Legions Imperialis Legions Imperialis: The Devastation of Tallarn + New Models

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

1 hour ago, Marshal Rohr said:

Me turning around to see a blanket laid over the table: Is that a Warmaster Titan or are you just happy to see me

 

 

 

heyoooooo

Smart players would put their titans beside large buildings to hide their silhouette. 

Edited August 5 by Deus_Ex_Machina

[Noserenda]

2 hours ago, Marshal Rohr said:

Me turning around to see a blanket laid over the table: Is that a Warmaster Titan or are you just happy to see me

 

 

 

heyoooooo

And now i have to explain to my wife why i nearly choked on my drink :D 

[Arendious]

1 hour ago, Deus_Ex_Machina said:

Smart players would put their titans beside large buildings to hide their silhouette. 

*Dramatically whips blanket off the table*

 

You thought it was a Warmaster! But it is I! Three Warhounds in a trenchcoat!

 

 

I actually quite like the idea of using tokens that match a unit's type (Core, Battle Tank, etc ) and only revealing the unit itself once within a certain distance. 

 

Also, since we have unit size attributes, that would allow for differing "density of fog" - units under Size X are obscured, above that are visible as normal. 

 

XXX 

 

Back to the book in general - Tallarn continues an interesting trend of ignoring volkite options on vehicles that possess them. 

 

[DuskRaider]

That’s weird, don’t they have rules for the volkite-wielding Knights and Titans? I know they do, but I can’t remember what they do and I don’t have my rule book near me. It should be pretty simple to take the rules for the Mageara or Moirax and simply apply them to a tank, it’s basically the same thing. 

[Xenith]

45 minutes ago, DuskRaider said:

don’t they have rules for the volkite-wielding Knights and Titans?

 

Titans have had volkite, graviton and conversion-beam weaponry for a good while now 

[DuskRaider]

Just now, Xenith said:

 

Titans have had volkite, graviton and conversion-beam weaponry for a good while now 

Yeah I have them for AT. I meant Volkite has rules in LI for Knights and Titans, I’m not sure what the hesitation is to giving them to tanks. 

[SkimaskMohawk]

It is odd that volkites are missing across the board. It shows up on the legate and the Leviathan and that's...about it?

 

Meanwhile it's a sponson option for almost every vehicle, including all mounts of the Kratos, a turret option for preds and the Kratos, and an option for the speeders and jetbikes. Maybe they thought its too redundant with the heavy bolter, but that didn't stop them with autocannons on the malc.

[DuskRaider]

3 hours ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

It is odd that volkites are missing across the board. It shows up on the legate and the Leviathan and that's...about it?

 

Meanwhile it's a sponson option for almost every vehicle, including all mounts of the Kratos, a turret option for preds and the Kratos, and an option for the speeders and jetbikes. Maybe they thought its too redundant with the heavy bolter, but that didn't stop them with autocannons on the malc.

Wouldn’t the turret options be stronger than a Heavy Bolter though? I’d have to dig my book out and look at the Mageara as I would assume a tank mounted Volkite would be similar in both size and strength. 

[Arendious]

I have to assume that the limited plastic kit production slots for 'Specialist Games' is driving some of the small numbers of new detachments in each book. It feels odd that "the biggest tank battle in Imperial history" doesn't feature many of the Legions' iconic tanks, let alone artillery or tank destroyers.

 

Pondering the missing volkites - I wonder if there was/is intended to be a Forgeworld resin upgrade set featuring them at some point. 

[DuskRaider]

1 hour ago, Arendious said:

I have to assume that the limited plastic kit production slots for 'Specialist Games' is driving some of the small numbers of new detachments in each book. It feels odd that "the biggest tank battle in Imperial history" doesn't feature many of the Legions' iconic tanks, let alone artillery or tank destroyers.

 

Pondering the missing volkites - I wonder if there was/is intended to be a Forgeworld resin upgrade set featuring them at some point. 

Yeah, this has bothered me quite a bit. Astartes have access to multiple Super Heavy tanks and yet not a one has been released yet. Between Felblade and Spartan variants, we should have at least a couple by now, but… nothing. On the flip side, Auxilia now have what? Four Super Heavies? More? I find it very odd, especially as you said, with the largest tank battle in history. 

[Matrindur]

1 hour ago, Arendious said:

I have to assume that the limited plastic kit production slots for 'Specialist Games' is driving some of the small numbers of new detachments in each book. It feels odd that "the biggest tank battle in Imperial history" doesn't feature many of the Legions' iconic tanks, let alone artillery or tank destroyers.

