Most and Least playable Colossal

[Khador247]

I think that with new warjack designs PP starts with Khador first as its base model. Low DEF, good base ARM, high P&S, powerful ranged attacks with good range, Low SPD, good number of damage boxes, ok MAT, subpar RAT. Then they make jacks for the other factions and add more bells and whistles. Our stuff ends up feeling pretty vanilla.

We've got a pile of warjacks in our arsenal that the majority of players don't use. Most of us gravitate towards Spriggan, Beast 09 and Behemoth (note the cheapest of those is 10 pts) for competitive play. I still like a Juggy as a second jack or in theme lists. In the present day environment of Colossals I can see our already shaky options becoming even worse. P&S 16 fists aren't going to cut it. Combo slam...meh. One shot with a POW 14 gun...forget about it. We seem to get goofy, quirky stuff like beat back on the Decimator gun instead of something that would actually be useful like crit knockdown or we get something POW 6 AOEs.

Apparently the Motherland is as incompetent at figuring out how to build guns for its warjacks as it is in developing arc nodes. At least we stole that sweet sweet Assault Kommando armor from Llael though right? Oh yeah but that means you have to use AKs though and quite frankly they blow. At least they must have stolen a Mule or two and figured out how to replicate a gun that causes crit devastation.

To make my lists these days a jack need to have at least P&S 18 and/or a POW 15 gun (or 2 POW 14s). I need to start bringing more ARM debuffs. I think I need to invest in a Ragman and start throwing Gorman into more of my lists.

[MathPasta]

Which is a general problem with the faction:

If your faction prides itself on being vanilla and not having many special effects you will get models that are vanilla that just smash stuff.

Khador has plenty of themes that allow for cool effects on models. Just slap one of these on a Unit/ Jack type and you get yourself something cool:

Ogroth Artifacts
Kolduns
Different types of explosions (Immolation bombs anyone?)

[PG_battlemechanik]

DEF 7. Meh. Our jacks are DEF 10. How often to opponents miss your jacks? Not very often. Not a big deal in my book.

Def 7 is a huge deal. Huge. It's the main reason conquest went from "auto-buy" to "maybe if someone gives it to me for free... but even then I'd just sell it". Base Def 10 means you can put superiority (or sidearms) on it, and have it be incredibly durable. Def 7 means there's no point at all. As it stands, a behemoth with superiority is approximately as durable as a conquest, similar damage output, and is 6 points less. The main thing conquest has going for it is general colossal special rules (albeit with loss of arcing fire and subcortex shots) and being non-character.

Is this just because PP wants the default game size bumped up to 75 points, and was afraid someone was going to run Karchev, conquest, and 9 zerkers (or however many you can fit around a 120mm base)?

[PG_jamano]

That's why I'm excited about the greylord cav, it'd be hard to make them boring

[MathPasta]

That's why I'm excited about the greylord cav, it'd be hard to make them boring

Its not hard:

"Exactly like Graylord Ternion! But Speed 7 and with 5 damage boxes and Defensive line"

And the way we have seen our developers think (Lets give them the same thing they had before-except in a giant can) this could easily happen.

[lastspartacus]

The colossals I feel are all mostly well balanced, different in style, powerful pieces for their faction.

Stormwall is the best overall. From a competative perspective, the things it does happen automatically, completely reliably. 2 pow15s, infantry denial, and an autohitting pow10 that can also be used as a focal point for stormsmiths, which is enormously huge for WM opponents. It promptly shuts down both your infantry and warjack options of retaliation, and for a merc player, is the only colossal that fulfills the deep fear of 'must take colossal to beat colossal' must closely.
He also is the best supported by his faction, with huge synergies throughout.

Galleon has the best utility out of all the colossals, and is the MVP for how much he improves the faction in which he was placed. The random nature of its offensive output makes it a risk in tournaments, though he takes previously 'low-tier' casters up a couple notches.

Kraken is an excellent utility jack in a faction full of synergy.

