Nusquams' Blog from Nowhere: weapon

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

The Real Answer to Escalation Balancing

It's quite simple and very clever on GWs part. You don't need void shields or another LoW if you already have an established army and feel like you need a bit more of a boost. It's not banning Escalation or banning D weapons.

Just play the Alter of War: Escalation missions in the back of the Escalation book.

They are designed for one player to not have a Lord of War. The missions special rules help level the playing field even further. One mission gives a unit who controls an objective shooting attacks armourbane, fleshbane, skyfire(optional) and interceptor. Imagine a Dev squad with lascannons controlling one of these? Another gives the player without the LoW units outflank and acute senses. Grav/melta bike squad? More like Titan Hunter Squad. Another gives the LoW player a VP for each wound/HP remaining and the non-LoW player a VP for each they dealt. Pus three other missions and more rules I didn't mention.

All these coupled with the new Warlord table that opponents without LoWs get access to... It proves for a very challenging game for the player with the LoW.

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

More Thoughts on D Weapons

I just had another thought. Things with D weapons are expensive. Crazy expensive. I know a lot of people are concerned they are just "point and remove from pay" weapons but think about the point breakdown:

The cheapest source of SD weapons in Escalation. The Shadowsword's volcano cannon. It's 5" blast SD. That is still going to be almost a third of you points at 1.5k. Know how many lascannons you could get for around 500 points? Depends on codex, but the answer is: A lot. Do you know what can survive that much pewpew? Almost nothing, to the point where it equates to Strength D. Especially the Revenant Titan. 4 D weapons is impressive, but for around 1,000 points you can bring the pain without D weapons if you dedicate it all to big guns, not just lascannons. Plus because it's from different sources you minimize the risk to overkill something. So you don't spend all 1,000 points to kill 200.

What D weapons actually end up doing is reducing the time it takes to destroy things. This helps when some apocalypse games take a few days to complete. In "regular" a term which I use very loosely nowadays, 40k it translates to consolidated firepower as the things that carry them takes up more points.

Now it isn't, say, a "1:1 ratio of time:power" as D weapons in the form of blasts can output a bit more if things are bunched up(pro-tip: don't) but it's closer than you might think. Plus it is a double-edged sword; one source of that much firepower is easier to bring down than say, 6. Also if you lose that superheavy you are out that much instantly, where as multiple units take long to kill of and the power curves down instead of cutting off.

If you want more protection that's when you bring Void Shield Generators. Not only do they protect what you can use to kill titans, but the rest of your army as well.

Against vehicle, a D weapon has a good chance to nuke it. So do 12 lascannons.

D weapons are fearsome, but not the end of the world. I fortunately have enough experience to where I can confidently handle them without bringing a Revenant of my own. If you feel like you don't have enough experience/models etc don't cry "nerf now!" just simply say "Hey, I'm new/poor/not confident my current army can handle D weapons/other valid reason, would you like to play a game without Escalation/D-Weapons?"

It is that easy.

For tournaments, you have to expect every player that to have a min-maxed list that utilize everything available withing the confines of the tournaments structure. So if it allows Escalation/Stronghold (Hint: it should if it allows all the other supplements because they are designed to exist in a meta where superheavies do too otherwise Tau Fireblade Cadre with Screamerstars EVERYWHERE) then expect D weapons and plan accordingly and realize that 40k was never supposed to be cut-throat.