Warhammer and Such

[hardy harness]

D'you reckon it'd be possible for a Grey Knight to go renegade

[runic swallow]

Anything is possible but it’d be very unlikely

[hardy harness]

True

[rocky shale]

Given that their whole thing is "never falls to corruption" it seems like a bit of a stretch

[hardy harness]

Well not even in a like

[rocky shale]

Like its Your Dudes you can do whatever

[hardy harness]

"Bleeeeeeeeeh I'm a chaos marine now" sense

Just like

"Holy fuck this place is a shithole, why am I fighting for it"

[upper canopy]

Itd be a stretch

[rocky shale]

I dont necessarily think Grey Knights are huge on imperial creed so much as "hell is real and someone's gotta deal with it"

[hardy harness]

Yeah which gives me a pause here

[floral herald]

The GK answer to practically nobody and are cleared to blue-on-blue anyone they please cause they say so

Them being renegade probably wouldn’t change their behavior a lot

[hardy harness]

That's also true

[upper canopy]

They also are recluses to an extreme and interact barely at all with society

[hardy harness]

...yeah so ultimately they probably wouldn't even notice if one of their own went renegade lmao

[runic swallow]

They are one of several factions with the I Do What I Want paper, but also have the guns to back it up more than others

[hardy harness]

As long as they don't just go full "I'm a chaos marine now"

[floral herald]

Yeah - an individual breaking away from em would be rare because all chapters are cults but theirs is a Super Cult and nobody gets away from the brainhacking

[hardy harness]

"I do what I want and if you wanna stop me I'll blow you up with my mind and also my big bolter"

[rocky shale]

I think its one of those things where like GW would never write a canon renegade grey knight because thats not really what GK fans care about or like

[brittle salmon]

This is why the Exorcists are the superior anti-daemon chapter

[hardy harness]

No, the Grey Knights are better solely because they have the coolest looking helmets

[upper canopy]

I also think a lone renegade marine is like

Pointless

What's he gonna do

[hardy harness]

Your mother

[rocky shale]

Like the red corsairs are kinda the poster child "renegade but not that chaosy" marines

[hardy harness]

More seriously, was thinking like a Rogue Trader's compatriot or something in the same vein as the Space Wolf in Rogue Trader

[rocky shale]

A rogue trader can have non-renegade Astartes around

[hardy harness]

Ulfar, that's his name

[rocky shale]

Ulfar isnt a renegade

[hardy harness]

...is he not?

Thought he was

Given how detached he is from the rest of the Wolves

[rocky shale]

No he just hangs out with you because he can't get home to his chapter

[hardy harness]

Huh

[floral herald]

Yeah he’s just a kidnapping victim in the middle of nowhere

[hardy harness]

Then I guess this whole line of questioning was kinda pointless ultimately

[upper canopy]

Also like rogue traders can do that

[rocky shale]

Rogue trader spoilers ||the drukhari killed the others and he survived by being fun to watch kill stuff||

[upper canopy]

Just like "I delivered you ten tons of bolter ammo, I thus contract a single marine as my bodyguard for 50 years"

[hardy harness]

Tbf 50 years is barely anything to a space marine

[runic swallow]

One of the other notable people with the big I Do What I Want paper

[finite compass]

Back in the day, Rogue Traders could requisition Space Marines

It was part of the powers of the Warrant of Trade

[rocky shale]

Rogue traders have a "i do what i want" pass but are generally speaking still aligned with the imperium

[hardy harness]

...reminds me, I still wanna play a Rogue Trader captain that's secretly working with the t'au

[vital barn]

Grey knight hanging around a Rogue Trader and stabbing demons with them is pretty plausible, Chaos Grey Knight less so, since having corrupted grey knights as precedent kind of destroys the entire selling point of the Grey Knights.

[hardy harness]

Port over my Darktide psyker because I mean, look at her, that is the most Rogue Trader looking psyker I have ever seen

[hardy harness]

Yeah, yeah, and afaik it's just

Kind of not really possible

[floral herald]

It’s possible it’s just never happened

[upper canopy]

You dont even need to secretly work with the tau

[runic swallow]

Tbh wouldn’t have to be secret

[rocky shale]

A RT can just trade with the Tau as long as they dont like really piss off the inquisition in the process

[runic swallow]

Just point to the paper

[hardy harness]

True, but you can probably worm your way into more places if you keep it on the down low that you're just a t'au loyalist

[runic swallow]

And don’t step on too many toes

[vital barn]

There's a very funny moment in one of the Black Library books where some guy lies about having a Warrant of Trade but the Archmagos likes the cut of his jib and gets him a real I Can Do Whatever I Want license, using that exact phrase

[rocky shale]

You can also have a character who just believes in being a decent human being without being aligned with the Tau

[soft willow]

You had a good fake but I made it real so now you work for me is a good way to make friends.

[hardy harness]

"I have a Warrant you know! I can do what I want!!!"

"Alright let's see it."

"...okay so maybe I lied."

"I like the balls on this guy. You're getting a Warrant today my boy."

[runic swallow]

I do love the occasional story of a guy just admiring the chutzpah of a huckster and just going “yeah sure I’ll just make you official”

[rocky shale]

That being said, being a rogue trader does necessitate some level of "running an imperial voidship" which does require tens of thousands of peasants living generationally in your ship

[hardy harness]

Aye

[rocky shale]

You can try to be like kinda nice to them but the ship doesnt run without the peasant horde

[hardy harness]

Also aye

Though there's something to be said about keeping the crew happy and not prone to a mutiny

[sour sequoia]

I think I'm late to this but there's the option of the funniest Raven Guard successor chapter which could be lying rogue grey knights since the Inquisition has no fucking clue where the chapter's from

[hardy harness]

Much less of a headache to just not actively treat them like dogshit and thus not worry about everyone revolting and ripping you to bloody tatters with their bare hands for being such a fuckass excuse of a person

[sour sequoia]

I learned many funny things trying to find an RG scheme that sparks joy

they got some wack shit

[rocky shale]

TBH like do an iconoclast run in rogue trader and I feel like that covers about how feasibly nice you can be without things just blowing up in your face

[brittle salmon]

https://bsky.app/profile/hazelmonforton.com/post/3lvyhhidrg22n

dr. hazel 🐝 (@hazelmonforton.com)

Not to worry. I have a Warrant of Trade.

#warhammer40k @owlcatgames.bsky.social

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Bluesky · Aug 9, 2025, 7:04 PM

[rocky shale]

And multiple times in that playthrough things do blow up in your face for being a bit nice

[hardy harness]

Cause remember, this is 40k, where everything sucks all the time everywhere and we can't have nice things

[rocky shale]

RT spoilers again ||Right up until you're really nice and they revolt anyways because oops you were nice to genestealers||

[upper canopy]

I gotta play RT

[rocky shale]

You still can be person so nice that it confuses other people but like the setting is full of stuff that blows up in your face as a given

[rocky shale]

Its excellent so far, im in like act 4

Much better than the other owlcat games

[sour sequoia]

I own it and have not really cracked into it despite being like the only game that has the faction I play because I'm way too busy painting the damn faction

[upper canopy]

I also think 40k is a setting where one nice person is pointless

You can't stop the generational slavery inherent to running your ship

Because if you do it falls apart

[hardy harness]

Tbf I feel the issue with that is trying to stop it too fast

Like that's the sort of thing you slowly ramp down over years

[upper canopy]

Its been that way for millenia

To wind it down would require a generational amount of effort

[rocky shale]

I like the story potential of like "one good-intentioned person in a inherently cruel system who is both aware of what they cant do without having everything explode, but still tries where they can"

[upper canopy]

Which is time you dont have

Because the world is ending, you are stretched thin, and the enemy is everywhere

[rocky shale]

Like kindness in a cruel world not "then the tau come and give everyone healthcare"

[upper canopy]

Yeah i think one person "fixing it" is just like

Setting bending wish fulfillment

But trying is different

[hardy harness]

...yeah, ultimately

Which tbh has ended up being my power fantasy lately of like

"Ridiculously fuckass strong character starts unfucking things marginally"

Mostly due to certain real world events making me need something to stop myself from going fucking insane

[rocky shale]

40k is a pretty poor choice in setting for that unless you are just writing complete fanfic power fantasy

[hardy harness]

Yeah, I know

[rocky shale]

Its a fundamentally fucked setting

[hardy harness]

I also know and that's what makes it fun but at the same time

The power fantasy persists

[rocky shale]

Thought I think there's still value in the idea of slightly unfucking your corner of a fucked situation beyond your control

[hardy harness]

Anyway, Rogue Traders, space marines, might try to play a Grey Knight somewhere that's pootling about with a Rogue Trader assuming I can find a game that'd support that

[upper canopy]

Mostly no one would go for that

Since it would be ridiculously lop sided

[hardy harness]

Yeah, true

[upper canopy]

You'd be playing an end game character in any system

[rocky shale]

W&G does support grey knights but as like T4

rogue traders are like T2-3

[hardy harness]

Christ

Guess that makes sense, given they're space marines with space magic n shit

[brittle salmon]

I mean, W&G does support uptiered characters

[hardy harness]

Aye but the whole party would have to be down to clown for that

[brittle salmon]

I mean, sure

[rocky shale]

Probably rough to find in a random group tho

[hardy harness]

Aye

Always rough finding a random group

Or even just finding a GM

I found one a while back but they just fucking dropped our group because their friends apparently heard about them running a Wrath & Glory game and wanted the GM to run it for them instead

Which I'm still kinda upset about ngl

[upper canopy]

Man Cyan's game ruled

Still nostalgic over it

[hardy harness]

Cyan ran a W&G game?

Must've been an utter banger

[upper canopy]

Yeah

Big silly space marine punch up

We ended up at full xp

[brittle salmon]

It was pretty much exactly what I wanted out of a space marine game lol

[hardy harness]

Sounds fun as hell

[brittle salmon]

Big dumb action heroes do big dumb action things all over the shop

[hardy harness]

Maybe I can coax him into another one...

Do kinda wanna play in a W&G game where the party are like, some special forces of t'au auxiliaries off doing special forces shit

[upper canopy]

Briar's guy shot himself in the head because of a psyker, had that break the mind control over him, then whipped around and one shot a tank

[brittle salmon]

God that was cool yeah

[hardy harness]

Yeah that sounds about right for an Astartes lmfao

[upper canopy]

I also ran a tau gue'vesa game once

It was fun

Scheduling killed it though

[hardy harness]

It seems like a good time

If nothing else than because it's something besides the usual "You're Imperium servants" story

[upper canopy]

It was tau auxilleries fighting an imperial crusade

Aimed on retaking their sub sector

[hardy harness]

Ooooooooooooo fun

[brittle salmon]

Tyrannic War Veteran Lamenter mustering just enough willpower to point his plasma pistol at his helmet after being influenced to shoot his squadmates in the back, uttering "Never again." and using the sheer pain and shock to snap himself out of it

[hardy harness]

Oh shit he tanked a plasma pistol?

