Thank you for the well thought out reply.
I've been giving it a bit more thought. But so far... Well... Honestly, it's just some ideas I'm toying with. Not sure what the process for doing a list is or how welcome it would be to start churning out a list with statlines at this early point in time?
jimmyzimms wrote:
2.) This is where you need to get more meat. So far those things mentioned are modeling choices, not really gameplay changes.
For instance "up close and personal" is just taking CCW then. You can already do that in AMTL. The fact that the weapons are "snarling battle heads, and tentacles" need something to make them distinct. How is the chaos giant buzz saw fundamentally on a gameplay level different from the Chainsword arm? I'd honestly stat them the same. We can take a centerline cannon / CCW head from the collector section of AMTL list for the heads. Even the old chaos tails are probably just the Carapace Multilasers Laser Burner in practical gameplay terms.
A very good point.
What I was thinking comes in two different ways:
1) Limit the large long-ranged weapons (like Vulcano Cannon) a bit, either by outright limiting it in list building or by upping the cost slightly.
2) Make mid- to close-range weapons a bit more attractive. Either through tweaking the statline a bit or by lowering the point costs slightly.
I was hoping to keep a fair few of the standard weapons (after all, even the Dark Mechanicus would see the idea of standardized production) but also opening up for some slightly tweaked stats.
Going way back the 40K 2. edition, you had (for example) the Autocannon vs. the Reaper Autocannon. Or the rapid firing, but unstable, plasma weapons. So Slw could be removed, but every to-hit roll of 6 would inflict a critical hit on the titan.
In addition, there could be the option for having the titan be possed by a greater demon, thus opening the option to pick a demon weapon.
Finally, it could be tied to marks. The Mark of Khorne, for example, grants the titan the Fury of Khorne rule (and the ability to summon Khorne demons). The titan MUST take at least one close combat weapon, but it's speed is increased by +5 cm.
The idea is to not force players to play in a certain way (Khorne cares not how the blood flow, or whose blood it is, as long as it flows), but to give them a slight nudge by making some combos a bit more obvious than others. A huge lumbering titan advancing slowly while tearing the opponent apart with a torrent of shoots also pleases Khorne, but with extra speed and a close combat weapon... Well... Khorne smiles on you when you tear an opposing titan apart in glorious close combat.
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like how? I'm with you but what would be more chaotic? I assume you mean in the structure, not the units. Please correct me if I am wrong here.
Completely correct.
An Imperial titan legion is a very rigidly structure army with titans, support units, and naval assets.
I was thinking an army constructed more like a chaos warband of old, with a single warlord and his lesser followers. Titans are still the core units (the warlords), but a lot of other units are upgrades for each titan, rather than units in their own right (the followers). So you might have a Warlord with a group of Dark Skitarii and a couple of summoned demon following it around, all in a single large unit.
That being said though... Having though a bit more about it, I'm honestly not sure it's a good idea as it might reduce the army to too few activations and a few large blobs of intermixed units.
One idea I was toying with was to use it to upgrade the titans stats, rather than as actual units.
For example:
Techno-slaves: CH - No weapons - Leader. This represents Tech-priests and their slave-servitors attending the titan, helping restore void shields, realigning sensors, repairing damage, etc.
Techo-cultists: CH - EA(+1), FS. This represents a horde of adoring cultists clustering around the titan's feet, all trying to catch the attention of the demon within, and intercepting any attempt at charging the titan.
That follows the structure from the current list a bit more, with Legates, Sacred Icons, etc.
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now this is something! I can dig that!
Cool, because i really like that idea.
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That's basically just taking Vraks list. Cheap low tech infantry with a Titan option. However that's diluting the theme a bit here if we did that plus adding in a potentially terribly unbalanced and unfun list to face off against. The major balancing act of lists composed of war engines, especially titans, is to limit their activation count. They're almost always going to be on the backfoot that way. Adding in a bunch of cheap feeder formations of crap units as cannon fodder allows you to screen your titans off in toto (remember the battle titans and infantry are pretty close to the same speeds) and then gain huge numbers of supporting fire dice rolls from the titan by using the cheap formations to initiate assaults/defend assults.
Point well taken. It's something to think about for sure, but as mentioned above, I was originally envisioning it all bound together in one intermixed unit. That is, it's not a titan list with cheap infantry to sit tight on an objective. It's a titan list with some cheap infantry that has to stay in coherency with the titan, effectively protecting it against close combat attacks, but at the same time hobbling it as it will have to manoeuvre around on the battlefield with a lot of annoying insects clustering around it's feet.
But as I've already admitted, it might not be the best idea, making the list too limited on activations, and there might be better ways of doing it. It will have to be thoroughly tested for sure.
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3. I'd suggest leveraging the Dark Mechanicum, Forgotten Forgeworlds list dev by Cygnus. No need to step on toes and theme. Hist approach is more focused on the forgeworld forces vs the titans though admittedly. Likewise the Mechnicum Explorator list by Norto is a more modern style ad mech + knights list.
I was certainly hoping to be able to find inspiration from other lists. But on the other hand, I don't want to just copy the work done by others.
Again, thank you for your input. Also for the second part - some really good ideas there.
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