Hey all,

I have been working on some theoretical titan legion armies and was wondering how the point costs for the hulls and weapons were decided on? And why was the rule for rounding to a nearest 50 pts introduced? What was the thinking and decision making process for these?

Matt

Hi!

Your going back about 15-16 years, but my senile brain will try to remember...

Some of us have a lot of 1st edition experience, so the building rules and values from that edition provided some background to formulate the base costs.

Second we decided on using a "base titan" as the average baseline and retroactively calculate costs. I think that titan was a warlord with a power fist, Gatling cannon, defense laser and multi-launcher. I think we picked that particular one since its the one shown in the original books in pictures (1st edition as well).

Using the two things we mentioned we figured a base cost for each hull and weapons. There was a lot of "guesstimating" and tweaking to get the values right. We wanted warlord titans to be worth between 600-900 points.

The rounding was to avoid values that ended in 25 and 75, since all second edition units were either ending is 00 or 50, we wanted to maintain that for the sake of continuity.

I'm sure it was more involved than what I explained, it been so long that some of our decisions and thought processes are lost in the mists of the past.....

Kinda sad really. We did not have the foresight to "chronicle" how we did things.

I guess no one thought almost 15-16 years later we'd still be around.

Primarch

Thought that was the case but didn't realise it was that long ago.
The rounding to 50 is a fine idea, but we do have some units that end in a cost of 25/75 (a warhound hull is 125!) so it might be fine to round to nearest 25 now. This would also help with the odd weapons priced at 60/65/85.

What I seem to be finding is when I build my titans, I waste a good chunk of points because of the rounding. This means I end up changing the weapons to make the most of the points rather than arming them with what I want. Over a few titans this can add up to a couple of hundred points.

Hi!

That's good point. I think rounding to the nearest 50 is an old legacy thing, so perhaps its time is past. Just straight up add and leave as is.

I vaguely remember one of the original netepic members coming up with the weapons costs. Tony was his name. I wonder whats become of him.....

Primarch

Having to round after you construct your titan could be gotten rid of. It undoes quite a bit of the work behind pointing all the weapon.
Rule as is, means you can arm a Warhound (for example) with all many of weapon options, but most of them give you a final cost somewhere between 200-250 pts, which you then round up to 250 anyway, so the cost of the weapons had absolutely no impact on the final cost, it is basically back to original 2nd Ed rules were you paid 250 for your warhound.

I am sure the costs could be worked out from some sort of algorithm that puts values on range, dice, hit, save mod etc.

What was the reasoning behind not making the Battlegroups cheaper than the individual versions? Which was the case back in Titan Legions.

And as a tangent, has anyone actually ever armed anything with a Plasma Cannon or Destructor and did anything successful with it? Was wondering if their rules could be altered and rather not being able to do anything, maybe so sort of "Gets Hot" rule ala 40k might be an option.

Hi!

TL battlegroups were overpower and abused. It virtually gave you a free titan for the "drawback" of maintaining them in coherency.

Having played extensively under those rules it was just TOO good. I think at one point we gave battlegroups a free hull and you just paid for weapons. Still somewhat a give away.

A plasma weapons, plasma cannon in particular, require some forethought when deployed, usually in conjunction with another titian. I usually paired it with a titan specializing in stripping shields then the one with the plasma cannon would take it out. Very little survives a plasma blast!

I've slagged gargants and eldar phantoms with it in the past.

I'm not sure how to make them function like the fluff indicates without using the same mechanic the Emperor Class does. Which may not be a bad idea....

Primarch

As Primarch said, 2nd edition titan battlegroup were just abused. Buy 2 warlords, get one free...

I played a TL army in my last games (only titans), even if optimizing titan cost is quite hard ( I don't like to waste points and I like to pay cheaper my close combat weapons) such an army is very hard to fight against if you're not prepared. For many armies, unit base is infantry with many stands but no tsm than can knock down shields...Now that titans can ignore infantry/cavalry/vehicles in CC, you know that the 800 points SM Tactical Comp can't do anything to your 500 points reaver...

Losing few points and VP when building a titan is one of the 2 disadvantage of playing a titan, the other one is the small number of activations

I third the issue of overpowered titan battle groups. Many a time I was on the receiving end of the Reaver Titan battle group in my opponent's Space Marine army, and it wasn't pretty. They were just too flexible, and way too cheap for how effective they were.

In addition, there were some armies, notably Chaos, which didn't have cards for titan battle groups, and were horribly out classed by those armies which did as a result. Titan Legions as a whole really did skew the game in favour of certain armies, and the increase in the availability of titan battle groups was one reason for this.

_________________

Battlegroups were a bit busted. Used to love fielding a Reaver battlegroup. I suppose back then titans were a big selling point, now we have got older and wiser we see the little men can be just as important.

I haven't read the chaos list yet, so not sure what is in there, but I wouldn't see a problem letting them have access to battlegroups and some of the ad mech list seeing as whole titan legions did turn to follow chaos, so they would be seen in chaos armies.

Of all these queries, the main one for me is the rounding. For me it just undermines the points costs of the weapons. Of course it has to be done for VPs, but for the total cost it just doesn't seem needed.

Anywho, just asking questions to get a feel for what has been going on.

