwise I'd lean on it being Scale 6 like the Warhound.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I wouldn't be surprised if the Rapier was a 7, because we know that the Audax rules apply to titans 7 and below.

In my head, a rapier being a fairly light sword, I wouldn't be surprised if a Rapier Scout Titan was a taller, more willowy thing with a preference for melee.

[Sherrypie]

I wouldn't be surprised if the Rapier was a 7, because we know that the Audax rules apply to titans 7 and below.

 

In my head, a rapier being a fairly light sword, I wouldn't be surprised if a Rapier Scout Titan was a taller, more willowy thing with a preference for melee.

Scout titans specialising in melee would be somewhat counterintuitive, methinks. Audax going for the throat with claws is a special case, as they don't use battle titans at all.

 

As the obligatory side note down unrelated internet pedantry, rapiers aren't really that light as swords go. A 17th century Italian rapier (which they didn't really call rapiers until much later) was on the heavier side of one-handed swords with a very long blade and perfectly capable of multiple fighting styles. Then again, if we compare it to the absurdly heavy types of weapons seen in the grim darkness, it sure feels light in comparison :D

[Sandlemad]

Folks have speculated about SG doing the classic thing of tying the heresy-era Rapier design into a later chaos design (in the same fashion as the Vultarax/Blight Drone), specifically the Questor or Subjugator patterns of Slaaneshi titan. Permitting changes in Epic designs and sculpting trends, they're roughly the height of a Warhound but a good bit slighter and more gracile. Less mass than a Warhound. Probably overall still more mass than an Acastus knight but not by much. If that's where they're drawing inspiration, I can see the Rapier being either a big scale 5 or a small scale 6, so to speak.

 

It does make you wonder about armament though. What would make sense for a sub-Warhound scout titan's design space? A single Warhound-grade weapon? Possibly a chainfist equivalent, if CC is supposed to be its niche? Some short range stuff like the porphyrion's twin regular lascannons could work as well, even if it's only likely to do much against smaller stuff.

 

I think whatever they do with the Rapier, it's probably always going to be outshot by acastus knights but that's an in-universe quirk of the knights and titans not being on precisely the same size and power scale (which I still think is a feature, not a bug).

Edited October 27, 2020 by Sandlemad

[Noserenda]

We know the Warbringer was concepted during AT playtesting and it stands to reason the other new titan designs were at least hashed out at the same time, which save a lot of the work and i think just puts them in the queue to be made into models and then put into production. I do think things get built in 40k scale first for whatever reason, though the release order isnt always that way around, a whole bunch of 40k titan weapons got designed around the release of the 40k warlord but not released until later if at all, like the Quake cannon among others (best way to see is to look at their 40k statlines for the missing weapons, all of those got commissioned afaik).

The Rapier has a single Warhound weapon from its depiction in a novel afaik, though im hoping for some secondary weapon systems that the better thought out modern designs tend to mount, even if its a battery of antipersonnel guns that arent useful in AT it just makes the beast seem more plausible.

[Gattopardo]

Folks have speculated about SG doing the classic thing of tying the heresy-era Rapier design into a later chaos design (in the same fashion as the Vultarax/Blight Drone), specifically the Questor or Subjugator patterns of Slaaneshi titan. Permitting changes in Epic designs and sculpting trends, they're roughly the height of a Warhound but a good bit slighter and more gracile. Less mass than a Warhound. Probably overall still more mass than an Acastus knight but not by much. If that's where they're drawing inspiration, I can see the Rapier being either a big scale 5 or a small scale 6, so to speak.

 

It does make you wonder about armament though. What would make sense for a sub-Warhound scout titan's design space? A single Warhound-grade weapon? Possibly a chainfist equivalent, if CC is supposed to be its niche? Some short range stuff like the porphyrion's twin regular lascannons could work as well, even if it's only likely to do much against smaller stuff.

 

I think whatever they do with the Rapier, it's probably always going to be outshot by acastus knights but that's an in-universe quirk of the knights and titans not being on precisely the same size and power scale (which I still think is a feature, not a bug).

 

This does hit on a bit of a problem with the Rapier. Exactly what will its role be in the game? It's clearly got to be a Titan rather than a Knight, but equally - as far as I remember - it's just got one (warhound class) gun, as Noserenda said. I guess it could be faster than a Warhound, which would be interesting - and presumably you'd tend to be taking the thing in multiples, so you'd get squadron benefits as well. Certainly an interesting problem for the design team.