That's a lot more impressive than I thought, I figured he blasted himself with a bolter

[brittle salmon]

Mhm

[upper canopy]

We survived a lot of bullshit

[brittle salmon]

Half his face had already been scarred from a tyranid bioweapon, it didn't make him any uglier

[upper canopy]

My primaris gorilla bashed a bloodthirster and tanked a keeper of secrets

[brittle salmon]

Oh yeah, for the ending we threw down with 4 greater daemons at once after looting an archaeotech vault

My apothecary jammed a stasis nuke from the Old Night into the chest of a plague marine and booted him into the loving embrace of a Great Unclean One

[hardy harness]

Bet they both had a good laugh once they got to Nurgle's Garden

"DAMN BRO DID YOU SEE THAT SHIT, THAT FUCKING RULED"

[brittle salmon]

Whereupon a 10m radius received all the concentrated power of full scale atomic weapon and were utterly vaporized

Oh yeah for sure

[crimson solar]

they get the i do what i want pass until they have something that's of interest to the inquisition.

[rocky shale]

yeah i said that

[crimson solar]

ah sorry, missed that

[junior robin]

finally, the emperors celts primaris lieutenant

[charred bridge]

I bet Maldacor and Alpharius were good buddies, or were they?

[past sphinx]

All we can know for sure is that he's dead

[floral herald]

We know it’s a lie that Alpharius was found on Terra and raised by the emperor and malcador

But idk where that leaves things

[tired cairn]

Wait, why would you lie about that

Was Omegon found somewhere else?

... Oh ok. A lot of this is excellent 40k dumb-silly

I wonder if they will pull a Princess Switched: Switched Again and it will turn out they were in fact triplets

[junior robin]

I just imagine there is a machine deep bellow the imperial palace that pops out a fresh alpharious every once in a while.

[thin ibex]

Alpharius, Omegon... Gork, Mork...

[runic swallow]

You know, for fun!

[pulsar cairn]

Was the emperor a jojo?

[pulsar cairn]

Do Marines ever transfer to different chapters?

[upper canopy]

Only in the sense of successors going to refound a primogenator chapter

And The Deathwatch

[pulsar cairn]

Are Ultramarines primogenator?

[upper canopy]

Yes

the first founding chapters

Ultramarines, Blood Angels, and Imperial Fists have all needed their successors to send them marines so they didn't go extinct

[pulsar cairn]

Interesting

[desert jay]

You also have overstrength chapters splitting off a few hundred into a new chapter

[finite compass]

There's also the pre-heresy in-universe conspiracy theory of "Isn't it interesting that when those two Primarchs we don't speak of anymore got Damnatio Memoriae'd, the Ultramarines got a giant numbers boost"

[tired cairn]

There is also the "weird how a bunch of loyalist chapters got a bunch of new people after the Horus Heresy"

[upper bluff]

I mean at least that one has the fact that loyalist defectors of traitor legions exist

Which I guess now that I say that there is no reason something similar couldn't have happened with the damnatio memorized ones

[floral herald]

I love that one because it’s both suspicious and also like

The ultramarines were always gaining in numbers

[thin ibex]

Leave it to the administrative marines being good at improving their numbers

[desert jay]

UM also not especially the type to think leaping into the fray is a fun exhilarating time

And that reduces casualty numbers somewhat

[pastel rampart]

Turns out the way to keep your numbers topped off is to have a logistics expert as your primarch. Who knew!

[charred bridge]

Or, just never get hit by being too fast

[floral herald]

guy who correlates everything with the Ultramarines getting larger

[charred bridge]

What if the limited numbers super human strikeforce just rode fast vehicles that would liqify regular humans and killed fast and left before anyone could catch up.

[desert jay]

I suspect whoever wrote the ad copy for those vehicles underestimates a baseline human's G-tolerance

[charred bridge]

What ad copy

[floral herald]

I think it’s funny how most modern warplanes have lower g tolerance than their pilots

[charred bridge]

There's no sense in really trying to build one for higher G than the pilot's

[desert jay]

Figurative ad copy

Really the relevant difference between human and supersoldier when it comes to hopping on a space-bike is that trying to swing a sword at Formula 1 speeds would take a normal human's arm off

[charred bridge]

I was glazing White Scars

Formula 1 Speed is slower than I'd expect for 40k jet bikes

[desert jay]

White Scars (generally) don't have jet bikes, they have ground bikes

Jet bikes are for named characters and Custodes only

[charred bridge]

Well they don't anymore

[tired cairn]

Oh, huh. That's kind of surprising. Obviously there isn't any point in designing a plane beyond the combat capabilities of a human, but what ends up being the typical limiting factor for a plane's G-tolerance?

[desert jay]

(There's IIRC one Dark Angels jetbike character and one White Scars jetbike character)

[charred bridge]

Airframes bend

[tired cairn]

And that poor sad White Scars character on foot. Though they probably don't sell that discount box anymore lol

[charred bridge]

It's only designed for so much bendinh before it actually shears itself apart during a turn.

You could design it to go fast still turn at higher G's but that requires more nearly everything engineering and therefore more maintenance

[desert jay]

Oh right there are still plenty of jetbikes about in the Heresy era

[charred bridge]

GW says only cool characters can be jet bikes in 40k

[tired cairn]

Ah, ok. Is this a thing due to changes in materials used? I'm under the impression it wasn't the situation historically

[charred bridge]

Jets go a lot lot faster than previous aircraft

[tired cairn]

I thought for jets too

(that is, it was until very recently airframes had more g-tolerance than for humans. Though I wouldn't be surprised if there is nuance here about types of maneuvers affecting this)

[charred bridge]

It depends, WW2 aircraft could reach 12G but one they'd probably crash but they didn't go fast enough to shear itself. It'd bend the frame so bad it couldn't fly for more than hour before it fell apart and was no longer flight worthy without a metric ton of maintenance.

Physics involved past like Mach 1 is different and wild.

[thin ibex]

Warhammer aircraft are built like bricks aren't they?

And aren't all fighters happily both atmo and space?

I should say imperial aircraft are built like bricks

[charred bridge]

Imperium would make F4 engineers, proud and horrified.

[floral herald]

Wings break

Under a full load an F35 can only handle like 3.8ish gs

[jaunty dawn]

Its cause dogfighting doesnt happen anymore

So theres no point in making a dogfighter

[floral herald]

https://external-preview.redd.it/UZuNJIIKGE9kUcYpXYz02iBHpKY7XFaEEEgxWUxCV8E.jpg?auto=webp&s=d9f41f2f92867143753839ca86e3784550d15063

[charred bridge]

If you're within dog fighting range you've done something real wrong, most target acquisitions nowadays is like beyond visual range

[floral herald]

It’s also very heavily laden

[tired cairn]

It's wild how much stuff an aircraft can hold (I do often underestimate their size, but still)

[tired cairn]

Do you think orks need to close their cockpit windows when they go to space?

[jaunty dawn]

Theyre mahoosive

[charred bridge]

Gets in the way of the wind in your face

[tired cairn]

Obligatory:

[charred bridge]

Love the Tau propaganda posters

[vital barn]

let he who has not bodged a terrible design with way too much raw force cast the first stone

he says, looking at his Factorio base

[sour sequoia]

67% done with my neophytes lads

I love holding twice the model count of every other army in deep strike

[pale narwhal]

I love the gsc models

My ass would not get them painted fast enough to play with them painted like. Ever

[west zealot]

My take is that it's Omegeon that was found on terra and raised by emps and malcador

As he starts the book with "I am alpharius. This is a lie".

[west zealot]

Alpharius Anonamous. It's like Alchoilcs, but for deranged plots that'll make the imperium stronger by cutting out hte rot this time i swear

[soft willow]

Hey now, Agents have plenty of useless goobers.

And almost as many in reserve!

[sour sequoia]

Honest to god some of the most dynamic matches for my army being the Imperial Agents 40 cop infiltrate and bajillion breacher reserves is

Really something

[soft willow]

Honestly if Agents just had a proper army rule I think they'd be doing better.

[sour sequoia]

But I have found agents kinda gets outbullshitted by GSC

[soft willow]

Yeah you just don't get a gimmick to gimmick back with.

[sour sequoia]

Cop squad does not enjoy the purestrains + bikes rush, and that usually clears enough space to blow out everything else when neophyte hammers drop

[soft willow]

I'm curious how it works out vs the new LoV dex. Need to get my GSC playing friend out for a game soon.

[sour sequoia]

played into the best LoV player in the region round 1 of my RTT on saturday, I can show you lmfao

[soft willow]

https://tenor.com/view/jason-momoa-chair-interested-gif-9751403

[sour sequoia]

I am become free overwatch Steeljacks, destroyer of worlds

[floral herald]

https://tenor.com/view/big-oof-yikes-gif-15532766

You weren't kidding about the Steeljacks augh

[soft willow]

Volkite steeljacks went brr?

[sour sequoia]

I couldn't even tell you what the rest of the army does just that the vehicle overwatching + steeljack precision overwatch on 4+ with like 36 fucking plasmas will just remove Host of Ascension from the game

that unit is 160 points and killed about 900pts of my army

[soft willow]

That was only the one freebie right? Not multiples since it's not actually a lets you do it again rule?

[sour sequoia]

correct

but LoV also has the bodies to screen out

[soft willow]

180 now with the MFM but yeah still big oof.

What was his full list?

