Jimmizimms didn't seem to think so above when all I said was if it stayed around permanently that would be fine.


As to your specific points, a 6+ invulnerable save is pretty useless.

And he's not really equivalent

BloodthirsterWE30cm4+3+-Axe of Khorne(bc)Assault Weapons,EA(+3),TKDaemonic Focus,Damage Capacity 3,Expendable,Fearless,Inspiring,InvulnerableSave,Jump Packs,Reinforced Armour,Walker.Critical Hit Effect: The unit isdestroyed, all summoned units within 5cm are destroyed on a roll of 6+.


AvatarWE15cm3+2+4+Wailing Doom30cmMW5+and(bc)Assault Weapons,EA(+1),MWCommander,Damage Capacity 3,Fearless,Inspiring,InvulnerableSave,Walker.Critical Hit Effect: The unit is destroyed. All Eldarformations with a unit with a line of fire to the Avatar receive a Blastmarker.

Bloodthirster has 3x the attacks which translate to 2x the hits on average and they're TK so no saves at all, while the avatar still gives reinforced armour a save.

The Avatar also doesn't have reinforced armoue making him vulnerable to MW attacks. Bloodthirster has double the movement and jump packs.

So I don't really see them as equivalent

I think we'll have to agree to disagree. The Bloodthirster is faster and hits harder, but has no ranged ability at all and is extremely vulnerable to firefights. And the Bloodthirster auto-dies if it's detachment breaks.


The Bloodthirster has 6 attacks in total, hitting on 3+ for an average of 4 hits.
The Avatar has 4 attacks in total, hitting on 2+ for an average of of 3.3r hits.

So 1.2x the hits on average, but obviously the individual hits are going to be nastier.

Personally I don't see an issue with giving the Avatar Reinforced Armour (as per scarik's post) and improved CC ability, but Holo-fields is just going to feel weird.

_________________
The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

Not sure where you're getting the 6 attacks from?

It gets +3 Extra Attacks that are TK, and its DC is 3 so halved rounding up is 2. That's 5 attacks, 3 of which are TK.

The DC3 avatar has 3 total - 1MW +2 basic. It's effectiveness in melee is pretty poor in comparison. 1 MW5+ at range is definitely better than nothing, but it's 1 in every 3 times the Avatar shows up at the moment. or if the avatar stays around permanently, it's going to cause 1 pt of damage once per game with its MW.

The bloodthirster at 30cm movement with jump packs is going to get into melee earlier, and do a lot more damage. The avatar will take twice as long to get into melee, has fewer and less damaging attacks, meaning that overall the bloodthirster is going to do about twice the damage output per game, if not more.

Not having a firefight stat will affect it if the enemy are the ones performing engages and refusing to get into BC, but it's got counter charge of 10cm rather than 5cm, which means they'd have to be more than 10cm away to prevent him getting into BC.

With his speed I expect the BT to be doing most of the engagement moves himself.

It gets +3 Extra Attacks that are TK, and its DC is 3 so halved rounding up is 2. That's 5 attacks, 3 of which are TK.


Hey?

_________________
I have 4 laptops in this room and cannot play a pixel pushing tabletop simulator on any of them.

I'm getting six attacks from the War Engine rules.

3.3.2 Close Combat and Firefight Attacks
Instead of rolling a single hit dice for each war engine in an assault, roll a number of hit dice equal to the war engine’s starting damage capacity. You may choose to split these between close combat rolls and firefight rolls as you see fit, but close combat rolls will only hit enemy units in base contact, while firefight rolls will only hit units within 15cm that are not in base contact.

Half rounded up is from third edition, where War Engines had more DC.



It sounds like you haven't faced Firefight-heavy or Skimmer-heavy forces very often. :-(

In practice, the Bloodthirster will often end up with Skimmers as the only units in its 30 cm threat range, who will choose to float up and force both sides to use Firefight values.

Depending on other factors like Webways, the Bloodthirster is obviously going to get into position faster, but on the turn they assault, they both have the same 30 cm threat range.

The other issue with no Firefight value is hit allocation. Because of the War Engine limitation of 'close combat rolls will only hit enemy units in base contact', the Bloodthirster needs its 30 cm speed just to be able to barge through enough enemy units that its hits don't get wasted overkilling 1-2 units. Assuming it gets close enough to non-Skimmer units.

The third issue with no Firefight value ties into position and threat range. Even if you're facing a footslogging opposing force who don't have Transports to simply move out of the Bloodthirster's 30 cm threat range, the Bloodthirster is almost always going to be in the threat range of the target formation. Basic infantry can move 15 cm and then firefight 15 cm, which is likely to result in the target being two-up* for combat resolution and a broken Bloodthirster.

Obviously the Avatar suffers from several of the threat range issues as well, but at least it's going to get an average of 1.5 hits back in the firefight, instead of there being no chance of any hits, and it can use Firefight values to get hits on units that aren't in base contact.


