I recently aquired some 'nids and thus had a look at the current rules for E:A. Coming across the Hydraphant bio-titan I wondered why it only has CC weapons - I remembered from past times (Epic 40k) when playing against 'nids that the larger bio-titans all had a choice of ranged attacks (up to 60cm). What was the reasoning to drop this options for the E:A incarnation?

To make rules for a hypothetical creature that hasn't ever had a model.

Annoying I agree, to all of us that actually have hierophant (hydraphant) models - one of the best epic models made IMHO.

Yes it should have more option for ranged weapons.

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http://hordesofthings.blogspot.co.nz/

Basically it's nice to have new (variant) lists like the E&C Hive Fleet Leviathan but as long as there are no models for it I prefer having rules for the models already available (even if hard to aquire). If there's no reasoning besides adding other creatures thus reducing options on existing models I also have no problem in adapting the rules to my linking ...

I think it would be perfectly fine to handle it like ork or eldar titans - some limited options that enables to make use of existing models. Certainly we can use "counts as" for all the different old bio-weapons.

Here's a link to my original proposal for "mutable Bio-Titans"; it's a little dated now, but gives a general idea.

A more restricted list of options is always a possibility.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?

I don't even think you need to go that far with the weapon options. Just a bio-cannon option for the hydraphant, pretty much any of the existing model weapon options could count as a claw or a bio-cannon.

Those were, I believe, all the old bio-weapon options, as I said above, a more restricted set of options would work.

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"EPIC: Total War" Lead Developer

Now living in Boston... any EPIC players want to meet up?