It should be noted that there were only 4 Warhounds on Taros. Maybe Battle Titans wouldn't have been so quick to retreat (hence my view that only a Battle Titan death should cause BM's across the army).

So far we've got one person saying that a BM on each formation is not good enough (I*am*Salvation) and one that says it's too harsh (incinerator950).
Intersesting.

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To be fair, from his post, I don't think that incenerator who is saying it is too harsh has played the AMTL list yet unless he has used proxies and I don't know if he was refering to the current god machines rule or the proposals for BMs.

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I have to say I really like the current God Machines rule - it reflects the importance of battle titans. In previous versions I remember making sure that I had one titan 25pts more expensive - usually with indirect weapons, and hiding it. Reflecting that loosing any battle titan is a grievous loss is preferable to that.

In response to these points-

1. Any TK heavy is going to do well against AMTL, but will be stuffed when they play speed freeks. Having any titan as the BTS doesn't really change this

2 I don't see how anything meaning that you field lots of titans is a bad thing

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2 -
I think it promotes 2 strategies. Quality, trying to avoid the loss with a load of say Warlords. Or quantity, where you resign yourself to the loss and try and win regardless!

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I agree that the loss of a battle titan needs to have a significant effect, but disagree with the method that's done with the God machines rule. It seems rather inelegant to just make BTS easier to achieve. All this does is push things to further favor particular armies.




This is one of my issues with the god machines rule as it stands. Why give armies that would already do well vs ATML an even easier time claiming BTS regardless of how well they would do against another army?

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Maybe, to balance the 'any battle titan counts as BTS' the AMTL player could also be allowed to move one of the non-blitz objectives before the start of a game (up to some limited distance perhaps), or maybe the AMTL player could place an extra tourney objective that could act as a wildcard somehow.

I know the former would help AMTL players, and the latter could be interesting depending on what the placement restrictions are, and what function it is allowed to serve.

The idea behind this being that we make one objective for the opponent easier to achieve (the BTS), so we make some other objective easier for the AMTL player to achieve (T&H or DTF).

One idea that was considered in the same vein as the current God Machines rule was that any destroyed Battle Titan counts as an Objective for both players.

It wasn't used because although it felt very 'fluffy', it didn't bring much to the balance of the game.

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Why attempt to balance this by changing more of the Tournament rules? If we have to consider things like this to balance the god machines rule it seems a bad idea overall rather than attempting a different approach all together.

I know I keep hammering this into the ground, but why the focus on victory conditions, and in particular BTS? This seems very conditional IMO. Making it easier to get skews in favor of armies that already have an easy time with it and does little for other matchups. I will admit it forces a change in composition for a TL force and more conservative play, but it doesn't seem well balanced or fun if it makes a victory condition fairly predictable.

As I said earlier, I'd prefer to see an approach that does not change victory conditions but affects the performance of the AMTL force over the course of the game.

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Would making warlords 1+ not solve the issue of the "all cheap reavers" list?

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Under the old version I'd switched to 2 reavers one warlord by the end

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Requiring a warlord isn't a good solution because some people will want to take just reavers, and I don't see why that shouldn't be allowed.

For better or worse, the tournament scenario is the baseline measurement for how well an army list is balanced. An all-WE list is so outside the norm of the rules that modifying the scenario might be easier than modifying the army list. Also, modifying the scenario already has a precedent in the Tyranid list.

The ultimate goal here is to try to get a set of goals that give a reasonable chance for either side to win on objectives and not on a tie break. Maybe someone ought to produce a table of how different armies tend to fare against the AMTL list, and what goals are relatively more difficult/easier for each army to achieve.

After we know what goals are problem areas (both for and against the AMTL) then we can monkey around with them to get a better result.

For instance, what if (in a tourney scenario) the AMTL player placed the objectives as normal, but the opponent was required to place one [non-blitz] objective in his own board half and one in the AMTL player's half (instead of both in the AMTL player's half).

OR, what if the AMTL player was allowed to place an extra objective anywhere on the table (not within 30cm of another) and then Take and Hold for an AMTL list is to control 2 out of 4 enemy objectives instead of 2 out of 3, or Defend the Flag is to control 3 out of 4 friendly objectives instead of 3 out of 3.

I'm very much of the opinion that if you have to change the scenario to balance the list, you've failed. I'm against it here, and I'm against it for the Tyranids.

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I agree with this.



I agree with the first one and a half sentences. I think modifying the scenario should be a last resort under any circumstance. Precedent or no, this doesn't seem like the best direction for army lists to constantly be modifying the way the tournament scenario plays. Once we start getting into that we might as well just write a ground up scenario instead.



Why would the AMTL want to do this? how is this related to their thinking in regards to their titans? You are looking at approximately 6 activations maybe 7 in a 3k list, why are we increasing the number of objectives the list needs to take with already limited numbers? Really, why is it so difficult to explore options outside of changing scenario objectives?

I think the goal should be about making the AMTL force easier to break over time to represent the caution steaming from the loss of a titan or the possiblity of loss in a heavy engagement. The point being that then armies who have difficulty with WE don't need to destroy them outright, just break them to keep them from claiming objectives.

I'd like to give this a go and see how it affects the AMTL list:
Unbroken titans may not rally in the end phase. Each scout titan lost generates one blast marker on all AMTL formations,and each battle titan lost generates two blast markers on all AMTL formations.

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Delete the part about unbroken Titans not being able to rally and I'd be interested to hear about your experiences.

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E&C: sure. it might be a week or two to get a game together, if anyone can give it a shot before then. I had the unbroken titans unable to rally because I felt that rallying in the end phase would kill the effect of getting the BM's when a titan dies. I also wanted to put more emphasis on marshal orders for titans to clear BM so they would be forced to choose between less effective shooting and moving more often or risk breaking to the accumulated BM. In the end I'd like to see something that lets armies work to break titans to claim objectives than outright killing them.

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