Welcome to AT Stats – this is a very basic site looking to provide you with everything you wanted to know about Adeptus Titanicus unit statistics.
Hopefully that’s what you were looking for coming here – I’ll be covering Titan and Knight Chassis information, all the different weapons options for them and covering off how effective they are for their points cost. I _won’t_ be looking at the tournament scene and how various people are doing with their current load-outs. I will be looking at the potential and likely damage statistics for each.
Why am I doing this? The answer is three fold;
Firstly, this is the sort of thing that interests me – I love to know how things work. If I find things that don’t work, I like to try to come up with ways to fix them.
Secondly, I’m interested in game balance – I like to bring units to a game that ‘work’ – each unit should have a purpose and work with the rest of the Battlegroup/Household. If there’s something that’s costed wrong, or doesn’t add anything to the game, it’ll either by too prevalent, or won’t see action at all, which is a waste. Initially at least, I’ve found AT to be relatively well balanced compared with some other systems. Even the sub-optimal units and weapons seem to have a place under certain circumstances and for certain game-plans.
Thirdly, I try to build a model of the game, which allows for the incorporation of new/fan created units and can compare them with the existing ones. This allows test rules for new units and entire factions to be more easily balanced against existing ones.
I play Adeptus Titanicus in both 8mm (AT18) and also using full scale 28mm Titans using the simplified ruleset of the Titan Owners Club at Titan Walk UK (28mm AT), so you’ll see references to any differences between the two at various points below. I’ve also been involved in points balancing additional units, such as Princeps Goddenzilla’s Imperator Titan, and establishing a ruleset for Eldar Titans/Wraithknights for use in AT.
Please feel free to leave feedback through the site below or tag me on Instagram @racock1
What’s here?
- The Basics – Building a balanced Battlegroup
- Assumptions – how have I come to the decisions I’ve made?
- To Do – what’s not included and what do I have still planned?
- The Maths – well excel formulae that make up the stats
- What Else? – the extras outside of the AT Ruleset
- Let Me At It – here’s how it all hangs together
- Observations – what stands out so far?
- Unit Options – some stars and some less optimal selections
Latest updates;
v1.07
Added the new Warhound weapons from the Legions Imperialis box-set
v1.05->v1.06
updates to Eldar Titans throughout testing over the summer ’23, London Grand Tournament and Titan Walk UK ’23
v1.04b
Minor update to include the new Conversion-Beamer Weapons – for the first time in a while, these bring some really interesting (and useful) tools to the existing titans. No changes to the existing model or calculations. We were a bit busy in the run up to attending Warhammer Fest in Manchester.
v1.03/1.04
Modifications in the run up to and immediately following the Northern Sector Titan Walk in March ’23;
I’ve split out the non-official unit info to its own page.
Mostly minor stat tweaks and points adjustments for Eldar Titans, plus an updated Damage calculation for chassis and weapon equivalencies.
Life expectancy has also been tweaked to take this into account.
These tweaks show heavier damage weapons / stronger chassis to be slightly more effective and lower damage weapons / lighter chassis to be slightly less so than previous calculations.
v1.02
I’ve finished my analysis of the Acastus Knights, Warp Missiles and the Dire Wolf Neutron Laser
v1.01
I’ve added more Knight stats and included single model units in the Summary for the two Acastus Knights.
I spotted a mistake in the Damage Capacity calculations, in that they weren’t including the first point of head damage, so have corrected that.
I’ve re-visited Eldar Titan Damage capacity (which is still too high), so made some updates below. I’ll work on some new cards shortly.
The Basics – Building a Balanced Battlegroup
At a really basic level, AT is a game with a two simple principles;
– Move to where you can do the most damage without taking too much damage in return – make sure you’ve got at least one (preferably more) target(s) at your best available range of your weapons, but don’t expose yourself (and your weaker sides and rear facings) to your opponent’s titans at their best range
– Shoot it ’til it’s dead – a nearly dead titan normally puts close to as much damage as a completely healthy one (especially as most weapons are pretty easy to repair), so make sure there’s less on the board to do you damage – this may even mean shooting a titan that has already fired, to kill it so it’s not repairing itself / shooting at you next turn, rather than one that hasn’t fired yet (unless it’s likely that you can kill that one as well and/or it’s likely to kill one of your units).
To do this, you need a balanced Battlegroup – What this means is that you need to have the weapons to both remove void shields and deal structural damage. In smaller games, it’s best to share these two roles across multiple titans, as if all your shield stripping is in one titan that gets destroyed, your ‘big hitters’ won’t be able to start clanging against armour. Likewise, if your ‘big hitter’ gets destroyed, you will strip the shields, but struggle to do damage and destroy the enemy titans. A balanced Battlegroup is one that has roughly twice as much damage causing weapons, as shield stripping (see Assumptions and Maths for more detail below). In simple terms this is;
Have twice as many Volcano Cannons, Quake Cannons Meltas and Fists, as you have Apocalypse Missile Launchers, Volkites, Bolters and Gatlings.
Plasmas and Lasers are both ‘middle’ ground weapons, generally able to do something to both shields and armour, though not as good at either role, and/or at a premium in points for flexibility. They definitely have their place, but don’t count to the 2:1 ratio.
Your first Maniple
As an example Maniple, the below has a good balance of weapons to deal with most threats;
Axiom Maniple – 995 points
Warhound Titan with Turbo Laser Destructor and Vulcan Megabolter – relatively short ranged but able to take down shields and deal damage, even if it needs to move up the board in the first turn to find a target.
Reaver Titan with Apocalypse Missile Launcher, and twin Volcano Cannons- a long range support Titan with an ability to both strip shields and deal damage. It has the potential to run ‘a little hot’, but should be staying out of range of most enemy units.
Warlord Titan with Apocalypse Missile Launchers, Belicosa Volcano Cannon and Quake Cannon – dedicated long ranged support to strip shields, deal damage and also slow the advance of enemy shorter ranged units.
