Soooo... Superheavies.

Seem to be a problem at 3++. They say:

Quote :

We obviously have the Escalation and Stronghold drops and this seems to have created a catalyst for a ton of people to look at what needs to be done to make 40k a fun and enjoyable game in a competitive environment. The FoB changes post was a great early discussion point but unfortunately, that page isn't working anymore… We are working to get it running again but I have no idea currently why this has happened.

it's the GW lawyers!

I put a comment on the GW Facebook page following their announcement about Throne of Skulls and the little buggers removed it so it wouldn't surprise me.

Was it a negative comment?

Yep, but not in any way rude of offensive.

This expansion and the stronghold one adding D weapons and Super heavies to the main game just baffles me.

Unholyllama wrote:

I don't see DE having issues with super heavy vehicles; however, I DO see us having issues with gargantuan creatures since Poison only works on them with a 6+.Lances work just fine but not Entropic Strike from Necrons.

Luckily the agoniser is not a poisen weapone XD

I think if you would leave the D weapons at home, the games should be still fun. SH seem to be quite funny, as long as they do not shoot or hit with the D.

The Guys from Team0Comp (Reecius&Friends) have a few battlereports that feature escalation. some with Ds and some without, and it seems that the ones without a truely fun.
see here:

FullDE wrote:

This expansion and the stronghold one adding D weapons and Super heavies to the main game just baffles me.

It's amazing how many people are focusing on the Aquilis Strongpoint in the Stronghold book. Yes it's in there since the book has updated rules for every fortification in the game so it makes sense to put it in.

That said, it's huge and I don't see tournaments allowing it just like many restrict Fortresses of Redemption and Skysheilds do to their size.

Now, outside of the Aquilis, the book is great in my opinion. Though, I'm scared to see what will happen if/when GW releases models for the Void Shield Generators.

I'm not terribly familiar with the rules for superheavies, so forgive me if I speak from ignorance, but I don't really see a huge problem. D-weapons apparently can explode vehicles with a single hit... but my vehicles already explode on a single hit. They can kill my troops en masse with no save of any kind? Again... my troops are already being killed with no recourse to a save. They have armour values of more than 12? Dark Lances are as good against them as they are against anything else.

What can they do to us that all the high strength, cover-ignoring shooting things aren't already doing? Kill us harder? If anything it should benefit us, since you're spending a gazillion points on something that could be accomplished with a missile launcher. It doesn't take a D-weapon to make a Raider go boom.

If anyone should be worried about this stuff it's armies like the space meringues and tau, and quite frankly, screw those guys.

The other day I saw a couple tac squads of Templars shut down a Warhound Titan something chronic. The 'our weapons are useless' rule was brilliant, what with it being completely optional when you invoke it. The Warhound was doing the stomping attacks with the blast templates, which was killing a couple of marines, maybe three at a time, then the Templars player was able to deny it shooting it's Turbo Destructor Lazers, before charging it again. He had drop-podded I think 4 tac squads in all around it's feet and literally held it on it's own board edge until it was finally brought down bby that final Krak Missile; I had called this dude as the grunt who would bring it down 2 turns earlier!

Yeah i haven't played against d weapons ever but I imagine with dark eldar, all it means is I have to spread out my units a lot more... and that's it. A lascannon blows up my boat on a 4+ and melta on a 3+. 50% of the guys inside die. If anything it reduces the amount of targets I have to prioritize. And bring more lances.

Barking Agatha wrote:

I'm not terribly familiar with the rules for superheavies, so forgive me if I speak from ignorance, but I don't really see a huge problem. D-weapons apparently can explode vehicles with a single hit... but my vehicles already explode on a single hit. They can kill my troops en masse with no save of any kind? Again... my troops are already being killed with no recourse to a save. They have armour values of more than 12? Dark Lances are as good against them as they are against anything else.

What can they do to us that all the high strength, cover-ignoring shooting things aren't already doing? Kill us harder? If anything it should benefit us, since you're spending a gazillion points on something that could be accomplished with a missile launcher. It doesn't take a D-weapon to make a Raider go boom.

If anyone should be worried about this stuff it's armies like the space meringues and tau, and quite frankly, screw those guys.

From a purely DE point of view you probably have a point. D-weapons are not really any worse than a Baleflamer for us. We still get no saves and are killed on a 2+. The only real difference is that an Archon with a Shadowfield is also insta-killed and even Wracks don't get fnp.

Personally however I am more concerned with how this affects the game overall. The existence of D-weapons in any game of 40k completely changes the meta and makes a lot of units completely worthless. Land Raider? Forget about it. Abaddon? Dead in 1 shot. Swarmlord? Toast. Seer Council? LOL. Now some people may not like some or all of those units but is it really necessary to invalidate them completely?

And I always find myself coming back to this point; If I want to play Apocalypse I can. Why am I being forced to?

Count Adhemar wrote:

From a purely DE point of view you probably have a point. D-weapons are not really any worse than a Baleflamer for us. We still get no saves and are killed on a 2+. The only real difference is that an Archon with a Shadowfield is also insta-killed and even Wracks don't get fnp.

Personally however I am more concerned with how this affects the game overall. The existence of D-weapons in any game of 40k completely changes the meta and makes a lot of units completely worthless. Land Raider? Forget about it. Abaddon? Dead in 1 shot. Swarmlord? Toast. Seer Council? LOL. Now some people may not like some or all of those units but is it really necessary to invalidate them completely?

And I always find myself coming back to this point; If I want to play Apocalypse I can. Why am I being forced to?

Exactly, D-weapons and super-heavies have no place in 40k. Fluffwise, a Dark Eldar force would never engage a Titan directly. Best case scenario, they would nuke it from orbit.