Judicator is an infantry clearer and melee powerhouse under menoth, and is difficult to deal with amidst the menoth denial.

Hyperion is simply solid all around, very basic and cheap with a super weapon gun.

Conquest has very little in faction support but is incredibly solid melee powerhouse with a great denial tool and gun, so even though I would rate him last, I still find him very competant and in no way bad.

[scout's honor]

To make my lists these days a jack need to have at least P&S 18 and/or a POW 15 gun (or 2 POW 14s).

It would seem you are running nothing but Decimators then.

[jandrese]

Aren't they dice -11? and with parasite thats 60 boxes on average if the unit gets in there(which isn't hard with spd 7 reach and desperate pace)even just dark shroud is pretty close(or dark shroud and crippling grasp/feat with denny)
edit: and not to mention if theyre close enough they can CMA some horns. Seen those buggers scrap a clamjack too many times

Yeah, Dice - 11 and 4D6 damage with power swell on a charge. If your colossal had backlash put on it first, they're going to do around 16-20 points of damage to your caster or so fairly reliably from 12" away and immune to blast damage. It is highly unlikely that they will trash the Colossal too early to avoid backlashing your caster to death, although some will roll poorly and fail to crack the ARM. Dark Shroud can help prevent that from happening though. At DEF 7, the Raiders aren't likely to miss more than maybe a single attack roll either. If they actually want to trash the colossal, then Skarre just has to pop her feat first to make it Dice-6 + 4D6 and Dice-7 +3D6 times 11, way more damage than you need to crush the Colossal, although you're going to miss out on some feedback damage if you do that.

If you're facing pSkarre with the Conquest and you see Raiders with the Captain on the other side of the board, you had better have a darn good screen in front of Conquest.

[x3tsniper]

Yeah, Dice - 11 and 4D6 damage with power swell on a charge. If your colossal had backlash put on it first, they're going to do around 16-20 points of damage to your caster or so fairly reliably from 12" away and immune to blast damage. It is highly unlikely that they will trash the Colossal too early to avoid backlashing your caster to death, although some will roll poorly and fail to crack the ARM. Dark Shroud can help prevent that from happening though. At DEF 7, the Raiders aren't likely to miss more than maybe a single attack roll either. If they actually want to trash the colossal, then Skarre just has to pop her feat first to make it Dice-6 + 4D6 and Dice-7 +3D6 times 11, way more damage than you need to crush the Colossal, although you're going to miss out on some feedback damage if you do that.

If you're facing pSkarre with the Conquest and you see Raiders with the Captain on the other side of the board, you had better have a darn good screen in front of Conquest.

It is pretty stupid. The plan pretty much revolves around killing the captain at that point so the rest are affected by blast damage. The only caster I see myself taking Conquest with is Harkevich. The only thing he brings to the table for us that is new, is p&s 22 fists on reach. Woohoo. Super not psyched about that. I have a feeling the Mountain King is the Conquest of Hordes.

[scout's honor]

The only caster I see myself taking Conquest with is Harkevich.

I'm thinking pVlad. And probably also eVlad, to be honest, though that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. And while I'm at it, let's throw Vlad3 in there as well. All at 50 points only, of course.

[jandrese]

I think the fact that the Mountain King is FUR 5 is going to make a big difference once it gets in melee. Whereas a Colossal is going to struggle to beat down the Mountain King without some buffing or debuffing thanks to the 3 Focus limit, the Mountain King should be able to punch anything to death with its seven base attacks.

That's not to say it won't be terrible though. It looks reminiscent of the Wraith Engine in a way, a huge base model that's almost completely melee oriented and too easy to tie up with cheap trash models.

[x3tsniper]

The mountain king is unbelievably squishy, with no bells and whistles. I killed him in 4 hits last night.

[Khador247]

Heeey I see what you did there scouts honor. Well played sir. Well played.

...but seriously I never use the Decimator. Maybe it will get a bit of a new lease on life against Colossals. Even with its low RAT it should hit, then boost damage, fire the second shot, boost damage. Not the worst thing in the world.

