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Khaine

2018-08-18T11:41:28Z

2A02:587:3A12:6900:81AE:5B3:CC3D:5804:

[[File:Khaine End Times.png|350px|thumb|right|The only Eldar god that has the [[Awesome|testosterone]] and [[RAEG]] to rival [[Khorne|Khorne.]]]]
<div style="font-size:1.10em;font-weight:bold;font-style:bold;font-family:serif;margin-top:1em;margin-bottom:1em"> ALL WHO OPPOSE ME SHALL BURN TO CINDERS AND ASH! - Khaine, being anal as fuck</div>'''

{{Topquote|Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.|Dylan Thomas}}

'''Khaela Mensha Khaine''' (also known as the '''Bloody-Handed God''' or '''Big Daddy Calgar's personal pleasure object''') is the [[Dark Elf]], [[High Elf]]/Aelf, and [[Eldar]] God of War and Fire. He is also GW's chosen punchbag for when ever they want to prove just how powerful their new character of the week is. It has gotten to the point that the question isn't who could beat an Avatar but who hasn't beaten an Avatar.

==In Warhammer 40,000==
Mr. K.M. Khaine is one of the three Eldar gods that survived the [[Fall of the Eldar]] (the other two being [[Cegorach]] and [[Isha]]), although he was trampled and pushed out of the [[Warp]] and into realspace while [[Khorne]] was busy piledriving baby [[Slaanesh]] all over Eldar heaven. Because of this, he's no longer "alive" in a spiritual sense and is now shattered into a bajillion physical pieces. These pieces made their way into the [[Craftworld]]s, where they can be used to summon a manifestation of Khaine when the need arises. An [[Avatar of Khaine]] is a towering daemonic creature that loses to basically anything it ever fights. He's also the angriest god of the Eldar pantheon, although he can't really contest with the [[RAGE]] of [[Angron]] and [[Doombreed]].

It has been [[Xenology|hinted]] at that Khaine (as well as the rest of the Eldar pantheon) is one of the [[Old Ones]], and so strictly speaking is not exclusively an Eldar deity. He was also the Bloody-Handed God of War for the [[Hrud]].

===The story of the single angriest Eldar entity ever===
Long ago, when the Eldar were the most powerful race in the universe and they hadn't raped themselves yet, Khaine heard from [[Lileath]], the prophecy-giver of the Eldar pantheon, that the Eldar would one day kill him. Khaine, never one for subtlety, decided to [[exterminatus|murder every last one of the pansies]] to ensure that never happened. However, [[Isha]], the mother-goddess of the Eldar, wept for them because no sane mother would want her own children butchered to death by a maniacal god of war. Khaine's rage gets pretty visible at this point because he had the hots for Isha and still completely ignored her, even after she immediately used her common sense and said she was not getting with a genocidal manifestation of pure wrath (per the book ''Path of the Eldar''. Speaking of which, this book basically says that Eldar [[Exarch|Exarchs]] and Khaine have severe psychological problems. Too bad the only gods who come close to being psychologists are [[God-Emperor of Mankind|this warmongering atheist]] and [[Tzeentch|this squawking politician patron]] of [[Sorcerer (Dungeons & Dragons)|spontaneous casters]]. The last one would be [[Malal|this god]] who doesn't believe that you (or he) exists.

Anyway, that's where [[Asuryan]], the Phoenix King of the Eldar gods, intervened and decided to spare the Eldar from their would-be fate at the bloody hands of Khaine and Isha from having to witness it, by creating a barrier to separate mortals from gods for all eternity. This ensured that the mortal Eldar would never have the chance to kill Khaine and that Khaine would never be able to enter the mortal realm and kill all of the Eldar. This solution worked for Khaine, but not so well for Isha.

Isha missed talking to her children and so cheated through the whole barrier deal by having [[Vaul|Vaul the Artificer]] (the best craftsman of the Eldar gods) make spirit stones to communicate with them. Khaine however, discovered this, and cried foul on Isha and her husband [[Kurnous]]. Asuryan, not wanting to look like a biased dick, told Khaine that he could do whatever he wanted with the two, so naturally Khaine chose eternal torment. Vaul got pissed at this and bargained with Khaine that he would make a hundred of his finest swords in a year in exchange for Isha and Kurnous' release, which Khaine agreed to.

However, because Vaul decided to jerk off on the last day rather than work, he couldn't make the last sword in time and instead tried to trick Khaine by putting one normal sword among the bunch of ninety-nine epic swords he made, thinking that Khaine, with his short attention span and inability to count beyond 10, wouldn't notice and would just accept the fuckheug pile of swords as is. Which is exactly what seemingly happened at first, and Khaine released Isha and Kurnous. [[Just as planned|Situation over]]. [[Not as planned|However, Vaul didn't count on Khaine being a total mathfag/detailfag whenever he's weaponwhoring]], and so Khaine got almighty pissed when he discovered that he got tricked. Yeah, a lot of people reeeaaallly love to screw with Khaine. Too bad the guy has a terrible sense of humor.

This trickery had unfortunate consequences for the whole Eldar pantheon, who after Asuryan shrugged the matter off started to take sides: some agreed with Khaine, others told him to calm the fuck down and grow up; and things snowballed from there and boiled over into the mortal realm. Exactly what the hell happened then is unclear but a couple of things are set in stone. At one point, Khaine got his hands on Vaul and beated the shit out of him before chaining him to his anvil. Another certainty is that he eventually murdered Eldanesh, an Eldar champion, although why he did it is unclear since multiple reasons have been put forward (there's lore on this in multiple sources and they are contradictory as fuck):

*Eldanesh challenged Khaine to an honorable duel for the freedom of Vaul, armed with the last blade the Artisan-God should have finished in time (and did before his capture). (Original lore from 2ed. Codex: Eldar.)
*Eldanesh, as nominal leader of the mortal Eldars, was just tired of his shit and told Khaine to calm the fuck down because he and the [[War in Heaven]] was fucking things up for the Eldar royally. (More recent lore.)
*Eldanesh and Khaine actually collaborated during the war against the [[Necrons]], but at the end he gave Khaine the middle finger when he tried to convince him to keep killing for the sake of killing and generally having violent fun. And Eldanesh did it in vain because his murder triggered the internecine [[War in Heaven]] anyway. (See also the novel ''Path of the Eldar'' by [[Gav Thorpe]].)

Anyway, whatever the exact reason, what is certain is Khaine got [[rage|a little angry]] at Eldanesh and slapped a bitch, and since said bitch wasn't a god it really didn't end well. That's the point where Asuryan got '''really''' tired of everyone's shit so he told everyone to shut the fuck up and condemned Khaine to have blood eternally drip from his hands to remind him of his crime, earning him the title "Khaela Mensha" (or Bloody-Handed).

When the [[Chaos Gods|Chaos god]] [[Slaanesh]] was birthed from the accumulated Warp energy of the Eldar's galactic empire of excess and decadence, Khaine tried to battle the newborn god and managed to put up a pretty good fight, despite the fact The Great Hermaphrodite had already consumed the other Eldar gods and was backed by the Ruinous Powers themselves. Despite Slaanesh overpowering him she/he/it did not have power enough to consume Khaine, but then [[Khorne]] appeared and challenged Slaanesh to a battle, as he claimed that Khaine was his property and that Slaanesh had no right to eat him. Needless to say, Slaanesh lost. While Khorne was busy piledriving and backbreaking Slaanesh into oblivion, Khaine was in the middle of it and got shattered into a million pieces, presumably because Khorne had left his axe back at the Brass Citadel and Khaine was the only available melee weapon at the time. Or maybe he made a fine object on which to drop Slaanesh over and over again. Whatever it was, he doesn't say and the rest is history.

So in the end, Lileath's prophecy did come true in a sense. The Eldar were responsible for the birth of Slaanesh, who sort of got Khaine killed, but not totally because technically he is still "alive". It's just that he's not up and about anymore, like [[Cegorach]] and [[Isha]], and now has to live with the fact that he, the Eldar god of war and destruction, was himself destroyed. Either way, it was either [[Just As Planned]] by [[Tzeentch]], who was the only Chaos God who didn't directly intervene during the fall of the Eldar, or Cegorach, because that hilarious son of a bitch just HAD to do it to put Khaine in his place before he slipped back into the [[Webway]]. Hell, for all we know, the two could have orchestrated the entire Fall of the Eldar just to be the only two entities who managed to successfully screw with Khaine and get away with it.

