Legio Rankings

[General Zodd]

Hi all,

 

I’ve been pondering the apparent imbalance between different Legio rules and thought I’d be a bit more systematic with my thinking, but I’ll come to that in a minute. I guess the first question should be, why bother? Well, in narrative games it’s not really an issue, but it would be good to know if you’re up against it, or have an advantage going into a game, which you might then think about rebalancing. But for tournament/competitive matched play, having a handicap system might be worth considering.

 

Before I get into the detail, this is all just my perspective. I’ve looked at a few other people’s thoughts where it’s available to inform my thinking, but ultimately this will be riddled with my own gaming biases, and is more intended as a place to start a conversation from if anyone else is interested!

 

To stop this being a wall of text, I’ll break it into a few posts so you can respond to different sections without having the whole block being quoted!

Edited January 7, 2021 by General Zodd

[General Zodd]

So, my system was to allocate a fairly arbitrary point value to each aspect of a Legio, it’s traits, stratagems, wargear and Princeps senioris abilities, plus anything else that didn’t quite fit.

 

For Legio traits I tried to judge whether something was useful in every game, or only occasionally. Then how impactful the rule was when it came into play. If something was always good, I gave it 1.5, always moderate or occasionally good, 1 point, always rubbish or occasionally moderate 0.5, occasionally rubbish 0. I scored each trait and added them together.

For stratagems, if they had any which I would almost always want to take, I scored that 1, if they had any which I would consider taking, they got 0.5, and any I thought were rubbish got 0. I only awarded the highest of those points, so if someone had two I would consider I still only gave them 0.5. Unless they had two I would almost always take, in which case I gave them 1.5.

 

Wargear was scored the same as above, again not combining if they had multiple wargear, but just giving the single highest score.

Senioris abilities are a bit weird as officially you roll in the table, but many people just pick the one they want. If you pick that makes all Legios inherently better than a generic force as you have more options, but again if there was nothing on their table I thought was worthwhile I gave them 0, if they had one or two I’d consider they got 0.5, if all three are good or one is solid gold I gave 1 point.

 

Miscellaneous points were awarded for Audax having unique access to the Canis Light Maniple, and to the Crusade Legio for the ability to pick and choose what you want.

[General Zodd]

I won’t publish all my points calculations, unless you’re really interested and I can figure out a way of doing it without breaking the forum, but end results range from 2 points right up to 6. Rather than having 9 different tiers, I’ve made anything 5 and above ‘S’ Tier, 4-4.5 Tier 1, 3-3.5 Tier 2 and less than 3 is Tier 3.

 

My tiering structure is proposed as;

 

S Tier

Crusade Legios, Praesagius and Audax

 

Tier 1

Vulpa, Venator, Laniaskara, Tritonis, Tempestus, Astorum, Solaria, Fureans, Crucius, Oberon, Vulturum, Ignatum

 

Tier 2

Gryphonicus, Defensor, Mortis, Fortidus, Vulcanum, Damicium, Lysanda, Infernus, Honorum, Osedax, Magna

 

Tier 3

Mordaxis, Astraman, Atarus, Krytos, Interfector, Kulisatei

[General Zodd]

For full disclosure, I have both an Atarus force (which was where I first noticed the disparity in power levels!) and a Fureans force. So I have one Legio that comes out near the top and one at the bottom!

 

As for what to do about that, the most elegant solution that I could think of was that the lower tiered force gets a number of bonus Stratagem points equal to the difference in power level. So my Tier 3 Atarus playing against my Tier 1 Fureans would get 2 bonus stratagem points. But that’s just the first thing that occurred to me, open to suggestions and comments!

[Marshal Loss]

I'm not convinced that the differences between the Legios are large enough to warrant the creation of a handicap system. Even a single stratagem point more than your opponent can have a significant impact and the game's core mechanics are solid enough to allow even a "weak" Legio to beat a "strong" Legio without needing some kind of bonus to make up the difference. Moreover, with the exception of Krytos who don't really have anything in their favour at all, it'll be impossible to get a firm consensus on tier lists, or even how many tiers there should be in the first place.

