I have a nice Imperator titan waiting in my collection, her reactor is roaing and her princeps wants o take to the field.

However how should I deploy one in a standard 3K force?


To keep the activation count high I really can’t pair her with more than one other battler class titan, but should that be a Reaver or a  Warlord?

Also should I take a demi century of Skitarri?  They take up a support sot and will be stuck with the Imperator, or just shelled to death as an easy target.

Also what other support formations are suggested for an Imp.

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Tyranid air marshal

In case you missed it, here's a LINK to my latest battle report.

If you have any questions concerning the report, please ask.

It was your battle report that made me decide to try an Imp.  

I will be playing against Orks, more than likely a mechanized horde, and my opponent does look at these boards.

I was planning on
An imp
A warlord with lots of gatling blasters and turboi lasers
2 warhounds with a VMB and PBG each
A demi legion of Skitarri

However I have no idea what to do with the skitarri.  If they hide in the leg bastions.  Then they will either cower all game or get out and intermingle the imp which could result in a bad combat res.  Or hide them near my blitz to watch it.

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Tyranid air marshal

Maybe try forge knights in place of Skitarii? They look pretty tough and force the enemy to split antitank fire even more. I hope Paladins could make acceptable "counts as" for those. On the minus side it could be considered somewhat unsporting to bring absolutely zero AP targets.

Sentinels and Thunderbolts can be used to pad activation counts but you're not going to out-activate anyone so might as well drop the pretense.

My sense of aesthetics would make me go with an Imperator and two Reavers though.

I've promised beardy (my opponent) that I will not use forge knights since he more than likely needs them as proxies for stompas.

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Tyranid air marshal

Fair enough

I'd say two flights of thunderbolts then.

I thought about that, just as an activation buffer.  Since I can't see 4 thunderbolts doing anything against an Ork horde and Beardy doesn't really take many aircraft.

However They are almost untouchable, even with 3 or 4 flakk wagonz on the table.

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Tyranid air marshal

Don't get deceived about thunderbolts being labelled fighters

They're a pretty respectful ground attack aircraft, and even with their fragility Orks will struggle to contain them.

Activation bump doesn't hurt either.

edit: and you don't have a choice, do you? *laughs* it's either that, Skitarii which aren't going to do anything or another warhound. And warhounds are a bit boring.

I don't think Thunderbolts are a good choice when playing with an Imperator.

For one thing, you already have good AA with the Defense Laser. More importantly, Thunderbolts can't hold objectives and you'll need troops to do that. IMO, Sentinels are better for activation bumps (and they make a nice screen for the Titans too).

Good point boss.

Ground activations are needed in an AMTL list.  How do you find sentinels fare?  They seem somewhat light and easy to destroy.  whereas skitarri and thunderbolts are harder to wipe out.  Also the seninels give me 100pts to spend on my two battle titans.  Any ideas what it should be spent on?

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Tyranid air marshal

In my experience two Sentinel units are fairly survivable. Usually people are too preoccupied trying to shoot your titans to death to bother shooting at the dinky little sentinels.

Indeed. Sentinels rarely destroy anything worthwhile, but they can win you games.

Even a lone Sentinel may grab or contest an objective.

Well I played with my imperator today against Beardies Ork horde.

I took:
Imperator with CMLs and Legate (BTS
Warlord with 2 turbo lasers and two gatling cannons
Warhound with Vulcan mega bolter and plasma blast gun
Warhound with Vulcan mega bolter and plasma blast gun
Skitarii demi century

Beardy had something along the lines of
2 mekanized Ork warbnds with a few extra boyz and/or nobz and a Zzap wagon
2 big blitz brigades with 2 zzap forts each
5 strong stompa mob with 3 dreadz and a supa stompa. (BTS)

In the first turn the imperator, a Warhound and the skitarii wiped out the stompa mob (Skitarii killing the last stompa by waving their heavy bolters at it).  In return my other Warhound was destroyed by one of the mechanized mobs and one of the blitz brigades.
The warlord heavily damaged the other blitz brigade

