Okay so last night played 6k Titan Legion last night, using my chaos titans to represent their Imperial counterparts, & oh my is the Harpoon a BIT awesome for 50pts  

My 1st action was to let rip from my most shooty warlord (2x Lasblasters, 2x Plasma Destructors)& dropped all the shields off my opponents Imperator. Managed to retain the initiative & took the chance to bust a Harpoon Missile shaped cap in his ass!

The gods were obviously amused by my daring assault & deemed that my opponent should not pass his armour save!

Yum yum 1st turn Imperator yoink!

Anyone else think maybe it should cost more than 50pts?

It sounds like your opponent deserved to lose that Imperator: leaving it where you could strip the shields and hit it with a harpoon on turn one?

It's like saying war walkers are too good because they can screw a formation of Leman Russes with sustain if the Russes park themselves in range and crossfire.

I don't think the cost needs to be raised because it's a gamble: you probably wasted 50pts and a weapon slot, but it might turn out really well. Kinda like orbital bombardment, actually.

Edit: OK, I just looked over the stats for the harpoon missile - i didn't realise that it has unlimited range and MW. Yeah, it might need changing. Maybe reduced range rather than more points though. That way your enemy has to pick off the harpoon titan or stay away, rather than having a IG style "I spent a lot of points so I can shoot you anywhere" situation.

Lol, I know what you mean with the unlimited range!

He ended up battering his own Imperator in close combat!

Well, IMO the Harpoon is a fine example of the utterly random yet still overpowered stuff from the old days, never mind that the very concept doesn´t make much sense.

Titans are supposedly tough to control via direct mindlink and trained crews, but you can shoot a pointy stick into them and use remote control? Give me a break, even in a sci-fi fantasy with daemons, green aliens and giant robotic fighting machines. The level of technology required isn´t even remotely on par with the rest of imperial tech!

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I used to have a house rule a while back. Several of my old gaming pals used to be quite fond of the harpoon in 2nd edition (taking over gargants, phantom titans and whatnot). The rule was that the harpoon would take over 1 randomly selected weapon system instead of the whole titan. It seemed to make a lot more sense, background wise as well (My Lord, we've lost control of the plasma annihilator!).

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Nice! I like the sound of that . It also fits better with what Irondeath said...

Personally I love the Harpoon, but felt a little for my opponent.....a little.

I think Abbadon is going about this taking over the Galaxy thing all wrong...all he needs is an oversized Harpoon to fire at Cadia  (cut to lone chaos marine with a winch!)

QFT.

From a balance perspective, anything that can shift the point balance by ~1500 points on a lucky roll is bad.  Even if the balance were absolutely perfect based on the odds in all possible permutations of force orgs, it's just too much power hinging on one die roll to be fun.  Couchmonster's example is perfect.  First turn, first activation series - game over.


And of course, it's just silly from the game fiction perspective.  The idea of some sort of electronic parasite taking over an Ork Gargant is just wrong.  Boilers and grots and mechanical weapons magically dominated because some 'umie gadget stuck in the armor on the side of it?  How does that make sense?  Ditto for Imperial MIU technology being able to interface with an Eldar wraithbone construct.

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There's a few very good reasons why the Harpoon missile is in the 'Collector' section...

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For the gargants, I always saw the harpoon equiped either with a giant speaker or interfering with the shouting tubes in some way to blare out false orders from the Kaptain. With the phantom titan, the harpoon could be loaded with psk-out which interferes with the infinity circuit that not so much causes a takeover but for it to go beserk.

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More of a current misconception which seems to be that every army in Rogue Trader consisted of 2 squats with toughness 15 force fields and homing autodestructive 50" blast vortex missiles on jetboards...

My (rarely) updated hobby blog

I've been thinkning about the Harpoon and what it does, and I was wondering if it could be regigged to make more sense and better fit the tabletop, even if it means a retcon.

Possible if it hits and the enemy fails an armour save then you roll a D6
1 nothing happens
2 The target gains an extra D3 Bm as systems short out
3 The target gains an extra D6 Bm as systems short out
4 The target gains an extra D3 Bm as systems short out and a point of damage
5 The target suffers D3 points of damage
6 The target suffers D3 points of damage, in additon the firing player may immediatly fire one randomly determined weapon.

This would represent the surge of electricity and whots-not either lightly damaging systems (blast markers), heavily damaging systerms (lost of DC), or cuaing the waithbone/electronics/grots/nurones to accidentally fire (a waepon fires).

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As it's in the collector's section, and thus we're not trying to balance it for tournament play, I don't see a driving reason to retcon it.

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That's the reason why I changed the Harpopn Missile to a Haywire Missile in my Titan game under development.

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