Titans in LI

[Black Cohort]

Many people will be fielding Titans in LI, especially at the start as people build collections and with a pair of Warhounds coming in the starter box.  But how should you arm your God-Engines?  There are many choices, all for the same price; however not all of them are of equal value.  Given that even the smallest is over 10% of 3k points army, you need them to pull their weight if you take them.  Below are my thoughts on how you should equip your Titans, but I welcome others input and discussion.

 

General Thoughts

Titans should have weapons able to engage a variety of targets, mainly you want at least one weapon capable of stripping Void Shields in bulk and one weapon likely to put multiple wounds on high save units.  That second weapon could be an engine killer or just have multiple shots with good AP.  The other important consideration is range, it doesn't matter how awesome the stats of your weapons are if you die before getting in range.

 

Ideally you want to move as little as possible so you can first fire and take priority targets off the board before they get to respond.

 

Warhound

The best anti-Void shield weapon you can get is the swarmer missiles, good range, lots of dice, rapid fire; ideally you want to pair it with a Turbo-laser destructor which has the best range and good anti-armour capacity though the conversion beam dissolutor is also a decent option.  From what I can tell there is literally no reason to ever take the plasma blastgun, the turbo-laser is equal or better in every way.  If like me you only have the weapons from the LI starter box, I think your best option is the melta, it's range isn't great but neither is the volkite's and the volkite is unlikely to hurt armoured targets.

 

Dire Wolf

Because you are locked into the Ardex mega-bolter, I think this is actually a worse choice than a warhound.  None of the other weapons pair super well with the Ardex so probably take the Volcano cannon at least then you can one shot a knight if you hit or if the Ardex got lucky you might take down another scout Titan in one volley.

 

Reaver

You have a few options with the Reaver, I think you always want one Volcano Cannnon but for the second arm weapon a second Volcano Cannon, laser blaster or gatling blaster are all decent ideas.  For the torso weapon I think the Apocalypse launcher is the best option with it's huge range, but the turbo laser also isn't a bad option, it is probably only going to strip one void shield though, rather than the 2 or 3 the Apocalypse launcher gets.  On average a laser blaster and apocalypse launcher should do exactly enough hits to drop the void shields on another Reaver.

 

Warbringer

I would always take the Belicosia volcano cannon then whatever of laser or gatling blasters you want.  Three volcano cannons sounds cool, but then you have no way to take down void shields.

 

Warlord

I think it is going to be really hard to put anything against a dual volcano cannon and apocalypse launcher warlord.  All your weapons fire out to at least 70" so if you can pick a good spot to deploy you can just sit there first firing the most dangerous thing in sight.  And unlike smaller Titans your Apocalypse launcher puts out 10 shots, so you can afford your arms to only be engine killers.  You would need luck or some support to kill another warlord in one round of shooting, but anything else is going to suffer.

 

Warlord Sinister

I don't think this is worth the points to take over a regular warlord.  If you do, you want to get a volcano cannon and apocalypse launcher.

[Metzombie]

Having weapons to strip the voidshield and do damge to the titan on the same modell is not a good idea. The target chooses the order of resolving the hits.  So the turbo-laser from the Warhound will hit the shields and the swarmmissiles will bounce of the armour.

[Black Cohort]

8 minutes ago, Metzombie said:

Having weapons to strip the voidshield and do damge to the titan on the same modell is not a good idea. The target chooses the order of resolving the hits.  So the turbo-laser from the Warhound will hit the shields and the swarmmissiles will bounce of the armour.

 

Maybe I miss-read the void shield rule, but my reading of it was that the stripping of void shields happens before the normal hit allocation.

[SkimaskMohawk]

55 minutes ago, Black Cohort said:

 

Maybe I miss-read the void shield rule, but my reading of it was that the stripping of void shields happens before the normal hit allocation.

 

It does happen before hits happen to the hull, but that doesn't change the sequencing. Each firing detachment resolves of its attacks against the target as described on page 56, and the successful ones from the hit pool. The defender then allocates hits from the pool and resolves them, one at a time. 