In practice, CC attacks are substantially less valuable than FF attacks, and even more so on War Engines because of their additional hit allocation limitations. By now, it's a running joke for Chaos Marine lists that you never ever take a Chaos Lord character with its extra MW CC attack if you can possibly take a Chaos Sorcerer with its extra MW FF attack, because the Chaos Lord is going to use its CC attack once every 2-3 games even with the help of transports...

In terms of power level, I'd rank the standard Avatar and Bloodthirster profiles pretty evenly - in the right situation the Bloodthirster is going to hit a lot harder, but that type of situation (unfortunately!) doesn't come up very often.


*I'm assuming no Blast markers on either side, 1DC lost by the Bloodthirster (+1 to combat res), seven or more units in the target detachment (+2 to combat res) vs the Bloodthirster's Inspiring (+1 to combat res).

_________________
The Wargaming Trader
NetEA Death Guard Army Champion

I think just sticking with the standard Avatar stats would be best. There's no need to invent a new larger more powerful Avatar when there's nothing in the background suggesting there is one and the focus and theme of the list should be titans and messing with the Avatar as well is an unnecessary distraction.

The standard 40k Avatar (on the right below) is way too small and puny to represent the 3DC WE Epic Avatar stats. The Epic Avatar stats already correspond to the largest and most powerful type of Avatar - the Forge World model.



Just stick the basics and balance a good list based on the existing titans (with some weapon variants) and knights. That's all we really want and it will be hard enough to balance a list of Eldar titans (considering the Warlock is arguably the most powerful unit in all of Epic Armageddon) as is without it ending up overpowered.

Well put.

The Warlock is quite good which is why it stays 0-1 even in the Titan list. I very much would never like to face 2 of them.

Ah thanks for that clarification. Your points are well made and IMO speaks to issues with CC as an effective fighting method.

Has there been any talk of improving the CC aspect of the game? Like 'apply hits to BC unit first, but apply any remaining to units within attacker's zone of control'. That gives CC the ability to put overkill on units further away without changing any of the existing rules.

I'm more than happy for the current Avatar rules to just become a WE you deploy with your force if you're looking for all out war aspects.

I didn't realise the warlock was so nasty - even more so than the imperator titan in the titan legion army list? Two warlocks are 1700 pts, while the imperator is 1250, so you could get an imperator and a warhound for the cost of two Warlocks. If they're that bad, maybe they need rebalancing?

Is it mainly the psychic lance that's the issue, combined with Farsight?

Could drop the lance to TK1? Or drop its EA to +1?

That would be a faction-wide discussion. At 850pts I'm not worried about the power of the psychic lance. Its still only 6DC. The issue is definately that if you have 2 then you have 2 Farseers so its harder to stop the Farsight attack and the Farseer itself ignores the -1 penalty to Retain.

Since Warlocks and Phantoms both have Leader they often clear their BMs and with SR4 there's a fair chance that you could win Strategy, activate the Phantom on 1+, then retain on 1+ twice with the Warlocks. That ought to about ruin any enemy army and most friendships as well. ^^

So it's the difference between being able to activate 2 titans in a row vs 3. Yeah I can't see many ways around that as the farsight rule is written.

I had some house rules for other psychic powers the warlock could use, inspired by older versions (like the netepic gold rules). I just made it a requirement that the warlock couldn't use the same power consecutively.

Well its been forever.

This list still needs a great deal of testing, and I think the way forward is a point rebalance. 5 activations just can't compete and all the reasonably effective lists are identical.

Thoughts?

It may be worth comparing it to the UK Eldar Dai-tan eldar titan list too for some related insight? (that was likely based on this with some ammendments) - it has only played 12 games at tournaments but has won 58% and it's planned to get some changes to reduce it's overpowered-ness.

Can see the list amongst the titan armies pdf here - http://epic-uk.co.uk/lists/CodexAT220124.pdf and army lists people used at tournaments here - http://epic-uk.co.uk/ukepicachampionship/albyr.php It's not an identical list for sure (and I haven't compared the two in a long time) but still likely worth a look for some inight of how an eldar titan list is running competitively.

I'm not so sure that a 5 activation list couldn't do well. At a 4,000 point tournament - so against larger than usual activation counts - a list consisting of 6 activations (5 eldar battle titans and a pair of nightwings) did well and was extremely powerful to face. Unlike most Eldar lists there isn't really anything vulnerable to pick off and everything is powerful in assault and has holofields and inbuilt AA.

Thanks, looks like the main difference is that Battle Titians cost 50 points less, most others 25points less and no option for bombers. And Revenants can all be solo.

4 formations of 1 Revenant is one thing I've avoided. Both for lore reasons and because the Cads are very annoying to play against.

I will say that at 4000pts the list has performed better for me than it has a 3000.