If any one Titan is destroyed, the rest of the units can still function. In smaller games, when using Titans with mixed roles, Axiom is a useful Maniple, allowing you to carry on issuing orders (making good use of Split Fire here to focus shield stripping on new targets, while clanging against armour elsewhere), if a previous Titan fails it’s command check.
Assumptions
Game Length
It seems like life expectancy for Reaver on Reaver combat is 3 turns (no more, no less for the vast majority of encounters), so I am basing life expectancy per ~300 points / Total Damage Output (TDO) on that for now. Note: that Titans that last much longer or shorter than 3 turns vs equivalent points will have skew to their damage output based against range that they achieve (if it matters e.g. short ranged – high damage output will be skewed quite low, long ranged lower damage output will be skewed slightly high).
Distances
The recommended battlefield for the Rulebook is 4’x4′ and 3 out of 4 matched play deployment rules set the deployment zones 36″ apart, which with 12″ adjacency (titans not set up opposite each other, but off-set 12″ left or right) means a target 38″ away. Titans wishing to close with each other will find themselves a minimum of 36″ apart, so weapons with shorter ranges than that will need to move to find a target.
A Titan wishing to stand and shoot will be hugging the back field and likely staying as far from opposite as possible from a ‘closer’, giving a minimum of >38″ and with 12″ adjacency, just under 40″ (a ‘ranged’ titan deploying after, and trying to avoid a ‘punchy’ titan deployed in the centre of the board would be able to get just over 42″ away from it).
Corner to corner, less base size is ~55″ so any weapon with a range of greater than this can reach any target anywhere on the board.
House rules for Titan Owner’s Club 28mm AT, puts Reavers and larger at 12″ deployment zone and Warhounds and smaller at 18″ deployment zone equivalents (all 28mm AT uses x4 distances for everything)
-> min distance 24″ Warhound to Warhound, and reduces distances to travel punchy -> shooty to min >33″ / >35″ for 12″ adjacency or max 37.6″.
Weapon Ranges
Weapons >24″ will find a target T1 and can FF every turn if desired (Stand and Shoot/SnS).
Weapons <24″ will find a target if they Move and Shoot. Weapons =24″ depends upon scenario (and for 28mm should be fine – especially Warhounds, but most missions will need to MnS)
Weapons with a range above Melee (10″) will find a target in T2 (just may need Full Stride and a double push of P2L in T1 to get there)
Melee weapons only come into effect on T3 (Run and Thump/RnT)
Scenery and Obstructions
Scenery doesn’t matter for point costs even with different weapons.
A bit of an odd one at first glance, but bear with me: It only benefits/hinders Titans that want to get closer: Benefits from cover (if they slow down to make use of them, but unlikely to use max movement on a direct path to get in the right place to have full cover and elongates path to target) / Hinders as it adds to movement required to close with target, so ignoring it for now on the basis that there is little totally obscuring cover in the game, but most obstructions provide some cover and a close ranged Titan will avoid those obstacles that don’t provide sufficient cover, so will take an extra turn to get to the enemy for two turns of -1 / -2 to Hit giving the same sort of damage output (after an extra Damage Control phase).
Clearly Cover benefits models, but it doesn’t affect their relative points value as per above.
– I may need to look at this more later (and model it out), but for now, that’s the assumption.
Targeting vs not able to
TLDR: Weapons that have the ability to target locations are not significantly more valuable than those that can’t (except Beam)
Targeted hits, hit 1/2 as often (on a 3+ -> 5+), or worse (1/3 4+ -> 6+), vs not targeting hitting a preferred location 1/3rd of the time (or up to 1/2 in the case of the preferred being Body, on a Titan w/o a Special location and after damage to Weapons) and the other hits doing damage to A.N. Other location. So Targeting with all weapons will destroy 1 location in 1/6 less shots, but wastes the other half of the hits potentially doing damage to other locations.
Therefore: If your entire force shooting a specific target has targetable weapons, or if you have weapons that can only damage specific locations (due to low AP), or a specific location needs to be further damaged to allow other weapons to be able to damage it, or a damage on a specific location will likely lead to destruction of the Titan, it is worth targeting, otherwise, don’t, and rely upon weight of fire against the titan as a whole, as otherwise, non-targetable weapon firepower has a potential to be lost hitting locations that will not contribute to eventual destruction of the Titan.
Having a mix of targeting and non-targeting weapons leads to approx 2/3rds of total damage capacity of a Titan being reduced before landing a Coup de Gras shot with a targeting weapon, or 2/3 luck from a non-targeting weapon. With an added bonus of more potential damage effects to the titan (e.g. reducing weapon output / reducing movement etc.) at a cost of reducing AP bonuses by 1/6th on ‘preferred’ location
Ratio of Damage to Shields vs Damage to Armour
Each Titan needs to be able to put out enough shield damage / structure damage to take out an equivalent number of points of titan: If there’s not enough shots to do shield damage, then it won’t reach the structure, if there’s too much, it won’t have the strength to get through the structure.
The amount of damage output to shields/structure can be balanced across multiple titans in a battlegroup, but the total damage potential to shields/structure should be in a rough ratio to take down;
300 points = Reaver: 4VS, 10 structure
500 points = Reaver (above) plus Warhound: 3VS, 9 structure, OR Warlord: 5VS: 11 structure (but stronger structure).
VS are easier to take down, but easier to regenerate, only the Critical structure can be repaired.
Repairs to count over 3 turns = 1-2VS and 0-1 Crit Dmg per 300 points?
-> ~1 VS to 2 Structure no matter which chassis
Holofields and other shielding
Holofields save 1/3, 1/2, or 2/3rds of all hits on structure. No Titan is going to spend it’s time standing still (SnS) unless it can out-range it’s opponent, in which case it’s not taking damage anyway, so counting this as 1/2 = *2 to structure (1/2 of all structure (1/2) + 1/2 of the saved structure (1/4) + 1/2 of the saved, saves (1/8) -> +1 structure).