[Khador247]

I'm thinking pVlad. And probably also eVlad, to be honest, though that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. And while I'm at it, let's throw Vlad3 in there as well. All at 50 points only, of course.

While EVlad does feel like an odd choice I do tend to agree with you. He can tuck in behind it to stay relatively safe and can slap Hand of Fate on it. The Creeping Barrage templates can help protect his infantry at least a little bit.

[jandrese]

The more I think about it, Creeping Barrage isn't for Conquest. The infantry in the game that are going to be a danger to a Colossal don't care about POW 6 blasts because they're mostly ARM 15 or 16. Creeping Barrage is there to keep the riffraff away from your troops. You put four templates down in front of the Winterguard Deathstar and just dare those Daughters of the Flame to try to tie you up in melee. You put them in front of the Widowmakers and ask the Kayazi Assassins what they plan to do about it.

[MathPasta]

Run through, loose a couple of troops and just kill the rest?

[jandrese]

ARM 11-12 troops really need to think twice before running through. They're likely to lose half or more of their number to the damage rolls. ARM 13-14 is a little bit safer, but you've really got to get to ARM 15+ before you're in the "I'll just lose a guy or two" range.

Of course those ARM 12 or 13 troops can get Arcane Shield or Defenders Ward or something and basically shrug off the blasts...

Yeah, POW 6 sucks. Just ask anybody who has ever fielded Deliverers.

[lastspartacus]

kayazy lose the majority if they try to make a run for it. Actually Conquest is a big deterrant for WG deathstar sprays...come to think of it.

[PG_LunarSol]

If your faction prides itself on being vanilla and not having many special effects you will get models that are vanilla that just smash stuff.

I'm not really annoyed by vanilla. Raw stats is ok, but I'm more annoyed when you start reducing the raw stat advantage while everyone else maintains the bonuses they receive from support. If Khador is boxes, give us boxes. For some reason, Conquest is a bigger drop in boxes from 2 heavies than the others (-6 instead of -4), a bigger drop in DEF, (-3 instead of -2). The real kicker though is definitely the guns. We lose out on one of our few really good "vanilla" special rules (arcing fire) and for it we get some of the weakest guns in the game. I'm cool with the whole "poor accuracy AOE" thing, but when the POW gets dropped that much, it gets really frustrating.

[Khador247]

I'm not really annoyed by vanilla. Raw stats is ok, but I'm more annoyed when you start reducing the raw stat advantage while everyone else maintains the bonuses they receive from support. If Khador is boxes, give us boxes. For some reason, Conquest is a bigger drop in boxes from 2 heavies than the others (-6 instead of -4), a bigger drop in DEF, (-3 instead of -2). The real kicker though is definitely the guns. We lose out on one of our few really good "vanilla" special rules (arcing fire) and for it we get some of the weakest guns in the game. I'm cool with the whole "poor accuracy AOE" thing, but when the POW gets dropped that much, it gets really frustrating.

I have to admit, you make some really good arguments here. In Khador we pretty much taking arcing fire for granted. Not having it is going to be a pretty big change. The POW 6 on the Creeping Barrage is just downright bad. 8 is the real sweet spot for blast damage. 7 would have been about right.

[Septimus]

Yeah, Dice - 11 and 4D6 damage with power swell on a charge. If your colossal had backlash put on it first, they're going to do around 16-20 points of damage to your caster or so fairly reliably from 12" away and immune to blast damage. It is highly unlikely that they will trash the Colossal too early to avoid backlashing your caster to death, although some will roll poorly and fail to crack the ARM. Dark Shroud can help prevent that from happening though. At DEF 7, the Raiders aren't likely to miss more than maybe a single attack roll either. If they actually want to trash the colossal, then Skarre just has to pop her feat first to make it Dice-6 + 4D6 and Dice-7 +3D6 times 11, way more damage than you need to crush the Colossal, although you're going to miss out on some feedback damage if you do that.

