I had assumed the support formations thing was a typo as well, given how things have always tended to centre around the battle titans.

Note I don't beleive the support missile thing is a historical game convention. I can't remember my configs for 1st edition (you know all battle titans got a free heavy bolter?) but for second edition I had warlords with 2 barrage, 1 vortex, 1 barrage gun head, 2 carapace multi lasers and 1 big heavy plasma thingy. In squadrons of 3 Also note I was young and foolish.

I had thought so as well which surprised me when I looked back over the older lists.

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-Vaaish

Oh that was good. But wasn't that overpowered, it relied on 4 warhounds for backup and was more an abuse of scouts that was totally against the background.

Still, corners and then the scout barrage was entertaining I think it only came up after a failed attempt at a drop list in a London tourney and thinking how to make it better. Was a fair while after everything was published though.

More seriously when Epic was still widely played following its launch the testing process did turn people off. Stuff like early iterations of the chaos list, were you could go wild with fearless war engines with MB IC barrages (about 8 I seem to remember) and that to experienced wargamers they were obviously broken. Being made to grind through games to take a few pictures and show no survivors on the other side wasn't fun and that remedial action was so slow to be taken. A fair few just went off to play other games that were already complete and more balanced.



I should like to point out Tim is by far the most abusive. Just in general But the core method is dumb list building. Find something that is good in Epic and max it up while covering the weaknesses. Bits of Epic that creak are the best targets. So historically most of the worse builds are variations on fearless RA war engines, or exploitation or the air rules. The core rules are hard to abuse so easily and that normal comes down to simply over stat'ed models. And you play them against 'balanced' lists, in other words the ones that win tourneys, take on all comers etc. So for example the old flying aces series of tests - 5 a-10s with their long ranged (I think they were WE as well) TK gun. With the rest of the list providing flak and ML they were very effective. A list of 3 squadrons of nightwings would have stuffed them, but that list would normally lose games, so who would take it?

In Epic you want firepower (total hits and types of hits, probably when mving, often into enemy deployment zones), survivability, speed (to get to objectives) and activations.

So Warhounds and their ilk which tick all those boxes are always good and have few consequences to spamming.

The only other area of abuse is sheer numbers. Witness the massive feral force (defeated by playing corners typically), speed freek (skorcha) horde, old Siegemasters list, etc. When you start to get more than 100 units (I wouldn't be surprised if Tim managed 150+) on the table at 3000pts the game takes ages and many armies can't combat such numbers



When I have time (and it looks like I have again) I am happy to do this. But I don't want to test obviously broken units any more. And if you don't axe them swiftly you end up with batreps that are tainted by their inclusion, sometimes covering up for underperforming units. Start the power level low and build up. Still for the titan list I can't see any completely overpowering builds straight off the bat. Then again I never tried the firepower approach to AMTL much, it was always sheer numbers of assault capable WE frames mixed with warhounds for harasment and objective grabbing. Happy to give it a go on Saturday on Vassel and the vassel AMTL force with its small number of models was always a relief to the tedium of moving stuff on it

<Testing broken stuff>

Quite a few have been done in the past, and by the past I mean the I don't know how many years... And yes things have changed, the other bits of lists have changed. Take the EpicUK AMTL list. Would warhound spam there work as well now you have the crit change? The ability of big WE to be engagement monsters has probably changed a bit due to changes in other lists. And it would take a lot for someone to go back and test out an old broken idea just because a few environmental variables had changed.

So to bring things back on task here...

I think we can put the Support Missile issue to rest by restoring the carapace only constraint that got lost in the transition to indesign.

Warhound "spam":
Not convinced there is quite the same issue here, so no change at the moment but lets keep an eye on things as more games come up. We can reduce the slots to one per battle titan if necessary.

Along those lines...
I'm on the fence about the scout titans opening support slots. I think this may be an either /or situation where we restrict support slots to battle titans IF we don't decrease the scout slots. If we do limit it to one scout slot per battle titan, I think we need to leave the wording alone so there's enough slots to make a 3k list.

Final note, Plasma Destructor.
Scary, yes, damaging, yes, problem... not convinced. It's expensive and bring them all to the field really limits your options. I feel it kind of falls into the same lines as the 2x Imperator lists. You do a ton of damage to a single formation but you can't kill enough stuff to win and it's likely you can't hold enough ground to win either. Again, lets keep an eye on it for the moment.

Thoughts?

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-Vaaish

Support weapons on carapace only sounds great.

I would just as well leave warhound access and likewise support formations alone for now. Also, I haven't seen anything in terms of warhound abuse that begs they be changed. And until there are actual battle reports suggesting otherwise I feel there should be no reason to.