Still need to work out what Ions and Scatters do in benefit terms as they are ok against low strength weapons and useless against anything moderate+
Damage Capacity
Damage Capacity of a Titan is 1.5x it’s Voidshields (as they can be re-generated) + 2/3rds of it’s total number of hits it can take to all locations together. i.e. if you don’t target a location, you will need to hit about twice as many times as needed to kill a titan compared with if you are targeting only one location. Weapons targeting specific locations can pick a single location and therefore do twice as much equivalent damage (see Targeting vs…).
To Do
There’s plenty of bits still to add to the model, below are some of the bits that I’m planning to incorporate
Knights
I still need to work on multi-model units for the Knights (and even Squadron-ing Warhounds etc.)
I’ve changed my mind about including lower AP values, as even an Armiger needs to be hit at AP9 to scratch it, so lower values are insignificant.
Fusion
I haven’t added the +D10 at Short Range, rather than the +D6 currently. This makes no difference to max damage (number of structure damaged per turn), but will increase the probability of doing Higher AP damage (when this is implemented, it’ll increase the Weighted Total Damage Output a bit).
Ion Shields and Scattershields
Ion shields are a fixed save against a certain strength of weapon vs how many Knights are in the banner, so need to work out how much of different strength weapon is _likely_ to be directed at them to work out how much additional structure this is equivalent to (I don’t believe it’ll be too much, but could change in knight/low strength weapon games). Eldar Wraithknight Scattershields are a straight port of the rule to work the same as Ion shields. I’m currently just assuming that you’ll get a 6+ against each point of Structure, though this doesn’t take into account lower/higher Strength weapons.
Titan Types
There are three basic classes of Titan that determines how they operate in game;
Stand and Shoot (SnS) First Fire orders for 2/3 turns
Move and Shoot (MnS) just as it is
Run and Thump (RnT) don’t fire anything until turn 3 and add a smash attack with charge bonus
These need to be incorporated into the total damage output depending upon Titan type, as can’t be built in at a weapon selection (as weapons can behave differently depending upon what orders you give them).
Voidbreaker
currently I’ve got this just set to Voidbreaker (2) – I’ll need to update the formula to identify (1) or (2) and update appropriately – not complicated, just wasn’t an initial priority.
Warp Missiles / Vortex
Warp Missiles currently have a separate formula, so not incorporated into the all-in-one calc. Vortex has not been calculated yet, but it’s a bit of a beast!
Turns in S. Range / L. Range
Change this to be calculated, rather than manual. This would be based upon Range and Accuracy, favouring the most accurate range, over the other, with the total being dependent upon Long Range. Note this _may_ also need to take into account the movement of the chassis that the weapon is mounted upon.
Damage at Max AP
This is currently capped at a minimum of 9, which slightly skews weapons, whose damage is peak against lower Armour Levels – I didn’t include any lower initially due to 9 being the lowest level required to do damage to a Titan location, though it would support the model better to take this down further – at least to the minimum S6 at the top end of Knight minimum damage – anything lower still damages at the equivalent of S6.
Warlord Sinister
I’ve not yet spent any time attempting to cost in the additional abilities of the Warlord Sinister, so it is coming in significantly over-costed.
Update Damage Capacity
Currently, the odds of rolling body, legs, head, weapon or special aren’t incorporated into the damage capacity calculation – I could do with improving that.
The Maths
Below are all the components that make up the current model including the various weapon traits.
Note: pasting Excel Formulae into this page removes the asterisk denoting multiplication, so there may be points where I’ve missed it below: The full formulae can be seen in the Excel document.
Weapon Characteristics
Beam
Beam auto-hits and cuts in half the amount of damage needed to destroy a titan as you can always choose a location without penalty – see also Damage capacity.
Blast
Causes between 4/10 (Warhound 3″ blast) to 6/10 (Warlord 5″ blast ) extra hits when missing BS test, so just counted it as 0.5x extra hits when rolling a miss.
Bypass and Melee (Warp is different)
Weapons that ignore Void Shields, ignore 1/3 of the total damage capacity of a Titan. = *1.5 TDO. But they also do no damage against Void Shields.
Shieldbane
If you have a weapon with it and the target has shields, you are using it! If you don’t, you’re not using the weapon to fullest potential – consider this with weapon choices (e.g. Wingrove Pattern: Twin Volcano and Carapace Laser Blasters as you will be running HOT).
Voidbreaker
It’s Voidbreaker (2) ok? – this covers all current titan weapons, though will need an update to the formulae for Knight Volkite weapons, which are Voidbreaker(1).
Titan Chassis Statistics
Damage Capacity
Damage Capacity of a Titan is 1.5x it’s Voidshields (as they can be re-generated) + 2/3rds of it’s total number of hits it can take to all locations together. i.e. if you don’t target a location, you will need to hit about twice as many times as needed to kill a titan compared with if you are targeting only one location. Weapons targeting specific locations can pick a single location and therefore do twice as much equivalent damage (see Targeting vs…).
So the formula for this is;
Check that shield type is Void Shields. If so, count the number of voidshields and add it to 2/3rds of the total structure and critical damage of the locations
For a Warhound, on row 2, the formula is;
=IF(AB2=”V”,1.5(COUNTA(AD2:AO2)-1)+((COUNTA(AU2:BG2)+COUNTA(BL2:BY2)+COUNTA(CD2:CQ2)+COUNTA(CW2:DH2)))2/3,
IF(AB2=”H”,(COUNTA(AU2:BG2)+COUNTA(BL2:BY2)+COUNTA(CD2:CQ2)+COUNTA(CW2:DH2))2/31.5,”Ion/Scatter”))
At AP
The Armour level to be beaten changes throughout the game dependent upon structure beaten, so to get the average AP (and therefore an equivalency for toughness of a titan outside of just it’s starting armour level), we need to find out how much it changes over time. For each location, we calculate the starting armour and the number of pips / critical damage that need to be inflicted at that level and each level that it changes. The formula is;
sum of (AV level*location points) – (location points where there are negatives) – (critical damage pips *3 <as all Critical Damage locations are at -3 AP>) All divided by the total number of pips of location damage.
