Old vs. New - Battle of the Talos

Greetings and welcome to Battle 11 of Old vs. New.

The Talos has always been one of the signature items in the DE list, and this is because it's so different. A Monstrous Creature, it is immensely strong and tough, marking it as everything that DE normally are not. Plus, the fearsome appearance and the fluff behind these mechanical monstrosities usually captures the imagination of even the most jaded player.

But, the question remains - which was better? Is the old monster crab/scorpion superior? Or is the new bloated war beast better at collecting samples for its dark masters?

Talos vs. Talos Pain Engine, let the sweet agony commence!

Slot and Cost

As usual, the first basic question is - did they change the cost of the model, and is the model still in the same slot of the codex?

Both Talos and TPE are Heavy selections.
Both cost 100 points even.

Well, that was nice and easy

Advantage? - Tie!

Stats

This should be an easy one to compare. Did they take away or add to the stat line?

The Old Talos

WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv
5	3	7	7	3	4	d6	-	3+

The New Talos

WS	BS	S	T	W	I	A	Ld	Sv
5	3	7	7	3	4	d6	10	3+

I know what you're going to say - they're identical, another tie!

But...no, no actually, they aren't. Now, I recognize I am being nitpicky as anything with this call, but I imagine everyone who played the Old Talos (and maybe even the New) will understand where I'm coming from with this.

Leadership '-' with Fearless is different than being Leadership '10' with Fearless. Why? Because, versus a varied assortment of powers, not having a Leadership score meant you couldn't be targeted with them at all, whereas 10 just means you're tough in a Leadership sense. Now, I'm sure there are situations where having a 10 is better (though Mindwar is the only one I'm coming up with) but, on the whole, being immune to any sort of Leadership shenanigans is generally a bit better than having a Leadership of 10.

Weak advantage, but that's how I see it.

Advantage? - Old!

Wargear

What good are stats without awesome weapons to use them with?

New

New has a variety of oddball tools at its disposal. They, generally, are seen as a bit on the expensive side for what you gain, but there are some good load-out possibilities if you go in smart.

The Talos starts with a TL S.Cannon and can upgrade it to a blast template tosser, a haywire blaster, or heat lance. All of which are prety decent options and quite good t what they do (except maybe the Stinger Pod which, honestly, is pretty 'meh' compared to just sticking with the S.Cannon, frankly.)

It can also take an extra CCW.
And can switch out CCWs with Chain Flails for an extra d6 possibility, or oddball tools like the questionable Ichor Injector, or the most excellent TL Liquifier gun.


Old

It had its claws and the Talos sting...yeah...that was it (dear gawd, an Old entry with *less* options, my soul!!!

The Old Sting was pretty interesting - basically it was Assault 6, AP 4, 24" range. You would roll to hit...and then would apply the hits to the closest enemy *model* that hadn't already been hit. So 1st hit would hit the closest enemy model, 2nd would hit the next, so on and so forth.

Didn't matter if they were in Assault either, could still hit and wound them.

It was a lot of fun.

The Talos Claws were...usually an issue. There remained, till almost the final day, some debate about how they worked on Vehicles. The question was raised because GW nerfed their skimmer status and clarified that they worked "as a monstrous creature
and as such uses all the rules for Monstrous Creatures rather than skimmers"

All well and good, as the Talos used to be a skimmer for movement purposes. But that opened a can of worms as to whether their claws were affected by the ruling that they used 'all the rules for' MCs (traditionally they didn't.

Make your own calls on that one, I saw it both ways quite a bit.

The classic rules gave it d6+Str+number of succesful hits after first for it's roll to penetrate vehicle armor (as opposed to the MC 2d6+Str norm) Generally speaking, you were better off if you got regular MC penetration chances.


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Not too hard of a one to consider. The Old is inferior at busting up vehicles, and even though I actually rather love the old gun, I do have to admit the options of the new gun is generally superior.


Advantage? - New!


Face to Face in Battle!

Since the Old lacks any upgrades it would be rather unfair to give the New any upgrades either.

At that point they are functionally identical in all ways - so basically whichever of them gets off the charge will be the winner.

Kind of a derp out but...whatevs, blame Phil Kelly for not making it a more drastic stat shift up


Advantage? - Tie!

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So that's my breakdown.

This is perhaps one of the easiest battles we've seen. Basically Phil took the old model, cleared away some confusing rules that had been bothering players for a while (and that the FAQs had done NOTHING to help with) and then gave the unit the new special rules and some upgrade options.

Literally that's all he did, and I like it (though dislike th enew model compared to the old, natch )

They're the same machine of war, but New has clearer rules, some decent upgrade options, and is overall still the same old Talos we always loved to lob at Marine Squads for lulz.

That's my call - what's yours?

TL liquifier gun and pain token shenanigans pull it for the new, IMO, but yeah, its a pretty basic match up... Kind of wish that the new ones could move as a skimmer though, it would make sense with their models and make them much more competitive. I would love to use these guys more, but it's either run them from a WWP or footslog them across the field (and get shot to death in the process), and when you stack them up against a ravager they are unquestionably the weaker choice, strictly due to that fact. When you add in the lack of an invul save and lack of grenades, you're looking at something that is horribly overpriced for it's possible damage output.

Even running a WWP list, I have NEVER been able to get a talos into base contact with a vehicle.

The one single thing I hope for more than anything else in 6th ed, is that monstrous creatures armor saves are considered invul saves. I never understood why they weren't... it really nerfs MC's into the ground.


Also, the new models are bacon covered bacon slathered with awesomesauce.

The old models were H.R. Giger + Scorpion so, yeah, you can keep your floating meatball with arms.

Would you take a Talos at the moment with all those Grey Knights running around with force weapons?