[[Image:Champs.jpg|thumb|left|1200px|The Champ AND the President, ARE HERE!!! Everyone else, such as Roman Reigns/Brock Lesnar/Undertaker AND Trump/Obama/Reagan, are PHONIES!!!]]

===The Avatar of Khaine===
[[File:Avatar vs Lorgar.jpg|thumb|350px|right|The Avatar of Khaine in its natural state of existence: dying horribly to make whatever character or faction GW is currently trying to sell look awesome. (In this instance, [[Lorgar]] mercy killed it.)]]

The Avatar of Khaine is a unique Eldar [[daemon]] unit. The Avatar is basically a small fragment of Khaine's power given form through one of his fragments present in a Craftworld.

The Eldar will only summon the Avatar into battle under the most dire of circumstances when there is no other choice. This is because in order to summon the Avatar, the Eldar must sacrifice one of their [[Exarch]]s, known as the "Young King", in order to bring him into existence, and this only lasts for a limited amount of time. Like any daemon, after some time, the Avatar will eventually degenerate and disappear, taking the sacrificed Exarch with it. There is an alternative method of awakening the Avatar, but it requires no less than six [[Phoenix Lord]]s to show up on a craftworld simultaneously and place their weapons at the Avatar's feet. The concentration of psychic energy is enough to not only awaken the Avatar without needing a sacrifice but to [[Apocalypse|supercharge him]].

He <s>used to be</s> '''IS''' really strong, but [[Games Workshop]]'s authors have taken a liking to murdering Avatars every chance they get depending on marketing needs. Because of this, the Avatar has been:

*Killed hilariously by [[Marneus Calgar]] in hand-to-hand combat in the 5th edition [[Space Marine]] codex.
*Possessed by Heartslayer, a [[Keeper of Secrets]] (oh, the irony), during the invasion of the Eldar Craftworld Kher-Ys.
*Trampled to death by twelve stampeding [[Carnifex|Carnifexes]] during the battle between [[Craftworld Iyanden]] and the [[Hive Fleet Kraken]]. What happened was that the Avatar goaded the swarm's [[Hive Tyrant]] into a duel. What the Avatar failed to realize was that this wasn't tabletop and that the [[Tyranids]] are a pragmatic instead of an idealistic lot who have no concept of honorable or dirty fighting, so the Hive Tyrant just raised his brow at this and sent twelve Carnifexes to run the Avatar over. (Weirdly, [[Matt Ward]] gave him a more dignified death than this bullshit.)
*Strangled (WTF?)/neck snapped by [[Fulgrim]]. Which doesn't make much sense, considering the Avatar neither breathes nor has bones. Then again, Astartes (and humanity in general) have proven time and again that they can kill ''anything'', all thanks to the favoritism and [[plot armor]] brought to them by Games Workshop.
*Killed by the [[Sanguinor]].
*Doused in a great flood by the water people of Astrominus IV after his raw power and heat defrosted them from their icy imprisonment by the Space Wolves.
*"Put out of his misery" by [[Lorgar Aurelian|Lorgar]] (who was, at the time, considered to be the worst fighter out of all the [[Primarchs]]). Though the Avatar was heavily damaged even before the fight, unable to even stand and driven mad by centuries spent in the Warp, and this was just a few pages before Lorgar proved to be a top level badass as he battled and bested Anggrath, the uber-[[Bloodthirster]] of Khorne who can eat Avatars and [[Titans]] like cookies.
*Killed by [[Gabriel Angelos]]' 3rd company without the aid of anything heavier than a [[Dreadnought]] during the [[Dawn of War|Tartarus Campaign]] (though a video game example is slightly less ridiculous because it's usually up to the player rather than plot armor). The presence of [[Isador Akios]], though he was already descending towards [[heresy]], probably helped too.
*Killed in a break-dancing competition by a Khornate [[Bloodthirster]] during the Eldar's incursion on Lorn V (at least this one's non-canon).
*Killed in ''single combat'' by Epistolary Anteas of the [[Blood Ravens]] during the Kronus Campaign. (Yep, Papa Smurf himself just got outdone by a [[Librarian]]). (This might not be entirely canon; Anteas is only credited with stealing the pieces of the Avatar's armor, and the in-game Librarian is only fighting the Avatar single-handedly because of engine limitations. The cutscene is designed to show off monstrous creatures, which Spess Mehreens don't have.)
*If the [[Imperial Guard]] under [[Governor-Militant Lukas Alexander|Lukas Alexander]] defeat the eldar on Kronus, then the avatar gets killed by a MOTHER FUCKING [[sentinel|SENTINEL]]. This is non-cannon however.
*Killed ''twice'' by [[Blood Ravens Force Commander|Force Commander Hair Gel's]] squad during the fighting to pacify the Eldar in subsector Aurelia. Though to be honest, both of these battles are really fucking hard if you don't have a well-managed squad, and nothing short of [[Ulkair|greater daemons]] is more than a speedbump for [[Tarkus]] or [[Cyrus]].
*Stabbed in the heart by [[Maugan Ra]] to temper his Maugetar. See? Even in its own faction, the thing gets killed anticlimactically.
*Abandoned on a [[Maiden World]], where its connection to the Eldar was severed, reducing it to a mindless state of rage. The now-unbound Avatar consequently called out to the [[Orks]] of the nearby Octarius system, which were [[Looted|happy to answer it]]. It's kind of sad that the only time the Avatar isn't being a jobber is when he's being used by someone else entirely.
*Killed by the [[Legion of the Damned]] when assisting the [[Invaders]] in their assault on Craftworld Idharae. When the Legion realized their flaming bolters did squat against the Avatar, they instead brought the roof down on it. Bringing down the roof...sigh...
*Possibly defended [[Caerys|Farseer Caerys']] last base on Kaurava III only to be blown away by <strike>[[Vance Stubbs|VANCE MOTHERFUCKING STUBBS]] and his 100 [[Baneblade|Baneblades]] after they refused to fuck off.</strike> KRUMPED BY GORGUTZ! QWIT WHININ' DIS IZ KANNON YA 'UMIE GROT!
*Slain by a Battlewagon whilst leading Ulthwe's forces in a near suicidal attempt to defeat a powerful Ork Warboss.
*Somehow able to achieve a mutual kill against [[Skarbrand]], most likely the closest thing to a victory any Avatar has ever achieved; it should be noted that, as the Avatar of the Craftworld with the greatest devotion to Khaine, it may have been stronger than normal. Sadly, with the death of the Craftworld and Infinity Circuit, this Avatar is most likely no more.
*Somehow fused and corrupted by a Genestealer Patriarch who took over it on the Craftworld Zaisuthra.
*A purer shard of he Avatar of Khaine, called the Warshard, was killed rather quickly by the Yncarne possessing Yvraine which, considering the Yncarne itself was easily defeated by Ahriman, does not say good things about Khaine.

One rare example of an Avatar of Khaine not being used as a punching bag is in the Fracture of Biel Tan where one ties with an injured Skarbrand.

[[Image:GiotaTsirouFaceboook.jpg|left|thumb|600px|Giota Tsirou, a 200 pound girl of short stature displaying unrivaled hotness!]]

===On the Tabletop===
[[File:LatestKhaine.jpg|thumb|right|300px|FOOL! YOU DARE QUESTION THE SIZE OF MY LOINCLOTH?!]]
The Avatar of Khaine took a bit of a beating with 8th edition. For starters, the Avatar now costs 250 points while not improving too much. What you get for that cost is a whopping WS2+ A5 monster that hits at S8 AP-4 D6 damage, with a reroll on the damage. This means that the Avatar of Khaine can punch holes in tanks like it's nobody's business. Do note that it has only 5 attacks and it deals no Mortal Wounds, so it can kill a maximum of 5 models per turn. If you really want all your attacks to hit, give him an Autarch buddy for rerolls for your To Hit rolls. On top of that it can also shoot with that profile as an 12" Assault 1 weapon, and thanks to Battle Focus does not get -1 to hit if it advanced the same turn. Paired with its 7" movement and a re-roll on failed charge rolls one of the Avatar's largest problems in earlier editions, its low speed, has been kind of addressed. As for saves it gets a 3+, a 5++ due to being a Daemon and its Molten Body ability has been reworked into granting yet another 5++ save instead of immunity to flamers and melta weapons. With the advent of multi-wound weapons this is quite useful and it would be one hell of a job to write down exactly which guns count as flamers or melta now that the keywords regarding them are gone, it is still sad to see such a flavorful ability disappear. With T6, W8 and no degrading of its abilities as it gets hurt the Avatar can stay in the fight long enough, but two lucky Lascannon shots can put it down for the count with frightening ease (although if you lose a character to shooting in 8th edition you probably don't know what you're doing). Don't forget that it's a Character, so as long as it remains screened by other units it should be able to get close enough to the enemy to deal damage. Be wary of flyers with powerful weapons, for they can easily assassinate your Avatar because of the high speed of the rest of the Eldar army compared to it.

