Talos Fitout...

I have recently (read today) taken delivery of a shiny new Pain Engine. I love this model, so dark and brooding and just evil. Wonderful sculpt really.

Anyway, I am looking at it to complement my forces somehow. Yes, its slow, and most of my army is very quick (raider rush with hellions, beasts, reavers and so on, can add the list if it will help) but think that this can help deal with deep striking and outflanking nasties, if I take it as a Talos.

If I take it as a Cronos, I think (could be wrong), it would be good to run it up with the beasties or hellions to provide some buffs along the way. Perhaps swing it up a flank, get it into a decent position, deep strike some hellions in and steal a pain token or two. Very handy (difficult but manageable).

So, the Talos fit out I have in mind is for twin-linked liquifiers, really not sure of the tail weapon. Heat lances would be nice, but the stinger pods could be useful too. Not sure.

The Cronos seems far less versatile but the spirit probe and pain token nastiness seem a good option as well.

The last point is what to drop. My heavy slots are full, with two Razorwing or Void Ravens and a Ravager. What sort of combo should I be looking at?

Hit me. Hard.

I personally prefer the twinlinked splinter cannon/liquifier load out.

the_dukes_scion wrote:

Yes, its slow, and most of my army is very quick (raider rush with hellions, beasts, reavers and so on, can add the list if it will help) but think that this can help deal with deep striking and outflanking nasties, if I take it as a Talos.

Talos are a fantastic counter deep strike units.

Believe it or not though their speed isn't that much of a problem.

It has a 36" range splinter cannon and can sit in midfield where all the objectives are and then your opponent needs to come to you. It's an area denial unit. Start it 12" into the board in area terrain (Monstrous creatures now benefit from area terrain). Move it forwards 6" or 6"+d6 (run) if there are no targets, andyou are in the middle of the board turn 1-2. You can threaten anything within 18", because it's not like overwatch bothers a talos, so there is no reason not to try a 10-12" charge. With the liquifiers anything that comes within 14" (6" move + 8" flame template) is going to be in trouble, whilst the 36" range twinlinked splinter cannon can fire away at scoring units whilst you sit and wait for your opponent to advance.

The splinter cannon is also great for getting a pain token on it ASASP. This is probably the most important aspect of the splinter cannon, if you order you shooting phase, so by the end of turn 1 your talos hasn't fired yet and an enemy unit is down to 1-3 models then theirs a good chance you can get FNP on it turn 1. This  really goes a long way to making it more survivable.

Even if your talos gets shot to pieces turn 1 they are probably the most resilient unit in our army for their cost. If your opponent is shooting it instead of the more fragile elements of your army you should be well on the way to victory as he will be expending considerable fire to do so (especially if your talos is obscured by a ruin for a 4+ cover save).

Finally it's worth remembering that the talos is about projecting fear. Can you opponent risk it rolling high on it's charge and reaching one of your units? Can your opponent risk it rolling AP1-2-3 with it's twinlinked liquifiers (these might be S4 re-roll to wound making them quite deadly)? Can your opponent risk that it might roll a 6 for it's number of attack? Can your opponent risk failing to wound it? Can you opponent risk it passing more 3+ saves than it statistically should? Can your opponent risk the liquifiers rolling above average on overwatch?

Fear is not about what a unit will do, but about what it has the potential to do. In the case of the Talos, that's terrible terrible damage.

Honestly in the current waveserpent meta I find my ravagers just die before being able to accomplish anything, especially if I go second without night fight, so right now I would rather invest in a Talos, as it takes a lot more fire to remove them.

If your interested below are some illustrated battle reports where I used Talos:

BR10: The Black Buzzards VS SM Salamanders - 1500pts
BR16: The Black Buzzards VS SoB Mech - 1500pts
BR24: The Black Buzzards VS GK Mech - 1000pts

If your think of using a talos or chronos you'd have to customise your list around them. Say taking 2 of them and a blob of grots maybe a wwp to bring them out midfield it gives your opponent something to think about

Darkeldar neeb wrote:

maybe a wwp to bring them out midfield it gives your opponent something to think about

Honestly I would always start them on the board. Their role is to draw fire away from your more fragile elements.

The webway portal only gives you an additional 5-9" movement (2d6" pick the highest difficult terrain, 3" portal diameter). Assuming you are using a footbased grotesque unit to deploy it, you will want them in cover hence the difficult terrain test. If you start using transports to get a 11-15" move (6" transport move, 2d6" pick the highest difficult terrain, 3" portal diameter) you are investing a lot into a fragile portal delivery system. Another thing to bear in mind is that this distance advantage is only if your talos comes in from reserve turn 2, any delay and it's gone. The other thing is the talos that started on the board can assault turn 1-2 against aggressive armies like daemons, the webway portal talos cannot (as shown in psycheer's battle report).

The problem with the webway portal is you need to invest a lot of points into a unit who's whole purpose is to set up the portal, and most likely get shot off the board, only to be at the mercy of your own reserve rolls.

Sorry I meant bring the grots out of the wwp aswell using a homo with wracks as the delivery for the wwp.

Agree with Mush 100%. I want to start my talos on the board, as it's not scaring anyone in reserve. It's the scariest looking unit we have, and a lot of people just don't know what it's capable of so generally try to put shots into it regardless.