[sour sequoia]

Leagues of Votann
Brandfast Oathband
Strike Force (2,000 Points)

CHARACTERS

Memnyr Strategist (45 Points)
  • 1x Autoch-pattern bolt pistol
  • 1x Close combat weapon

Ûthar the Destined (95 Points)
  • Warlord
  • 1x Blade of the Ancestors
  • 1x Rampart Crest
  • 1x Volkanite disintegrator

BATTLELINE

Hearthkyn Warriors (100 Points)
  • 1x Theyn
     ◦ 1x Autoch-pattern bolt pistol
     ◦ 1x Close combat weapon
     ◦ 1x Ion blaster
     ◦ 1x Weavefield crest
  • 9x Hearthkyn Warrior
     ◦ 9x Autoch-pattern bolt pistol
     ◦ 9x Close combat weapon
     ◦ 1x EtaCarn plasma beamer
     ◦ 7x Ion blaster
     ◦ 1x Magna-rail rifle

DEDICATED TRANSPORTS

Kapricus Carrier (75 Points)
  • 1x Armoured hull
  • 1x Magna-coil autocannon
  • 1x Smoke Launcher
  • 1x Twin magna‑coil autocannon

Kapricus Carrier (75 Points)
  • 1x Armoured hull
  • 1x Magna-coil autocannon
  • 1x Smoke Launcher
  • 1x Twin magna‑coil autocannon

OTHER DATASHEETS

Brôkhyr Thunderkyn (160 Points)
  • 6x Brôkhyr Thunderkyn
     ◦ 6x Close combat weapon
     ◦ 6x SP conversion beamer

Brôkhyr Thunderkyn (80 Points)
  • 3x Brôkhyr Thunderkyn
     ◦ 3x Close combat weapon
     ◦ 3x Graviton blast cannon

Brôkhyr Thunderkyn (80 Points)
  • 3x Brôkhyr Thunderkyn
     ◦ 3x Close combat weapon
     ◦ 3x Graviton blast cannon

Cthonian Beserks (200 Points)
  • 10x Cthonian Beserk
     ◦ 9x Concussion maul
     ◦ 2x Mole grenade launcher
     ◦ 1x Twin concussion gauntlet

Hekaton Land Fortress (240 Points)
  • 1x Armoured wheels
  • 1x MATR autocannon
  • 1x Panspectral Scanner
  • 1x SP heavy conversion beamer
  • 2x Twin bolt cannon

Hekaton Land Fortress (240 Points)
  • 1x Armoured wheels
  • 1x Heavy magna-rail cannon
  • 1x MATR autocannon
  • 1x Panspectral Scanner
  • 2x Twin bolt cannon

Hekaton Land Fortress (240 Points)
  • 1x Armoured wheels
  • 1x Heavy magna-rail cannon
  • 1x MATR autocannon
  • 1x Panspectral Scanner
  • 2x Twin bolt cannon

Hernkyn Yaegirs (90 Points)
  • 1x Yaegir Theyn
     ◦ 1x Bolt shotgun
     ◦ 1x Close combat weapon
  • 9x Hernkyn Yaegir
     ◦ 1x APM launcher
     ◦ 7x Bolt shotgun
     ◦ 9x Close combat weapon
     ◦ 1x Magna-coil rifle

Hernkyn Yaegirs (90 Points)
  • 1x Yaegir Theyn
     ◦ 1x Bolt shotgun
     ◦ 1x Close combat weapon
  • 9x Hernkyn Yaegir
     ◦ 9x Bolt shotgun
     ◦ 9x Close combat weapon

Ironkin Steeljacks with Heavy Volkanite Disintegrators (180 Points)
  • 1x Steeljack Theyn
     ◦ 1x Heavy volkanite disintegrator
     ◦ 1x Plasma knife
     ◦ 1x Preymark Crest
  • 5x Ironkin Steeljack
     ◦ 5x Heavy volkanite disintegrator
     ◦ 5x Plasma knife```

[soft willow]

That looks very solid.

[sour sequoia]

I did find out he's been in the top 100 NA leaderboards a fair bit, bounces back and forth with another guy. I thought all the Northern Rockies top 100 folks were down in Utah this weekend so I told our TO "give me your strongest battles, I am your strongest soldier" and he just started laughing his ass off

I do not get blown out like that by people who are not on the leaderboard so I think I am Okay

[soft willow]

Any other thoughts on that from the recieving end?

[sour sequoia]

the disembark strat for brandfast is currently busted as shit, expect an FAQ because currently Berserkers can reach enemy home objective turn 1 with almost guaranteed charge odds

buuuuut if your TO lets you use it as it currently stands: go wild

[soft willow]

Oh yeah.

The didn't leave in the movement phase so I can do whatever I want thing is clearly an unintended loophole.

[sour sequoia]

I honestly dunno most of the stuff because he didn't have tons of spenders for yield points, but I really like the motion they seem to have now instead of dumbass grudge tokens

[soft willow]

Your army is probably the wrong one to ask this but was he getting value from the Magna rail forts?

[sour sequoia]

would love to report on a game where I know enough to just ignore steeljacks or run all my round 1 trash at them and then play the game for real

because I saw absolutely fuckall from the rest

[soft willow]

And yeah YP is way more dynamic and interesting a mechanic.

[sour sequoia]

in every game after mine? worth their weight in gold. It's just that I'm Fucking Genestealers, Lmao

[soft willow]

I assume he just worked up to Fortify Takover ASAP and stayed there?

[vital barn]

I too got rinsed today but in a less interesting way

getting some first games of HH3 in

Dracosans mean

well, one Dracosan is just a fat, slightly tougher Vindicator but they're assault transports, heavy artillery and suppression fire in the same unit, so they have no reason not to bring six of them and each comes with its own CQC defence squad or blob of objective cappers that it dumps out when threatened

on the upside, if Ursarax touch Solar Aux infantry you find out very quickly that yes, they will blend

[sour sequoia]

Just about. Was kind of an interesting/weird RTT with all our usual pros missing, buncha "guys doing their best impression of the average Yasuo main" with their Super-Busted Pro Strat marines armies

and then my ass getting fed to the remaining pro players in town while these guys looked in and shit talked our best players for not being able to kill T3 5+ trash

I did not realize people just literally have not read the GSC army rule

[vital barn]

I will say that dracosans look sweet

[soft willow]

Dracosans are cool in LI too.

[soft willow]

A lot of people don't know the army for how well it's been doing.

[tepid stratus]

I'm straight up running 2 in my knights yeomen detachment. Being able to ram a siege tank atvan objective and puke out 20 guys with heavy flamers to take it in a knights list is just gravy

[vital barn]

this was just an online game so no fancy models, but they're still neat tanks

oh yeah, I hate the heavy flamer spam

these guys were mostly axemen in the assault transport det, so my Ursarax pulped them, but they still outscored me

I need a unit specially designed to deep strike into the backfield and nuke all those 120pt basilisks

Cool 12 on my frontline and solid wound count meant they didn't hurt much but they prevented some of my backline squads from scoring by pinning the magi bossing the squads around

[tepid stratus]

Don't the leggy boys outflank?

[vital barn]

Vorax? yeah, but they don't do very much else

[tepid stratus]

I don't know what their weapon options are

So don't know how useful they'd be

[vital barn]

they badly need cybertheurgy support, they have BS3/WS3 rotor cannons and irrad flamers

not good for taking out tanks, even RA10 tanks

[tepid stratus]

I've looked at automata for a while 5 minutes while contemplating that goofy detachment for knights

[vital barn]

current plan is to take a termite, put a melta techpriest inside and then fill it with those 10pt Echidnax bots

they're as tough as Thallax, and they have two S8 D2 attacks each, so they can soak fire for meltapriest and if left alive to touch a tank that isn't rear armour 14 they will shred it

pop up, fire blast melta at 1-2 basilisks, priest melta at another, demand they clear 24 T5 3+ wounds that I put there for 240pts and then punish them if they don't, because I have a bunch of scoring cuttlefish

not sure if it'll work in practice, a techpriest is quite snipable if they have Precision Shots around, but it's a decent theoretical compared to the similarly priced Thallax squad that gets more meltas but has to focus fire on one tank

[brittle salmon]

To be fair, right, most snipers aren't going to be near the deep backline

Nemesis Bolters can reach you from 48" away but barely anyone is taking them when Seekers exist

[vital barn]

seekers aren't so bad at range either, I would at least need to blow them up first

[brittle salmon]

30" range is a lot shorter, they're gonna be near the midline if not deeper

[upper canopy]

I think im gonna homwbrew doodle an imperial domain in open revolt Successfully

With the revolt having started due to the head of a noble house fucking up and getting himself slated for execution so he just decides to rebel, and Accidentallies a populist uprising in the process

[past sphinx]

real Han dynasty hours

[upper canopy]

I did realize This Was Literally Liu Biu

[thin ibex]

Rules question. Space wolves helm of the beast slayer, it reduces AP of attacking character, vehicle, or monster models.

Does that mean that a unit who had a character leading them is made up of character models?

[pale narwhal]

If it intended it to be the whole unit it’d say character, vehicle, or monster units

Is my read

Since the unit inherits the keyword but individual models do not (and RAW models’ attacks are resolved one at a time)

[thin ibex]

Thanks!

[tepid stratus]

Yeah it specifies model not unit

[vital barn]

cool tank of the day: Mechanicum Krios

apparently this thing is layered in energy fields like it's imitating a Culture Mind, so it qualifies as an assault gun despite having effectively zero armour

cheap, cheerful, has an exorbitantly heavy main gun for the price and they'll outrun anything else with tracks when pressed, they're absurdly fast

the tank-hunter variant with the big snubnose lascannon thing has to sit still for best effect, but being able to zoom 20" a round to set up is still pretty good for ambushes

[tired cairn]

The top-left looks like a horn, presumably to announce your army

[sour sequoia]

We Got Doomsday Ark At Home lookin ass

[tired cairn]

I don't know how different 30k movement is compared to 40k, but 20" seems comically fast for a tank

[vital barn]

lightning cannon, same as the one on the Knight Magaera

[tired cairn]

I do agree it looks cool though

Oh, I just noticed the person. I would probably prefer if they weren't visible but w/e

[vital barn]

specifically they're 14" move and Rapid, which means they can roll the full 20" and still fire the main gun

they'll keep up with Land Speeders on any terrain that isn't literally impassable for ground vehicles

[tired cairn]

Kind of ridiculous lol

[vital barn]

the little crab-shell thing he's in kind of folds up into a pod when under fire

it's exposed on the models for the same reason every IG tank has a guy standing up in the cupola, presumably

the tank destroyer version wants to sit still for best effect, so you roll it out, find a good camping location, zap someone and then book it

the lightning cannon, however, is barely less accurate on the move

Mech armour is this incredibly strange mix of "that would never work" and "this is actually a fun doctrine"

[tired cairn]

What's the top-right needle gun?

[vital barn]

irrad cannon

liquefies all soft tissue within the effect radius, negligible effect on non-organics

not my preferred weapon option, I prefer the versatility of the anti-tank pulsar and the lightning cannon

the pulsar-fusil in particular is four shots while stationary, does enough damage to reliably put down a Custodian or chunk a dreadnought and has a very good suppression value because nobody wants to walk out into the burst fire lascannon

falls off a bit against Land Raiders and similar heavy tanks, though, doesn't quite have the penetration

I feel the Krios would be a total joy to use if we ever got Wargame: 30k

just blitzing around setting up cheeky ambushes

and "fuck you, my scout cars are assault guns" is very mechanicus

[vital barn]

sadly mech does not get anything that mounts a Demolisher Cannon so we can't truly do Doomsday Ark Spam

that's Solar Aux, they can put those on their transports

we do get the Brass Scorpion, which is mostly notable for being 'ard as nails

15W, T8, 2+/5++ and reduces the damage of all incoming hits by 1, in a world where lascannons do 2 damage, meltas do 3 (unless you're a vehicle, which it isn't) and giant neutron lasers do 4 and have two shots per tank destroyer

I'm so glad that thing is good for once, it's such a cool model

you can also get masterwork krios tanks if you take an archmagos who has tank autism rather than any of the other special interest options available, and then they just flex on everyone with Leman Russ armour, Dracosan hull points and Javelin speeder speed, but those qualify as Archmagos pet projects, not the mass production version

[uneven ember]

I thought it looks like a ray gun from a 1940s SF serial

[tired cairn]

That is probably what they were going for, ha

[vital barn]

all the lightning guns are like that, yeah

fiction-wise they're the classic "atompunk gun that shoots black lightning and reduces you to smoking boots" B-movie weapons, except scaled up to HMG or armoured vehicle sizes

mean stats too, although hard to get in quantity

AP3 blasts are quite rare in Horus Heresy, and the rest of those rules basically mean "AP2 and 3 damge on 5+ to wound" so they can knock out 3W elite terminators/custodes

[mental birch]

What does shred do now?

