TRC and Clauswitz have raised some serious concerns about the balance of a particular style of AMTL army list (that being one composed of lots of Reavers and Warhounds). Taking their concerns onboard, I have some thoughts on how to proceed with refining the balance of the list:



THINGS I'M FAIRLY CERTAIN I'D LIKE TO TRY:
- Reaver Titans may only take a maximum of 1 Free Weapon.
- Warlord Titans may only take a maximum of 2 Free Weapons.
- Titan Close Combat Weapon becomes +25pts
- Carapace Multilasers become +50pts, give it its ground-attack shots back.



POSSIBLES:
- In order to unlock a 'pair' of lone warhounds, you must first select a Warhound Pack.
- Points increase for Warhound Titans.
- Extend 'optimised weapon loadout surcharge' to cover Battle Titans that select three or more of one weapon system.




Detailed breakdown:

- Reaver Titans may only take a maximum of 1 Free Weapon.
- Warlord Titans may only take a maximum of 2 Free Weapons.

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Have you read this?
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/forums....y332638

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Yes I have read their battle reports.

Ultimately they don't seem to believe that an army composed only of Titans is balancable (in a fun manner) at all... well fair do's, if that does turn out to be true then we will just have to scrap the entire AMTL army list and work on the Skitarii army list as the 'primary' Mechanicus list.

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Battelreports? I linked to my thread #21.
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/forums....y332638

Edit: Now it should do. Very strange.

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The only problem with limiting the number of free weapons is when I want to equip a titan with more than one.

Perhaps, you could simply take all of the weapons that are free in 3.15 and make them 25pts (as is).

Then, state that a titan can choose ONE weapon from the following list at no cost in points:

Inferno Gun, Vulcan Megabolter, Plasma Blastgun, Laser Burner, Corvus Assault Pod, Carapace Landing Pad.

That way, a titan could still be equiped with a laser burner and a corvus pod, but it would be 25 pts more than what it is in 3.15.

My point being that the weapon stats aren't what makes the list abusive, just the fact that 3 x zero leads to overly cheap price points.

^ I like that suggestion in principle, although it could be complicated in practice. It might be better to say that any free weapons after the first for a Reaver or second for a Warlord cost 25 points. But it might not, I'm not sure.


That sounds pretty sensible.


I'm a bit suspicious of these. If you aren't min-maxing on the Battle Titans then Warhounds as they stand don't seem particularly abusive. This would limit how many lone-Warhound activations were available in an aggressively optimised army, but I worry it might also push down the activation count for other, less abusive builds and make them less viable, so that only carefully optimised armies are any use at all.

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I think that would resolve most of my concerns E&C.

The main downside would seem to be the banning of certain weapon configs.  I can live with that but it didn't seem universally popular.

Certainly it would be possible to have some system of accomodating the other configs (semajnollissor's idea of adding a cost to additional free weapons being one of quite a few ways of doing it, at the cost of some increased complexity).

I personally, rather like the idea of the Warlord affecting how the scout titans are deployed, but the pack for singles mechanic will do the same job activation-wise.

- Reaver Titans may only take a maximum of 1 Free Weapon.
- Warlord Titans may only take a maximum of 2 Free Weapons.

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How about this? Allow Titans to take as many Free Weapons as you want, but if you take more than 1 for a Reaver or 2 for a Warlord, then each additional Free Weapon costs 25 points.

As for Warhounds, maybe allow then to be taken in pairs only?

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I believe it was unbalanced (moreso than V3 is now... the French AMTL is an evolved version of V2 and is, according to the UK tournament players who have faced off against it, still overpowered), and furthermore it was kinda dull, what with there only being two bands of weapon system. It also didn't follow the background properly, as weapon systems had to be altered to fit into the two power bands, so we ended up with Megabolters with 6x shots, etc.

If the community wants V2 back, then I won't stand in their way, but as it is I believe the community is much happier with the V3 approach, and indeed I believe the 'feel' of the list has improved greatly as a result.

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That sounds like a good idea to me. I'd rather not see absolute restrictions that could invalidate peoples models, but charging for free weapons beyond the first 1-2 does help raise the base cost and could well encourage more different options to be fielded.

I would prefer if we could avoid convoluted pricing structures if possible, however.

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Ben

In that case what did you think of semajnollissor's proposal in other thread? That had very simple pricing structure with no additional rules.

It might need tweaking and possibly some weapon costs upped if still overpowered, but I would rather something that was easy to understand. Rules like v2 or Clausewitz's suggestion of higher base cost plus "free" upgrades, these are both too confusing.

Cheers

James

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