If you're not running a Saim-Hann list the Avatar's '''12"''' aura (which allows units to re-roll failed charges and makes them immune to morale) can be pure rape. Use him to propel Howling Banshees up the table, or to lead a horde of Guardian blobs.

When using Power Ratings instead the Avatar clocks in at 13 points, the second-most expensive unit behind the [[Wraithknight]]. Nothing much changes about it, so stick it in combat as soon as you can to get the most out of it.

==Warhammer Fantasy==
Similar to his 40k part only not in pieces. He is given a LOT more respect in this version of him, shown to be a powerful, mighty god that is renowned and feared (as he should be, you pussies).

There was no prophecy that the Elves would harm him, so that 40k story about him trying to wipe the mortal elves out didn't happen in the Fantasy universe because he had no reason to dislike the mortal elves. The Swords of [[Vaul]] story DID happen however, and that final Sword was the [[Widowmaker]] which somehow ended up in the mortal world (a lot of Khaine's shit does actually, probably at a 1:1 ratio with [[Lileath|Lileath's]]). He's not outright evil (other than the fact he likes war just like the Fantasy players), rather he's pretty neutral and the High Elves love to acknowledge the dualities of "evil has to be killed by good, there can be no joy without sorrow, etc" with him.

Overall, Khaine is a huge asshole and High Elves acknowledge him as part of the pantheon but do not actually worship him (barring a small minority amongst the [[Ulthuan|Nagarythe]] who are a bit more fucked up than the rest of the lot, which is saying something). [[Dark Elves]] on the other hand praise him in [[Asuryan|Asuryan's]] place (when they aren't worshiping [[Slaanesh]] anyway).
High Elves do not insult him however, and still include a depiction of him amongst the High Elf Pantheon who view him as a necessary evil. High Elf warriors pray to Khaine before battle, but are careful to insure that his influence does not drive them batshit crazy. The Shrine of Khaine is a hotly fought over place between the High and Dark Elves, the former trying to prevent his worship and the latter trying to, well, worship at it. It's the location of the [[Widowmaker]] (see below).

He's not overly fond of ANY of the elf races in the mortal world, but since the Dark Elves revere him instead of big boss Asuryan (Eldar confirmed for Dark Elves, Dark Eldar confirmed for <strike>badass Dark Elves</strike> {{FWIP}} '''TRAITOR, DIE IN THE NAME OF OUR LORD ASURYAN AND THE PHOENIX KING!''' What Phoenix King? You mean [[Malekith]] [[End Times|lol]]?) he grants them boons then sits back with some popcorn and watches the Elves slaughter each other.

His love of war combined with his elfness and that his most ardent worshipers are scantily-clad women means he's probably the secret love-child of Khorne and Slaanesh (tsundere confirmed).

===The Sword of Khaine===
Long ago, when the Old Ones left and Daemons were overrunning the world, [[Aenarion]], the first Phoenix King of the High Elves (as well as the father of the king of the Dark Elves) took up the Sword to help fight off the Daemons. He used it to kick so much ass he eventually drove the Daemons back. During the final battle against the Daemons, while his [[Caledor the Dragontamer|best bud]] created a Vortex to syphon off the extra magic and keep the Daemons from manifesting properly, he used the sword to fight and kill all four avatars of the [[Chaos Gods]], killing a Lord of Change, Bloodthirster and Keeper of Secrets single-handedly (though his HUEG dragon helped him against the Great Unclean One). Suck it Marneus.

Aenarion, mortally wounded, took his (also mortally wounded) dragon and flew across half a continent (which, thanks to the size of the Warhammer world, means a full sized continent) back to the island then stuck it in the ground at the Shrine, where it remains to this day.

Some editions imply the Widowmaker being grabbed by Aenarion and thus causing the Dark Elves to happen is Khaine's plan come to fruition so there'd always be elves fighting and thus his portfolio would mean something. Other times, he's with the other gods in facepalming when he nabbed it and cursed himself. It's open to interpretation.

===Khaine Lives In Death===
Kane.. er, I mean Khaine... was the main focus of [[The End Times]]' third book, which focused on the conclusion of the Elven wars.

So Malekith, king of the Druchii and all-around bad person, manages to repeat the ritual of becoming the Phoenix King once again and succeeds this time, reclaiming the title that was rightfully his. [[Tyrion]], the closest thing to a guardian as Ulthuan has had the entire event, finds this to be a breaking point in a series of upsets (Including being utterly unaware that his own illegitimate daughter was sacrificed to summon [[Nagash|the king of the spooky scary skeletons]] and the death of the last Phoenix King) decides that enough is enough. At the Shrine of Khaine, Tyrion reaches for the Widowmaker, and thus becomes possessed by the big guy himself as his Avatar.

This possession does a 180 on his personality; where once Tyrion was a noble prince who was dedicated to defending his land, Khaine's possession turned him into a murderous asshole. Well, that and Morathi's attempts at wooing him. This too affected the Elves as well, as they also surrendered to their murderous impulses and Witches joined with his host. Together, they rampaged through Wood Elves and murdered Orion (and Kurnous), they executed Kohril when he stole the Widowmaker in hopes of ending the war early, and generally just stopped caring about protecting their land.

This all comes to a head at the Isle of the Dead, where all Elves had a massive battle, with Malekith's side being bolstered by the ghosts of Phoenix Kings past who sought to repay a debt to their creator. Eventually Malekith, now bearing Asuryan's power, and Tyrion the Avatar of Khaine battled. It was long, bloody, and terrible, but eventually it ended when Alith Anar managed to snipe out Tyrion's heart. Tyrion's death also spelled the death of Khaine, and thus his madness faded from the world and the Old Gods faded from the world. When Tyrion was resurrected in the last book, it was free of the Bloody Handed one's influence.

===Age of Sigmar===

In Age of Sigmar Khaine (like all the Aelven gods) is dead, killed in the End Times. But the Aelven Gods are cyclical and will reincarnate if they're worshiped enough. Khaine's parts ended up in Khorne's control...somehow and were reforged into weapons for his greatest generals, except for Khaine's iron heart which, despite his greatest efforts, would not break or even crack. Finally Khorne got frustrated and hurled it away where, after a lot of shit, it came into the clutches of Morathi, who is the High Oracle of Khaine and is uniting worshipers to bring Khaine back to life.

Except not. Holding onto the Iron Heart of Khaine has allowed [[Morathi]] to steal its power and she's using it as part of her plan to ascend to Godhood. Of course given that a lot of other members of her family (like Malekith/Malerion or Alarielle) have ascended to Godhood, maybe when she ascends she'll be the Goddess of Murder herself, Khaine reborn.

===On the Tabletop===

As implied by the name, the Daughters of Khaine faction is entirely devoted to Khaine and as such they get their own Avatar of Khaine model. This can be taken either on foot or as part of a Cauldron of Blood, but unlike the 40k version, it's not the heart of a Craftworld or Temple but simply an iron statue, animated by magic. As such it requires continual prayers from Daughters of Khaine Priests to stay awake and moving, at least until you hit turn 3 in an all-Daughters army, at which point it wakes up permanently as part of their escalating table allegiance ability (there are a lot of bonuses to playing all Daughters of Khaine, the girls do not play well with others).