[jaunty dawn]

Is it extra damage?

i noticed my warpfire guns lost pinning and got shred instead 😭

I was worried we lost psyker Praetors but turned out that just stayed in the book

They also went down to strength 5 but fair enough thats much more meaningful than 7->6

[vital barn]

Shred is +1D on X+ to wound
Breaching is AP2 on X+ to wound, Rending is autowound on X+ to hit, Critial Hit is autowound and +1D on X+ to hit

crit is really mean, especially in duels

someone like Lorgar can sometimes beat superior duelists just because he has Crit 5+ and as such any hit he lands against higher weapon skill is going to autowound for 4-5 damage

[mental birch]

What does the basic lighting gun do?

[vital barn]

heavy bolter but spooky

not too notable in and of itself but good for two random thallax to have in the special weapon squad, since they're cheap and can potentially stick a status on a unit

any thallax in the squad can take special weapons now, so I'm liking the idea of running 4 multimelta/photon thruster and 2 lightning guns just to take the first wounds and status guys

[mental birch]

4 multimelta oooo

Also tempted to do Archmagos lacry

[past sphinx]

@vital barn is mechanicum solid in this edition? ive been eyeing them from across the bar for a while

[vital barn]

Odd but solid, looks like

Your transports suck and all your scoring units are slow, but you slug it out with the best of them

Definitely the best internal balance mech had ever had, I can't think of one genuinely useless unit

although I still wish Magi could get jump packs and the transports were less janky

[tired cairn]

What makes the transport janky?

[vital barn]

The faction is split into half a dozen techno-arcana, each of which is its own faction

this is mostly not a problem but transports can only take their own faction and your transports are usually Macrotek, which is almost entirely tanks

so your tanks can't carry anything worth carrying

The Triaros and Termite can pick their keyword, but the Macrocarid is locked to Macrotek so it's a paperweight this edition despite a solid statline

[tired cairn]

That's a bit silly

[past sphinx]

thanks!

[pastel rampart]

https://bsky.app/profile/dragoncobolt.bsky.social/post/3lxfsouaggc25

Dragon Cobolt (@dragoncobolt.bsky.social)

adeptus sororitas writing the chronicle for her abbey spends two paragraphs describing her canoness and how she looks in her new armor and her haircut, then goes "also the sector governor was there" then spends five paragraphs writing about the governor wife's dress

Bluesky · Aug 27, 2025, 7:54 PM

[vital barn]

Some disentangling of the problems caused by the army having six different factions and jump pack wargear options for Magi would fix 90% of the issues I have with 3.0 Mechanicum

jump pack magi, wargear options for Echidnax servo-automata and free choice of keyword for the Macrocarid

most of the units themselves are pretty solid, they just have the occasional attack of skornergy

[deft crest]

Chat

I forgot

Not all demons have a 4++ any more

Playing chaos daemons is suffering

[paper bluff]

They have a 4+ invulnerable

[desert jay]

IIRC some are 5++ now

[paper bluff]

Invulnerable and feel no pain?

[desert jay]

By convention, FNPs are +++

[mental birch]

Jet pack texhprirst pls

[cinder wraith]

do anyone know the classical song that was played in the reveal trailer of chaos knights army? i cant tell if its bach or vivaldi

the first one ever (before they announced the knight abominant)

i think its the 8th edition one

but i cant find anything about it

[desert jay]

You have a link to the vid?

[vital barn]

Militia and Cults army list is out for 30k

looks really good this time around

it's still a mostly second-line army, but there's a lot of juicy provenance options, you don't have to pay points for them and they've gone out of their way to let people use their existing armies like GSC/Votann/Guard here without problems

great for seasoning a Marine or Mech army, or even running on their own and then deploying some allied killy stuff to make up for your surfeit of shitty dudes with shitty annoying guns

you also have Attack Crocodiles and Eternal Warrior Ogryns

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/z9ikifym/imperialis-militia-download-this-free-pdf-army-list/

[deft crest]

Yeah both my battle line and my Dogs are both 5++

[mental birch]

Lil

Lol

[deft crest]

None of my daemons have fnp except to like

physker stuff

and thats literally 1 dog

[mental birch]

Bork

[pulsar cairn]

Ya know those mechanicum lads who get good at enhancing biological human bodies? Do they ever do it to themselves?

[mental birch]

Yeah probably

[vital barn]

yeah, tons

30k Lacry archmagi can boost themselves up to T8, although some fraction of that is armour

[pulsar cairn]

"My body is a machine, your machines are your body, we are not the same"

[vital barn]

30k magi who do boost themselves for combat are pretty monstrous

the dedicated duelist magi are twirling around thunder hammers at Weapon Skill 7-8 like they were batons, and they'll take anything that isn't tagged PARAGON, which means Primarch or Constantin Valdor

[tepid stratus]

Meanwhile daemon fulgrim is in the corner... A 300pt stat block for 700pts

[vital barn]

he's not bad, he'll carve up almost anything

I think I prefer demon angron purely because he has the challenge-overspill legion gambit so when angron turns a praetor into a soup-like homogenate it also gets a few of his lads

but having put Demon Fulgrim against Regular Horus, it's no contest, 600pt fulgrim butchered him

I think the only stock Primarch that stands a chance here is Magnus, because Magnus has a wild combat kit

rolled that out, even stunned from a pre-fight perils of the warp Magnus came within two coinflips of killing demon fulgrim

hit on 2+, wound on 2+, 4 damage force sword is pretty mean

[floral herald]

What is the admech faction identity in 30k?

[vital barn]

somewhere between old-style nids and Illuminate

the mechanicum armed forces are literally Byzantine, they're organised into Taghma, each of which is the personal forces and retinue of a particular Magos

an archmagos calls all his underlings to war, they each call their Taghmas and so on

mechanically, there are half a dozen different hyperfixations you can give your magi and each of them unlocks different buffs and different specialist units in their auxiliary detachments

with your primary detachment being literally nothing but your Magi and lesser tech-priests

your units don't have +scoring buffs, your HQs do, and they confer those to the units they join

[floral herald]

Ah ok I’m seeing the old tyranid stuff

[vital barn]

so you'll have a lot of beefy heavy infantry, combat bot monstrous creatures and high-quality armour being buffed and led by the tech-priests among them

less emphasis on the chumps these days, but you still have tech-thralls, which are ludicrously expensive for their stats (a conscript with T5 and 6+++ for 10pts, same as a tactical marine)

but the Lacrymaerta magi who handle the biotech and manage the labourers can add 2-4 extra models to a thrall squad every round as they build new infantry from corpses and bits of battle debris

so all of a sudden that 100pt 10-model unit is actually 22 basically-fearless models and they're actual tarpits

the main body of the army and most of their scoring is slow, because your transports can't carry your actually scary units and your magi move 6" a turn, but they are completely and totally unmatched in close quarters shooting and baseline durability

there isn't a model in the entire army below T5, their shooting is consistently great and their melee is this strange mix of durable, low-skill robots that will crush through marines despite lackluster weapon skill and cracked priests who tailor their statline to be exactly what's needed to beat their opponent mid-duel and then go blade to blade with Siggy or Abbadon

you have no units that can dive into melee with top-line Marine elites, but your melee is mostly for cleaning up squads you've already mauled with the guns, because almost every combat bot can fire in the shooting phase, fire again at full BS in the volley phase before charges and then punch the last poor bastard to death after the other four terminators died to the hail of mauler cannon fire

[floral herald]

Volley phase? I’m guessing that’s kinda like overwatch in 40K?

[vital barn]

overwatch and challenges were significantly expanded, yeah

now, when you charge, the attacking and defending units can snap-fire assault weapons at each other before the charge roll is made

flamers are great here because they auto-hit even at snap-fire BS2

certain armies and units have rules that let them use larger weapons in the volley phase and/or fire at full ballistic skill, most Mechanicum automata have both

Sons of Horus turn their tunnel-fighting gang tactics into amazing volley fire too, they're the other guys who love close quarters gunfights

[soft willow]

Stop trying to sell me on buying another army for a game I don't play.

30k Mechanicum are so cool.

[vital barn]

embrace the machine god, he lets you go mano a mano with chapter masters and trounce them

[soft willow]

I embraced the machine god's larger children instead.

I do need to get some Skitarii kits to build my Secutarii though.

[floral herald]

I’ve been tempted by 30k but idk what I’d play

[vital barn]

Secutarii are sadly a completely different faction now, 30k mech don't work great with them, but they still use a lot of the same kit

[floral herald]

Probably Fists or uhhhh

[vital barn]

there's a whole new mission type called Engine Kill which is intended to make fighting Titans more fun, though

you can target different bits of the titan, manage void shields, swarm it with infantry boarding actions, etc.

[soft willow]

Yeah I mostly have Knights that I can use for games, and then I want to get a Titan/Secutarii force together for Engine Kill.

Though I currently have played 0 games of 30k.

[vital barn]

Knights we're good at, they can directly include house-bonded battle automata or ally techpriests and they work very well together

[soft willow]

So if I was playing Knights as a core I could add cool robot friends?

[vital barn]

Mech add the scoring they need, repair them absurdly quickly and can throw Cybertheurgy buffs on them for BS/WS5

yeah

[soft willow]

Well shit.

[soft willow]

Now I don't have an excuse not to buy the cool robots.

[vital barn]

Domitars, Castellax, Vultarax and Vorax

[floral herald]

Maybe iron warriors?

I like the big fucked up space marine tanks

[vital barn]

although I personally recommend Vultarax going in that detachment and taking proper Mech allies if you're going to run lots of the others

[soft willow]

Shame Thallax aren't in that because those are cool models.