 

To illustrate the point, you put Magna in T2, yet from my experience they are incredibly & reliably powerful. I'd be laughing all the way to the bank if somebody handed me 2 stratagem points coming up against a Legio like Audax. How does a Legio like Tempestus get to T1 over some of the guys in T2? What makes Audax/Praesagius stronger than Astorum or Fureans? And what about those Legios who might have one gimmick/utilise one maniple absurdly well but then are mediocre at everything else? My Mordaxis generally suck yet I've played games against a friend whose force is made to turtle with Fortis/Regia and I generally annihilate him because Toxin Nodes are very powerful in that particular context. So much subjectivity here, too many variables. No two players are necessarily going to build their Legios in the same way which might have a disproportionate impact on the results or end up with somebody being penalised for no good reason. You'd probably need to post the calculations in their entirety because some of the results don't make a lot of sense.

 

In my experience, missions are the great equaliser. Some missions suck for certain Legios (ever tried doing retrieval as Mordaxis? ) and rule for others. The open engine war system was a huge step in the right direction on this front, and I'd love to play in an event where those cards were used.

 

Hope I don't sound overly negative, & I appreciate the effort you've put in. Just a little skeptical of expanding beyond the system which we already possess (where SP are handed out based on maniple number).

[Mandragola]

It's interesting to look at this but I think ultimately not the right way to go about it, unfortunately. The scores you've come to have a number of issues, as will always be the case when you try and do this in a formulaic fashion, rather than relying on actual analysis of the Legios' abilities. You're basically just counting Legios' abilities (or at least the ones that don't suck) rather than really analysing them.

 

So for example you've got Astorum, with their incredibly powerful ability to reroll repair dice used every turn, on the same tier as Solaria with... kind of nothing for anything bigger than a Warhound. Astorum are generally regarded as a top tier Legio and Solaria bottom tier, or near to it so this doesn't feel right.

 

Of course, people are able to win games with Solaria and lose them with Astorum. Luckily, AT games aren't determined by Legio traits. I think Lee Marshal went 5:0 with his Solaria at the Legio walks early last year. Played in the right way, all sorts of combinations can be effective.

 

This makes it very difficult to objectively judge Legios - if a good player using a specific build cna get a lot out of a Legio, but it doesn't do much at all for most players, is it good? Lee would say it is, and that it's thematic and works how the Legio is meant to. But none of that can be determined by trying to score the Legios on a points-based system.

 

I like your proposal of adding SPs to the handicapped player. It should probably only be 1SP, given that you get 2SPs for having no Legio at all. But then maybe you should also add handicaps based on skill, since that's much more important.

[General Zodd]

Thanks for the considered reply Marshall Loss! I think your reservations come down to three areas; is this necessary at all, is the proposed tiering itself defensible/objective, and are stratagem points the way to resolve it.

 

Firstly, as I mentioned, in narrative play it’s really not that big a deal, but if anyone is running an event and wanted to think about it from a more competitive level playing field perspective I do think there’s sufficient disparity between Legios to think about *some* type of system. If we take poor old Krytos and compare them to Praesagius, one has no meaningful benefit over a generic Legio, but still gives up 2 Stratagem points for the right to call themselves Krytos. Their Praesagius opponent gets to reroll location dice at long range (super useful with blast weapons), get to replace their Senioris if they die and once per battle get a free emergency repair exactly when they might want it most. That’s before you look at their optional extras. I’m not saying Krytos can’t win that battle, of course they can, but it’s an uphill struggle if player skill is similar. There also isn’t a mission where Krytos is favoured unless there’s some unusual element about destroying scenery. Even then they’d have to use stratagem points or Legio equipment to get that benefit and Praesagius’ abilities would still be useful. That’s at either end of the spectrum, so is the most extreme example, but it illustrates my point.

 

Now, the tiering itself, I will think about how to post the spreadsheet on here (anyone have any suggestions how I do that?) so you can see my working out, but I’ve outlined my process. We will obviously have differences of opinion on the impact or utility of various abilities, and in my defence I caveat that this is based on my own gaming preferences, and is the start of a conversation rather than a definitive list. Your point about Magna is interesting, as I’m not that impressed by them. Their ability is good, but they only have the one trait and requires you to get close making you predictable. Their stratagems are good, but pretty expensive, and their wargear is excellent but only affects one weapon on one class of Titan so far. I also don’t rate their Senioris table. I’d be interested to know why you rate them so highly.

 

On your final point about Stratagem points, that was simply a first stab at a nice and simple response. Now, given that you give your opponent two SP for taking a Legio, maybe that handicap could be deducted from that instead? So if you have a Tier 1 Legio vs a Tier 3 (whatever we decide those tiers include) the Tier 1 Legio wouldn’t receive those bonus SP? Again, just a thought.

 

Interested to hear what others feel, is this a worthwhile endeavour? Is it all a big fuss over nothing? Are Legio Astraman secretly really amazing?