Liquifier gun is always a must, but as for the tail weapon, that really depends on what you want your talos to do. All the tail options are viable. Except maybe the stinger pod. I use the heatlance, for versatility. Splinter cannon is a great choice, but I already have tons of splinter cannons. I have a lot of dark light weapons as well. Good amount of haywire as well. Which means the only unit I have with a melta is the Talos, which suits him fine as unlike most of our units, he wants to be in melta range.

The cronos, is good, but I kind of think of him as a turtle. Slow and steady, and he toughens up the units around him. With two AP3 template weapons, and AP2 in assault, he will remove models consistently. But he won't cause anywhere near the damage the talos will. If you feel like your list MUST generate some pain tokens to survive, then I'd include him. If you were going to use him to kill your opponent, you're better off with the talos.

Expletive Deleted wrote:

I use the heatlance, for versatility. Splinter cannon is a great choice, but I already have tons of splinter cannons. I have a lot of dark light weapons as well. Good amount of haywire as well. Which means the only unit I have with a melta is the Talos, which suits him fine as unlike most of our units, he wants to be in melta range.

My issue with the heatlance is not only is it more expensive, but you lose that ability to get an early pain token. I just find that due to the heatlance requiring that the talos be within 9" of it's target it seems rather moot on such a slow unit. At that range you might as-well charge, assault hits rear armour, ignores cover saves (like jink and holofields) and gives you free movement. Smash attack makes the random number of attacks a none issue. As you are guaranteed a minimum of a S7 auto hit on rear armour (from hammer of wrath) and two S10 AP2 hit's that re-roll armour penetration (auto penetrating armour 10). Any closer than 9" and the charge becomes even more effective. The only situation where the heatlance is useful is when you are lucky enough to take out a transport with it and charge the survivors. At the end of the day the heatlance only has a 21% chance of destroying an AV12 vehicles within 9", a talos has a 27.7% chance of making a 9" charge (and a 41% chance of making an 8" charge). At least that's my take on heatlances.

As for the haywire, they work well with haywire scourge, but without the critical mass of haywire the scourge generate I find they tend to under-perform,

Regarding what to drop: that's kind of a tricky question based on your own meta and how the rest of your army functions.

That said, try dropping the ravager and keeping the talos and flyers. You're going to find that most opponents are going to expend quite a bit of firepower to knock it down. In my meta, the 2 most feared units are the Talos and the Reavers. I just picked up a second Talos model so I'm going to try running two of them and a Razorwing in the next league games; while shelving the Ravagers for awhile.

I run my scourges with Haywire so that's probably why I always found it to be effective, when I used it.

With the Heat Lance you have a 54% of glancing on armor 12. to 44% pen. And like you said a 21% chance to outright destroy it. Contrarily, In your scenario you have a 24.6% chance of outright destroying it on assault. But if you shoot your splinter cannon at something else you can't assault the vehicle. Now with the heat lance and assault you only increase your chances of destroying the vehicle. Few vehicles have more than 3 hull points meaning you don't need the explosions. If you're 9" away you have a... well crap my math fails me, but a really high chance of doing 3 hull points in one phase. I play mostly against space marines, so a splinter cannon does only slightly more wounds on average than the heat lance. The lance is half the range of the cannon certainly. but the Talos is tough enough I'd usually rather get a pain token on another unit if I can. The lance gives me the ability to destroy a tank whenever in range despite penetration rolls, kill space marine infantry almost as effectively just with shorter range, and yes, like you said, if he can pop a transport he can get to the good bits inside. It's more versatile than the splinter cannon, which can only pew pew things with a toughness. It does reduce his range, but let's face it, you want him in 9" range just to use his liquifier gun, and if you start him 12" in + 6" he has a first turn shooting range of 36". Not melta range but TL S6 AP1 will wound most anything short of a MC and will hurt light vehicles on a 4+. I like to use my Talos as a swiss army knife. At 10 points, it's not a bad upgrade.

But yes if you intend on sitting him in one place, then he'll need that range to remain effective on the battlefield.

I agree with Mush. The times I have used my Talos (rare-but working on a coven based list) it has soaked up the fire. I had a DA army dump two full turns of shooting into it before it died. It only killed a couple of bikes, but between soaking up the firepower and the fear that drove all his movement, I positioned the rest of my army for a turn three table.

I like the range of the splinter cannon, but can see him as a viable anti-armor option with the right load out.

Ultimately it comes down to what else is in your army and what you plan to do with him.

Alright, the rest of the army looks like:

Baron
14 Hellions and Helliarch
10 x kabalites SC in raider
10 x kabalites SC in raider
10 x kabalites SC in raider
10 x Wyches HW in raider
Beastpack 3 masters, 2 Flocks, 5 Khymera, 1 Clawed Fiend (this is variable with CF dropped)
6 Reavers HL
2 Razorwings/Void Ravens (depends on my mood)
Ravager

More or less this most of the time. To aid my problem, I have magnetised up the tail weapons so i can pick whatever I feel like. I also modelled up the left hand to be changeable to add the chain flails and so on, but the liquifier is solid. I like the idea of the heat lances, to maybe help the reavers out depending how close i can get. Leaving them in reserve so I can get the talos into a reasonable position to help out perhaps.

Magnetized mine too made it so it could be a talos or a chronos...though I have yet to use it as a chronos.