 

Pondering the missing volkites - I wonder if there was/is intended to be a Forgeworld resin upgrade set featuring them at some point. 

It might seem like we only get small numbers of new detachments because HH has so many units that we are waiting on in the first place but LI gets alot of support for a specialist game.

 

Ignoring any terrain and bases and using sprue sizes instead of kit numbers to gauge investment these are the numbers different sub-games got:

I'll count the Dire Wolf and Warhound weapons as Titanicus releases but the plastic Arvus Lighter as LI release instead of AI.

The sprues sizes will all be converted to medium size sprues which is the LI standard size.

 

LI got 24 kits with 24 medium size sprues with 3 more kits with 3 more sprues on the way so 27 medium size sprues in 9 months

Titanicus got 14 plastic kits with 34.25 medium size sprues , 8 resin Knight/Titans kits and 19 resin weapon releases (still counting resin releases that later got replaced by plastic)

So a total of 34.25 medium size sprues and 27 resin releases over a total of 72 months

Aeronautica Imperialis got 21 plastic kits with 23 medium size sprues and 15 resin resin releases

So a total of 23 medium size sprues and 15 resin releases over a total of 27 months (Launched in June 2020, last release in August 2022 with the Legio Custodes Ares Gunship)

Underworlds got 58 warbands with 1 medium size sprue each so a total of 58 medium size sprues over a total of 82 months

Warcry got 32 kits with 54 medium size sprues over a total of 60 months. It also got alot of terrain releases but I'm not counting them here.

Kill Team second edition got some new 40k models released as part of KT commander sets but they weren't really KT releases so the Elucidian Starstriders and Gellerpox Infected were the only real KT releases so 3 medium size sprues. It really started with the 3 season so thats when I'm going to start counting.

KT 3rd season got 15 kits and 8 upgrade kits with 40.5 medium size sprues over a total of 36 months. Again alot of terrain releases but I'm not counting them here.

 

Necromunda is a bit too muddled with their releases for me so not going to count them.

 

So on average:

LI got 3 medium size sprues per month

Titanicus got 0.48 medium size sprues and 0.375 resin releases per month

Aeronautica got 0.85 medium size sprues and 0.55 resin releases per month

Underworlds got 0.707 medium size sprues per month

Warcry got 0.9 medium size sprues per month

Kill Team got 1.125 medium size sprues per month

 

So on average LI got nearly 3x as much as the next highest game. Of course LI is still young so now is the time we are getting more kits in average so that will distort the numbers but still we really can't complain with this output

Edited August 6 by Matrindur

[DuskRaider]

IMO it’s kind of apples and oranges comparing Titanicus releases with Imperialis. AT has two (technically three with Black Shield) factions that all share the same models and of that there is a very limited number of different kits they can possibly create. Sure, they created new Titans to fill niches such as the Warbringer and Warmaster, but there was only so much they could do short of the nuclear option of the Imperator. 
 

In contrast, technically Imperialis has the same amount of factions (one less since they haven’t touched upon Black Shields yet), but the variety within those factions is comparatively vast. You only really need five models to play Titanicus, you need much much more to play Imperialis. Furthermore, you need said variety to ensure that every game you play isn’t essentially a mirror match which was one of the biggest issues up until fairly recently. 
 

In short, Legions Imperialis SHOULD have a wider range because it encompasses so much more than at the very least Titanicus and at most just about any other SG currently produced by Games Workshop. Still, it’s a head scratcher that we got models like the Sabre and still no Super Heavy. 

[Interrogator Stobz]

Gotta love some maths.

 

Yep, LI feels like a whole game already. 

Can it be improved or expanded? Absolutely.

But you can walk in and get an entire and varied force within the first year.

That's impressive. 

 

[INKS]

how hard are these to build and paint, so tiny. kinda cute though

[Matrindur]

49 minutes ago, DuskRaider said:

IMO it’s kind of apples and oranges comparing Titanicus releases with Imperialis. AT has two (technically three with Black Shield) factions that all share the same models and of that there is a very limited number of different kits they can possibly create. Sure, they created new Titans to fill niches such as the Warbringer and Warmaster, but there was only so much they could do short of the nuclear option of the Imperator. 
 

In contrast, technically Imperialis has the same amount of factions (one less since they haven’t touched upon Black Shields yet), but the variety within those factions is comparatively vast. You only really need five models to play Titanicus, you need much much more to play Imperialis. Furthermore, you need said variety to ensure that every game you play isn’t essentially a mirror match which was one of the biggest issues up until fairly recently. 
 