Edited January 7, 2021 by General Zodd

[General Zodd]

Hi Mandragola, interesting points, I think Solaria is one of those Legios who can be really effective with a skilled commander. Their stratagem alone makes them a standout in my opinion, and their wargear options are both strong, as is their Senioris traits. I have tried to balance traits as mentioned, rather than just adding them together. Solaria, for example, got just one point for their trait as it’s always relevant every game, but is only of moderate impact. Astorum got 2.5 for their traits in contrast, but nothing for wargear, obviously. They also only got 0.5 for a middling set of Senioris traits. You could easily argue that traits should be more heavily weighted compared to other categories, which would then increase Astorum’s ranking, but also widen the field.

 

You make a really interesting point about skill required to get the most out of a Legio. If you have one Legio whose abilities are useful but require no finesse, and a Legio with rules that can be amazing if you know exactly how to use them, how do you balance that? I genuinely don’t know. Audax is probably the most obvious one, they have a huge restriction but are potentially devastating in the right situation and in the right hands, but it would be very easy to get caught on the hop and lose in very short order!

 

As for handicapping for skill, that’s not my intention. Skill should be the deciding factor, in my opinion, not something you should try to balance for. This isn’t golf!

[SkimaskMohawk]

I largely agree with others. Theres too much context to what makes some stuff good or not. The core matched play mission isnt able to measure efficacy as its so variable and asymmetrical to boot. So there's the legio rules combined with a given maniple, allegiance and stratagem points. Optional rules. Terrain saturation. That's so important, it should almost come after legio.

 

Not a lot of terrain and legios that favour long range combat on durable chassis will dominate. Dense terrain will favour smaller faster chassis. Urban terrain like when people play with dropzone commander stuff almost swings back around to large titans if the loadout is correct, but usually still favours the lighter units.

 

Using audax as an example, they have the most flexible and durable warhounds. But, to make the most of their durability, they have to be vulnerable to blasts. To make the most of the warhounds' weapons, they have to be quite close and be vulnerable to any melee from dedicated units like reavers and lancers. Some lists and tables will get rolled by the warhound tide, others will deal with it easily.

[Marshal Loss]

Firstly, as I mentioned, in narrative play it’s really not that big a deal, but if anyone is running an event and wanted to think about it from a more competitive level playing field perspective I do think there’s sufficient disparity between Legios to think about *some* type of system.

I don't think that's true at all, and there's a reason why you don't see successful centralised efforts to do this for other GW games, e.g. 40k, where balance issues between factions are far more egregious. Already on this topic - through our individual perspectives and experiences - it's obvious how important context is. The fact that your tier list contains some ??? decisions for me & others illustrates that. AT isn't like 40k where you virtually never see a "bad" army (in this case Legio) sweeping a tournament; there isn't sufficient disparity between Legios to warrant this type of system. It's precisely because Titanicus is generally so well-balanced that I think your universalizing efforts are ultimately doomed to fail.

 

The example you provided as being the worst case scenario, Krytos against Praesagius, sort of shows what I mean. What classes + maniples are both sides taking? What guns are they taking on their titans? What non-Legio specific stratagems are they taking? Who has the Opus? How is the board set up, who gets which side, what are the objectives, how much terrain is there? If both players' skill is considered equal then the answers to any/all of these questions arguably matter more than which Legio one picks.

 

There's also the relative ease with which some Legios' "reliable" abilities can be completely negated: take Mortis, for example. The only genuinely great thing they have is March of the Dead, which can potentially be negated by the far cheaper and universally available Vox Blackout. Other abilities (e.g. Mordaxis ignoring concussive) may disproportionately impact some games and not others based on the weapons taken and not on their opponent's chosen Legio. How can your system hope to alleviate disparities between Legios when there are so many outside variables impacting how reliable/unreliable an ability/trait/wargear choice is? You can say that "well, Mordaxis' ability won't matter all the time, and my system gives it a rating based off that", which may well be true, but in the context of a tournament (or even a single competitive game) that assumption could have massive consequences. And what about wargear choices that have a pro & a con (e.g. Toxin Nodes) compared to wargear choices that only offer a flat benefit? Are these both worth the same in your system? Because they shouldn't be, even if they cost the same amount of points. Tricky stuff.

 

Could cite many other examples or quibble with other rankings (e.g. in what universe is Tempestus/Solaria better than Magna or Vulcanum or Damicium or Infernus?) but I don't want to labour the point.

