I've thought about this off and on.  I don't have time to do a full write-up now, but since British is slaving away on his chaos legions I thought I'd get some ideas for SoD out there and let people comment on conceptual issues.

Overall, I see the SoD as sort of battle sorcerers.  These are titan-gods, primarily interested in their personal prowess and convinced of their ability to deal with anything.  Most of the time they aren't about shelling the enemy from a distance but about getting up close and personal, using their powers to enhance their close quarters ability in visceral fashion, like titan gladiators (or maybe titan Sith Lords).

1)  Model the mental effects of Tzeentch powers - confusion, deception, precognition.  Disrupt weapons, Inspiring effects and possibly some advantages to GT setup (e.g. counts as SR5 during setup or unique garrison qualification).

2)  Model the flying aspects (avian wings, hovering discs, flamer leaping) with Jump Packs ability available to some of the lighter titans.  Possibly allow Skimmer as a rare ability.

3)  Weapons heavy on flamer/melta/plasma styles to stick with the flame theme of Tzeentch powers.  These would tend to be more towards short-range stats and would be coupled with good FF.  This goes with the "stuck in" style.

4)  A limited number of "raining death from the sky" kinds of powers, directed by seers - basically a small number of long range artillery-type powers.

5)  Visions and madness in their followers.  All the Skitarii would be slowly drifting into insanity - possibly lower Initiative (and cheaper) skitarii formations.  Then as a final step over the edge, I'm thinking a formation of self-blinded warp visionaries following in the wake of the titans, virtually oblivious to the real world around them, but responsive to the will of their titan-gods.  Stat-wise they'd be something along the lines of Plague Zombies - rather pitiful in terms of combat ability, but Fearless.

6)  Skylok.  I'm not too keen on the idea of unique characters and I hate the idea of a full flying titan.  However, I think including Skylok as an homage might be okay, like the Chaos Primarchs - non-GT scenario only.  Rather than full flight, make flying something he can do but it is a tremendous effort and taking off in the middle of combat is not really feasible.  Something like landing on the battlefield a la Free Planetfall and then Skimmer ability for flight-assisted leaps.

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Neal

Dropping Titans would be rather powerful - I did consider it when I was originally going to do the list.

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Chaos Titan Legions: Khorne
Chaos Titan Legions: Nurgle

Certainly lower initiative Skitari as a transported troop option would be interesting - fine in the turn they act together, ineffective after being dropped off!

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Cool ideas. Bu to hope i will be able to still use my covnerted Tzeentch Warlord Titan without breaking it apart because of illegal weapons.

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Generally I kinda think the skimmer/jump pack Titans will be horrific, unless of course they get massivly down-hulled/shielded for their pleasure so an army of very powerful Titans in terms of fire power, but one that gets blown appart if it has the missfortune of wandering into the range of anything nasty enough.

Any thoughts on what you're going to name the particular Dark Mechanicus Cabal involved (if at all), helps me with cohesion for the formation names for the DM army.

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Chaos Titan Legions: Khorne
Chaos Titan Legions: Nurgle

Eldar Revenants aren't especially heinous because of having Jump Packs.  Jump Packs are effectively only a speed increase and not much of one.  Difficult terrain rarely slows down Walkers and ending in difficult terrain is still going to cause checks as normal, so it's not much bump there.  They allow the unit to go over impassable terrain instead of around it.

I agree Skimmer would have to be carefully controlled, which is why I put it as "possibly" and "rare."

Any thoughts on what you're going to name the particular Dark Mechanicus Cabal involved (if at all), helps me with cohesion for the formation names for the DM army.

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Neal

I'd use "count as" long before I tore apart a highly customized mini like that.

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Neal

This i will certailnly do  
If used as a gerneric Warlord Titan it looks as if it has two QuakeCannons/VoclanoCannons and two InfernoGuns The big eye between the horns is then just decoration.

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I'm hoping to start a bit of this coming up.  Does anyone have an objection to the overarching concept of warrior-sorcerers?

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Neal

No. Keep to it

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So, here's what I have on a quick sketch.  Weapon stats are approximations based on the AMTL, but could be off quite a bit in some cases.
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Battle titan chassis are +25 points for their better FF value.

Support formations are...

Scout titan
Scout titan coven (2)
Skitarii (with new name) (9) + transport options
Blind Seers (zombies) (9)
Disc Riders (9)
Screamers (not summoned - permanent)(9)
Doomwings
Firelords
Spacecraft

Scout Weapons
Tzeentch Cannon Battery (4x AP4/AT4)
Flames of Tzeentch (inferno gun)
Melta weapon (30cm, MW2+, +1FF/MW), +25(?)