Again for a Warhound;
=(
(AQ2-SUM(AT2:BC2)/COUNTA(AT2:BC2))COUNTA(AT2:BC2)+ (AQ2-3)COUNTA(BD2:BG2)+
(BI2-SUM(BL2:BU2)/COUNTA(BL2:BU2))COUNTA(BL2:BU2)+ (BI2-3)COUNTA(BV2:BY2)+
(CA2-SUM(CD2:CM2)/COUNTA(CD2:CM2))COUNTA(CD2:CM2)+ (CA2-3)COUNTA(CN2:CQ2)+
IF(CS2<>””, (CS2-SUM(CW2:DE2)/COUNTA(CW2:DE2))COUNTA(CW2:DE2),0)+ IF(DF2<>””,(CS2-3)COUNTA(DF2:DH2),0)
)/
(COUNTA(AT2:BG2)+COUNTA(BL2:BY2)+COUNTA(CD2:CQ2)+COUNTA(CW2:DH2))
Dev Capacity / Crit Capacity
This calculates the total number of hits that a chassis can withstand at the AP needed to do Devastating / Critical damage. However, this _doesn’t_ currently take into account degrading Armour values, so is only a relative indicator and isn’t used in any other calculations.
Direct, Devastating and Critical Damage Capacity Equivilency components
o/a Damage Capacity ratio
I’ve updated this from v1.04 onwards to ensure scaling across all chassis. It’s not too different from the previous version which was based upon;
Damage Capacity Ratio = Damage capacity divided by Reaver Damage Capacity * (average AP divided by Reaver average AP) to the power 2.25
but now uses a slightly less arbritary calculation based upon the actual damage levels of all the Titans: I’ve updated the calculation to take into account how much better AV12 is than AV10. The average AP required across all Titan chassis currently available (counting the Warlord Sinister as a Warlord and both Iconoclast as a single chassis) to land a Direct hit is 9.277. For a Devastating Hit, it’s 11.388 and this scales nicely that an increase of 2.111 AP does roughly double the damage of the previous level. This allows us to ‘weight’ the damage capacity of a titan dependent upon it’s armour value to give an equivalence value for all Titans. This is also used across weapons to equate their damage output.
Each increase of 2.111 over AV/AP9.27 doubles damage / resilience for chassis / weapons to give…
which in Excel is;
=1+(<AP/AVlevel>-9.277)/2.111
Weighted Damage Capacity
This is simply the total Damage Capacity multiplied by the Damage Capacity Ratio, giving an indicator of how difficult the chassis is to destroy. It is then used in the over-all survivability of the chassis based upon points cost, once weapons are added.
=DI2*DO2
Titan Weapon Statistics
Turns in S. Range / Turns in L. Range
This is currently manually entered, but based upon the range / effectiveness of the weapon. i.e. average life expectancy is 3 turns, if it takes until the second turn to get into long Range, the weapon will only be likely to fire twice in the game. Melee Weapons tend to take until the third turn to reach their intended target, so will only do damage on one turn at short range. See Assumptions: Distances and Weapon Ranges for more info.
Short/Long Ranged Damage (per use)
exactly what it says: This weapon will do this much damage per use against this level of Void shield or AP level. There’s a few bits still to be done here (see To Do). I’ve included a handy guide to what the AP level equates to in terms of Titan Armour above.
3+/4+ VS Dmg
This is the likely amount of Void Shields at this level that this weapon will cause, based upon how many turns it is likely to be in which range. This is calculated based upon turn in S. Range / Turn in L. Range.
=IF($E26=1,AG263,IF($E26=2,2AG26,1.1*AG26))/3
Avg. Dmg Output at Top AP
Calculates the total damage of the weapon over three turns and divides it by 3
note: the values are based upon an arbitrary, but feels about right;
T1 Death likelihood = 10%
T2 Death likelihood = 20%
T3 Death likelihood = 40%
T4 Death likelihood = 20%
T5 Death (or survivability :€) likelihood = 10%
so if in range T1, Average Damage output is 1*T1 + 0.9*T2 + 0.7*T3 + 0.3*T4 + 0.1*T5 with damage output averaged over 3 turns.
if in range T2, it’s the same – the T1 damage.
if only in range T3, -T1 and T2.
If I get any better stats on survivability of titans in game, I’ll update this.
Note, this then takes into account the likely number of turns attacking at the two ranges.
=IF(D53+E53=3,
IF(E53=3, 2.5*AI53, IF(E53=2, 1.8*AI53+0.7*X53, IF(E53=1, 0.95*AI53+1.55*X53, 2.5*X53))),
IF(D53+E53=2,
IF(E53=2, 1.55*AI53, IF(E53 =1, 0.85*AI53+0.7*X53, 1.55*X53)),
IF(E53=1, 0.95*AI53, 0.7*X53))
)/3
Top AP Max Damage
Manually entered, as it was simpler than sticking in a formula – this is the AP at which the weapon still puts out maximum damage – Note: it only goes down to 9 currently, though some weapons will have a Top AP Max Damage level of 4-8 (Str 3-7).