[vital barn]

Domitars and Castellax really like having techpriests boosting them hard

and making them Scoring

since no knights have the Score Objective Good rule

instead they pick one Vow per knight, which is basically a custom secondary objective that rewards VP separately

so you really do want some cappers so you can get both objectives and Vows

[vital barn]

oh just ally those in, they kick arse now

way cheaper, Deep Strike in the deep-strike-limited 3.0 environment, don't really need magos support and they can all take special weapons

excel in multimelta or photon thruster kill teams

Ursarax are more a Mech-primary army pick but they're also not bad

[vital barn]

Legion rules don't typically apply to vehicles, but Iron Hands and Iron Warriors both excel there because of custom vehicle wargear and easy access to Battlesmith HQs

tanks are bad at shrugging off debuffs without dedicated repairmen, so it helps a lot to have warsmiths and iron fathers

armour is very good this edition, especially AV14-all-around Land Raiders, Spartans and Kratos tanks

and obviously Solar Aux are all treadheads

oh yeah, knights also get Household Ranks, one of which is "the knight has battlesmith"

enginseer knight goes pretty hard

[brittle salmon]

Thallax are nasty, they even get a debuff aura when they're under the effects of Cybertheurgy because their wails of agony are that unsettling

[tepid stratus]

My problem with him is his output vs cost. You're only really getting your money back if he gets to fight other big characters or monsters

[brittle salmon]

Metal as hell

[vital barn]

Thallax are also functionally impossible to suppress, as with a lot of mechanicum units

basically everything that isn't a Myrmidon or walking around with a Magos attached isn't going to give a fuck about suppression/pinning/morale

Magi and their units have merely average to good morale because they still care about not exploding

[brittle salmon]

Yeah Mechanicum units are very very resistant to statuses

Unless it's Panic

[vital barn]

yeah kill the phosphex first

[brittle salmon]

Turns out the lads still don't like Phosphex or Flamers

[vital barn]

luckily that's actually doable this edition because phosphex rapiers and artillery tanks are mostly paper

and the flamers don't actually hurt much, so if you can dodge them for the duration of the enemy shooting phase you can charge through the fire to rip and tear

[vital barn]

that is true, but he is also a basically indestructible raider who will just take apart backline unit after backline unit if not checked

in efficiency terms I prefer Angron to Demon Angron and Demon Fulgrim to normal Fulgrim, because normal Fulgrim is just a challenge monster and requires expensive transportation

mostly because Angron has really neat army buffs in his normal form and loses them when he turns into a knockoff bloodthirster

Fulgrim's buffs are also good but somewhat less important

[tepid stratus]

Maybe I'll give him another shake

Was just deeply disappointed by him last edition

I will be using my 40k model tho, I own the 30k model but boy is he fragile

I do wonder how viable brotherhood of the Phoenix is

[vital barn]

well, it's funny, I'm not sure how good it is considering you don't get detachments out of your giant pile of praetors

paragon of battle saturnine praetor is pretty entertaining at least

[brittle salmon]

I will note that it's now legal to form units just out of combining characters, so you can probably use the Giant Dumb Praetor Deathstar for something at least

[floral herald]

By M_Inferna on Twitter

[brittle salmon]

Accurate

[vital barn]

you could do that in 1e, good to see they brought that back

[brittle salmon]

Excellent

[vital barn]

still, if you fill that out with the most smashy characters possible that's something like 1400 points of HQ and no detachments at all

maybe 1200 if you take fewer Saturnine Praetors and more normal Praetors

[mental birch]

Bunch of weidos and their toys/personal projects

[brittle salmon]

Awesome, in other words

[mental birch]

Doing weirdos partying with

their mechs

every mech has a guy

[vital barn]

They also have some mundane but very useful buffs, most of which are just "+1 to two stats"

they're surprisingly broadly applicable, you can buff allied vehicles and dreadnoughts, and hereteks can buff anything Malefic, so demons, demon engines, possessed marines, etc.

Stacking cybertheurgy buffs on Horus Ascended is technically possible but very much qualifies as gilding the lily

[reef pagoda]

oops shes tripping

i hate gluing models without 2 stable feet

surprisingly she fell over overnight

[pine matrix]

Doing the Pimps In The Crib lean

[crimson solar]

plastic glue or superglue?

[reef pagoda]

plastic glue, citadel because i ran out of the kind i like ;_;

[pulsar cairn]

do yall know the Alpha primus? the primaris prototype?

where's their geneseed from?

currently reading through "Belasarius cawl the great work"

[floral herald]

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/lyczjxkf/tomb-world-how-the-new-season-stacks-up-according-to-kill-team-experts-squad-games/

Wow these are nutty teams

Deathwatch are nasty as hell but they only get 5 models and no off map trickery so they gotta fill the hole left by Custodes and the necron team is wweeeeeird

[dense idol]

(calvin's dad voice) all kill teams are actually either custodes or gellerpox

[floral herald]

Ok but these ones really are

5 ultra elite murder machines vs a wizard a bug with a huge gun and infinitely respawning goons

[brittle salmon]

Are the deathwatch guys really good?

[floral herald]

They get damage reduction in enemy territory, 2 actions on counteraction and action free heals and cleanses on equipment

And like, a laundry list of buffs to choose from for weapons

[brittle salmon]

Hot damn

[floral herald]

They’re also probably 14 wounders I’m guessing

[brittle salmon]

fucking nasty

[floral herald]

Yeah

And they’re up against a 21 wound bug robot with an unspecified but strong gun, fields which reduce attacks and damage, a leader who can take objectives through walls, and Unlimited Weak Guys Who Don’t Give Any Points When Killed

Fuck me I was struggling to decide on this box I got marketed to

[tired cairn]

They misattributed who did the write up and so also changed the url slightly: https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/lyczjxkf/tomb-world-how-the-new-season-stacks-up-according-to-kill-team-expert/

[tired cairn]

No telefragging, but you do swap when you teleport to where someone else is

Also, weird that it is a vantage point. It does not seem tall enough for that

[deft crest]

Did GW ever talk about why Stormfang/stormwolf isnt in 10e?

or i mean i guess why it got legends

[floral herald]

I don’t think it… does anything

Which is weird too haha

[tired cairn]

grumble grumble the lite rules don't seem to have terrain rules

[floral herald]

They don’t it sucks yeah

[deft crest]

It means you have light cover while on it because its vantage right?

[floral herald]

If my recollection is right all of the rules for vantage points kick in for people 2” below you or more

And it seems to be about .6” tall?

So I think it does nothing

[deft crest]

Mmmm

[tired cairn]

Is it Vantage purely so you can stay on top of it?
From wahapedia:

If terrain is not Vantage terrain, then operatives can move over it, but they cannot finish a move or be set up on it.

[jaunty dawn]

ye

[tired cairn]

That's pretty funny/silly

[floral herald]

Oooooooh

That makes sense now

[deft crest]

Ye

[floral herald]

The swapping is gonna be really funny

[thin ibex]

I think it boils down to "it wasn't popular, people were not using or buying it, aircraft are weak and unloved in this edition, it doesn't have a niche, and they were trying to reduce the volume of faction specific models"

[floral herald]

I was kinda hoping it’d get promoted to general space marines stuff instead

Like the stormraven

[thin ibex]

Don't get me wrong, I liked it, but im pretty confident it was one of the space wolves least played and most divisive models

[deft crest]

Mmmmmmmm

Im not a big player of em but i own two of the start collecting boxes that i put together with some wolfen

I was hoping for a easy fun vehicle to paint

Plus 16 models in a flyer sounded cool

[vital barn]

that whole generation of custom planes and vehicles for every SM chapter didn't seem to work very well

Ravenwing Dark Talon, looking at you

[tired cairn]

Oh, the Stormwolf is extra-brick shaped

Do you think the wings are purely vestigial?

[rocky shale]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Warhammer40k/s/YY7FC7BxTF

This is awesome

I might have to pay for the full version now

[tired cairn]

What do they have against them and White Scars?

[charred bridge]

Breaking speedlimits on jetbikes

White Scars never go anything less than maximum speed

[sour sequoia]

The ops are scared of my thirty dirtbikes with 5+ saves

[past sphinx]

snagged BIG FLAMER for only 120 bucks

[rocky shale]

Damn that's a good deal

Though that box might not have the plasma/volcano cannon variant

[past sphinx]

it does not

ill just grab some printed proxys cannons

[floral herald]

https://www.reddit.com/r/killteam/s/VI8pPHOB2M

Deathwatch KT rules leaked

These guys are pretty straightforward

5 rough fucking customers from a big roster so you can specialize for a given opponent

[brittle salmon]

I think I'm very much okay with that

[pulsar cairn]

Which space marines have the best cooks yall reckon?

[floral herald]

Based on what little info we’ve got… space wolves probably

Space marine food is mostly fucking awful

[uneven ember]

I feel like it would have to be the Blood Angels?
they seem like the ones who would be most supportive of having someone spend centuries practicing as a chef as a side gig

[floral herald]

Thinking on this this is probably another hypothetical tier list where I can put Imperial Fists alone in their own tier

[uneven ember]

Space Wolves, I think they'd enjoy eating, but the meal is just extra-rare meat and beer that would actually kill anyone without a Preomnor organ

and if you ask for anything else they give you a swirlie

[uneven ember]

at the top or at the bottom?

[floral herald]

The bottom it’s a poop vault episode

[floral herald]

There’s surprisingly little detail on space marines eating normal stuff but I think this is broadly better than most of them

[vital barn]

much as I hate to give literally any props to the Space Wolves, I think it's still them

[floral herald]

I can see some blood angels getting up there for sure

[pastel rampart]

BA would cook you a very fancy meal, SW are the grill n' smoke kings.

[vital barn]

pre-HH Emperor's Children would probably beat all of them, because they'd decide to do proper haute cuisine just for fancy boy points

current EC not so much

[floral herald]

The average space marine is eating like ration bricks which taste like cigarette butts and fuel oil and kill normal humans for some reason

[vital barn]

yeah I've always wondered about that trope

[pastel rampart]

Current EC are creative cooks, but not of anything you'd willingly eat.

[vital barn]

is it just like Vit A poisoning but for every nutrient?

[floral herald]

I think it’s like, ceramic precursors for their bones and such?

It’s always pretty vague

[pastel rampart]

Ultras make the best wine in the galaxy and fantastic bread but their culinary traditions are otherwise middling.

Iron Warriors, despite their sullen outlook, used to make great gyros.

Iron Hands found out about soylent green and never bothered with anything else.

Night Lords made very good black pudding but you never asked about what went in it.

[tired cairn]

I feel like Ultramarines or Iron Warriors would provide surprisingly good rations for any of their non-space auxiliary troops, purely for practical reasons

[desert jay]

Thousand Sons sorcerers (Rubrics don’t eat) have a create food and water spell for when they run out of ration bricks. Don’t ask why the ration bricks are preferable

[tired cairn]

(surprisingly good is still probably not great in a 40k context, but you know)

[pastel rampart]

Ultras are the logistics experts and they understand the practical application of keeping the non-SM people well fed, so they stuck to an ancient Terra tradition of putting a tiny bottle of hot sauce in each ration.