No real opinion on plasma destructor. It's fairly expensive that basically means one less formation in a list that already struggles for numbers of formations.

Support weapons sounds good!

I agree with that warhound spam might not be a problem.

Plasma destructor could be 4xMW2+ at 90cm maybe?

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https://epic40ksweden.wordpress.com/

"You have a right to be offended" - Steve Hughes
"Your feelings are hurting my thoughts" - Aron Flam

Not ready to do anything with the PD yet. Those stats are an option if it comes down to it. I'm not sure about making it 90cm seems a bit too long ranged. Also thinking of just dropping it to 5x shots as a first step. Puts it in line with the increase in power from the PBG to PC. We'll see what's needed.

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-Vaaish

I'd suggest making the PD a carapace-only weapon too, and while you're at it, make the TCCW an arm-only weapon. They look odd mounted differently...

I have a match scheduled for tomorrow vs Steve (Onyx), which should hopefully generate a useful battle report.

This I'm looking forward too. Will it ve the support misdile list?

Will also be interesting to see if people will go on a hindsight extravaganza, pointing out tactical errors that would "totally change the whole game" if the result isn't what they expected.

_________________
https://epic40ksweden.wordpress.com/

"You have a right to be offended" - Steve Hughes
"Your feelings are hurting my thoughts" - Aron Flam

Cool, I don't think I've seen one from you guys in a while. What matchup are you looking to use? The 4x warhounds? Or go heavy weapons?

_________________
-Vaaish

Vaaish - you've added the fire arcs to the titan unit entries but I just noticed you've forgotten to update the reference sheets to add them in there. This is particularly important as you encounter the reference sheets first when looking through the document.

I don't think all-out with the Plasma Destructor, using as many as possible, is the optimum way to use them in a list. The titans become too expensive and for many targets that many MW shots is overkill.

A 3k assault list combined with some PDs could be nastier, such as below. Two of the Reavers having twin Laser Burner so 14 CC attacks or 10 FF attacks each, plus Forge Knights inflitrating 40cm to initiate assaults with titan(s) supporting. 33 4+ Reinforced armour and a Warhound would be tough for an unprepared opponent to deal with.

Reaver – Plasma Destructor, 2 x Laser Burner, Carapace Multi Lasers 700
Reaver – Plasma Destructor, 2 x Laser Burner 650
Reaver – 2 x Plasma Cannon, Laser Burner 625
Forge Knights 250
Forge Knights 250
Forge Knights 250
Warhound – Plasma Blastgun, Vulcan Mega Bolter 275
7 activations, 3k

Considering the God Machines rule I really don't think massed single Warhound lists would be that great or overpowered. They're fairly easy to kill (made easier with the worse critical) thereby placing blast markers on everything within LOS. In comparison the Epic UK TL list allows 5 single Warhonds at 3k and each is considerably more powerful and has no God Machines rule. If they don't think there's a balance concern with them then in comparison the Warhounds in the Net-EA list should be fine.


I would suggest making minor tweaks as needed to the approved list for balance right now, as needed.

Separately then why not put out a trial playtest list that switches Sentinels for Robots and Forge Knights for Knight Palladins and see how it goes? You're perfectly entitled to have a trial version running in parallel for people to playtest if they choose, with it having zero effect on the status of the approved list. It's been this way with the Eldar lists and the Tau list for years now. Pretty much as soon as the tyranid list got approved Dave put out a trial version with several changes, some quite significant.

If the trial list gets extensive playtesting, support and proves balanced then it can in time replace the approved list, but if this doesn't happen or there are problems with it then you haven't lost anything and the existing approved list remains untouched.

Right. I'll get that updated. The Reaver, Warlord, and Warhound don't have the arcs listed in the reference sheet though because we don't have specific weapons like with the emperor titans.

Plasma destructor...
I agree and I think that's what Mordotens report shows. Not sure about the list you posted. I think it shows less about the PD than the Forge Knights. Even then I'm not sure its that bad.

Warhounds...
I agree but the issue was brought up and it can't hurt to see it on the table.

_________________
-Vaaish

As far as I can tell from the comments above, the Support Missiles are now going to be edited back to being carapace only, which would mean 1 per titan. Can you confirm I understand that correctly please?
If so it gets rid of the 'Shock and Awe' list (which is good, progress) so I'll discard that and try something else.



Lol sorry, you made a terrific effort in actually putting a battlereport together so quickly, and suddenly the whole internet is an armchair general.

It won't be a perfect match of course; Steve will use the Iron Warriors army he used to come 2nd at this year's Australian National tournament in Canberra, and I'll be using a list I've never tried before from an army I've never used. I hope the battrep will be useful regardless of this.