Once he's awake however, he's an incredibly brutal close combat unit. Clocking in at 180 points (or included as part of the 300/330 for a Cauldron) he moves 9 inches a turn, has a short ranged shooting attack that can hit hard (6 shots, 3s to hit, 3s to wound, -1 rend, 1 damage, just don't ask how it hurts Magmadroths) and in close combat he's got 4, 3 to hit, 3 to wound, -3 rend, 3 Damage hits. Yes, flat 3 damage. Alone he can very easily wreck entire units or annihilate monsters (especially since the turn he wakes up automatically, he gets rerolls of 1 to hit) and on top of a Cauldron he can help the Cauldron eat squads. The only downside is he's basically only a beatstick, only having a small +1LD aura (which is active whether he's awake or not). Still, as the monster at the front of a brutal charge, he certainly does the job.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:M3470223a 99120212009 2013CauldronOfBlood01 873x627.jpg|Dark Elf Cauldron of Blood, a mobile shrine to Khaine administered to by his fangirls.
Image:AvatarofKhaine.png|Here we can see Khaine being a little bit mad at Isha lying about that ”time of the month”
Image:1236357978434.jpg|The Avatar of Biel-tan, soon to get its shit kicked in.
</gallery>

{{Eldar-Forces}}
{{High Elves}}
{{Eldar-Gods}}

Swarmlord

2018-08-18T06:14:28Z

2A02:587:3A12:6900:81AE:5B3:CC3D:5804:

{{awesome}}
[[File:Swarmlord.jpeg|thumb|300px|Behold the Devourer of countless galaxies, destroyer of empires, ender of countless species, and the end of evolution. You now want to play Tyranids.]]
'''The Swarmlord''', also known as Schwarmführer (due to his first leaked images coming from scans from a German [[White Dwarf]], also it sounds way cooler), and Gargamel (owing to how he fucked over Papa Smurf), is one of the few [[Tyranid]] character with a little bit of personality. He is as ancient as the Tyranids themselves, a veteran of conflicts across countless galaxies. Essentially the apex predator of the entire species, the Herald of the Hive Mind and granddaddy of all [[Hive Tyrant]]s, the Swarmlord is the [[Creed]] of the Tyranid army, and also the most intelligent, cunning and experienced Hive Tyrant of the swarm. Whenever the Hive Mind can't overwhelm the opposition with sheer numbers or adapting new tactics, it spawns the Swarmlord, and he [[gets shit done]]. And on top of being a super-general, the Swarmlord is also a [[Khorne|close combat monster]] and [[Tzeentch|powerful psyker]], capable of facing off with [[Abaddon|the Despoiler]] himself, though with the advent of 8th edition he now has [[Roboute Guilliman|some]] [[Magnus the Red|stiff]] [[Mortarion|competition]] for who can mathematically whoop Abaddon’s sorry ass the hardest. Although it should be noted this is only in [[crunch]] as, in [[fluff]], the Swarmlord has [[Bullshit|rarely managed to win a fight against serious opposition]] and is weaker than [[Marneus Calgar]] in a duel, meaning Abaddon is most likely the stronger fighter in the actual narrative. Plus, it's pretty obvious that the big-name heroes will win almost every fight they get themselves into.

He's also immortal, as his memories and personality are constantly saved by the Hive Mind and are placed in brand new shiny body if the previous one got blasted apart with massed melta fire. While the hive mind could potentially spawn a new Swarmlord without the previous one being slain, which could lead to multiple Swarmlords on different battlefields, no evidence of such cloning exists. However, if the Macragge Swarmlord is still alive, hibernating under the surface of the planet, there ARE at least two Swarmlords in the Galaxy. He's something of an Ensemble Darkhorse on /tg/, well liked and thought of as incredibly badass. Shitting all over Calgar probably has something to do with it.

He serves as the Super-Heavy unit of the [[Tyranid]] Army in [[Dawn of War 2]].

==List of deeds==
[[Image:Champs.jpg|thumb|left|1200px|The Champ AND the President, ARE HERE!!! Everyone else, such as Roman Reigns/Brock Lesnar/Undertaker AND Trump/Obama/Reagan, are PHONIES!!!]]
*First seen on Tyran, leading [[Hive Fleet Behemoth]]'s final assault on a Mechanicum outpost. Not quite clear why, because the battle was pretty one-sided, although he could have been gathering more data about human warfare.
*Showed up on Macragge and kicked major ass, outclassing [[Marneus Calgar]] in tactics, but only beating him in a fight because he ganged up on Marneus with his bodyguard. He cut off Papa Smurf's limbs, guts and one eye, but due to plot armor, failed to kill him. The honor guard managed to recover their [[Chapter Master]] thanks to the <s>force-feeding</s> heroic sacrifice of their commander to the Swarmlord to buy some time. While the [[Ultramarines]] withdrew to space, the Swarmlord led his forces to the polar fortresses to omnomnom the First Company and [[Ultramar]] [[Planetary Defense Force|PDF]]. And he succeeded. Unfortunately, the space battle for Macragge hadn't gone so well, mainly because the Imperial Fleet had the balls of steel Ultrasmurfs lacked; while the Tyranids won the planet, they lost the war. The Swarmlord was killed during this battle, but its "consciousness" (as far as any Tyranid bioform can be called conscious) was reabsorbed through the Tyranid synaptic network to be reincarnated later.
*It's possible that the The Great Beast, who lead [[Hive Fleet Kraken]]'s invasion on [[Craftworld Iyanden]] was the Swarmlord itself. The other option is that it was a normal Hive Tyrant with the now-defunct Armoured Carapace biomorph. The Avatar of [[Khaine]] attempted to goad the creature in single combat during the fighting. However, the Swarmlord, not really knowing nor giving a damn about honorable duels and such, tricked The Avatar into getting shit kicked by twelve Carnifexes. It also avoided all Eldar attempts to assassinate him until the corsair prince [[Yriel]] finally managed to stab him in the face with a [[Cronesword|cursed spear.]]
*Showed leading [[Hive Fleet Leviathan]] at the last years of M41, where it once planned and executed [[Indrick Boreale|multiple simultaneous and devastating attacks]] on the Hodur Sector, resulted in omnomnoming two dozens Imperial worlds (including one Space Marine Chapter home world) in less then two months. Such a rapid and unstoppable Tyranid advance is rumored to be the main reason for inquisitor [[Kryptman]]'s decision to launch his infamous mass-exterminatus cordon project and [[Blood Ravens|stolen]] Genestealer project to redirect Leviathan into an Ork empire.
*Launched a campaign against Vior'Los, where he faced off in a Duel against [[Farsight]] and got his ass kicked. To be fair O'Shovah has a weapon that absorbs life forces, so the Swarmlord is [[Anal circumference|at a major disadvantage.]]
*Now he's rumored to be in the [[Octarius War]], pwning [[Ork]]s. It was going well, but then the [[Eldar]] went and purged the entire system of all life and after that Ghazgkhull showed up, hopped up on WAAAAGH energy and blessed by the direct intervention of [[Gork]] and [[Mork]] themselves. To make it even worse a [[World Eaters]] warband caught wind of all this and decided to join in. Within the year they had offered 8000 skulls to [[Khorne]]. This might not seem all that impressive... except for the fact that the ''smallest'' of these skulls was the size of a '''boulder'''. The [[Chaos Lord]] leading the warband, Vodha Bloodprice, managed to off a [[Hierophant]] with the the axe of a fallen [[Warboss]] and got promoted to [[Daemon Prince]] as a reward from the very pleased Khorne.
*Appeared to lead the invasion of Baal where, once again, it died in single combat against a tired and exhausted [[Dante]]. If you haven't noticed, Swarmy has a critical weakness against anybody with [[plot armor]] and through this lost most of the menace that comes with being the pinnacle of all Tyranid evolution. It almost kills Dante, though, impailing him and popping up his secondary heart, damaging his spine and leaving him gravely posioned before Dante [[awesome|evaporated its face with the Perdition Pistol at point blank]].