Complete Titan Statistics
VS (3+) per turn
Total Void Shield stripping ability per turn (based upon 3+ Void shield saves)
Damage per turn
Total damage output from all weapons per turn (at top Damage output of the weapon)
AP vs VS Ratio
as discussed previously, the required AP to Voidshield ratio required to take out a titan is 2:1. This shows the ration of AP to Voidshield damage output of this titan configuration in terms of x:1
=CONCATENATE(TEXT(L6/K6,”#.#”), ” : 1″)
Life Expectancy
This is how long the Titan is expected to last if it were to be attacked by an equivalent points level of titan – e.g. 200 points worth of focus against a 200 point titan. This is based upon the life expectancy of a 310 point Reaver being 3 turns and its Weighted Damage Capacity being 21 (points of damage at AP9.277) giving;
=INDEX(AT_Chassis!$DS$1:$DS$29,A6)/21*(310/J6)*3
Smash/FF w/
This is a current manual workaround for the Titan types of Stand and Shoot and Run and Thump, to include the weapon number that the Titan would make use of to undertake an additional First Fire / Smash attack
TVSO
Total Void Shield Output – amount of void shields that the titan is likely to take out in its lifetime
Void shields per turn * Life expectancy
VS per 100Pts
TVSO point corrected to 100 points
TDO
Total Damage Output of the Titan in its expected lifetime
@AP
Average AP of the weapons on the Titan
Dmg per 100Pts
TDO point corrected to 100 points
Weighted (vs AP) TDO
TVSO + 2*TDO weighted against AP (using the above weighting of each 2.111 above 9.277 doing double the damage) of damage output all divided by 3 (the shields plus 2x Armour)
=(Q6+2*<TDO>*(1+(<AP>-9.277)/2.111))/3
WTDO / 100Pts
The overall effectiveness of one titan which can then be used to compared with another. Note: I still don’t feel that this is quite right, but definitely gives a feel of the effectiveness of weapon selection within class. It also supports the feel of how well balanced Reavers and their weapons seem to be, as well as that Warhounds and Warlords seem to be a little more effective in game terms.
Let Me At It
Here’s the current version of the AT_Stats spreadsheet. This’ll get updated as any errors get corrected, ToDos get added and Formulae get improved. Feel free to hack it about, and provide any suggestions for improvement in the comments section at the bottom of the page or via my insta @racock1
Observations
I started with the Reaver Chassis, and the available weapons appear to be very well balanced. With the following exceptions;
Melee focused weapons – There is no synergy with weapons for the carapace slot, but the card/rulebook instructs that all weapon slots must be filled. This means that the titan either needs to spend its whole time running towards the enemy and miss out on firing its carapace weapon, or moves normally to fire its Carapace weapon and won’t get to it’s target as quickly. This seems like an additional Melee Carapace weapon from the Warhound or ‘banner pole’ with alternative ability needs to be made available.
Melta weapons – these don’t appear to be as effective as their 35 points implies, though I have not yet included the D10 for short range attacks, and there _may_ be enough justification for their ability to inflict critical damage on the toughest Titans’ toughest locations. Even with this, it still feels a little too costly.
I then expanded out from there and there’s a few other observations;
Graviton Weapons – the sole benefit to these weapons, is their ability to be Concussive: Even with Rending, the damage output is _so_ low compared to other options available. Peak Damage for the Destructor is a measly 0.56 at up to AP11, it’s 5 points cheaper than a Laser Blaster, which puts out three-times as much (vs VS and at AP9/10) to slightly more damage (at the top end at AP14) over a slightly shorter range.
The Ruinator puts out 1.11 Damage per use at up to AP12. A Quake Cannon puts out a little more against Void shields and up to AP11, and then a little less, but also has the Quake rule and a massive blast template to hit other close-by targets if it goes for a wander.
Unless you really need the Concussive ability on a smaller chassis, this doesn’t bring a lot to your tactical options.
Plasma Blastguns appear to be very versatile for the points. They are well above average for stripping shields (2/3rds as good as the best Warhound weapon, the Volkite Eradicator at 20 points) They have an average range at 24″, but even through they already have very good damage output (1.36 compared to the also 20 point Turbo Laser Destructor’s 0.93), the ability to maximal fire them, means that they can push this to AP12 with full damage, and with upgrades like Focused Capacitors, can hit as high as AP17, covering almost every eventuality for only an extra 10 points. With the new calculations in v1.4 onwards, this sticks out as being far too effective.
C-Beamer Weapons – I was a bit worried by these, seeing how utterly devastating they are on the Acastus chassis and felt like ‘the team’ weren’t going to push the points over the expectedly required 50/75 points that would be needed to balance the envisaged rules. However, they sensibly dropped ‘blast’ from the stats, which brings the effectiveness of the weapon down to a ‘very’ but not ‘excessive’ level. These weapons are definitely giving a new flavour option to the Titans carrying them. For a Warhound, it’s a massively powerful and long-ranged weapon at the expense of pushing a small reactor: You might want to stand still and fire it long range turn one (but only if you’ve somehow stripped a titan of it’s shields already), before moving up, or maybe do power to locomotors turn one to get a bit closer before firing once at long range after Damage Control, but you’re not likely to be able to use it’s long range / high damage profile many times without blowing a hole in yourself. The same weapon is a little more forgiving on a Reaver, with it’s larger reactor, but you can’t really run it much alongside a Volcano Cannon without cooking yourself. Then there’s the Warlord version, which is very interesting: Here’s a high-strength targetable weapon with a long range – it’s like a Sunfury+ with the option to put more strain on the Warlord Reactor, but likely to be able to do critical damage on any location in the game. I think this could be interesting to see alongside a blast weapon like a Quake Cannon, or _possibly_ a Belicosa, providing you’re not going to want to use that reactor for much else, so probably Apocalypse Missile Launchers up top.
All Rounders vs Single Purpose Titans
This is an interesting debate and it plays a bigger part in battles with a smaller number of units. With less units, having all of your eggs in one basket (high AP weapons, or all Void Shield stripping ability on a single chassis) is a sure way to have that particular titan picked off, leaving one short of the ability to either take down shields, or do enough damage. In larger games, it is possible to have multiple single purpose titans, or squadrons, which can be more efficient in their use, without the need to spread out similar role weapons across multiple Titans.