The old one looked like it should have been a vehicle! XD! When I first saw it and before I saw the rules for it, I thought it was a skimmer/walker XD

Would it be legit to break off the flying base and let the old one crawl around on its little crab legs?

The new one is much more Giger-esque if you ask me (can see a lot of similarities to the alien queen if you think about it)... its really a nice fusion of a biological system and a machine... when I googled it though I ran across THIS sweet conversion, that looks much more awesome than either of them imo.

Sky Serpent wrote:

Would you take a Talos at the moment with all those Grey Knights running around with force weapons?

If their armor save was an invul save... yes... yes I would... with the current rules... not in your lifetime.

Voted for new on the basis that it can be upgraded to be more effective than the old one.

Would I run one, well it's on my list of experiments still to do.

Kenny, you've never run a Talos? That's kind of surprising to me.

I voted new Talos.

Strangely enough the old model got me into WH40K (wrote that in another thread already), but when the new model came out it actually was even more awesome and fits with the fluff better. I also like the rules much much better now.

I've always run a Talos. @Ruke: I always got them into base contact w/ vehicles through WWP. I ran 2 portals back in the days. Dropped the 1st on turn 1 and the 2nd on turn 2. The 2nd one would be in the middle of the board.

I don't run it now to force myself to finish my army. I'm lazy and if I start with the cool stuff first, I'll never finish the Kabal en the Cult. I'm holding everything Coven off, torturing myself like a true Dark Eldar.

Voted new, I quite like the newer model over the old. The forceweapon thing really bugs me though, makes it less of an option unfortunately. Would be nice too if the Talos pain engine started with a pain token!

New one.It has pain tokens and pure monstruous creatures rules, which make him far more threatening for opponent. I play him with 2 ravagers and lots of small targets, and thanks to the cover saves always manage to bring him to contact. Even against good players it has always got his points back in kills.
The old one had lots of drawbacks, he couldn't go in covers because you had to test and lose 1 HP if you rolled a one, it was awful slow as it couldn't run in old versions of 40K, and it had to go to contact to be efficient. And if you rolled a 1 for his attacks, you were in trouble. Now at least the TW heat lances make him scary for vehicles from further, and it costs only 10 points to make sure he has a decent amount of attacks.
Definitly, I vote for the new Talos!

Trying to hit armor with the old one was pretty hard to decipher, even loved how some DE players turbo-boosted their Talos because they thought it was a skimmer.

New Talos is sweet and can't ask for a better one in a wwp style list - it's duality makes it flexible to handle any target once it emerges but you do have to consider it's 3+ armor save.

As for the new model, hands down better. The old metal model was a pain to build until you just figure on building your own with what ever bits you had on hand.

I liked the older model (not a fan of the Arnold Schwarzengrot look) but PfP and upgrades are always nice. That being said I dont think Talosi should ever be run solo, so its joke vote for me!!! (Plus yes Thor... it should be Talosi)

What really bummed me out about the Talos is the pic in the codex is what the new model should of looked like, A new and improved older model, not a Grot on steroids w/ a tail...

Upgrades win it for me.
Twin Linked Luqifier and Heat Lance - it is so estetically pleasing to imagine how this little bugger draw a hole in rhino with its heat lance and then sprays liqifier acid inside. Thats truly coven stuff ))

As for Grey Knights - well not every squad can have both hammerhand and activate force weapon, so they are hoping on sixes. I hope this new rules about Instant Death in 6th ed. will be true. Damn how often i say that phrase regarding GKvsDE matchup.

I quite liked the old model, it was really disturbing. The new one has tentacles though. And cool gun options.

Vote: NEW

The old one having no ld stat would actually make it automatically fail any leadership check, unless it specifies that models with no ld value are immune (most often they just specify that vehicles are immune).

In an case, I vote for the new, as it is definetly better once you give it some upgrades.

I like how the votes in this are being swayed almost as much by the model as by the model entry itself.

Shadows Revenge wrote:

What really bummed me out about the Talos is the pic in the codex is what the new model should of looked like, A new and improved older model, not a Grot on steroids w/ a tail...

I can understand that, the Talos in the pic is pretty sweet (and what the one in the pic I posted above was based off of), but the new model is plastic, and doesn't look like a crab dreadnaught.

Nomic wrote:

The old one having no ld stat would actually make it automatically fail any leadership check, unless it specifies that models with no ld value are immune (most often they just specify that vehicles are immune).

What's the leadership check you have in mind?

Thor665 wrote:

Kenny, you've never run a Talos? That's kind of surprising to me.

Used to run them in the old dex, had a pair popping out a WWP,straight into the enemy, happy times.

I've ran 1 once in this dex but only as a quick tryout for 1 game. Kind of liked it but didn't really fit in with the rest of the army at the time.
I've now got a plan to incorporate 1 or some scourges into my hellion tournament list, so will be testing a bit more extensively over the coming weeks.

That seems an interesting set of choices - assault MC or shooting jump infantry...

Sky Serpent wrote:

Would you take a Talos at the moment with all those Grey Knights running around with force weapons?

i wouldnt even consider them unless for a coven army and wwp.
on the topic of vote: neither.

A new poll is going up today, so I'm calling this one.

By a super and oh-so-tight margin, I'm pretty sure New won this one

I believe a while back I remember discussing the plural form of Talos and I think we got it nailed down fairly accurately. Of course, with the internet and everyone being an expert but a forum goer said the plural form of Talos is:

Talos.

I know it is sort of boring, I was using Taloi but the explanation the forum goer gave us sounded as though he really did know english, word structure and was able to explain it with some sort of logical answer. Again, I didn't know the guy from atom (adam?) but he really had nothing to gain by it and seemed sincere.

Me, I still like Taloi but I just thought I would share that story.