Colossal issue

[swirly]

http://www.steamforged.com/colossals-how-to-kill-them/

This great steamforged article by Rich Loxam brings up 3 criteria that should be met in order to bring a colossal down.

1. I can't see any problems we have with damage output.
2. eEiryss is our answer to upkeeps once again.

The biggest problem I have is figuring out a delivery system. How will you guys answer this issue?

[Tyr852]

Depends on what my local meta turns in to , if it runs Colossal heavy I'll run FFE mortar spam or occulated behemoth either way it forces them to come to me. Or I'll just run Conquest with Hark or again eIrusk not ideal but hard to say till it's hashed out more as not everyone in my area is going to be dropping the cash for them as lets be honest besides SW and Galleon the others you have to want to like

[Madhiggins]

when i first saw the title, i wasn't sure if you had an issue with colossals, or if you had a big issue, or if you were going to talk about the magazine issue that was about colossals.

as for a delivery system, i feel like my karchev list is going to be seeing a lot more use in the coming months. with about 20 points devoted to one colossal, it's going to be a lot easier to tow bomb my jacks without any massed infantry getting in the way. but if you're talking about hot colossal on colossal action, then our delivery systems aren't too bad. plenty of speed booster feats, and plenty of Boundless Charge/Superiority buffs to pass out. although it's a shame to waste the def buff os superiority on the conquest but oh well.

[Digilante]

I don't think there is anything in this article that is nonobvious. NEWS FLASH: Colossals are like big warjacks.

Also Cryx has trouble? Cryx... the faction with the most pervasive ARM debuffs in the game? pDenny can get conquest to ARM 11 with Feat + Parasite + Gorman + Dark Shroud and the only thing in that list that is unique to her is the feat. Though by the time the Satyxis are done with their feedback you're going to be ready to kill your own colossal.

[Frege]

I've done a bit of thinking and, for me, the only difference between dealing with a heavy jack and a colossal (apart from extra boxes) is that the colossal cant be slammed/thrown. Sometimes with jacks you dont bother killing them you just toss them around, kd them or whatever.

So i am going to use generally the same set of tactics as i use to kill heavy jacks.

[swirly]

Except jacks don't have covering fire templates sitting in front of them.

[Madhiggins]

the Stormwall is the only colossal that has covering fire worth using. if you're counting on the Conquest's pow 6 covering fire to stop anything then i hope you're ready to have one big dead jack. and all the others literally don't have any form of covering fire.

[PG_Draxos]

Except jacks don't have covering fire templates sitting in front of them.

Have you ever faced a cyclone?

[scout's honor]

The biggest problem I have is figuring out a delivery system. How will you guys answer this issue?

There's no one right answer for this, right? It'll depend on the Colossal, the caster it's with, the list it's in and the list you're putting up against it. Generally speaking though, when building an anti-Colossal list I'd personally look at eVlad, eSorscha or pIrusk first. eVlad's feat turn should let you get to a Colossal and take a great big chunk out of it against most Colossal lists out there. pIrusk has his feat turn to give his infantry more survivability and with Battle Lust they should be able to eat up a Colossal. eSorscha's going to have it the most difficult of the three but on the feat turn, with WGI to clear the way or do a CRA, a bonded jack Boundless Charging in and whatever else you care to bring you should have some good tools as well.

[Jake the Dog]

the Stormwall is the only colossal that has covering fire worth using. if you're counting on the Conquest's pow 6 covering fire to stop anything then i hope you're ready to have one big dead jack. and all the others literally don't have any form of covering fire.

I'll refer you to this post. 4 Crepping Barrage Templates have uses and they should work. Depending on your enemy, you should stack them.

So, the diagrams in the previous page got me thinking more about stacking the Creeping Barrage and less about spreading it out, so I started playing with a spreadsheet to see how would stacking the templates would behave against light infantry, and this is what I got out of it.

This chart show your average chances of killing 1 wound model when you stack Creeping Barrage instead of letting them just pass through one. Seems to me that against up to Armor 14, double stacking hits a sweet spot



And this here is my data set for those with the inclination of verifying the results

[Digilante]

I think you need to look beyond the raw numbers when you are considering creeping barrage. They are going to have a useful psychological impact on your opponent. With four templates you can make a line around 14" long: that's too big for your opponent to waste a turn scooting around, so you're going to get rolls and you're going to get kills. Even at POW 6 a 10-man unit with ARM 14 moving through the barrage will lose 2-3 models on average.

You can also use them to funnel your enemy by leaving an intentional gap in the templates. Given the option of avoiding the roll I suspect many opponents would take it, bunching them up nicely for the main gun/mortar fire next turn.