Turn two
The imperator shot up the warlords mekanized mob, damaging but not breaking it. And the warlord engaged the damaged blitz brigade wiping it out for no damage.
The orks retaliated by the warbosses mob breaking the remaning Warhound and reducing it to one DC (so it fled deep into the Ork side) and the remaining mob and blitz brigade breaking the warlord and reducing it to 2 DC.
The skitarri sustained at the warbosses mob to little effect.
The Warhound failed to rally, but the warlord rallied

Turn three
The Orks continued to harry the crippled warlord and destroyed it.  The imperator turned and blasted at the intermingled blitz brigade and mekanized mob, doing little damage to the mob and breaking the blitz brigade.  The mob then rushed behind the imperator and shot at the Skitarii hiding near the blitz, to no effect.

The warbosses then doubled back into his own side and finished off the damaged Warhound, the skitarii then marched out of their cover into a wood on the centre of the battlefield.

Turn 4
The imperator engaged the Ork mob behind it.  Winning the combat by 12 before the dice off.

The Skitarii carried on marching, this time into some ruins on the Ork side of the battlefield, but close enough to one of the objectives on their own side to contest it.

The warboss tried to engage the Skitarri but only his wagonz were in range to firefight and he lost by 1.  The blitz brigade thought about ramming the imperator but just sustained at it instead, stripping many of its shields.

The warboss failed to rally

Turn 5
The Imperator wiped out the blitz brigade and the Skitarii took some pot shots at the broken warlord

AMTL victory 2-0, BTS and They shall not pass.

Thoughts
My dice rolls sucked.  I barely made half of my 4+RA saves and couldn’t hit anything with 5+ (which was most of the imps weapons).  However even with such poor rolling the imp was able to dent a formation a turn and towards the end it was able to take them out.

Turn 1 it sustained at the stompa mob killing the supa stompa a dread and 2 stompas
Turn 2 it advanced on a mekanized mob and bare did anything, I think it killed a trukk
Turn 3 it advanced on a blitz brigade and managed to also hit a mekanized mob.  Again it didn’t do that much damage (about a third of the blitz brigade and a few wagonz and boyz), but did lay a host of BMs
Turn 4 it engaged a mekanised mob and wiped the floor with them
Turn 5 it advanced on the blitz brigade and finished it off.

Though the weapons look impressive I didn’t manage to do that much to the enemy apart from when I had my fully charged plasma annihilator. A 13BP attack hitting on 5s, a volcano cannon and 4 lots of AP4+/AT4+ isn’t that impressive.

I also never got to use the imps quake cannons MW ability.

The battle also felt very defensive.  I am use to storming forwards with my titans, however I was on the back foot this entire game, trying to hold off the horde, rather than smashing into it.

Though this could be due to the slow nature of the army.

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Tyranid air marshal

Thanks for the batrep, Ragnarok!  

I had the same feeling when using my Imperator last time : despite its many weapons, it doesn't do that much damage but tends to break anything it fires at.

Which is good IMO, it's already near indestructible, giving too much firepower would be ott. Right now it feels powerful but balanced, even in 3000 points games.

I notice that your opponent did the same thing as mine last time: he didn't even try to fire at the imperator. I think it's worth it to try to at least break it. If you pull it off, you've just deprived the AMTL player of half its army!

You had better luck than me Mr H.

Turn one mine broke a stompa mob.

Turn two it failed to break an Ork mob, or even o any major damage to it.  Despite getting all the models under all three templates.  6BM wass All I could lay on it, and 4 of them were from just shooting them.

Turn 3 it got two whole mobs under its barrage and unleashed its PA, but still failed to break either of them, or even kill much in the ork mob.  Though the blitz brigade was close.

Turn 4 it took out a mob in a firefight.  14 attacks, 12 hots 9 kills after grots and a combat res of +12 before the roll off against 3 remaining stands.

Turn 5 it finished off the blitz brigade.

So overall it wasn't able to do that much for 1325ps.  Hitting on 5s isn't that imprseeive.

I would like for the hellstorm cannon to have a second mode of 8x AP4+/AT4+, so it can lay into enemy tanks and voids/powerfields.

the other possability would be disrupt, thought this has a problem that it can't be used with the quake cannon.

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Tyranid air marshal