So, in Melbourne last Saturday and Sunday, miles from home and my husband hits me up for a visit to Games Workshop at one of the many horrible shopping paradises any capital city is famed for. I’ve noticed that he’s back into the model painting thing …
Background: on our very first outing to the Melbourne Museum after meeting at a wedding the night before, he says “I love models, like in the diorama” (there was a little diorama of the gold fields of Victoria). And I said “I bet you play Space Crusade and Hero Quest and you probably paint the models” and so a love was born.
Present day at Games World: Brad (husband) asks for a ‘defiler’. I shrug, my eyes glaze over, in short I have no idea. But the guy from the store had the strangest manifestation - his eyes got shiny and his colour went up and he launched into this HUGE tirade of Warhammer speak which is a language I don’t understand.
You people are a strange species. I wish I understood.
I thought it was strange that in Belfast, where a myriad of 2nd hand games and DVDs stores and model stores flourish and wither reasonably quickly, the Games Workshop store at the back of the Castlecourt centre has just kept going, must be well over a decade at least.
Yes. The Warhound Titan is around a foot tall. I don’t even wanna know how big a Warlord Titan is (but they haven’t made a 25mm model of that yet, if Forgeworld did make one it’d be at least $2000.)
But I’ve never seen a Titan on an Apocalypse battlefield (cause they’re so expensive or need to be scratch built.) You usually see a couple of Baneblades, though (the super heavy Imperial tank that is only slightly less powerful than a Titan.) They are being made in plastic now from GW proper, for around $100. Still expensive in my mind for something that can only be played in Apocalypse, even if it is a good part of a square foot big.
When Citadel Miniatures (Games Workshop’s miniature-making part) first started making miniatures back in the Dark Ages, they used the 25mm scale, which was already well-established. Since, they have slowly made their miniatures larger and larger, for the purpose of making a mixed force of old and new miniatures look gawky, to make people buy new versions of their old miniatures. So Citadel is still nominally at 25mm scale, but their guys are way bigger than everybody else’s 25mm scale.
I’m mostly retired now, but back during Eye of Terror I was present at two Eye of Terror things Warhammer threw, with this massive chaos tank versus a wall.
We were told to bring 500 points. I did. Four Tau Broadsides (10/1 damage) (Walking railguns) and two power suits.
Once, I was on the side of the Empire. And I took down the tank. The other time I was on the side of Chaos and I did more damage to the Wall than the tank did.
Nothing really says loving like a spike to the head. I’ve fought Warhounds. Repeatedly. The Space Marines take me, but if the rest of the field can keep them off me for two turns, they’re dead.
I don’t recall the old Imperial Armour rules but they seem to have made Titans and other super heavies more survivable than they were before. According to my calculations even with 4 broadsides shooting at it with the void shields down you should only get 2 penetrating hits which shouldn’t take it down (as you need penetrating hits to cause structure damage.) And if it keeps its distance its void shields would still be up so that would cancel 2 more hits.
But of course the points value of 4 broadsides is tiny compared to a Warhounds cost. If you scaled it up to the actual pts cost then it would be a walkover.
I think I am going to get a Warhound and field it when people are not expecting it (I’ve only seen one or two in my life myself). It pwns Baneblades and I’ve never see Tau represent in my local Apocalypse battles. (And it’s the only thing that has a chance against Eldar Falcons, which have gotten even harder to kill than the past edition!)
Well, I did say it takes two turns. And these days, my heavy team fields up to nine Broadsides. Rarely useful to use them all, it gets expensive, but I have them.
(Though my current theory is a high-mobile force with no heavies at all, just missiles)
Generally, though, the point being that against Tau, Titans are just really good ways to ensure that you’re outnumbered after they blow it up real good.
(I still delight in the first time a Necron player ran into Tau. Turn one: "Right, the monolith… Can I check line of sight? Okay. And the other monolith? Right. This guy shoots that one, this guy shoots that one. (roll roll) Okay, they’re dead.)
The new book. If it’s going to cost anything like the Defiler - then he’s washing my hair in the bath for four nights instead of just one! I have to admit - he’s done a fantastic job of this thingy and the detail is awesome. Maybe he can paint my toenails instead …