If you're facing pSkarre with the Conquest and you see Raiders with the Captain on the other side of the board, you had better have a darn good screen in front of Conquest.

But clearly I would have banishing ward on my colossal. And I would have used my ghost stone to razor wind the Sea Witch. Y'know, like we Khador players do.

[PG_jamano]

But clearly I would have banishing ward on my colossal. And I would have used my ghost stone to razor wind the Sea Witch. Y'know, like we Khador players do.

That would actually work pretty good with an arc node

[Kuwanger23]

So the pow 6's are blast damage? I did not know this. How unfortunate.

[Defenstrator]

Def 7 is a huge deal. Huge. It's the main reason conquest went from "auto-buy" to "maybe if someone gives it to me for free... but even then I'd just sell it". Base Def 10 means you can put superiority (or sidearms) on it, and have it be incredibly durable. Def 7 means there's no point at all.

I'm pretty sure this was a deliberate design choice. The colossals that have DEF 10 are ones that can't get a DEF bonus. I would seem Colossals like Conquest or the Judicator that have access to DEF buffs were given a lower DEF so they couldn't be pushed past DEF 10.

[PG_jamano]

I'm pretty sure this was a deliberate design choice. The colossals that have DEF 10 are ones that can't get a DEF bonus. I would seem Colossals like Conquest or the Judicator that have access to DEF buffs were given a lower DEF so they couldn't be pushed past DEF 10.

But that's one spell on 2 casters!

[Demeritus]

To be fair Defenstrator, Stormwall does have access to Blur. Hyperion has access to both Quicken and Force Wall.

[Defenstrator]

True, but neither of those help in melee. When looking at the various colossals stats the first thing that popped into our heads is any colossal with access to a melee DEF buff got a lower base DEF. Was this a deliberate choice? I don't know, but it does seem likely that they don't want other MAT 5 or 6 heavy hitters to have to boost to hit these things.

[Indragnir]

Def 12 (in melee) colossals cannot be. Period. The game cannot allow a heavy beast/jack failing 17% of its attack (mat 6) against a colossal. It's beyond reason. Do your faction have Def (melee) buffs? your colossal will have a lower Def.

[Sheer_Falacy]

Def 12 (in melee) colossals cannot be. Period. The game cannot allow a heavy beast/jack failing 17% of its attack (mat 6) against a colossal. It's beyond reason. Do your faction have Def (melee) buffs? your colossal will have a lower Def.

Fear the power of the ashen veiled Kraken! (vs hordes, that is)

[Triumph Of Man]

I don't think there is a faction forum that doesn't have a "how do we deal with stormwall?" thread. I think it's top of the heap at the moment.

Skorne Forum, Trolls.

Apply Bronzeback/Mauler. Laugh.

[The Happy Anarchist]

I think the fact that the Mountain King is FUR 5 is going to make a big difference once it gets in melee. Whereas a Colossal is going to struggle to beat down the Mountain King without some buffing or debuffing thanks to the 3 Focus limit, the Mountain King should be able to punch anything to death with its seven base attacks.

That's not to say it won't be terrible though. It looks reminiscent of the Wraith Engine in a way, a huge base model that's almost completely melee oriented and too easy to tie up with cheap trash models.

You would think that. It has been my experience that the MtK can't actually punch Stormwall to death with 7 attacks, even buffed to Pow 23. Conquest does dice +1 to MtK with KSB animus, so 5 attacks at dice +1 is approx 40 damage. You need only a Great Bear helping or Fury or Ragman to easily finish him off. MtK with Rage + KSB hitting Conquest with 7 Pow 23 attacks is 70 damage though, so MtK can beat Conquest to death with buffs, outside of Harkevich helping out.

[lastspartacus]

8x7=56. Thats Stormwall damage grid I think.

[PG_LunarSol]

8x7=56. Thats Stormwall damage grid I think.

Unfortunately, while DEF 10 is usually fairly irrelevant, it is not irrelevant against MAT 5.