Creeping barrage is not going to protect you from banes. We just have to accept that. What they will do is nickel-and-dime your opponent's infantry over the course of the game, helping in the attrition war and causing them to second-guess their actions.

[AnotherMike]

I'll refer you to this post. 4 Crepping Barrage Templates have uses and they should work. Depending on your enemy, you should stack them.

I didn't realize they stacked, are we sure this is right?

[Taslon]

If your having problems delivering, Ill give you my trick. Take the behemoth and a Kodiak. Have the kodiak powerbooster and trhow the behemoth, 2 hand style. Hop you deivate forword. Have eirusk pop feat and energizer the Behemoth for three inches. Then charge or walk to said jack. Assuming the average, of no movement gained or lost from the throw, just the 6in throw, You get a 6+3+7, or 16in charge threat on a fully loaded behemoth. Better if you dont have to charge. People dont see it coming.

[Mercykiller]

I didn't realize they stacked, are we sure this is right?

Why wouldn't they? There's no rule saying the templates can't overlap, nor is there a rule stating that you only suffer one damage effect when you enter a persistent template. If you were in an Unbound game and had 6 Conquests that were all in range you could stack 24 damage templates on one spot and force 24 POW6 hits on anyone going through

[profparm]

If your having problems delivering, Ill give you my trick. Take the behemoth and a Kodiak. Have the kodiak powerbooster and trhow the behemoth, 2 hand style. Hop you deivate forword. Have eirusk pop feat and energizer the Behemoth for three inches. Then charge or walk to said jack. Assuming the average, of no movement gained or lost from the throw, just the 6in throw, You get a 6+3+7, or 16in charge threat on a fully loaded behemoth. Better if you dont have to charge. People dont see it coming.

I'm confused as to how the Behemoth can charge. A throw knocks you down (even if you can't be knocked down, you must forfeit either combat or movement action, as per the Throw rules). You can only shake Knock Down or Stationary during the Control Phase, so you can't shake the KD that way, either. In addition, while knocked down, it can not move, thus it can not gain the bonus of Energizer, not until you either get a control phase or the Behemoth begins its activation, forfeiting movement or combat. You use the word "hop", but I'm not sure what that's referring to.

Edit: Never mind, I was looking at the wrong Irusk (pIrusk instead of eIrusk).

[Jake the Dog]

I'm confused as to how the Behemoth can charge. A throw knocks you down (even if you can't be knocked down, you must forfeit either combat or movement action, as per the Throw rules). You can only shake Knock Down or Stationary during the Control Phase, so you can't shake the KD that way, either. In addition, while knocked down, it can not move, thus it can not gain the bonus of Energizer, not until you either get a control phase or the Behemoth begins its activation, forfeiting movement or combat. You use the word "hop", but I'm not sure what that's referring to.

Edit: Never mind, I was looking at the wrong Irusk (pIrusk instead of eIrusk).

Maybe do it with Harkevich? Jump Start and Escort should aid.

[profparm]

Nah, his science checks out; the eIrusk lets models stand up from KD, even if they were KD this turn. Jump Start, however, specifies that it does not affect models that were knocked down this turn. Escort is only a 2" movement hike, which we have in droves to get up to a 9.5" threat range with the behemoth's hands, but that's not nearly as good as the 16.5" threat of his scheme. I still don't like plans that involve using 19 points, 6 focus, popping your warcaster's feat, and is subject to treacherous deviation dice, but there are additional gains to all of those actions, and its certainly a funny answer to Colossals, especially in low-point games.

[Mercykiller]

No, Jump Start won't work, it specifically disallows it. However eIrusk's feat can do it (although funny enough not for a Steady model, as they actually have rules to preclude it baked in as well).

EDIT: Damn, ninja'd! Oh and for real fun try the same trick with the Conquest as the one throwing Big B or Beast 09. Higher strength = farther toss

[Tico Love]

Isn't there a rule in Prime that states that if a model is thrown it still has to forfeit its action or movement regardless of wether it was knocked down?

I don't have my book with me, it might just be for slams.

[profparm]

It DOES have to forfeit its movement IF IT IS NOT KNOCKED DOWN, so, if its immune to KD, this plan doesn't work.

eIrusk's feat explicitly states that Knocked Down models in his control area can stand back up, allowing your model that was knocked down earlier that turn to jump up and still act normally. Since it was knocked down, it doesn't qualify for the line about "if a model is immune to knock down, it must still forfeit either its movement or combat action in its next activation". It takes a bit of rules rereading (for me at least) to understand the combo he was illustrating, but it works just fine.