Most important seems to be the need to match range in Titan weapons. There doesn’t seem to be much point in placing an 8-20″ Vulcan Mega Bolter on the Carapace of a twin Volcano Cannon wielding Reaver Titan, which otherwise, would do better trying to stick at 60″ away from it’s intended target. Unless you intend passing a split-fire order each turn, you should be anticipating the majority of a Titan’s weapons all landing on a single target at its most efficient range every turn, each with an ability to either take down Void Shields, or inflict Damage, hence again, Vulcan Mega Bolters are not a good pairing for Volcano Cannon, or even Melta Cannon, where the former should be targeting Voidshields, or Knights at short range, and the latter, should be knocking chunks off of an unshielded heavily armoured beast. Hence an all rounder’s weapon selection should fall within a grouping of something like “long ranged”, “short ranged, but high output”, “low to medium damage” or “medium to high damage” weapons to make best use of the damage output of the Titan within a turn.
Laser weapons form the most ‘average’ weapons, with an ability to both take down Void Shields, but also to punch to a reasonably high AP level. However, they are not as good as most that are intended for either one purpose. This means that they make a good ‘third choice’ on an all rounder, which already has weapons that focus more on one than the other. e.g. Reaver with Gatling Blaster, Turbo Laser Destroyer and Melta Cannon, where all weapons have a medium range, the Gatling Blaster is excellent at stripping shields, but with the ability to damage up to AP11, the Melta Cannon can rip great chunks off of an unshielded titan, and the Turbo Laser Destructor can be used to finish off shields that the Gatling Blaster doesn’t remove, or add to the structure modifiers if shields are down, giving the Gatling Blaster a better chance of damaging. The Titan should be moving turn one to close with potential targets, and then in turn 2 could be the first to activate, firing Gatling Blaster, then TLD if shields remain, followed by Melta Cannon, or if firing after another titan that removes it’s target’s shields, fire Melta Cannon and then TLD to hopefully build up some negative modifiers on a location, prior to hitting it with the Gatling Blaster. An alternate Longer Ranged All Rounder Reaver, could be armed with Volcano Cannon, Apocalypse Missile Launcher and Laser Blaster, forming a longer ranged version of the previous selection, but again with the laser weapon forming the middle option depending upon whether shields remained. Noting that this is slightly less balanced due to the range of the Laser Blaster, and the low Strength of the Apocalypse Missile Launcher struggling to do damage to Armour without modifiers.
The Warlord Titan and/or it’s weapons appear to be undercosted for its in game and calculated effectiveness: its increased armour values make it far more resilient than its few extra pips of damage capacity make it appear. This extra resilience per point means it is around for longer and so puts out even more damage during a game than it’s weapons would on a shorter lifespan chassis (like the Warbringer)
Although the Warmaster chassis appears to be in-line with most other titans (not the Warlord) in terms of survivability, it appears that its damage output is not quite high enough for the points: Although the main weapons are upscaled from the Warlord, having Warhound equivalent tertiary weapons instead of Reaver ones, seems to knock this back a bit.
Unit Options
Warhound Titan Unit Options
The Warhound Chassis is fast with a damage capacity of 21.8 Direct Hits at an average of AP 8.5. With a minimum cost of 200 points, it’s resilient enough to survive against an equivalent points value shooting at for three turns, though this drops off with more expensive weapon options.
Optimal Load-outs appear to be; Twin VMBs for shield stripping, VMB/Plasma Blastgun for balanced, or Twin Plasma Blastgun for optimised damage output against pretty much everything – this is the most expensive at 240 points, but gives the flexibility in a small package for shield stripping and armour damage throughout the spectrum and punches well above its weight.
Twin Inferno Guns can also be used to great effect against clusters of Knights and Warhound Squadrons.
TLDs are a poor middle ground between the VMB and Plasma options, not really excelling at either Shield Stripping or Damage to Armour, however, did have the longest range for a Warhound weapon (until the release of the C-Beamer)
Natrix Shock Lances and Ursus Claws don’t appear to be able to do enough damage for the points investment required i.e. multiple Warhounds with very short range to attack a single larger target, all of which need to reach their target to have a fair chance of getting their points back.
Volkite Eradicators do very much the same as a VMB, but with a chance of punching to AP11, though don’t seem to do enough for the extra 10 points.
Graviton Destructors bring the potential of slowing down an opposing unit, but with very low damage potential for the points cost.
The Conversion Beam Dissolutor is an interesting new addition for a Warhound, bringing longer range and higher strength weaponry to the small frame, but with a good chance of cooking your reactor and causing self-inflicted damage if you’re looking to use it at long range for 2+ turns
Legions Imperialis has brought three new weapons with it;
The Incisor Pattern Melta Lance – this puts out generally half the damage of a Plasma, but is targetable, and pushes higher AP at (a very) short range, for a 5 point saving.
Swarmer Missiles – Higher output than I was expecting, but still stripping half of what a Vulcan Mega-Bolter doesat short and 5/6ths at long, but with twice the range – could be interesting paired with a Conversion Beam Dissoluter for a sniper.
Shudder Missiles – These are an interesting addition: Does just about zero damage to anything (0.67 points of damage at AP10), but Quake on a quite likely hit. Could be useful in a smaller game, where you can’t afford to take a Quake on a Warlord / Warby, but want to slow down Knights and un-shielded Titans. It also has Barrage to get those naughty in-hiding targets.
Reaver Titan Unit Options
The Reaver is a very versatile platform, coming with sufficient speed to make use of Melee options, or able to be equipped to keep at arms length. It is the unit which all others have been base-lined to (by me), with a Damage Capacity of 24.7 Direct hits at an average AP of 9 (8.964). It also has options to get in at medium range and put out huge damage to Void Shields and/or armour.
At the cheap end, it’s possible to kit out a Reaver from as low as 290 points, most of the better optimised builds are at 310.