Titan Weapons
Beams of Power (3x MW5+)
CC Weapon
Seer Sensorium (CLP)
Aerie (corvus carapace - 9 disc riders or screamers, possibly CC/FF)
FF Flamer weapon (need name - similar to laser burner but better), +25
Disrupt barrage (need name) (60cm, 3 BP, Disrupt), +50
Melta Cannon (new name), +50
Warp Fire of Tzeentch (from the Warp Palace)(30cm, 3BP, TK), +75/+100
Missiles (psychic bombardment), +75

Scout Upgrades
Wings/Discs (jump packs) +25
Veteran, +25
Warp Flame (+1CC/FS), +25(?)

Titan Upgrades
Supreme commander, +75
Ether Cannons (45cm, 2xAA5+), +50
Veteran, +25
Confusion (need cool spell name) (Inspiring), +50
Warp Flame, +25

===

Still pondering a good Imperator concept.  I'm thinking 2 Aeries instead of Bastions, but past that I don't have much.

==

gotta go - darn work

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Neal

Looks like a good starting point to me.

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Currently doing a plastic scenery kickstarter

Ideas for weapon names:

Warp Flail
Levinbolt Caster
Enchanter
Fire/Warp/Flame/Bolt Caster
Hallucinator
Deceiver
Fireball Cannon
Pentagrammaton

Any combination of the above  

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I've been thinking about this some and I've decided that I don't want to do the same thing with the titans as with chaos marines.  Another titan legion list with variant names and a few different weapon options isn't going to cut it.

The idea that I'm thinking of replacing it with is a "Titan Cult."  The core formations will be battle titans.  However, instead of having a certain number of slots they may use for support formations, they would have a minimum number of slots they must use as their followers and minions trail the god-machines of Tzeentch.

On top of that, I was thinking of making the madness of Tzeentch more pronounced.  The followers would be genuinely mad and only the presence of their titan-gods-incarnate would keep them focused.  They would be 2+ Initiative, but any formation more than X cm (I was thinking of starting with 15cm) would have an additional -1 activation penalty, so effectively a 3+.

There would be a small number of non-cult formations that would be chosen out of the 1/3 support allocation and would obviously not suffer from the penalty.

That would keep the ratio of titan to non-titan forces within a fairly narrow range to help make the list easier to balance.  Battle titans are going to be in the 600-850 range.  Support formations are going to be in the 200-350 range.  Counting support I think you're going to end up somewhere pretty close to the 50% titans range most of the time.  It's basically going to force somewhere around 1 titan for every 1500-2000 points.  Obviously, at normal tournament point levels that won't be enough to cover all the ground necessary and the support formations would have to move away from the titans and end up with activation penalties.  That would highly incentivize taking a Supreme Commander, which is an additional point sink.

So, as a quick mock-up:

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Titan God Formations
Imperator
Warlord
Reaver

Titan Cult Formations - Must take 3-5 per Titan God Formation
Skitarii (with new name) (9 for ~250) + transport options (~100)
Mutant Horde (9) (~200)
Blind Seers (zombies) (9) (~175) - 0-1 per titan to avoid hordes of Fearless
Spawn Herd (9) (~225)
Disc Riders (9) (~325)
Screamers (permanent)(9) (~225)

Support Formations - up to 1/3 of points
Scout titan (~275)
Scout titan coven (2)  (~500)
Doomwings (150)
Firelords (150 each)
Spacecraft

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A 3K list might look something like this:

Warlord SC - ~900
Skitarii - ~250
Mutants - ~200
Screamers - ~225

Reaver - ~650
Mutants - ~200
Seers - ~175
Spawn - ~225

Doomwings - 150

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If you really tried to max the number of titans, you could do this at 3K:

2 Reaver - ~1200
6 Cheap Support - ~1200
2 Warhound singles - ~550

Weaknesses would be lack of AA and fragile support formations.


If you tried to go with minimal titans, you could stretch it to a single battle titan and 1 scout titan at 3K:

Battle Titan SC - ~900
2 Skitarii with transport - ~700
2 Disc Riders - ~650
Seers - ~175
Warhound Titan - ~275
2 Doomwing Formations - 300

The primary weakness would be difficult command and control - 2-3 pf the ground formations would end up effectively running with 3+ Initative.

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Any obvious problems that I'm missing?

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Neal

Hmm Screamers. Somehow tied to a Titan? I love the image of a Tzeentch Titan surrounded by schools of Screamers attacking everyone daring to get too close.

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