 

Your point about Magna is interesting, as I’m not that impressed by them. Their ability is good, but they only have the one trait and requires you to get close making you predictable. Their stratagems are good, but pretty expensive, and their wargear is excellent but only affects one weapon on one class of Titan so far. I also don’t rate their Senioris table. I’d be interested to know why you rate them so highly.

I mean, I think it's obvious why they're so strong, and I've never seen them ranked so low before today, which highlights the importance of perspective here: Magna are easily one of the best close-range Legios in the game. Their two stratagems are pricey, yes, but allow you to build around melee or close range shooting (often both) and can potentially knock an opponent out of the game in a single round. Guaranteed charges & re-rolls is nuts, while Spearhead Assault with a Lupercal or Ferrox is outright disgusting. DPOs only impact a single gun on a single class, but said weapon is already one of the best guns in the game on the most ubiquitous class in the game. As for Princeps traits, we have Slayer of Kings (a reprint of Fureans' best trait): think about that on a Reaver...

 

Magna's rules/bonuses lend themselves well to any class/maniple, are super reliable, aren't limited solely to melee or range, and can be of use against nearly any opponent in nearly any mission type. My most regular opponent - a good player - uses Praesagius, supposedly your top choice, and I've never once thought of them as a particularly powerful Legio. I appreciate this evidence is purely anecdotal, but you get the point. The idea to me that Solaria or Tempestus deserves to be a higher ranking than Magna is...well...

 

Yet you might read all of the above, read Magna's rules again, and go "I think they suck". To each their own! I think the only thing people can agree on, balance-wise, is...

1. Krytos offers no tangible benefit whatsoever
2. Some of the "build a Legio" combinations can potentially be broken

 

Is this a worthwhile endeavour? Is it all a big fuss over nothing?

I wouldn't say it's a big fuss over nothing - this is a great game, one worthy of discussion, and I applaud the passion - but no, I don't think it's worth your time. There are too many variables, the game is too context dependent, and I'm quite confident that the overwhelming majority of players would agree that Legio choice doesn't matter enough to make such an effort necessary.

 

If you're serious about continuing then you need lots of data, well beyond what this forum is able to offer. Try the big AT groups on FB + Reddit as well, the experiences of others might offer some guidance.

[Gryphonicus Walks]

I’d be interested to see what people’s perceptions of the top, middle and bottom tier legions are based on their own experience/appreciation of the rules

[Gattopardo]

This is a very interesting topic, but one problem is that, like Mandragola said, you've really got to actually analyse each Legio as a whole, because it's not solely a question of how good each trait is, but how they work cohesively.

 

Take Astorum for example. They're generally thought to be one of the stronger Legios - rightly in my view. Partly that is because Veteran Princeps is a universally useful trait that will help any build (albeit some more than others) and just means your Titans are more durable and can push their reactors harder than other Legios. But it's also to do with how their rules work together as a whole. Veteran Princeps favours taking Warlords and means that Astorum Warlords are really tough; and War March helps mitigate one of the biggest weaknesses of the Warlord chassis. Then on top of that there is the Machine Defiance strat. In isolation it's ok. But it becomes potentially great when combined with the other Legio rules - you will probably have a lot of Warlords (and the strat works best on Warlords), and the rerolls to repairs mean it's already harder to drop your shields. Then you get this strat that gives you a good chance of bringing voids back online when your opponent finally does drop them! And of course you can then take a maniple that gives further benefits to durability, like the Fortis or Regia. So Astorum have rules that work together harmoniously. Other Legios might have good rules individually but they don't always work so well together.

 

Infernus are another example and for me an obviously strong Legio. First off they can buy rerolls for 5 points, which is kind of insane really. Then they've got the Burned Ones strat which is both cheap (1 stratagem point? Really??) and great. Just removing a piece of blocking terrain whenever you want in the combat phase - so your opponent thought they'd hid from your Melta Reaver? Think again.....Oh, and by the way, the Princeps of that Melta Reaver probably has World Burner, so he's going to shoot you with it twice, with a reroll. That's quite superb really. The melta cannon is a great gun anyway, but Infernus's rules make it loads better by doubling its output and making it more reliable; and something like Burned Ones is so hard for your opponent to play around, especially as you can take it more than once.

 

There are other factors to consider too. For example, some Legios have great Princeps traits. That's nice, but not as good as having a really good Legio trait, because there are some really good generic Princeps traits. Of course if you've got something like World Burner you're probably going to take that as it's just so good, but it's no real disadvantage for Astorum that their Princeps traits are so-so, as you can always take a good one from the generic set.