Cheap as Chips – Twin Gatling Blaster and Apocalypse Missile Launcher for 290 points – a dedicated Shield stripper. Add 10 points to it to upgrade the AML to a Volkite Eradicator and you have all weapons at Str 5 and the targetability of Beam in your arsenal, but like on the Warhound, it doesn’t seem to quite pull its weight.
Melee focus – 310 points gets you a Chainfist, Power Fist and TLD – you can shave 10 points off by swapping out the carapace for a VMB, AML or Warp Missile, but you’re not looking at firing any of those except in Melee, so might as well make it count. Only ever take a single Power Fist and use it after the Chainfist, you don’t want to punch the opposing unit out of range!
On the (loose) topic of Warp Missiles: Whilst these are a ‘good fun’ weapon (meaning fun to use without destroying your opponent’s), their sole purpose is to do damage to a Titan while their shields are up. I had previously estimated that 3 Warp Missiles would be required to take down the shields of up to a Warlord Titan i.e. 2 Crits to the Body. There is basically no other use for something that bypasses shields, except to take the shields down on a Titan, i.e. to save you having to shoot through them all – The only possible exception being to stop something running at you, which also required 2 Crits, but which can be repaired without the engine being under much pressure to repair anything else. Taking shields down is a persistent effect as once done, a 6 is required to just bring up a single shield, rather than restoring to a previous state e.g. full speed on a single 5+
To deliver an average of 2 Crits takes 6 Warp Missiles, requiring 6 Reavers to spend 60 points and have no carapace weapon for the remainder of the game – all to land 2 Critical Damage (note: not Critical Hits, so no additional damage), and while doing so, also inflicting an average of 3.333 Structural Damage. Whilst that sounds like a fair bit, that’s 6 Reavers, firing at a single Warlord for a turn. Even if you manage to get Split Fire Orders on most of them, until the shields go down, any other weapons firing at the same target are effectively wasted as you’re chewing through shields that you’re attempting to bypass.
If 4 of those same Reavers instead took an Apocalypse Missile Launcher and one took a Turbo Laser Destructor (and we ignored that the remaining Titan also needs to have a Carapace weapon) for 60 points, A Warlord would still be stripped of all of it’s shields, have taken two structure points of damage, but now any other weapons that any contributing titan has are going towards taking down shields / racking up damage, but also leave all of these Titans with a weapon that they could use in future turns.
Conclusion – the use of 6 Titans to be able to negate taking down 6 Void shields is far out-weighted by the cost to the person taking them and the reduction in Firepower for the remaining turns of the game.
All Rounders – There’s quite a few options here, from a 320 point Melta / Gatling Blaster / TLD, Melta / Laser Blaster / AML, 305 point Twin Gatling / Conversion Beam Dissolutor.
Arms Length – Volcano, Laser Blaster, AML – still only 310 points for a high AP Blast, shield stripping and something in-between. The Conversion Beam Dissolutor is an interesting option in here, with a long range, but probably ‘a bit spicy’ to run alongside a Volcano Cannon, or to use alongside the draining of a Laser Blaster against a shielded target, it leaves it in an odd spot where you might want to use it at a very precise 20-24″ with a Melta Cannon (erring on the short-side, where even then, the Beamer is a high damage weapon).
It does feel like it should either have a Melee option Carapace weapon, or a way to negate the 10 point tax for putting a ranged weapon on top.
We are also missing the mid-tier Plasma option from the weapon options of old, so hopefully we’ll see this making an appearance at some point in the future.
Warlord Titan Options
The Warlord has the most available weapon options of any chassis. As such, there are a lot of possible options. Note: You’re almost always going to want to add 25 point Gyros to your Carapace weapons to get best use out of them. If you decide not to, you can save those points on the below, but it’s not recommended. It can withstand 28.8 Direct Hits at an average of AP 11, which is a huge jump up from the smaller scaled Titans and reflected in its Life expectancy
Cheap As Chips – Ok, there’s no real ‘cheap’ option, when it comes to a Warlord Titan (ok, so you could ignore Carapace Gyros and take two Quake Cannon and AMLs for as low as 440 points, but it’s not got the damage output that you’re looking for for that points investment), but in this instance, one of the _cheaper_ load-outs is very effective: In larger games, where you can afford to have eggs in one basket (but also in another as well), the DakkaLord with two Macro-gatling Blasters and Paired Gatling Blasters on the Carapace for 500 points is a nightmare to face. The sheer weight of shots that it puts out, means it’s likely to completely strip and start putting pain on any lesser titan, where Str 7 from the macro-version is enough to damage any location (six shots needing 2s to hit from a foot away, 6s to damage and re-rolling 1s is still averaging a point of Damage up to Armour 13 and two or three at AP12/11 !). It does need to move to get it’s targets.
Melee focus – The Warlord can be fitted with up to two Arioch Power Fist/Claws – sadly, they don’t have the VMBs fitted to the back of them in the rules, and of course you have the potential to knock your opponent away from you with the first attack. The fists tend to be more of an assault deterrent, than for directly assaulting an enemy titan, primarily because the Warlord is quite slow and struggles to make it across the board in three turns (a max of 12″ a turn if it foregoes firing carapace weapons, where the tax is 15 points minimum on top of an already expensive 385 point chassis). The recommendation here is for something like a mid-table brawler with a single Power Fist, Macro Gatling Blaster or Sunfury Plasma Annihilator, and Paired Gatling Blasters or Laser Blasters (if you are going Lasers, the triple-barreled Blaster is always more efficient than the TLD) up top for 465-500 points. The lower points value gives an indication of it’s lower damage output.
All Rounders – Due to the cheaper options on the Carapace providing you with Void Shield Stripping capability (AMLs at 15 points, Gatling Blasters at 30, or the limited range vs Scale 9 Warbringers and smaller titans of 8-20″, VMBs at 20 points), these can be matched with mid-ranged weapons like Sunfury Plasmas, or a Macro-Gatling Blaster for 485-530 points.