 

So in the case of titans with voids, if you get 8 swarmer hits and 1 melta, then the melta is 100% going on the shield and the swarmers can hit the 2+ armour after.

 

In general I'd consider weapons with quake as they're pretty rare and also pretty annoying; half movement and -1 to hit are significant and titans can split fire with weapon attacks to try and spread the debuffs (at least on the warhound). Probably better to take quake weapons instead of volcano ones when presented.

 

The reavers best top weapon is still the warp missile, with the gatling blasters being extremely versatile still.

 

Warbringer is bad, as you have a massive spike in points over the reaver for...+2 voids, -1 movement and a top gun that's basically the quake, since the belicosa is so narrow in use.

 

Warlords have a whole slew of good weapons. Macro gatlings are great, quakes are super useful, various shoulder weapons are good. Even the volkite is pretty solid, though terrain dependant.

 

The sinister is just an upgrade over the warlord. You get to heal up in the end phase, you get a LD debuff bubble, and you get 2 additional weapons (as well as the left arm weapon). You can only use one of the three psi weapons per round, but those weapons all ignore every save (including voids) but armour and jink. Death pulse does d3+1 attacks to everything in a 7" aoe at 4+, -1; real good. Antipathic tempest is basically a quake cannon, adding utility without costing the arm slot, as well as being a decent tool for digging out infantry in structures. The arm cannon pierces structures and hits everything in its path, making impassable the only thing that blocks it; you can line up some great shots and do a lot of damage. And that's basically the point of this titan: do as much damage possible to as many things at once. Maybe take a melee weapon since death pulse is so short range and you don't want to get swarmed by ogryns.

 

And the real titan you should take as soon as youre in the bracket (2500) is the warmaster. An enormous 12 shields, backed up with a 1+ save when the rules tell you the "1s always a fail" thing don't apply to saves, so you're immune to anything that isn't -1. All those rate of fire Light AT weapons just bounce off the armour completely. The guns are just nuts, with an array of ardex that gun blast small armies, very competent revelators, insane suzerains, and your choice of shoulder mounts. 

[Pacific81]

I'll be using Titans in friendly games where we can port over the SM2/Titan Legions hit charts, and all of the tomfoolery that entails, but otherwise will keep their use to a minimum as they are just soooo dull in this game. I have the same criticism of Epic Armageddon actually, although at least that game compensates with better rule mechanics in other areas.

Sorry but it feels like going back to the Atari 2600 combat cartridge after you have got used to 16-bit games on the SNES, I don't think I could do it :) (this will only mean anything to people of a certain age!)

[Karhedron]

In the lore, Warhounds classically hunt in pairs. Maybe a good approach is to equip one with weapons for stripping voids and the other with turbo-lasers to deal a killing blow once the shields are down.

[Captain Idaho]

I'm inclined to consider Titans amongst the army at a whole. Titans can freely split fire their weapons so a mix of weapons works well enough in that capacity.

 

As an example, a Warlord with Apocalypse Launchers and Volcano Cannons will see the latter wasted on void shields if fired at the same turn at a titan with them still up.

 

However, a tank Detachment or 2 that unleashes fire on the enemy titan first will enable the Warlord to do serious harm. Alternatively, the Warlord can split fire and put its weapon systems somewhere else whilst unleashing all the Apocalypse Launcher shots on the titan whilst you blast something with the Volcano Cannons as needed.

[Nagashsnee]

18 hours ago, Metzombie said:

Having weapons to strip the voidshield and do damge to the titan on the same modell is not a good idea. The target chooses the order of resolving the hits.  So the turbo-laser from the Warhound will hit the shields and the swarmmissiles will bounce of the armour.

 

Do you not resolve the hits on a weapon by weapon basis tho? So vulkan shoots first X number of hits, resolve move to next weapon? Or am i getting mixed up with other games?

[Valkyrion]

No, all weapons fire at the same time so the defender can choose which pool of hits to tank on the shields.