==On the Tabletop==
[[Image:GiotaTsirouFaceboook.jpg|left|thumb|600px|Giota Tsirou, a 200 pound girl of short stature displaying unrivaled hotness!]]
[[File:Swarmlord Codex Tyranids.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The Swarmlord in its natural habitat: [[Doom|knee-deep in the dead]].]]
The Swarmlord was one of the most deadly and expensive HQs in the game, being able to buff his army and slaughter almost anything in close combat with high weapon skill instant death attacks. While having only one wound more than a regular Hive Tyrant, he was more survivable in close combat due to a 4++ he got from parrying attacks with his swords. There were only a couple HQ models outside Apocalypse capable of killing the Swarmlord in a challenge with a chance of or better than 50% - Primarchs, Draigo, Lysander, Abaddon and Skarbrand primarily, but also anything with a lot of high strength/AP attacks, anything that causes instant death or anyone that has Eternal Warrior, and even that doesn't save them most of the time. Give him a unit of [[Tyrant Guard]] and he's damn near unstoppable. If you have a friend who is a Blood Angels player who won't shut up about how powerful Mephiston is, just say "Swarmlord" and you instantly end/win any ensuing argument. Also it's hilarious.

And then [[Robin Cruddace|6th edition happened]]. It lost Eternal Warrior, and Tyranids as a whole lost access to the main book psychic powers, including their buffs. And he lost his special rule that made enemies reroll successful invuln saves, AND got 5 point price increase as a final slap in the face. What does he get from all of this? One additional attack and he's level 3 psyker. ONE, UNO, EIN attack and ML3 when there isn't really much to use it on due to the Tyranid psychic table being at most decent-ish and unspectacular, and he gets less rolls for powers than he used to. Christ...

Given the removal of the Parasite, the nerfs to walking Hive Tyrants (R.I.P armored shell), and the obscene overcosting of [[Tyranid Warrior|Primes]], the general theory on why the Swarmlord and other Tyranid HQs was hit so hard is that GW wants to promote sales of Flyrants and Tyrant Guard which are not only big and expensive models, but big and expensive models you have to buy a lot of. Everyone already had walkrants, most people only ever got one swarmlord, and the prime is a rather small model by GW standards. Tyrant Guard weren't spectacularly buffed, but Flyrants are one of the clear winners of the new book.

The Swarmlord however was forced to sit the edition out with no FAQ, Dataslate, Supplement, or Forge World book to throw him a bone. So ended a year and a half of true glory, replaced with bitter mediocrity and memories of godhood now lost.

And then 8th Edition happened.

=== 8th Edition===
In 8th Edition Swarmie is back with a vengeance. An even 300 points nets you a monstrous 6 attacks at WS2+ S8 AP-3 D3+1 mortal on 6+ to wound and an additional one at S8 AP0 DD3 thanks to the pincer tail; a tough T7 12 Wound 3+/4++ (3++ against melee) platform that can run at a frightening 9". The range on Synapse and Shadow in the Warp is increased to 18" and thanks to Hive Commander the Swarmlord can pick one friendly '''Hive Fleet''' unit within 6" and have them move instead of shooting. This can be the Swarmlord itself to run a frightening 18" before charging, a fun way to suddenly spring a nasty surprise on your opponent, which is increased by 2d6" if you use Onslaught. The Swarmlord has a fixed Warlord Trait: Alien Cunning. This allows it to [[Creed|redeploy at the start of the battle to exploit the battle plans of your opponent]]. The downside is that this is a fixed ability, meaning it's predictable and loses its surprise because it cannot have a different trait. The Swarmlord knows three psychic powers: Smite and two from the Hive Mind discipline. Don't forget that the Swarmlord can use two powers per turn:

* '''Dominion''' lets one friendly Tyranids unit within 36" both ignore Instinctive Behaviour and Morale tests for one turn. While useful it's also situational.
* '''Catalyst''' simply grants a 5+++ save against all wounds to one unit within 18". Extremely useful, since the Swarmlord will draw a LOT of fire.
* '''The Horror''' is pretty useful: an enemy unit with 24" of the user substracts 1 from all their hit rolls and Leadership tests. Not only does it protect you until the start of your next psychic phase (have fun shutting down enemy heavy weapons squads this way), any damage you do against infantry units will hurt even more.
* '''Onslaught''' is by far the best of the bunch: if used on itself the Hive Tyrant can move 9", advance D6", then use Hive Commander to move another 9", advance D6" and charge after that. This gives the Swarmlord an average threat radius of 32", allowing for a first-turn charge in whatever vulnerable position your opponent has. Do note that afterwards your opponent will likely Fall Back and blast your Swarmlord to bits, but it'd be hilarious if you manage to take out your opponent's HQ unit with such an attack.
* '''Paroxysm''' means that one enemy unit within 18" of yours is unable to fight until it's the last unit to have to do so until your next Psychic phase. This seems odd at first, but it means you can cripple the tactical effectiveness of this unit and assure it won't be able to overrun one of your units and charge another one until you're ready for them. Situational.
* '''Psychic Scream''' hits the nearest enemy unit within 18" with d3 Mortal Wounds, and if they're a psyker they have to roll 2d6. If this is higher than their Leadership, pick one of their psycic powers: they can no longer use it in that turn. This is a tremendous way to fuck over an enemy psyker, but because of how targeting works you're not very likely to hit a lot of psykers with this unless you fight Grey Knights or something. But even then, d3 Mortal Wounds is always nice.

So in short, Catalyst and Onslaught are the best picks. Something that makes the Swarmlord unique is that it does not have a fixed Hive Fleet trait: it can pick from any of the traits and as such has access to a couple of useful effects:

* '''Behemoth''' grants re-rolls on failed charge rolls, which is alright since the Swarmlord is meant for combat, however with Hive Commander the Swarmlord can easily auto-charge after coming out of a Tyrannocyte or even when footslogging across the board, especially if it successfully casts Onslaught on itself, making this less useful.
* '''Kraken''' lets you roll ''three'' dice when rolling to Advance and pick the best one, which is a massive boon if you have the Swarmlord run off by itself. It can also charge in the same turn as falling back.
* '''Leviathan''' grants a free 6+++ for everything within 6" of a Synapse creature, which is valuable as your opponent will often focus a lot of high damage weaponry into the Swarmlord to bring it down.
* '''Gorgon''' gives re-rolls of 1 on to wound rolls in combat, which will be useful if you send your Swarmlord to try and take out tanks, or just want more reliable damage output.
* '''Jormungandr''' grants the benefit of cover out in the open... unless the model advances. Which given how you'll be running the Swarmlord is going to mean jack.
* '''Hydra''' grants re-rolls on failed hit rolls in combat against units with fewer models than your own... which means nothing since the Swarmlord rides alone.
* '''Kronos''' gives a re-roll of 1s to hit when shooting, but since the Swarmlord cannot do that this won't help him.

In the end Kraken is favoured because of the significant speed boost it grants, however Leviathan's durability increase and Gorgon's rerolls can also be decent choices.

Despite all this the Swarmlord is more vulnerable than ever with the advent of multi-wound weapons. His old reliable meatshields, the [[Tyrant Guard]] have especially suffered because of this: now REDUCED from T6 to T5 in 8th in return for 1 extra wound (so 3 total) and still only 3+ armour a single [[Lascannon]] shot has a good chance at popping one of them. While they can switch any wounds dealt to their charge to themselves as Mortal Wounds on a 2+, their relatively weak frames mean that this will rapidly kill them and focussed [[plasma]] fire will really thin the herd, leaving the Swarmlord vulnerable.

Another note is that the Tyrant Guard move 7", 2" slower than the Swarmlord at his highest stats, and thus they require adrenal glands to keep up with the boss. On top of this being not perfectly reliable, the difference in speed means there's a good chance that either unit will be able to outrun the other, meaning that using both at the same time is difficult at best. Then there's the point cost: 3 of them cost 111 points bare. Two additional points for the Glands and Sacs are worth it, and the 2 points extra on top of that are useful for the Lash Whip & Bonesword for the AP-2 it grants. Skip the Crushing Claws: they're way too expensive. There's one additional point of interest: Tyrant Guard can now be taken in units of up to 6. This is expensive, since such a unit sets you back 234 points fully kitted out, but it's a fun novelty.

