Agreed!

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Actually, they are always considered as "scout titans", and I could quote quite a few texts with lone operating Warhounds, for example the short novel in the Codex Titanicus of old, and several skirmishing / Lone hunting Warhounds in the Titanicus novel by Dan Abnett.
I agree that if there were 2 Warhounds in the list, they would probably act as a pair however, which would translate into "0-1 limit on single warhound, as much Warhound pairs as you'd like".

As resident "Titanguy" I'd note that going from no extra damage (95% of the time) to instant kill would be a huge change.

For commonality, I would recommend using the standard Imperial Battle Titan Critical Hit Effect.

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I like this idea best.

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Hmmm, while I agree that this change is needed, I am not sure it would cause people to choose some other strategy or formation over the Warhound(s). I am not even sure that it would be sufficient to change the cost either.

If costs or other aspect of the Warhound formation do not change, they will still be as cost effective and hence desireable as before, just slightly weaker in a random way.

I wouldn't say it's entirely random. It's a 50% chance of either taking extra damage or being destroyed. That's worse than the current situation (95% of the time, take no damage).

No more random that firing an AT4+ gun. :-)

Changing the Critical Hit to "Instantly Destroyed" would be a rather drastic change IMO.

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steve's comment about 400 points for a warhound seems about right. When one is knocking up a SM list the only alternative to the warhound is the pred and the warhound is so much better. That's justification on it's own terms.

Additionally you're going to have fewer activations than before if you take two warhounds . Now the preds are a serious alternative. But by rebalancing the warhound with regard the predator have we weakened the list?
I'd suggest that double warhound armies nearly always do well...

Making the crit hit actually matter certainly would be a much welcome bonus, but on it's own it won't sway peoples minds.

Adding a meaningful crit will stop people rolling their eyes when that warhound stamps over the troops that just failed to kill it in CC!

I'm not out to change the crit to make warhounds a harder choice, or necessarily weaker, just to make them a little bit fairer. All IMO of course

That alone would tend to imply to me that there is no harm at all in changing the critical hit result to something more dangerous, in that the Warhound will *still* be regarded as an excellent choice.

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hum. I still think warhound are taken not because they're very imbalanced - or we would see them taken just as much in IG lists for example, but mostly because they fit a nice role in SM armies. I would rather see their stats unchanged since that would affect a lot of other lists needlessly. It looks like a case of "if it's not broken, don't fix it". I would think that a 0-1 limitation on single Warhounds would be enough. That would only force player wanting 2 to take them as a pair, but i think it's quite fitting.

And 400Pts for 1, 500Pts for 2 is just silly IMO.

With the Pt cost reduction recently discussed about many marine tank formations, I also think we should wait to see if those more effective tank formations influence the use of Warhounds or not before changing them too.

And even if TRC say that warhound and termies ain't actually necessary to fight enemy WE, that is still the advice being constantly being given in the Marines tactica thread.

for sure

main trouble with marine tanks, especially preds, compared to warhounds is that they aren't walker and they aren't fearless and have poor cc. Oh and not being a WE and not having shields doesn't help (these things monkey with blast markers)

main trouble with marine tanks compared to infantry is poor in cc and dangerous terrain (tanks get shot up too easily cause they can't use it). The higher speed of tanks doesn't compensate for these shortcomings.

a theoretical warhound with no weapons (but all other stats the same ) is worth 200 points or at least that seemed to be concesus opinion when I asked a while back.

I'd rather have warhounds and infantry than tanks. even tanks with increased FF.

I've said it somewhere else: I fear that, Apart from specialists like transports and AA, tanks are broken in Epic. And for sure, seriously overpriced. 300 points for 4 Vindicators verses 250 for a warhound, what where they thinking!

If tanks where a lot cheaper than infantry then I might take them, if only to increase activation count. (to create pop-corn armies)

It really isn't silly: 2 seperate warhounds is way, way better than 2 together. EUK recognised this and added 25pts to the cost of a lone warhound. I fear that wasn't nearly enough!