Sorry, it's off-topic, but it was interesting that Scream mentioned Tactical Companies. I pretty much never take Tactical troops if I can avoid it, so much so that I even go out of my way to avoid buying battle companies. If you were playing a game of Epic where it was infantry only, Tactical troops would be fine but the fact of the matter is that their weaponry is near to useless against vehicles, so sticking them in buildings seems to be a waste of time. If you throw them into woods they can sit on objectives but if you are playing against an enemy who has taken some decent close combat troops then you know they will they will take a pasting in there as well.
It seems that instead of being a happy medium, Tactical troops suffer from being the worst of all worlds! It annoys me somewhat because these troops are meant to be the backbone of the Marine force yet I avoid them like a Nurgle plague. Always buy Devastator Companies or Assault Troops depending on what your requirements are!!
I feel the same way about Eldar Guardians but at least when you take them you get some decent firepower in the form of the Grav Tanks. I don't mind buying them because I can move the Guardians into position and treat them as cannon fodder to defend an objective, but the Grav Tanks are what I really care about with those companies. When you compare this to the Marines, their Rhinos are useless! I have to say though that the new optional rule that they can break away from the troops once they have deployed is good because at least you can use the Rhinos to cause a bit of nuisance factor!
But the abilitiy to buy a Falcon Host on its own (which has been about for a very long time but I can remember when it wasn't) has put me off even buying standard Warhosts! Think of it this way, for 850 points, would you rather have a War Host or a Falcon Host with 2 sets of Striking Scorpions and either Fire Dragons or Dire Avengers? No contest!

OK, rant over!

On a seperate note Mattman, I totally agree with you about the Plasma weapons, I never buy them! Give me a Volcano Cannon any day!

Cheers!

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I can't remember ever taking a tactical company in a game, I might have taken a battle company on occasion, but very rarely. always take vets, devastator then assault.

Good to see we're in full agreement Matt!

The reason I mentioned it is that every Chapter only has 1 Veteran Company (in my case Deathwing), 1 Assault Co and 1 Devastatot Co but has 2 Tactical Co's and 4 Battle Co's, yet Tactical & Battle Co's never get a look in. I like the fact that in NetEpic Gold that this is an optional rule, because in practice it would be a nightmare fielding these companies as often as (statistically) they should be!

_________________
Clickable links for more Epic goodness:

Life of Die Channel including Epic Podcasts and Battle Reports

Epic 40K Players Page on Facebook
Net Epic Evolution Rules
Net Epic War! Campaign Rules

3 plasma blastguns on a reaver and you vaporise any unit within 50cm Tested and approved

@ Biss
Would never field more than one of each of the vets, dev or assault companies as it wouldn't feel right. It might be that tacticals are to expensive or everything else is to cheap.

@ Scream
Blastguns are fine and useable. It is just the cannon and destructor that seem like a massive waste of points and have a massive drawback which negates the ability to use your other weapons.

Hi!

I typical use tactical and battle companies, in preference to veteran and devastator companies. One is cost and the second is VP's. You tie up a lot when you go with these. Any experienced player knows how to break either of these companies easily and rake in the VP's.

My particular favorite are battle companies. I get everything I want from one company card. Devastators to engage from afar, tactical to hold objectives and assault to engage any potential threats to the first two. Their flexibility is just too good to pass up.

Tactical companies are great for "disruption" tactics. Release one via drop pods and watch your opponent squirm. Their high break point via drop pods (and their high morale) makes then a cheap effective pain for the enemy.

Blastguns are nice, but without something to shred shields I find them of limited use, or they are just good for tank busting which, isn't a great use of titan points. I rather go with twin turbo cannons for that.

I've always had good experience with the big plasma weapons. Its virtually an insta-kill against unshielded targets. That many dice hitting with 3 to 4+ and -3 to -6 armor save is just too good to lend without restrictions. Defense lasers (volcano cannon) are great, but its one shot, that still needs support of weapons that shred shields for it to be effective, but one shot is much more likely to miss that 4-6 dice. Give me the plasma bad boy every time....

All that said I have been a secret proponent in generalizing the emperor class titan reactor output management to ALL titans. Then weapon firing becomes a resource management. So much energy to go around too many options for all to be had.

Of course that was perhaps one step to far for many back in the day, but I wounder now. The system would be simple, just a slightly tweaked form the Emperor Class uses now.

Plasma output
Emperor 1d6+6
Warlord 1d6+3
Reaver 1d6
Warhound 1d3 (half a d6)

Starting plasma is 2 for a warhound, 3 for a reaver and 4 for a warlord.

Same parameter of usage applies like the Emperor Titan
Shields - no plasma, no repair, 1 plasma repair on 5+, 2 plasma repair on 4+
Engines - no plasma no move, 1 plasma advance orders, 2 plasma charge orders.
so far same as Emperor, the fire control is the only thing I'd change to keep things simple due to the many weapons available.

Three weapon types:

Tier one Ballistic weapons. Any non laser, non plasma weapon. All special hard points fall under here (like corvus assault pods, etc).

1 plasma lets you fire any and all these weapons on advance or first fire orders. Most economical weapons due to low power requirements

Tier two laser weapons.

1 plasma for any and all laser weapons on advance orders, 2 for firing them on first fire orders.

Tier three, plasma weapons

its 1 plasma for advance and 2 for first fire PER WEAPON SYSTEM. Want to fire 2 blastguns on first fire orders? it will cost your FOUR plasma.

All cost remain the same.

I believe it is an easy system to "plug into" the current one without fiddly rules and its based on known rules mechanics present on the Emperor class titans.

Thoughts?

Primarch