===Power Ratings===
At 15 points the Swarmlord is balanced and doesn't get any other options. Nothing else changes.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:TacticalSwarmlord.png|The Swarmlord and a certain [[Creed|tactical genius]] team up. [[Awesome|Can I get a "Hell yeah!", people?]]
Image:Senordelahorda.png|El Señor de la Horda y su corcel, [[Raveners|el Terror Rojo]].
Image:Swarmlord carnage.jpg|Pictured: the fine red mist that you become if you get too close to the Swarmlord.
Image:Swarmbaus.jpg|"Bullets? What bullets?"
</gallery>

{{Tyranids-Creatures}}

Swarmlord

2018-08-18T06:14:13Z

2A02:587:3A12:6900:81AE:5B3:CC3D:5804:

{{awesome}}
[[File:Swarmlord.jpeg|thumb|300px|Behold the Devourer of countless galaxies, destroyer of empires, ender of countless species, and the end of evolution. You now want to play Tyranids.]]
'''The Swarmlord''', also known as Schwarmführer (due to his first leaked images coming from scans from a German [[White Dwarf]], also it sounds way cooler), and Gargamel (owing to how he fucked over Papa Smurf), is one of the few [[Tyranid]] character with a little bit of personality. He is as ancient as the Tyranids themselves, a veteran of conflicts across countless galaxies. Essentially the apex predator of the entire species, the Herald of the Hive Mind and granddaddy of all [[Hive Tyrant]]s, the Swarmlord is the [[Creed]] of the Tyranid army, and also the most intelligent, cunning and experienced Hive Tyrant of the swarm. Whenever the Hive Mind can't overwhelm the opposition with sheer numbers or adapting new tactics, it spawns the Swarmlord, and he [[gets shit done]]. And on top of being a super-general, the Swarmlord is also a [[Khorne|close combat monster]] and [[Tzeentch|powerful psyker]], capable of facing off with [[Abaddon|the Despoiler]] himself, though with the advent of 8th edition he now has [[Roboute Guilliman|some]] [[Magnus the Red|stiff]] [[Mortarion|competition]] for who can mathematically whoop Abaddon’s sorry ass the hardest. Although it should be noted this is only in [[crunch]] as, in [[fluff]], the Swarmlord has [[Bullshit|rarely managed to win a fight against serious opposition]] and is weaker than [[Marneus Calgar]] in a duel, meaning Abaddon is most likely the stronger fighter in the actual narrative. Plus, it's pretty obvious that the big-name heroes will win almost every fight they get themselves into.

He's also immortal, as his memories and personality are constantly saved by the Hive Mind and are placed in brand new shiny body if the previous one got blasted apart with massed melta fire. While the hive mind could potentially spawn a new Swarmlord without the previous one being slain, which could lead to multiple Swarmlords on different battlefields, no evidence of such cloning exists. However, if the Macragge Swarmlord is still alive, hibernating under the surface of the planet, there ARE at least two Swarmlords in the Galaxy. He's something of an Ensemble Darkhorse on /tg/, well liked and thought of as incredibly badass. Shitting all over Calgar probably has something to do with it.

He serves as the Super-Heavy unit of the [[Tyranid]] Army in [[Dawn of War 2]].

==List of deeds==
[[Image:Champs.jpg|thumb|right|1200px|The Champ AND the President, ARE HERE!!! Everyone else, such as Roman Reigns/Brock Lesnar/Undertaker AND Trump/Obama/Reagan, are PHONIES!!!]]
*First seen on Tyran, leading [[Hive Fleet Behemoth]]'s final assault on a Mechanicum outpost. Not quite clear why, because the battle was pretty one-sided, although he could have been gathering more data about human warfare.
*Showed up on Macragge and kicked major ass, outclassing [[Marneus Calgar]] in tactics, but only beating him in a fight because he ganged up on Marneus with his bodyguard. He cut off Papa Smurf's limbs, guts and one eye, but due to plot armor, failed to kill him. The honor guard managed to recover their [[Chapter Master]] thanks to the <s>force-feeding</s> heroic sacrifice of their commander to the Swarmlord to buy some time. While the [[Ultramarines]] withdrew to space, the Swarmlord led his forces to the polar fortresses to omnomnom the First Company and [[Ultramar]] [[Planetary Defense Force|PDF]]. And he succeeded. Unfortunately, the space battle for Macragge hadn't gone so well, mainly because the Imperial Fleet had the balls of steel Ultrasmurfs lacked; while the Tyranids won the planet, they lost the war. The Swarmlord was killed during this battle, but its "consciousness" (as far as any Tyranid bioform can be called conscious) was reabsorbed through the Tyranid synaptic network to be reincarnated later.
*It's possible that the The Great Beast, who lead [[Hive Fleet Kraken]]'s invasion on [[Craftworld Iyanden]] was the Swarmlord itself. The other option is that it was a normal Hive Tyrant with the now-defunct Armoured Carapace biomorph. The Avatar of [[Khaine]] attempted to goad the creature in single combat during the fighting. However, the Swarmlord, not really knowing nor giving a damn about honorable duels and such, tricked The Avatar into getting shit kicked by twelve Carnifexes. It also avoided all Eldar attempts to assassinate him until the corsair prince [[Yriel]] finally managed to stab him in the face with a [[Cronesword|cursed spear.]]
*Showed leading [[Hive Fleet Leviathan]] at the last years of M41, where it once planned and executed [[Indrick Boreale|multiple simultaneous and devastating attacks]] on the Hodur Sector, resulted in omnomnoming two dozens Imperial worlds (including one Space Marine Chapter home world) in less then two months. Such a rapid and unstoppable Tyranid advance is rumored to be the main reason for inquisitor [[Kryptman]]'s decision to launch his infamous mass-exterminatus cordon project and [[Blood Ravens|stolen]] Genestealer project to redirect Leviathan into an Ork empire.
*Launched a campaign against Vior'Los, where he faced off in a Duel against [[Farsight]] and got his ass kicked. To be fair O'Shovah has a weapon that absorbs life forces, so the Swarmlord is [[Anal circumference|at a major disadvantage.]]
*Now he's rumored to be in the [[Octarius War]], pwning [[Ork]]s. It was going well, but then the [[Eldar]] went and purged the entire system of all life and after that Ghazgkhull showed up, hopped up on WAAAAGH energy and blessed by the direct intervention of [[Gork]] and [[Mork]] themselves. To make it even worse a [[World Eaters]] warband caught wind of all this and decided to join in. Within the year they had offered 8000 skulls to [[Khorne]]. This might not seem all that impressive... except for the fact that the ''smallest'' of these skulls was the size of a '''boulder'''. The [[Chaos Lord]] leading the warband, Vodha Bloodprice, managed to off a [[Hierophant]] with the the axe of a fallen [[Warboss]] and got promoted to [[Daemon Prince]] as a reward from the very pleased Khorne.
*Appeared to lead the invasion of Baal where, once again, it died in single combat against a tired and exhausted [[Dante]]. If you haven't noticed, Swarmy has a critical weakness against anybody with [[plot armor]] and through this lost most of the menace that comes with being the pinnacle of all Tyranid evolution. It almost kills Dante, though, impailing him and popping up his secondary heart, damaging his spine and leaving him gravely posioned before Dante [[awesome|evaporated its face with the Perdition Pistol at point blank]].

==On the Tabletop==
[[Image:GiotaTsirouFaceboook.jpg|left|thumb|600px|Giota Tsirou, a 200 pound girl of short stature displaying unrivaled hotness!]]
[[File:Swarmlord Codex Tyranids.jpg|300px|thumb|right|The Swarmlord in its natural habitat: [[Doom|knee-deep in the dead]].]]
The Swarmlord was one of the most deadly and expensive HQs in the game, being able to buff his army and slaughter almost anything in close combat with high weapon skill instant death attacks. While having only one wound more than a regular Hive Tyrant, he was more survivable in close combat due to a 4++ he got from parrying attacks with his swords. There were only a couple HQ models outside Apocalypse capable of killing the Swarmlord in a challenge with a chance of or better than 50% - Primarchs, Draigo, Lysander, Abaddon and Skarbrand primarily, but also anything with a lot of high strength/AP attacks, anything that causes instant death or anyone that has Eternal Warrior, and even that doesn't save them most of the time. Give him a unit of [[Tyrant Guard]] and he's damn near unstoppable. If you have a friend who is a Blood Angels player who won't shut up about how powerful Mephiston is, just say "Swarmlord" and you instantly end/win any ensuing argument. Also it's hilarious.