[tired cairn]

Really helps the corpse starch go down

[desert jay]

Death Guard rations are technically a fermented food

[desert jay]

If you want to make this more Roman/Italian, a tiny bottle of olive oil instead

[tired cairn]

ah, so Ultramarines auxiliaries require more water

[past sphinx]

somewhere out there is a conversion for warhammer

i know it in my heart

[charred bridge]

Death guards are basically fermented food too.

[charred bridge]

I mean like eating a polar bear liver would kill a person from vitamin A overdose

I'd imagine to fuel like elephant heavy space marines you need dense ton of nutrients

[soft willow]

Now I want to start an Ultramarine army and just hand out olive oil bottles to anyone I beat.

[desert jay]

Well you are what you eat

[charred bridge]

All Ultramarines carry snickers and capri sun

Mandatory part of the kit

[sour sequoia]

I call this one in favor of the white scars being shockingly normal, it'd be a lot of basically dumplings or pierogis and then horse-derived foods

but if it kept genghis khan going, it's good enough for jaghatai khan

[lament light]

Don’t Salamanders hang out mingling with ordinary people on Nocturne? So they might have an idea of making food for regular people from their downtime.

Plus they’re masters of flame. They’re probably grillmasters.

[pulsar cairn]

good point....

[main pagoda]

SW dont really cook either they do kinda just slurp down raw meat and jet fuel mjord

[misty violet]

Worth pointing out in this case, the Salamanders also have an extreme culture of physical asceticism and ritual mortification. So while they probably do have master cooks, those cooks probably only make food for mortals they fight or live alongside. The actual marines probably survive on charcoal briquettes, bitumen, and gasoline

[charred bridge]

They like their steaks well well done

Charcoal does have 5000 calories

[tired cairn]

lol, the Salamanders cook but the only thing they make is extremely well-done steak (they give their normal human companions ketchup but don't partake in that themselves)

[tranquil ivy]

do y'all think this would work as a Xenophase Spear? They're from the Saurus Warriors kit, but they kinda have a Necron pattern on them in my eyes

[charred bridge]

I'd be surprised if it kept them going, although space marines can survive on very little food for like decades and the white scars on bikes probably don't burn a lot of energy themselves

[tired cairn]

Probably skinnier, but that's probably not a big deal and it has the right vibes

[tranquil ivy]

I know Xenophase blades usually look like Swords but im going spears here >:]

(it'll be a reflavored Spear of Vulkan)

[tired cairn]

Oh. Lmao the example I was looking at is a kitbash

[tranquil ivy]

lol no biggie

[jaunty dawn]

that'll look dope

[humble plover]

KT Tomb World preorder secured!

I couldn't get one from a discount store last night, so I had to pay full GW price, but I'm so hyped for everything in this box that I'm mostly ok with that

[jaunty dawn]

nice job!!

it sold out quick

[floral herald]

Noice!

I didn’t get the pre order but I have a FLGS which doesn’t do preorders so I’m hoping to just show up early

[floral herald]

Kill team game with strangers today

Phobos vs AoD

We kinda screwed the setup up some but it was pretty good

Managed to win 8-7

(We both completely fucked up our tac ops so it was a low scoring game)

I (Phobos) took Implant and then realized that tacticus space marines kinda just beat my ass in melee

They took Overrun but didn’t manage to get on my side of the board much because I rushed the midline and popped smokes

[floral herald]

https://youtu.be/7U2ylUBO3JE

oooh

[tranquil ivy]

Context: Im making a Salamander Successor

theyre renegades, they fuck with slaanesh mutations, and they have "canon" female space marines (also one has a relationship with a [ex] guardsman)

its stupid
but i get to do it

[charred bridge]

My hybrid war hounds and 1000 sons OC chapter plus non space marines guardsmen that's just as strong, I call them the 1001 Dalmatians

[tranquil ivy]

one of my captains (uses the Vulkan Hestan datasheet) is a kleptomaniac

the seeker of lost relics ability is literally just them deciding they NEED something over there

[charred bridge]

This acquisition is for the emperor

[tranquil ivy]

Jokes on you my army is "chaos"

they throw the middle finger at the emperor because slaanesh has better gifts

[remote wharf]

My blood angels but knights used to be knock off flesh tears but then they bad about doing a few massacres to many so try to be more noble™ (as noble as xenophobic brainwashed post human warriors who literally drinkblood can be anyways.), but some of the chapter were real mad about not being battle mad berserkers anymore so they fucked off and fell to chaos.

[paper bluff]

I've got a knight house that had an ancestor take a sister of silence as a wife after working with the custodes during the horus heresy. And due to those 2 reasons, A. The big mech is known as "The Void Queen" piloted by the current matriarch of the family. And B. They partner up with the custodes

[mild glen]

I am fairly certain that me picking T'au as my first army has severely destroyed my ability to accurately assess threats

[pale narwhal]

Yeah that’s real tbh

I’m also used to anything not a riptide or ghostkeel just folding at any melee pressure at all so now that I’m also playing marines it’s taking some adjusting

[upper canopy]

I can't believe people still do the "Tau face when when a Titan" meme when Tau Just Have Railguns

[charred bridge]

Im not very familar with chapters, are there like traitors chapters whos legion became chaos traitor but the chapter is traitor but not chaos worshippers

They just dont like the imperiums

[upper canopy]

Probably not from the First Foundings

but Renegade Chapters exist

[charred bridge]

The only legion I know of that went traitor but not chaos are Night Lords but they're kind of not around as a faction anymore.

Also lore question, is it ever stated why emps made space marines to be kind of human psychologically instead of say like thunder warriors 2 but only a little smarter.

[desert jay]

Don't forget the Tiger Shark AX-1-0 exists

On tabletop it's got twin(-linked) heavy rail cannon with dev wounds and a conditional anti-titanic 3+

[upper canopy]

The "Tau Face When Titan" story ENDS with the Tau immediately just killing the next one so hard they don't send Titans against the Tau anymore

[vital barn]

So far most editions of the standard hammerhead railguns are basically the same as Mech neutron lasers, which are stuck all over the usual medium armour escort for Titans. Titans are a big bigger than that, you do actually need the Tiger Shark or the Manta.

or that comically large mech that was going to be in Fires of Cyraxus but that got cancelled

Ta'Unar, I think

[desert jay]

I hate the Taunar so much

I wish Tau didn't have mechs larger than the Riptide and just got other cool stuff instead

Replace the Stormsurge with a Vorgh in power armor

[upper canopy]

I wish we got the Auxillery species that is apparently big enough to just Throw Down with Knights

YEAH

VORGH

[vital barn]

that would be a significant improvement

I do like the Tau's brand of fuckhuge superheavy flyer, I once wanted to make a giant cybernetic whale for my Mechanicum purely to get something almost as covered in guns as a Manta

give me my Mech Aerodyne, geedubs

the stupid flappy chopper thing is not suitably badass

[desert jay]

AdMech pulling up with one of these

[charred bridge]

Manta says brrrt

Tau should have titan sized voltrons

Come on united together to work in unison with mechs to make bigger mechs?

[vital barn]

admittedly the sequel to the Tau Shoot Titan With Tigershark story is "the imperium has put seven billion anti-aircraft units around the Titan" so I can see why they tried big mech

I would have preferred Big Tank, though

give me the hammerhead shadowsword

[charred bridge]

I wished Necrons had more big guys, I know their thing is they are basically anti titan units but having something Seraptek sized would be so neat

[desert jay]

Ctan shard powered/sized dreadknight

Unrelated... with Votann coming out, is anyone still on index rules besides Drukari?

Oh wait IK isn't out either, forgot they didn't get a paired release with CK despite being previewed on warcom at the same time

[mild glen]

Them: Ah, man, why are you shooting my Land Raider? It's turn one! It's not even a threat yet.
Me: Because it will be, it's within range, and I ignore cover.

[desert jay]

I would just reply "yet"

[desert jay]

Oh IK got delayed, I see

[mild glen]

"I just painted it!"
"Oh boy! My dice are about to pop off!"

[upper canopy]

I also think Tau deserve like

Spec ops

[vital barn]

isn't that what Pathfinders are basically meant to be?

maybe slightly less elite than your stereotypical SEAL Team Shas but they do all the right things in sneaking around, lasing targets and trying hard not to get shot by everything

[desert jay]

And also Stealthsuits

[thin ibex]

Tau pathfinders, lore wise, are like marine scout snipers or yes spec ops

Stealth suits i feel are a bit more... shorter deployment term oriented; cause pathfinders run mostly analog, and utilize survival skills. Stealth teams are definitely deployed in advance of the Cadre but I don't think it's as long term

Tabletop wise pf don't get to be actually elite for various reasons

But they do get scout and can get infiltrate

[vital barn]

look, ratling snipers and Scions are all various kinds of elite sniper boys and they die like flies

being elite mega spec ops with a squishy mortal body is a high-risk endeavour

[thin ibex]

I think narratively they're meant to operate out of a modified devilfish as like their mobile hq

[desert jay]

It looks like Tau run stealthsuits both organically (ie as part of other units) and also as something called "Optimized Stealth Cadre" which was even a specific formation in... I think 7e and 8e?

[vital barn]

I do like Tau mechanised infantry, sadly it has not been very good for a hot minute

[thin ibex]

It's specifically pretty solid with breachers in a few detachment

[vital barn]

in 7e there were approximately seventy stealth suit formations because Tau had A Few

[thin ibex]

But not as a whole army concept these days

I imagine stealth teams and pathfinders work in concert when they're doing information gathering, pathfinders probably go first and set up a hidden or obscured sortie location so that stralthsuits can rotate in for maintenance

[vital barn]

7e Tau had well over 40 formations

the only ones that were remotely notable were "like five free special rules for my drones, no drawbacks", "my stealth suits shoot the rear armour of your tanks from the front" and Riptide Wing

[thin ibex]

I do also imagine pathfinders often end up the most widely skilled and independent of the Tau teams (something i find pretty cool about them)

They've got a lot of "figure it out" energy

[vital barn]

it has been nearly a decade and I (and many others) still have a latent dislike for Tau because of their 7e rules, just an incredibly unpleasant faction to play against

and usually featuring precisely zero infantry

[desert jay]

"Only" 32 by my count

[vital barn]

all riptides, drones and invisible boys

[vital barn]

have you got the Apocalypse ones?

[thin ibex]

A lot of the community has the same vestigial distaste for tau even though they don't remotely play like that now and haven't for 3 editions

[desert jay]

Yeah they're on the page

[thin ibex]

I still know people that swear tau are op despite all indications to the contrary

[vital barn]

7th was a very long edition and they were that bad for basically all of it

there were zero rules updates to published stuff

[thin ibex]

Yup, just a bother to be judged as a faction by stuff that's like a decade past

Also I do think players now are kinda spoiled by the regular updates we get now.