For the low, low cost of 21 points (miscalculated earlier), 6 focus, and using your warcaster's feat.

[Tico Love]

Ahhhhh... I see! Sneaky Sneaky!

[rvrchamp]

Why wouldn't they? There's no rule saying the templates can't overlap, nor is there a rule stating that you only suffer one damage effect when you enter a persistent template. If you were in an Unbound game and had 6 Conquests that were all in range you could stack 24 damage templates on one spot and force 24 POW6 hits on anyone going through

While I agree that the templates can indeed overlay on top of each other, we may wanna check with the rules forums to see if a model would suffer multiple damage rolls. Here is the exact line from the creeping barrage rule in the Colossal rule book (emphasis mine):
"...A model entering or ending its activation in one or more of the AOEs suffers an unboostable POW 6 blast damage roll."

Looks to me like a model entering one, or more, AOE effects would only suffer the damage once.

[Mercykiller]

Ooooh, good catch

[Madhiggins]

"...A model entering or ending its activation in one or more of the AOEs suffers an unboostable POW 6 blast damage roll."

that's too bad, i actually thought you could stack the templates and i still wasn't too jazzed about them. now that you can't, it's just another thing that irks me about the conquest.

[ScottEBJJ]

http://privateerpressforums.com/show...+covering+fire

You can stack templates to get extra damage rolls.

[Mercykiller]

Except the wording on the creeping barrage templates themselves sounds like you can't. Is the wording the same on normal covering fires?

[epyonliu]

If that is indeed the actual wording then I don't think two creeping barrage templates will generated two damage rolls, even if they dont overlap... Too bad...

[Mercykiller]

Just checked the book, it is the precise wording

[ScottEBJJ]

Hmm, it looks like the wording is different.

Does anyone have a Manticore card? That be a more apt wording comparison since it's templates generated from the same weapon, unlike the Cyclone or Stormwall.

[Tyr852]

http://privateerpressforums.com/show...mplate-placing it would be similar to Kreugers feat with that wording , which was infernaled to be only 1 hit even with multiple templates.

[swirly]

That significantly nerfs the conquest unfortunately :/

[Tyr852]

How is it a nerf when it was our mistake in the first place ? You are still going to get on average 2 templates down between you and the things charging you which looking at the graph isn't horrible odds of killing a chunk of them , I doubt it was ever meant to wipe out everything

[MathPasta]

Why not? Why couldn't it have a 100% success rate of killing infantry? Stormwalls templates have a 100% success rate at killing everything 13 and lower on the arm. And on average will wipe out arm 18 infantry.

Ours is pitfull in comparison (And Stormwall can get more buffs then we can, so its not like ours is better in faction)

[Tyr852]

Because it doesn't ? Stormwall has 50% less template coverage and 17% base shorter range then ours but this thread is about how we are going to get our shiny toys over to smash their shiny toys - throwing a pity party about what we don't have doesn't accomplish anything to that effect as the rules have been printed and until it's errated or a new MK these literally are the cards we have dealt to us.

[MathPasta]

More templates, the majority of which have only niche infantry and it STILL won't do much < Two templates that can reliably kill the majority off all infantry.

Still. Im being unconstructive. I will be off.

[rvrchamp]

Conquest and stormwall are different... that's the long and short of it.

We can lay down an impressive 15" of aoe denial. 4x 3" AOE + 3x 1" distance between the AOE's. While the templates may not be very high POW, that is still a HUGE area of denial. Every dice roll counts for something right?

Ideas:

• drop the wall infront of a unit to force enemies to take the dmg roll if they charge.
• Drop an AOE on an enemy unit that is engaged to force them to either take a free strike, or stay put and take the barage dmg roll (they'll probably stay put)

It isn't a lot, but it's something.

[brEmSEr]

But if you are not centering the second template over the first, models entering would still get two blast damage rolls, right?
Krueger´s feat is not a good reference IMO since damage is dealt when the templates are put into play and simultaneous whereas damage vom creeping barrage is dealt on entering and since you cannot enter two different templates at the same time if their center points are not similar, you would suffer two damage rolls.

[Mercykiller]

No. The wording is very clear on the ability. There really is no room for interpretation

[MathPasta]

Why are people so afriad to admit that something is just sub par? I get not constantly whining about it (Guilty as charged) but it seems that people are terrified of saying "This ability is very poor for the cost"

[Septimus]

Has anyone considered the synergy between rifle corps' covering fire and creeping barrage? Potentially using the barrages to expand the edges of the rifle corps' template to create a potential 17" area of pain (light) pain?