And then [[Robin Cruddace|6th edition happened]]. It lost Eternal Warrior, and Tyranids as a whole lost access to the main book psychic powers, including their buffs. And he lost his special rule that made enemies reroll successful invuln saves, AND got 5 point price increase as a final slap in the face. What does he get from all of this? One additional attack and he's level 3 psyker. ONE, UNO, EIN attack and ML3 when there isn't really much to use it on due to the Tyranid psychic table being at most decent-ish and unspectacular, and he gets less rolls for powers than he used to. Christ...

Given the removal of the Parasite, the nerfs to walking Hive Tyrants (R.I.P armored shell), and the obscene overcosting of [[Tyranid Warrior|Primes]], the general theory on why the Swarmlord and other Tyranid HQs was hit so hard is that GW wants to promote sales of Flyrants and Tyrant Guard which are not only big and expensive models, but big and expensive models you have to buy a lot of. Everyone already had walkrants, most people only ever got one swarmlord, and the prime is a rather small model by GW standards. Tyrant Guard weren't spectacularly buffed, but Flyrants are one of the clear winners of the new book.

The Swarmlord however was forced to sit the edition out with no FAQ, Dataslate, Supplement, or Forge World book to throw him a bone. So ended a year and a half of true glory, replaced with bitter mediocrity and memories of godhood now lost.

And then 8th Edition happened.

=== 8th Edition===
In 8th Edition Swarmie is back with a vengeance. An even 300 points nets you a monstrous 6 attacks at WS2+ S8 AP-3 D3+1 mortal on 6+ to wound and an additional one at S8 AP0 DD3 thanks to the pincer tail; a tough T7 12 Wound 3+/4++ (3++ against melee) platform that can run at a frightening 9". The range on Synapse and Shadow in the Warp is increased to 18" and thanks to Hive Commander the Swarmlord can pick one friendly '''Hive Fleet''' unit within 6" and have them move instead of shooting. This can be the Swarmlord itself to run a frightening 18" before charging, a fun way to suddenly spring a nasty surprise on your opponent, which is increased by 2d6" if you use Onslaught. The Swarmlord has a fixed Warlord Trait: Alien Cunning. This allows it to [[Creed|redeploy at the start of the battle to exploit the battle plans of your opponent]]. The downside is that this is a fixed ability, meaning it's predictable and loses its surprise because it cannot have a different trait. The Swarmlord knows three psychic powers: Smite and two from the Hive Mind discipline. Don't forget that the Swarmlord can use two powers per turn:

* '''Dominion''' lets one friendly Tyranids unit within 36" both ignore Instinctive Behaviour and Morale tests for one turn. While useful it's also situational.
* '''Catalyst''' simply grants a 5+++ save against all wounds to one unit within 18". Extremely useful, since the Swarmlord will draw a LOT of fire.
* '''The Horror''' is pretty useful: an enemy unit with 24" of the user substracts 1 from all their hit rolls and Leadership tests. Not only does it protect you until the start of your next psychic phase (have fun shutting down enemy heavy weapons squads this way), any damage you do against infantry units will hurt even more.
* '''Onslaught''' is by far the best of the bunch: if used on itself the Hive Tyrant can move 9", advance D6", then use Hive Commander to move another 9", advance D6" and charge after that. This gives the Swarmlord an average threat radius of 32", allowing for a first-turn charge in whatever vulnerable position your opponent has. Do note that afterwards your opponent will likely Fall Back and blast your Swarmlord to bits, but it'd be hilarious if you manage to take out your opponent's HQ unit with such an attack.
* '''Paroxysm''' means that one enemy unit within 18" of yours is unable to fight until it's the last unit to have to do so until your next Psychic phase. This seems odd at first, but it means you can cripple the tactical effectiveness of this unit and assure it won't be able to overrun one of your units and charge another one until you're ready for them. Situational.
* '''Psychic Scream''' hits the nearest enemy unit within 18" with d3 Mortal Wounds, and if they're a psyker they have to roll 2d6. If this is higher than their Leadership, pick one of their psycic powers: they can no longer use it in that turn. This is a tremendous way to fuck over an enemy psyker, but because of how targeting works you're not very likely to hit a lot of psykers with this unless you fight Grey Knights or something. But even then, d3 Mortal Wounds is always nice.

So in short, Catalyst and Onslaught are the best picks. Something that makes the Swarmlord unique is that it does not have a fixed Hive Fleet trait: it can pick from any of the traits and as such has access to a couple of useful effects:

* '''Behemoth''' grants re-rolls on failed charge rolls, which is alright since the Swarmlord is meant for combat, however with Hive Commander the Swarmlord can easily auto-charge after coming out of a Tyrannocyte or even when footslogging across the board, especially if it successfully casts Onslaught on itself, making this less useful.
* '''Kraken''' lets you roll ''three'' dice when rolling to Advance and pick the best one, which is a massive boon if you have the Swarmlord run off by itself. It can also charge in the same turn as falling back.
* '''Leviathan''' grants a free 6+++ for everything within 6" of a Synapse creature, which is valuable as your opponent will often focus a lot of high damage weaponry into the Swarmlord to bring it down.
* '''Gorgon''' gives re-rolls of 1 on to wound rolls in combat, which will be useful if you send your Swarmlord to try and take out tanks, or just want more reliable damage output.
* '''Jormungandr''' grants the benefit of cover out in the open... unless the model advances. Which given how you'll be running the Swarmlord is going to mean jack.
* '''Hydra''' grants re-rolls on failed hit rolls in combat against units with fewer models than your own... which means nothing since the Swarmlord rides alone.
* '''Kronos''' gives a re-roll of 1s to hit when shooting, but since the Swarmlord cannot do that this won't help him.

In the end Kraken is favoured because of the significant speed boost it grants, however Leviathan's durability increase and Gorgon's rerolls can also be decent choices.

Despite all this the Swarmlord is more vulnerable than ever with the advent of multi-wound weapons. His old reliable meatshields, the [[Tyrant Guard]] have especially suffered because of this: now REDUCED from T6 to T5 in 8th in return for 1 extra wound (so 3 total) and still only 3+ armour a single [[Lascannon]] shot has a good chance at popping one of them. While they can switch any wounds dealt to their charge to themselves as Mortal Wounds on a 2+, their relatively weak frames mean that this will rapidly kill them and focussed [[plasma]] fire will really thin the herd, leaving the Swarmlord vulnerable.

Another note is that the Tyrant Guard move 7", 2" slower than the Swarmlord at his highest stats, and thus they require adrenal glands to keep up with the boss. On top of this being not perfectly reliable, the difference in speed means there's a good chance that either unit will be able to outrun the other, meaning that using both at the same time is difficult at best. Then there's the point cost: 3 of them cost 111 points bare. Two additional points for the Glands and Sacs are worth it, and the 2 points extra on top of that are useful for the Lash Whip & Bonesword for the AP-2 it grants. Skip the Crushing Claws: they're way too expensive. There's one additional point of interest: Tyrant Guard can now be taken in units of up to 6. This is expensive, since such a unit sets you back 234 points fully kitted out, but it's a fun novelty.

===Power Ratings===
At 15 points the Swarmlord is balanced and doesn't get any other options. Nothing else changes.

==Gallery==
<gallery>
Image:TacticalSwarmlord.png|The Swarmlord and a certain [[Creed|tactical genius]] team up. [[Awesome|Can I get a "Hell yeah!", people?]]
Image:Senordelahorda.png|El Señor de la Horda y su corcel, [[Raveners|el Terror Rojo]].
Image:Swarmlord carnage.jpg|Pictured: the fine red mist that you become if you get too close to the Swarmlord.
Image:Swarmbaus.jpg|"Bullets? What bullets?"
</gallery>

{{Tyranids-Creatures}}

Cato Sicarius

2018-08-18T05:14:48Z

2A02:587:3A12:6900:81AE:5B3:CC3D:5804:

[[File:Cato Fall of Damnos.JPG|260px|thumb|right|"I, CATO SICARIUS, will lead you to the keg party! Toga, toga, toga!"]]
{{MattWard}}
{{topquote|1=Excuse me, but you must mean that it is one of the greatest deeds the Chapter has ever accomplished! And it was thanks to '''I''', Cato Sicarius, because that is what it is! And '''I''', Cato Sicarius, was thinking that it was the most righteous time to remind you that '''I''', Cato Sicarius, to be your rightful heir as the new Chapter Master.|2=[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bM8YGsAmeqE&feature=youtu.be&t=2m12s Cato Sicarius]}}
{{Topquote|Lead me, follow me, or get the hell out of my way.|George S. Patton Jr.}}

'''Cato Sicarius''' is the leader of the Victrix guard and formerly the [[Brother-Captain]] of the [[Ultramarines]]' Second Company. Among his titles are Master of the Watch, Knight Champion of Macragge, Grand Duke of Talassar, Cunto Shitarius, and High Shiggydiggytee of who gives a damn. The Brainy Smurf to Marneus Calgar's Papa Smurf (for being an arrogant, smug know-it-all who gets brought down a peg whenever he gets too full of himself. Both also tend to repeat names over and over again; see above).