 

This is why the Crusade Legios are potentially so good. Most of the options don't seem too overpowered to me (apart from stuff like Tracking Gyroscopes and Blind Missiles). The real issue is that you can pick four good things that all work well together, so you're always going to end up with something that is at least as good as the best named Legios and in some cases better. Most of the named Legios have at least one thing that is so-so or doesn't combo that well with their other traits. And it's no big deal that a Crusade Legio can't have a special Princeps Trait as you can just pick a good one from the rulebook.

[Noserenda]

I think there are definitely Tiers of Legios in the game, some are outright good or bad and some lock you into a fairly limited set of build to "work" (Which is fine!) but im not sure you can quantify it so directly. I suspect its going to be an ongoing problem if SG keep adding Legios at the current rate though. 

[Gryphonicus Walks]

Appreciate all of that mine was just a general musing rather than deep out out analysis.

 

Astorum are generally considered top tier, Kyrtos lower etc.

 

I’m really surprised by how meh Mortis rules are.

 

What’s the general consensus on Gryphonicus?

Edited January 8, 2021 by Gryphonicus Walks

[SkimaskMohawk]

Burned ones is weird to me for a few different reasons.

 

First the strat basically forces an optional rule into the game. My buddy basically thought it was useless because to him it only works when you've decided to use the optional rules for destroying blocking, because....

 

The second problem is the new terrain piece. If you don't have ruined versions of the blocking terrain on hand, how do you determine it and what are it's properties? Does it maintain the height? How about it's ability to deny line of sight? What does "approximate size" actually mean? Is it fair for an Infernus player to make a terrain piece that's like the four corners of the building but have it completely open for Los purposes?

 

The last problem is how far you can take it. The only qualifier is blocking; I have some battlefield in a box buttes that are bigger than warlords and completely solid. How would any titan burn that down and what would they put in its place?

 

At the end of it, it's a very gotcha stratagem that gets more and more silly if your regular opponents don't really define terrain past Difficult, Open and Blocking, while also just leading to arguments on the replacement terrain.

[Mandragola]

Hi Mandragola, interesting points, I think Solaria is one of those Legios who can be really effective with a skilled commander. Their stratagem alone makes them a standout in my opinion, and their wargear options are both strong, as is their Senioris traits. I have tried to balance traits as mentioned, rather than just adding them together. Solaria, for example, got just one point for their trait as it’s always relevant every game, but is only of moderate impact. Astorum got 2.5 for their traits in contrast, but nothing for wargear, obviously. They also only got 0.5 for a middling set of Senioris traits. You could easily argue that traits should be more heavily weighted compared to other categories, which would then increase Astorum’s ranking, but also widen the field.

 

You make a really interesting point about skill required to get the most out of a Legio. If you have one Legio whose abilities are useful but require no finesse, and a Legio with rules that can be amazing if you know exactly how to use them, how do you balance that? I genuinely don’t know. Audax is probably the most obvious one, they have a huge restriction but are potentially devastating in the right situation and in the right hands, but it would be very easy to get caught on the hop and lose in very short order!

 

As for handicapping for skill, that’s not my intention. Skill should be the deciding factor, in my opinion, not something you should try to balance for. This isn’t golf!

I'm surprised Astorum get any points for their Princeps traits to be honest. There's nothing in there better than the generic table and the random order trait is hilariously awful, meaning you can never afford to randomly generate a trait.

 

On the question of ranking Legios, I think there are Legios that are good in specific builds, like Solaria, and Legios that are always going to be good, like Astorum. I think it's probably reasonable to grade a Legio based on its best potential, because that's probably what people are aiming for. It's unlikely someone's going to build a Solaria Fortis maniple - or at least not without knowing that they're making life difficult for themselves. So it's fair to give Solaria a high rating since they can be made do great things.

 

One of the things I like about tournaments (which don't really exist in AT yet) is that they nearly always use the Swis system of pairing players who have won against others who have. It tends to put players with comparable skill against each other, meaning everyone has more enjoyable games. Of course there are a lot of mismatches in game one, but rarely by game 5.

 

This is why the Crusade Legios are potentially so good. Most of the options don't seem too overpowered to me (apart from stuff like Tracking Gyroscopes and Blind Missiles). The real issue is that you can pick four good things that all work well together, so you're always going to end up with something that is at least as good as the best named Legios and in some cases better. Most of the named Legios have at least one thing that is so-so or doesn't combo that well with their other traits. And it's no big deal that a Crusade Legio can't have a special Princeps Trait as you can just pick a good one from the rulebook.