Arms Length – Ranged options are either Volcano / Quake Cannon with Apocalypse Missiles for 490, if you prefer to close with key targets, you can go with the 32″ Laser Blasters for an extra 35 points, or if you like to run hot, go full Wingrove Pattern (Twin Volcanos and Laser Blasters up top) for a whopping 570 points of high AP output destruction – just make sure most of the shields are down on your intended victim before opening this one up as you don’t want to ‘waste’ the shooting of the laser blasters on shields and add the ‘Draining’ effect to your reactor. An alternative is swapping out one or both of the Quake/Volcano with an even more expensive Conversion Beam Extirpator, which although doing less points of damage to a smaller titan, will upset anything up to a Warmaster’s day – you’re probably then looking at Laser Blasters up top as this is a dedicated Warmaster hunter for a mere 580 points including gyros!
Other Titan Classes
For the Warbringer, unless you’re looking to cook it, the preference is the Mori Quake (again, always with gyros) up top, with either dual Volcano Cannon or single Volcano and Laser Blaser, both for 420 points, or Belicosa Volcano up top, with single or no Volcano and Laser Blasters filling the other slot(s) for 455. I tend to look over the other Battle Titan class weapons here as the Warbringer is not made to be a mid-table brawler: It has no Melee option, and has to take at least one long-ranged, high AP weapon. They are often seen on the table paired with a Melta Cannon, but need to spend a lot of time moving (and pushing) to get those 7″ closer, which are better saved for cooling the reactor.
There are only two options full-stop at present for the Dire Wolf: The Chassis brings a slightly different angle to the game due to the ability to start outside of the usual deployment zone, however, the two main weapon options of Volcano Cannon and Neutron Laser, don’t couple well with the short range of the Mega-Bolter, so could be worth deploying up-field to make use of the Void Stripping ability of the Volcano Cannon toting variant, however, the Neutron Laser, doesn’t really want to be any closer than 30″ until it’s managed to shut-down Void Shields (which lets face it, is why you take a Neutron Laser or anything else that bypasses Shields) – The Dire Wolf _could_ be a good tag-team partner with a Warp Missile wielding Reaver, for maximum ‘concern’ to your opponent, despite the low likelihood of achieving the desired effect.
Dire Wolf with Neutron Laser – Initially, I didn’t see this as much of a threat, as even with the bypass of Void Shields, with the low damage output (Short Range output of 0.83 Structure at AP10 or 1.04 vs AP10 from the side due to it’s scout ability). However, this is (now) clearly not the threat of this weapon: This issue is that the effect of Shock is MASSIVE – If a Titan is Shocked and therefore is issued a shut-down order, it’s void shields collapse instantly, if this is in the Movement Phase, the affected titan can do _nothing_ in the Damage Control Phase (it just reduces it’s reactor heat by 2), it can’t move if it had yet to do so, it can’t shoot in the Combat phase, and in the End Phase it loses the Shutdown order (unlike a titan shutdown for any other reason), but this means that it still has a further Movement phase without shields and needs to roll a 6 in the following Damage Control Phase just to bring a single shield up. Basically this titan is out of the game as soon as an equivalent titan opens up on it.
So, how likely is it that a Titan will get shocked? Well a Neutron Laser has a +1 at a pretty lax short range of 30”. Due to the Scout ability, it’s likely to be hitting the side armour of something, and bearing in mind that this Titan is going to be at its optimum range and in position at the start of turn 1, it’s going to be First Firing, and then a priority to let loose a second time in the Combat Phase, meaning it is highly likely to get two shots off before a Warlord has a chance to reduce it to a puddle of molten slag.
This 265 points worth of Titan has a 25% chance of dishing out Shock on (the side armour of) a Warlord, meaning it’s 50/50 to taking a Warlord Titan worth approx. 500 points out of the game in 1 turn.
Dire Wolves are Auxiliary Titans but can also be taken in place of optional Warhound Titans in a maniple, meaning that you could take three with every three Warhounds (two as the optional Warhound titans in a maniple + one auxiliary).
Conclusion: Whilst a bit swingy, being able to take more than one Dire Wolf on a side could significantly unbalance a side turn one and lead to a lot of bad feeling in a game. At a Tournament, with Win At All Costs players on the cards, you could expect this, in a casual game, it’s only fun for the person bringing it.
The Warmaster and Iconclast have largely fixed weapons, with Shoulder Tertiaries for flavour: These are predominantly Warhound Arm Weapons, with the addition of a shorter-ranged Reaver Melta Cannon, and an Apocalypse Missile Array, which is 3/5th of a Reaver Carapace AML. With 30″ Main guns on the Warmaster, this is probably best paired with something putting out damage at about this range, like Plasma Blastguns or TLDs, where-as the Iconoclast really wants to be running until it gets into close enough range to use it’s Melee weapons – here, having no minimum range on the Shoulder weapons, means you can select any weapon without worrying about that minimum range of it’s Scale (which still affects the Revelator Missile Launcher/Cruciator Gatling Array)
Acastus Knights
The Porphyrion and Asterius are both heavy Knight chassis, wielding the big guns that the Knight Households require to compete against larger enemies. In a Knight Household, they seem to balance out against the backdrop of more delicate chassis and shorter-ranged / less powerful weapons. However, as an Auxiliary unit to an already strong Titan Legio, the damage output on these chassis far outstrips their points cost, with the Asterius having the highest Weighted Total Damage Output of any unit in the game and the Porphyrion not far behind. These units really need a doubling of the cost of their weapon options, or a removal of Blast on the primary weapons (like has been done to the other Beamer weapons for Titans) to bring them into line with other options in the game.
Overall, I’m loving how balanced Adeptus Titanicus is looking, with the few ‘slightly wonky’ points costs only an issue if one takes far too many of them.
Leave a Reply