[vital barn]

I'll be honest over the course of late 8th through present 40k's rules kind of melted into a big bland slurry as far as I'm concerned, it's very hard to keep track of anything

[thin ibex]

People getting all huffy because the rules keep changing on them (a valid gripe), but I'd much prefer that to being stuck with the same broken stuff for years with no recourse

[vital barn]

I considered picking my admech up again and was told within the span of eight months they'd gone from abysmal to broken to abysmal and then steadily back to "OK" purely by reverting the previous nerfs because of all the power creep

this did not enthuse me to the idea, especially when I checked the points costs and my old tournament army was now barely 1k

[thin ibex]

I've definitely run into that friction before, with my irl stuff, but I do find the changes favorable over a static set. Even if id prefer their updates were better implemented or researched

[vital barn]

I think there is a fairly solid sweet spot in between "never update anything ever" and "we turn your armies upside down every few months in a game that takes significant physical materiel to play"

also I think all the new Skitarii models look terrible so I went back to my delicious 30k mech with their significantly better pounds to points ratio, and that's saying something

[thin ibex]

Like... as a tau player, I'm still catching flack for a 10 year old issue tied directly to inflexible and unchanging ruleset that won't change until the next edition. I don't want that at all.

I do agree there's a sweet spot, and I think they're not there, but the game is, as I understand it, significantly more balanced than the last few editions by a decent margin

[vital barn]

apparently so, albeit by squeezing most of the delicious juice out of it from my perspective

although that is probably somewhat skewed by the fact that my army went from medium infantry, vehicles and tankettes with amazing shooting to "spam shitty infantry and hope they can't kill you all, your killing power is nonexistent, also pay over a thousand for the privilege"

[thin ibex]

That's a fair perspective, to me its a lot easier to get into it at an entry level and a lot easier to make tactical choices than when I was dabbling in 6th as a kid. Never even got into 7th. Tried 8th and it was effectively "the game is decided by the first turn roll off"

9th apparently wasn't much better than 8th in that regard

[vital barn]

from what I recall, most of 8th's meta was "as many copies of whatever unit offered the best kill per point as possible, clumped around a HQ for buffs, then a few naked troops to fill the army mana bar"

I recall walking into a game store, seeing six stormravens, Guilliman and 32 guardsmen in a tight ball on a table and being told it was functionally unstoppable

I still think Command Points and Strats are a terrible replacement for actual unit wargear options, partially for this reason

[brittle salmon]

iirc 8th was the edition of Just Table The Other Guy TM

which is an awful way to play the game, frankly

[vital barn]

even 7th managed to do objectives better than that

Horus Heresy has basically been playing variants of 7th since that time and the new one actually seems like "7e but they ironed most of the kinks out and made it much more interactive"

we'll see how long it takes for people to break it

does 10th still have GW refusing to publish a generic list of special rules and naming every units' version of the same stock effect something completely different?

[thin ibex]

I do think 30k/heresy is actively a good compromise for old heads who don't like the current state of 40k

Or new ones who want more granularity

[rotund flax]

No, we have universal special rules now

[vital barn]

wonderful, they have improved slightly on 8th/9th by going back to 5th

[rotund flax]

Definitely, 10th has made some tangible improvements

[sour sequoia]

kind of yes kind of no

[vital barn]

HH back in 7th was actually the more balanced of the two, and that's with HH1e's reputation for extreme nonsense

[sour sequoia]

there's a lot of stuff that maybe has a fancy faction-inspired name but is in the 95% of things that are pretty transferrable

[vital barn]

what, so Sigmar-charge-mortals style?

[sour sequoia]

'ah man here's my battleline that stickies objectives, here's my battleline that gets wound rerolls'

'here is my CP reducer and my CP generator'

[rotund flax]

Things like stealth, infiltrate, torrent, melta, etc have been standardized across factions

[vital barn]

OK, so they had half of a good idea that previous editions had all of

why, geedubs

[sour sequoia]

I mean for what its worth you know my tastes and I actually quite like 10th

[rotund flax]

But Gyr is right that not everything got made into a universal rule

[sour sequoia]

but I've also become a horrible little genestealer pervert in the corner playing with stupid rules nobody uses

[vital barn]

10th is admittedly inheriting some flak from my pre-existing biases here, since every time I updated myself on how the game worked after 8th dropped it had gotten about 15% less fun

[sour sequoia]

I have the Adding Models To A Unit rule memorized. With like two clauses even most TOs never have to think about because my faction s fucking stupid

[sour sequoia]

it is a very, very big upswing from 8th & 9th

[vital barn]

(which i tried to do about half a dozen times over 8th and 9th)

people were quite happy about 8th from what I remember, and then it came out and whoops, they cut the game out of the game

[sour sequoia]

8ths thing is it was Soup Era and also lethality hell

everybody had 'such cool rules' and all that really meant was everybody blew everything off the table

[vital barn]

command points still get side-eye from me because of how much they encourage(d) funneling all the special juice into one unit and leaving the rest of the army as flavourless warm bodies

admech had a bad case of that because our only good deeps was giant blocks of kastelans and you can't really have two of those

[sour sequoia]

yeah that part doesn't happen as much with current era, though you still have the 'okay here's the Marines Specialest Boys, go my [anti-X] [dev wounds] [reroll hits] [sustain lethal 5+ crit]

[vital barn]

I used to be able to buy a data-tether with my actual points

[desert jay]

Because every unit gets at least one unit-specific special rule and for some units that boilerplate rule is what they get

[vital barn]

OK, but you're still going to talk about that unit as "yeah, they're MEQ but with +1WS and FNP5+" or the modern equivalent

[desert jay]

And some of the boilerplate is slightly different between units like you get a bonus vs vehicles or vs vehicles AND monsters or it's reroll misses or reroll 1s and yadda yadda

What's better? Reroll misses to hit, or reroll 1s to hit and wound? [shrug]

(The answer is that it depends on your to-hit and weapon strength and also what other reroll access your faction has)

[thin ibex]

I think people were happy about 8th because it was the "everything and the kitchen sink" edition. Everything had all the rules, all the guns, all the shots, more more more. Turns out that really didn't work well

[sour sequoia]

the arms race of 3+ invulns -> guns that ignore invulns -> real invulns this time

[desert jay]

Are there "guns that also ignore real invulns"?

[sour sequoia]

IIRC there was near the end of the edition on like, Death Guard or TSons or some bullshit

[desert jay]

(Though you also forgot the start of the arms race, with 2+ saves and -4 AP)

[sour sequoia]

you would really hope those armies would pay for their sins like some people are still paying for shit from 6th lmaoooo

but no

[thin ibex]

I still feel as though a lot of "minutiae points costs for incremental, small upgrades" factored out to more often be a tax then a tactical decision.

A lot of "you don't bring this unit unless you're using these upgrades, so those costs need to be accounted for" simple stuff that came to mind with strictly better weaponry for cost was often that you just paid the cost for the better weaponry for every unit that mattered in your list. Which isn't as different, imo, from units now only having a mildly variable loadout in practice

[vital barn]

end of 8th saw the first few models that had outright damage caps

[thin ibex]

Ctan were wild

[vital barn]

doesn't matter what you did, you could not do more than 4 wounds/phase to Ghaz

[thin ibex]

Ghaz too yeah

[vital barn]

which is the kind of rule you introduce when you have royally fucked up your entire meta beyond all repair

[thin ibex]

The caps were really a bandaid for the raw lethality of the game

[vital barn]

Exalted 2e looking ass

[sour sequoia]

Super fun rule everybody liked which is why they let it persist on a single AoS model for some fucking reason lol

[desert jay]

TSons suffers in only having like 2/3rds of a unit roster and then through two years of 10e only getting to use half of what they do have

(ie. The index rules that make them sorcerermax)

[thin ibex]

I feel like 8th would have benefited immensely from better terrain rules instead of damage caps lol

[sour sequoia]

tbf this was more of a Death Guard bitch, I'm very relieved for the TSons glowup from index

[thin ibex]

Tsons seem pretty cool rn to be

[vital barn]

then again you also had lists like Renegades and Heretics, where your basic infantry squad started out as basically Conscripts (are there still conscripts?) and could get upgraded BS, upgraded armour, a whole spread of different guns, etc. and all those little 1ppm upgrades meant you had three or four armies' worth of variety

[thin ibex]

Me*

[desert jay]

DG does feel like the teacher's pet of Chaos sometimes

Conscripts are gone

[vital barn]

I did wonder why I couldn't see them on wahapedia

[rocky shale]

The amount of keywords a deathshroud melee profile gets is absurd

[vital barn]

also why

conscripts were like the guard unit

[desert jay]

9e had a conscript unit but no in-print model

[vital barn]

besides Russes, anyway

[thin ibex]

Conscripts are not a thing in 10th

[tired cairn]

You can still take infantry squads

[vital barn]

Valhallans crying in the corner

[thin ibex]

No longer can you daisy chain 30 men to your hidden commissar

[desert jay]

I actually don't know if conscripts ever had a dedicated model and not just "use the infantry squad kit"

[sour sequoia]

“Hello I’m slow army”

“Unstoppable 6 inch deepstrike, or scouting assaulting lone op 30 superterminators”

[thin ibex]

I don't think they did

You just painted the infantry different

[vital barn]

you took regular guardsmen and painted a white stripe on the helmet, traditionally

unless you were doing something fancy or playing R&H, in which case you could use all kinds of gribblies

I think Flesh Eater Courts ghouls were popular

[desert jay]

I think this is specifically for Cadian flavor but also Cadian is the vanilla of guard

[thin ibex]

Rn I don't think they're are any units in 10th with a 30 man unit cap

[rocky shale]

nope

[vital barn]

yeah, the white stripe is the whiteshield unit marking

[brittle salmon]

Because James is obsessed with only having units in a Codex if they have models

[tired cairn]

Noncynically, they probably felt it wasn't worth having both conscripts and regular infantry. More cynically they want every unit to have specific models

[vital barn]

but it was the universal indicator for "these are BS2, get those skitarii into melee because it's fun"

[desert jay]

This is probably traceable to that one lawsuit

[rocky shale]

The largest you get is like 20 guard + command squad + character for like 26

[desert jay]

Where it was ruled that if a unit never had models they couldn't claim the look & feel of a given unit as trade dress

[thin ibex]

I think from a design perspective, it can be a bit of an empty spot to have "infantry but worse and cheaper" when you're trying to pare down your design space. Very little in the game is just chaff

[tired cairn]

Yeah, most units cap out at 2x base squad size. Some single model units cap out at 3x though

[vital barn]

HH3e has been strange on the "no model, no rules" thing because the main Libers, the codexes you have to pay for, are pretty strict on it, and then all the expanded wargear lists put out by the same people go wild on the wargear options and custom units because they clearly share the average 30k players' liking for variety

[desert jay]

And guard conscripts lasted longer than most b/c of how diverse guard is if not doing more Cadians

[vital barn]

sometimes I want chaff, though, the hordes of chod are a staple

[rocky shale]

Even cultists are useful because they sticky objectives

[vital barn]

conscripts + commissar are like the Ur-chaff, they're what you teach baby vindicares how to snipe against

(well, maybe gretchin are the ur-chaff, but they're definitely on the same clay tablet)

[thin ibex]

Yeah in a tighter design game space, chaff also does something else aside from be chaff; sometimes that other thing is debatably useful

But like even gretchin are doing things when they exist in the board side from be bodies

[tired cairn]

Did people generally take both regular infantry and conscripts (not necessarily in the same list)? Or was one generally the better option than the other depending on points cost etc.?