In short, Legions Imperialis SHOULD have a wider range because it encompasses so much more than at the very least Titanicus and at most just about any other SG currently produced by Games Workshop. Still, it’s a head scratcher that we got models like the Sabre and still no Super Heavy. 

 

Sure but thats why I also compared it to the other games. Titanicus has the lowest average exactly because of the reasons you said but the others are all around 0.8-1.1 while LI is up at 3 sprues per month on average. Of course as I said thats because we are still in the high investment starting phase but we still can't really complain about these numbers.

 

But of course this is just for the number of kits not which kits we are getting. So we can certainly complain why we are getting three LR kits before other things.

[DuskRaider]

Just now, Matrindur said:

 

Sure but thats why I also compared it to the other games. Titanicus has the lowest average exactly because of the reasons you said but the others are all around 0.8-1.1 while LI is up at 3 sprues per month on average. Of course as I said thats because we are still in the high investment starting phase but we still can't really complain about these numbers.

 

But of course this is just for the number of kits not which kits we are getting. So we can certainly complain why we are getting three LR kits before other things.

Yeah, I’m not sure why we’re getting variants of three different tanks instead of anything new. 

[Matrindur]

1 hour ago, DuskRaider said:

Yeah, I’m not sure why we’re getting variants of three different tanks instead of anything new. 

 

Probably just because it takes less work since the only digital change is new guns and otherwise there would have been even less detachments in the new book.

 

At first I also thought they used a mold with exchangeable parts since the sprues are nearly the same except for the gun parts in the middle so if they use a mold that can change this middle part it also wouldn't need a completely new mold which would make it way easier to just do two more LR kits to fill out the detachment numbers.

But after comparing the two there are few more changes all over the sprue that would make this unlikely. For example the new LR sprue no longer has three gates for every open and closed hatch and part 22/27 also slightly changed their rotation on the sprue. 

So its likely it is a completely new sprue just with some improvements for the layout.

 

So the only reason why two more LR kits would be cheaper to make compared to another kit would be reduced digital work necessary

Edited August 6 by Matrindur

[Pacific81]

I wondered if the fact that the LR Proteus instructions have some mistakes (lots of components mis-numbered and then a step that you don't even have to complete as the part is already moulded) is an example of one of the kits being re-used from something else?

[Interrogator Stobz]

6 hours ago, INKS said:

how hard are these to build and paint, so tiny. kinda cute though

Much easier to paint than 32mm scale. There is far less expectation.

Gluing can be fiddly, but easy enough, just don't drop any parts on the floor. 

 

[Ruskinses]

Titan volkite weapons are all Beam special rule which would be a pain to do on a unit with 8 of them...

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

7 hours ago, INKS said:

how hard are these to build and paint, so tiny. kinda cute though

Stay away from LI models, if you have very large hands. Some parts are very tiny and will be either difficult or impossible to assemble. I am talking about the lascannon sponsons for the predators and sicarans which were a pain in the butt to build correctly. And to properly mount the missile launchers on top of the space marine shoulders was also an exercise in patience. Apart from that every component is designed that it fits only in one way which eliminates building errors.

[Deus_Ex_Machina]

Here is by the way a nice song suitable to play in the background while you do your tank battles on Tallarn:

 

[DuskRaider]

3 hours ago, Interrogator Stobz said:

Much easier to paint than 32mm scale. There is far less expectation.

Gluing can be fiddly, but easy enough, just don't drop any parts on the floor. 

 

I actually find it more tedious at times due to the size and the amount of minis you end up doing at once. Part of this may be my own doing since I ended up painting multiple Infantry boxes at the same time, but getting all of the ring details on that many little guys at once is a chore, quite frankly. On the flip side, I actually find doing the tanks quite enjoyable. 

[grailkeeper]

On 7/31/2024 at 9:55 AM, Deus_Ex_Machina said:

Fog of War is nothing new as it was already present in SM2. This is how it works:

 

1. Player 2 leaves the room.

2. Player 1 deploys his entire army.

3. Player 1 takes a light/soft blanket and covers his deployment zone with it.

4. Player 2 enters the room and deploys his army.

5. The blanket is removed.

6. Done.

 

 

They could just cover the tabel with a literal fog machine.

[Ammonius]

24 minutes ago, grailkeeper said:

 

 

They could just cover the tabel with a literal fog machine.

You may be onto something good here! How big are fog machines these days? Could one (or a tube from one?) fit inside a reasonably sized building on the table?