The effect they have on "standard" games is huge. With the disaster of rules, cost and books that is Forgeworld, these models will never ever be balanced. And up until now, they didn't have to be. Apocalypse was about causing mayhem, removing as many models from the table per turn and throw strategy and tactics out of the window.

The same can be said of 40k now. Yes, GW was already pushing the limits with the codices of Chaos Daemons, Tau and Eldar. It is no surprise to me that GW was forced to admit that they have hardly playtested any of 6th codices at all. But now, with the travesty that is Codex Inquisition, Dataslates and Escalation, the game as we know it is lost. 40k is now more than ever rock, paper, scissors and Titans. It is up to the players to keep 40k viable as a strategical and tactical game. In what form is up to individual gaming groups, I guess.

Well what the D-does is shifting the meta. Sure its a boring meta ;-) but then again, screamer star is also boring ;-)

But there is a paper to the stone aka the D. Flyers. As the D weapons are either CC or template, they can not harm a flyer, but flyers can harm them.

do any of the forgeworld flyers have titan killing weapons on them?

csjarrat wrote:

do any of the forgeworld flyers have titan killing weapons on them?

Yes. The SM Thunderhawk, Tau Tigershark and Eldar Void Hunter (and probably some others as well) do.

there we go then, void hunter it is. revenant cant hurt it, but you can dish pain in return.
now only need to save up several hundred pounds, bend all the misshapen resin back into place, spend months painting the damn thing....
or i could just not play escalation. yeah...
thats easier and cheaper!! :-)

csjarrat wrote:

there we go then, void hunter it is. revenant cant hurt it, but you can dish pain in return.
now only need to save up several hundred pounds, bend all the misshapen resin back into place, spend months painting the damn thing....
or i could just not play escalation. yeah...
thats easier and cheaper!! :-)

The point is the number of turns you have to destroy that Revenant. The Void Hunter arrives in turn 2+, so the Revenant is sure to get at least one turn of shooting, quite possibly two and even three is not that unlikely. In that time frame, your ground-based army is dead.

Then afterwards, when the Void Hunter finally gets to shoot, he gets a single strength D hit on the Revenant due to Titan Holo-fields. This will not destroy it. In the next turn, the Revenant outmaneuvers the flyer, forcing it to either go back into reserves or to go into hover mode, which makes it vulnerable as well. The Void Hunter will eventually win, but by that time, will you have enough time to destroy the rest of your opponent's army? Because your own army will surely be gone.

me wrote:

i could just not play escalation. yeah...
thats easier and cheaper!! :-)

sticking with this bit then! :-)

Count Adhemar wrote:

From a purely DE point of view you probably have a point.

Is there any other point of view?

Count Adhemar wrote:

Personally however I am more concerned with how this affects the game overall. The existence of D-weapons in any game of 40k completely changes the meta and makes a lot of units completely worthless. Land Raider? Forget about it. Abaddon? Dead in 1 shot. Swarmlord? Toast. Seer Council? LOL.

I get a feeling of satisfaction just from reading that! I'll hang around the tables and go 'Oh, dear. How does it feel? That's how it's like for Dark Eldar all the time!' Then again, I do play the House of the Bitter Laugh, so I enjoy that sort of thing.

I would give it a wait-and-see. It probably won't change things very much, I think.

Unholyllama wrote:

FullDE wrote:

This expansion and the stronghold one adding D weapons and Super heavies to the main game just baffles me.

It's amazing how many people are focusing on the Aquilis Strongpoint in the Stronghold book.  Yes it's in there since the book has updated rules for every fortification in the game so it makes sense to put it in.

That said, it's huge and I don't see tournaments allowing it just like many restrict Fortresses of Redemption and Skysheilds do to their size.  

Now, outside of the Aquilis, the book is great in my opinion.  Though, I'm scared to see what will happen if/when GW releases models for the Void Shield Generators.

Well that's better to read, I just don't like the idea of the Aquilis being in the core rules. If it was a update to it's rules for Apoc, I'd be all for it. I'm also glad it's the only one.

Was the firestorm Redabout finally fixed or is it's rules still sketchy?

One thing that bugs me about the supplements; Yes, TOs and the like are doing their thing, actually play testing and then banning what they feel they need to ban. That's all well and good.

But for those of us playing games in our buddies' basements? There's a group of ~10 of us who play whenever we're able. And one of the guys is so hell-bent on winning, he bought escalation and the stronghold book as soon as they dropped. Our issue is, this guy is our friend. And our friend is making the game NOT fun for the rest of us. We don't want to ditch him, but we don't want to play against him anymore either.
How are players expected to deal with these kinds of crazy-butt rules that unbalance so many different aspects of the game in a relatively friendly meta?
That's the problem I'm seeing with this thing.

Yeah, only thing to do is to talk to him. Failing that bring in your own escalation; spit in his beer, dead arm him, kick his cat and finally move up to hitting on his mom if he still doesn't get the hint :-)

THat's my issue with it too. I mean they couldn't have just made escalation a alternate expansion like cityfight, and then put the aquilla there? THen they could have left everything else in stronghold.

Laughingcarp wrote:

Our issue is, this guy is our friend. And our friend is making the game NOT fun for the rest of us. We don't want to ditch him, but we don't want to play against him anymore either.
How are players expected to deal with these kinds of crazy-butt rules that unbalance so many different aspects of the game in a relatively friendly meta?
That's the problem I'm seeing with this thing.

If you fear this person to the point where you cant talk to him about it, AND he is too dense to see that his behavior is disagreeable to the people he games with, then you ARE NOT friends, and you dont have to worry about telling him off! Problem solved