[vital barn]

people took both

[rocky shale]

If you have too much chaff in the game you have to start giving units more attacks to be able to meaningfully clear chaff which either ends in burying people in dice, or random 10A S3 shit guns on everything just to clear chaff

[tired cairn]

Interesting

[thin ibex]

Usually conscripts were bubble wrap/ table stuffers.

And something else was doing the leg work

[vital barn]

conscripts + vets was a common pairing, because you had chaff to screen and cap and bubble-wrap and then special weapons firing out of chimeras

[tired cairn]

They have mostly nerfed the hyper-horde armies

[vital barn]

but I definitely saw a lot of infantry squads with embedded lascannon teams behind conscript lines

[rocky shale]

I do like the lack of true miserable horde spam because its just agonizing to play against regardless of if its good

I dont think many people out there enjoy 30min movement phases

[thin ibex]

It's a bit sad rn yet cool in some ways that right now Tau are doing very well competitively, completely on the back of Kroot Hunting Pack

[vital barn]

well, if anything in Tau has to be meta, kroot are the most honourable thing

[tired cairn]

It was probably painful playing against Endless Horde when it was ok with its reactive movement lmao

[vital barn]

they spent like 25 years genuinely abysmal

kroot can have little a metagaming

[vital barn]

I raise you Unending Host

[thin ibex]

Yeah there's a little bit of a blessing that big horde is less... hordy perse. Being able to finish a game in one afternoon by actually playing the game instead of timing out opponent patience

[tired cairn]

What was its gimmick?

[vital barn]

120 bodies in squads of 15-20, if you wipe them they roll a die, on a 2+ they enter reserves and come in on any table edge but your enemies' DZ, roll randomly

[tired cairn]

But you can have chaff without also having 200+ model armies

[tired cairn]

That does sound annoying

[vital barn]

I killed 400 models and a baneblade in one 2k game and was still tabled round 5, although admittedly War Convocation was really bad at mass horde clear and what I actually needed was just like 40 Vanguard

oh no it was a blast, it was brokenly strong but it was very fun to fight compared to Taudar

[tired cairn]

Though in a different way than "yeah, I get to move every time you shoot me" lol

[vital barn]

it was not "yeah I have armywide 2+ cover save and my Better Imperial Knight is half the cost of your normal one", you got to pick up handfuls of dudes

[tired cairn]

Oh, yeah I just meant that Endless Horde was a pita for everyone because you had a couple hundred models that you moved a lot. (It's since been nerfed and I don't think really played)

[thin ibex]

I actually think Tau rn, outside of KHP are in a good if a little underpowered spot. Real nice general internal balance and every unit is usable, even if some need some love.

[vital barn]

Unending Host was very much funny friendly game territory rather than good tournament balance, but it was actually fun

interested to see if the 30k variant that's much more toned down is actually decent

no more outflanking respawns, so you have to try to make those chumps do stuff from your board edge, and you're only respawning normal squads on a 4+

if anything its too weak, but it has the juice

[mental birch]

My brain says Auxillary ultraman reference lol

Fireknife words is still baffling

Ahhahaa

[pale narwhal]

There’s an anecdote in the Taros Campaign book about a vox-snippet from a titan crew dismissing a faraway aircraft as a non-threat then almost immediately turning to static

Tau went from ‘nah no way those exist’ to ‘what the fuck’ to ‘they don’t deploy titans against us anymore’ in like. A couple of weeks

[pale narwhal]

They’re doing well*

*not a sub 45 winrate

It’s incredibly funny and vaguely depressing as someone who doesn’t really play tau for the kroot/auxiliary side of things

[mental birch]

Tau are ehhh

Yeah

A lot of my wins are from my opponents being psyched out

I tell them the optimal move and they dont do it

10/10

[thin ibex]

Honestly "not sub 45%" is legitimately a pretty good place to be. Id be pretty pleased if we could get there with the rest of the detachments. I don't need above 50% personally

In any event, KHP is Taus best detachment, and iirc its not close, next highest i think was aux?

[mental birch]

Yeah I'm a monkey trying to get retaliation to work

[pastel rampart]

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wr_rnbdYiuw

[vital barn]

To be fair that works until they break out the very good Mechanicus AA batteries and paint the surrounding area in guns, which they were doing all the way back in Titanicus

it's a very good Titan restriction order, though, you can't just send out a single unsupported Warhound to rove about, look at things and tear company-sized sections out of any light to medium units it encounters because it doesn't have the AA or the void shield count to deal with a few roving Tigersharks firing a whole bunch of railguns at once.

[thin ibex]

I'm actually so mad that Tau doctrine of using air power to answer titans and other super heavies got compromised by the tau nar and stormsurge somewhat

"We need an answer to knights" yes. The tigershark. Not building an equally big robot to match.

[upper bluff]

Yeah, sadly the Tau's practical approach to antiarmor is at odds with the current policy on aircraft

It's sad but I can also understand how airstrikes are hard to balance and create from a game dev position

[thin ibex]

Also big robot models sell better ultimately

We missed our chance to get a cool hover flier back in the stormraven days

[charred bridge]

The anti titan voltron was right there, combine a bunch of Tau suits together with the power of good cooperation and make a knight sized mech

How did GW miss that

[upper bluff]

That too. Maybe one day we'll get the best of both worlds and have an aircraft crisis suit

[thin ibex]

The Calamity Combined Battlesuit

[upper bluff]

The farsight enclave does something ridiculous like build a coldstar version of this

[charred bridge]

I'm also peeved that the anti titan weapon is like, the manta and it's a small space craft.

[thin ibex]

Inside are 5 Shas'vre

[charred bridge]

Bringing the fleet into a game of 40k smh

[thin ibex]

Well the tiger shark was noted to be anti titan as well; working in pairs

[vital barn]

anti-Warhound at least

[thin ibex]

Hey tau can bring the fleet in if the Imperium is gonna make their churches walk

[upper bluff]

Do the Tau do orbital strike stuff?

[vital barn]

I don't think we have any accounts of them railgunning the big ones, which are rather better escorted - the Imperial titan complement on Taros was four warhounds, of which Tau superheavy flyers got one or two

[thin ibex]

Not really, it's not precise enough

[vital barn]

warhounds and knights are good targets for such things

[upper bluff]

Fair, I just always think an orbital support themed detachment would be cool

[vital barn]

personally I'd rather have any number of Taunars than "Crisis Suit Voltron", that sounds much tackier even than Big Mech

although really they should cook up a Tau version of a Shadowsword

[upper bluff]

What you don't like the idea of the elemental council mega zord?

[soft willow]

Earth! Fire! Wind! Water! Greater Good! By your powers combined I am Captain Tau!

[charred bridge]

That'd be silly, the sky churches stay in the sky and land churches stay on the ground.

[past sphinx]

the tau saw a titan, went "oh fuck whats that" and then retrofitted a pair of massive fuckoff railcannons to a jet to do CAS runs on the poor fuckers

[thin ibex]

The strat isn't build a big mech though, it's coordinate more assets. 2 tigersharks single strafed a warhound. So against a reaver, you combo up, coordinate 3 pairs to punch void shields and deliver a precision strike

They've never needed to match pound for pound

[past sphinx]

god i love the tigershark

[vital barn]

From what I recall of the old Manta rules, back when it was genuinely intended to occasionally be in an Apocalypse game, you could actually shoot it with ground weapons at full ballistic skill because it was very fat and quite slow in atmosphere, so it's perhaps not the kind of thing you want to be running near large titan formations

[charred bridge]

And this plasma gun I invented

[vital barn]

I can see why they swapped to the purpose-built Tigershark

[thin ibex]

And to be clear, when 2 tiger sharks no dif'd a warhound the other 3 left rather than risk themselves

[vital barn]

two tigersharks popped the shields with all their missiles and then railgunned the warhound's cockpit, it wasn't just "max range horizon snipe, titans die" like a bad powerscaling discussion

[thin ibex]

Right, that they did so supports my position though. They used a precision strike tactic. One they can scale by utilizing more assets

[charred bridge]

Ah I see, tigers shark is basically new manta for big guy killing

[vital barn]

I think hanging out near a Reaver squadron and all their Secutarii would not be ideal for a Tigershark squadron, since people have very much tried to use airpower on Titans before in the last thirteen thousand years and you can hit voidships with the lasers on those things

albeit only the very big ones have that much range

Warhounds have effectively no anti-air unless you're right in front of them and tend to be almost entirely unescorted because they are very zoomy

larger titans are not

(conveniently, we have a bunch of standard Titan formations from the Titanicus specialist game, I'm not just pulling this out of my behind)

[thin ibex]

One of the big things is that building something to slug it out with battle titans just doesn't make much sense to tau combat doctrine. You use speed, power, and precision. The Tau Nar, supposedly, can't outrange the larger titans anyway, and can't stand up to them one to one, needing to coordinate to engage in a tactic that largely works the same as other assets

[vital barn]

I believe the Taunar is approximately the size and firepower of a Knight Porphyrion, which is about a match for a lone warhound if the warhound is kitted to do a similar job, and an overmatch if it's packing anti-infantry gear

that's a good asset to have around, it's heavy tank eradication season with something like that, but it's not for fighting Titan maniples

[charred bridge]

Dang the Tau can't out range a large titan?

[thin ibex]

Not if they can apparently shoot at space

[vital barn]

if there's one thing Titans have been shown to have a lot of, it is weapons range

at least the big bastards, because Warlords can engage in gun duels with low-flying cruisers

[charred bridge]

Oh damn I see

I didn't realize they got that much range

[vital barn]

Orbital Lance Strike is a strat in Titanicus, same strength as the Reaver/Warbringer arm volcano cannons, slightly weaker than the Warlord

Titans fighting other Titans is vaguely Battletech, but if they're not fighting other units that can take cover and duck and weave, they have basically as much range as they like