(Ilushia @ Dec. 10 2007,16:34)
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I haven't found titans to be particularly 'way too good' in general, to be honest. They've got some substantial advantages, to be sure, but there are plenty of ways to kill them (Cobras, for instance, will eat Titans for breakfast, lunch AND dinner pretty easily. Especially backed up by Falcons to strip shields). In essence you usually have to commit ~1.5x-2x the price of the titan to destroying it, give or take a little bit. The primary difference with titans vs other units is you can't just break them and assume they're not an issue any more. You have to wipe them out completely.
Let's compare falcons and pred annihilators then. They cost pretty much the same and which ever goes first nukes the other. So it's ok to use 1.5x-2x as much points to get a dead titan?
(Ilushia @ Dec. 10 2007,16:34)
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Some lists (especially Space Marines) really suffer for their lack of TK weapons. For space marines probably the best answer to a Warlord is 3 units of Terminators, one of which has a Commander in it and the other two with Chaplains, and a Thunderhawk. Teleport the Terminators in around the feet of the titan, use the THawk to put a blast marker on it, retain with the terminators to make a combined assault. That's 15x MW 3+ and 12x regular 3+. Average rolls that's something like 6 DC in a single attack, for around 1200 points. Kill a Reaver instantly, seriously damage a Warlord and almost certainly break it. Comparatively the Warlord will average around 1.66 dead Terminators, 3.33 if its got a chainfist or similar close combat weapon.
It certainly is balanced that if you're a marine player you have to take 3 units of terminators with three characters and a thunderhawk to have a chance of taking out a lone titan. Remember to take SC too since that roll of 1 would kinda suck.
(Ilushia @ Dec. 10 2007,16:34)
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With IG you can point 2 Shadowsword companies and 1 lone Shadowsword at Warlord to inflict an average 12 hits (strip all 6 shields and do 6 DC on average. A little above-average rolling and the Warlord will die outright) again at about 1.5x the price or so.
Assuming you have the shadowsword companies placed straight in line with the warlord and they don't have to double (I'm assuming you're going to shoot from d-zone to d-zone). This seems like?a school book example of balanced; with IG bring 7 shadowswords and a loaded die, check.
(Ilushia @ Dec. 10 2007,16:34)
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Yes, Titans are HARD to kill. This is intentional because they don't get much board control zone, and when divided apart from one another can be picked apart by large numbers of enemies potentially.
Why should they ever split? One reaver, one warhound and maybe a bunch of russes stay close enough the blitz to march there in one turn and a similar bunch start moving towards the center of the table while still remaining close enough to at least one of the objectives on the titan player's side. 2 insanely hard 'formations' that shoot anything within range and that can pillage anything that comes close. They don't have to win with objectives if they don't want to, they can just shoot a couple of formations to pieces and wait for the game to end. With other lists it would be possible to take 4 reavers and still get two to four other formations to play with.
(Ilushia @ Dec. 10 2007,16:34)
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Regenerating Void Shields: To be honest, if your opponent is marshalling then that's a good thing for you. Any turn he spends marshalling is a turn he either A: Avoids movement. Or B: Avoids shooting. In both cases you're accomplishing your goal: Preventing the Titans from getting across the field. Beating titans has NOTHING to do with actually beating the titans typically. The primary way to beat the list is to hold them off and single out the ones which need to die and kill them with everything. This is substantially easier in a Titan list then most others, as they cost so much that fielding three of them right next to eachother within support range more or less surrenders the entire rest of the board to your opponent.
So umm there's gold bars lying around or why is it important to hold the rest of the table? And how did you drop the shields in the first place? Most regular formations have 45cm range and I seem to recall that you can shoot when marshalling. The titans can do the moving part on the third round when there's nothing else left to do.
(Ilushia @ Dec. 10 2007,16:34)
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As for the 'any other list can do this' bit: The problem with that argument is that other lists don't generally have MW 2+ plasma guns I can double towards my enemies and have such a good hit rate with. As when doing so they become pretty much the defacto weapon for assault titans.
Yeah, instead of having a 3 x MW2+/60cm/Slow they have 6 x MW4+/Slow which seem pretty much the same? 3 x 3+ is what, 2 hits on average? 6 x 5+ is umm 2 hits on average? This was from Chroma's list. Then there's the lists that allow 2 reavers and 6 hounds and plasma blastgun is still the same it was. If blastgun would have 2 x MW4+/45cm/Slow, plasma destructor would be either 3 x MW4+/60cm/Slow or 2 x MW3+/60cm/Slow but since we live in the world of megacannons that's not the case.