Crusade Legios are very problematic. You can always twist these things if you want. Gyros are really bad for the game because they allow Warlords to just sit back on first fire and spray missiles everywhere. It's not a lot of fun to get tabled by a barrage from Warlords and Acastus before you start moving.

 

And you're right to point out that very few Legios have four useful traits, but Crusade Legios always will. Even if a Legio has pretty good traits it's not likely to be an absolutely perfect combination for the battlegroup you're fielding, but you can tailor a Crusade Legio's abilities precisely to the maniple and engines you have on the day.

 

I’m really surprised by how meh Mortis rules are.

 

What’s the general consensus on Gryphonicus?

Mortis come from Titandeath. That book contains some of the worst balance between Legios. It has the very powerful Astorum and Fureans and the far weaker Krytos and Atarus. Mortis are not that weak - the March of the Dead strat has all kinds of useful applications - but it's true thier trait is pretty insignificant. To be fair there are some pretty weak Legios in other books (and other problems, like half the rules in Molech making no sense at all) but Titandeath seems to have the biggest extremes in either direction.

[Gattopardo]

Yes I couldn't agree more about Tracking Gyroscopes. Not only is it absurdly underpriced, it also ruins the balance of the game by practically removing the downsides of the Warlord chassis. It makes the Warlord so much easier to use and harder to counter and kind of removes any need for the player using them to think hard about manoeuvring. It also means taking first fire orders is a no brainer. If it was only available for Warbringers that would be much better.

 

There are a few other custom Legio traits that are similar. Blind Missiles is one..it's incredibly powerful, particularly on a Reaver. You're giving up less firepower and you can put the marker anywhere due to the Reaver's 360 degree fire arc. I think you should at least have to roll to hit, or if not you should have to roll for scatter. Automatically shutting down an enemy titan at a key point is too strong I think, especially as your opponent can't do anything to mitigate it.

 

Like you say the Crusade Legios allow you to tailor not just to a maniple but even to the specific loadouts of your Titans, and even if people exercise some restraint over the absolute worst balanced traits I think you'll still see pretty much everyone taking four useful things that mesh well with their battlegroup. I think if I were organising an event I'd probably ban their use.

 

In terms of the Legios generally, we're also in a slightly odd place in that there have been a lot of rules released for numerous Legios over the last year but there will have been far fewer games than normal. So Ignatum and Laniaskara look strong, for example, but it's hard to say just how strong when many people won't have played with them much, or even at all.

Edited January 9, 2021 by Gattopardo

[Uberlord Gendo]

One might think about Legios by identifying the builds and play styles that their rules are conducive for and then consider how finicky those domains are. Audax does one thing pretty damn well. If you do that thing, then you're solid unless you run into something that counters that, but really the thing that makes Audax good or bad is how an all Warhound list fits into the game. Vulpa pushes CC and it's apparent tier depends on how well you can put together a CC heavy list playing into Vulpa's buffs. If there's no way to do that, then it isn't that Vulpa itself is bad, it's that the premise the legion is built on isn't there. Meanwhile a legio like Mortis or Presageius is very open ended. There won't be many builds that don't gain something from their rules, granting a great deal of flexibility, but that isn't so much their rules being good as that they provide space to do X and then provide some nice buffs on top of that. (Though with Presageius, that set of buffs is super nice.)

[Gryphonicus Walks]

So what do maniples do we think suit which legions best?

[Mandragola]

So what do maniples do we think suit which legions best?

This is potentially an enormous topic, given the number of Legios and Maniples we now have. There are hundreds of combinations. Most are kind of fine. And then you have to look at what weapons to give the engines in the maniple, whether to go for one full maniple or two small ones, and so on.

 

And the answers are kind of obvious. Tough Legios often combine well with tough Maniples, like Fortis or Regia. Melee-focused or fast Legios combine well with Maniples like Ferrox and Lupercal. Legios like Crucius and Astorum that can manage heat well work well for maniples like Extermigus that generate more heat. It's hard to go wrong with an Axiom maniple, for most Legios.

 

The option to swap engines in Maniples changes things too. Gryphonicus can run a Ferrox maniple with three very scary melee Reavers, for example. This can sometimes be useless though, if the maniple (such as a Lupercal) specifies it only affects a particular class of titan.