Hailing from the planet Talassar, Sicarius was [[Brother-Sergeant|Veteran Sergeant]] of the Second Company under Captain [[Severus Agemman]], the Captain of the 5th Company and Master Of The Marches by the time [[Hive Fleet Behemoth]] arrived to nom on [[Ultramar]]. After the First Company was horrendously nommed to the last man during the Battle for Macragge, Agemman was [[Promotions|promoted]] to First Captain and charged with filling up the First Company, with Sicarius replacing him as Captain of the Second Company, and Caito Galenus replacing Sicarius as Captain of the 5th Company. In the following two hundred and fifty some odd years, Sicarius has garnered a reputation for heroism and valiant actions surpassed only by a few others. Many within the Chapter believe that when [[Marneus Calgar]] dies, it will be Sicarius who succeeds him as [[Chapter Master]], even though Agemman (being First Captain) is the nominally designated successor.

He's one of the many fluff-based complaints against [[Matt Ward]], due to rather unbelievable feats such as repelling a ''one million'' Tau army with only thousand marines, which is rather unbelievable. You know, when you get outnumbered 1000 to 1, no matter how superhuman your soldiers are, they have no chances, even against [[grot]]s, not to mention tough as nails angry warmonger barbarians or high-tech space communists with an unholy amount of firepower .

Unless you're [[Sly Marbo]], of course. But that goes without saying (or the winged hussars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hod%C3%B3w).

In the end, of course, it turned out that [[Shadowsun]] just manipulated Cato to keep the Marines together, rather than separating them to support [[Imperial Guard]] as spearhead. So while Sicarius and his ragtag band was busy liberating three (and a half!) planets, the [[Tau Empire]] conquered three dozen more, effortlessly smashing through [[Planetary Defence Force]]s and Imperial Guard. Oh yeah he also killed a Transcendent [[C'Tan]]. Without being instantly turned to dust. Though somehow he was completely outclassed by [[Imperial Armour|The Undying of Damnos]] (who was going nuts via the [[Necron Destroyer|Destroyer]] madness). (If you must know, he broke his own self imposed rules and used a vortex grenade)
He also has at least three (''more like 6, actually'') canon models of him (the one not shown here is the Captain form the ''Assault on Black Reach'' starter). Meanwhile, [[Tu'Shan]] is still waiting for ''one'' model and ''rules'', while the [[Iron Hands]] are still waiting for ''special characters''.

Most Ultramarine armies will have his heraldry, due to it being more or less the default.

As of the latest Codex: Space Marines, he got lost in The Warp after being sent back to Macragge by Guilliman to protect it, where he spent an undisclosed amount of time murdering daemons that breached his ship while they found a way out. He eventually got out and joined Guilliman on the Indomitus Crusade, where Guilliman has taken a liking to him for reminding him of Aeonid Thiel, one his old Great Crusade buddies. So he took Cato under his direct tutelage to temper the hot-headedness out of him, much to the surprise and chagrin of [[Marneus Calgar|Papa Smurf]], who's currently getting the short-end of the stick ever since Guilliman has been essentially taking over his station (although he isn't outright bitter, since he knows what's at stake).

== Un-assholing the asshole ==
[[Nick Kyme]] and [[Graham McNeill]], in the Ultramarines books they've written, have played with Sicarius' character, showing his desire for glory putting the Second Company in extreme danger, and having several of his own sergeants suspicious about his motives. Nick Kyme's Space Marine Battles novel about the fall of Damnos shows the real reason the Ultramarines lost: because Sicarius insisted on winning an actual victory instead of just [[Exterminatus|blowing the planet to kingdom come]], which [[Varro Tigurius]] ultimately did after Sicarius had his ass handed to him (Which didn't work at all since Damnos became a major Tomb World). Gods of Mars also noted this with one character (present during the Damnos Evacuation) saying that meeting Sicarius was the biggest anti-climax of his life because Sicarius gave every impression of feeling like he had lost personally, not the Ultramarines or the planet's population.

That said his way of thinking wasn't wrong, the Real Problem was that the Necrons outnumbered the Ultramarines 500 to one; and unlike other races they get back up, while the 2nd was mostly worn down by sheer attrition. Were any other forces present, Damnos could have been saved. In Graham McNeill's Ultramarines series, Sicarius acts as chief prosecutor (which is, technically, one of his roles as Captain of the 2nd) when [[Uriel Ventris]] and Pasanius Lysane are put on trial for violating the [[Codex Astartes]], having such a smug attitude toward his fellow Captain that even the [[Eldar]] would think he was being rude. While there is no denying he's ambitious, Sicarius takes extreme offense at insinuations that he's gunning for Chapter Master. Which means you can just rationalize Ward's fluff as just propaganda (in fact MOST of the codex reads like what Ultramar believes their chapter is). This wouldn't be the first time 40k had an asshole glory hound painted as the greatest hero ever, they're just usually in the [[Imperial Guard]].

That said he's been getting some character development turning him into a rather likable guy, namely in Veil of Darkness and Warzone Damnos. Such as the reason for his smugness during Uriel Ventris was because Cato was a long time friend (and Champion) of Captain Idaeus blaming Ventris for his death. On top of that, the typical Ultrasmurf Mary Sueishness aside, Sicarus is the only Ultramarines special character who regularly wears his damn helmet, and that’s gotta be worth brownie points for (un)common sense, at least. And oh Emperor, that armor looks awesome! And those who still can't get over his continual Mary Sue achievements have taken great joy in that he's been relegated from being on the front line all the time killing Necron and Tau armies with his pinky toe to guarding his resurrected primarch. This amounts to standing in front of doors while Grandpapa smurf talks to important people/sleeps/RAGES at what the Imperium became, or throwing himself into a lascannon shot pointed in Guiliman's direction. Seems the wrath of Ward can go both ways.

After the Gathering Storm and the return of [[Roboute Guilliman]], Sicarius is appointed Captain of the Victrix Guard, Guilliman's new (old) [[Honour Guard]], and seems to have ceded command of the 2nd Company to Captain Acheran, the Primaris Captain on the front of the Dark Imperium box set, though he seems to have kept his other titles. Seeing a little of [[Aeonid Thiel]] in Sicarius, but also recognizing that his combat prowess is equal only to his ego, Guilliman has wisely moved him out of strategic command and into a role as a guard captain, where Cato can always follow his lord into the thickest combat to fight duels and jump in front of bullets and do other brave courageous things.

==CODEX DEVIANT!!!==
[[Image:Champs.jpg|thumb|right|600px|The Champ AND the President, ARE HERE!!! Everyone else, such as Roman Reigns/Brock Lesnar/Undertaker AND Trump/Obama/Reagan, are PHONIES!!!]]
[[Image:GiotaTsirouFaceboook.jpg|left|thumb|600px|Giota Tsirou, a 200 pound girl of short stature displaying unrivaled hotness!]]
Cunto Shitarius is such a glory hound that he's responsible for one of the Ultramarine's only deviations from the [[Codex Astartes]]; the chapter champion, a title he presumably refused to give up when elevated to the rank of Captain (you'd think this would have been a warning sign for the people promoting him). According to the Codex a chapter's champion (a chosen warrior who stands for the chapter as a whole in honor duels and serves as the Chapter Master's personal champion) is selected from the ranks of the [[Honour Guard]] elite, but Cato Sicarius holds this position which is pretty fucking dumb when you stop and think about it. For one, the whole point of having a chapter champion in the first place is so that your chapter's officers aren't risking their life in honor duels, so having an officer serve as champion is a bit self-defeating. What's more, people in leadership roles don't have the time to train in blade work as much as a dedicated champion does, so the honor guards are going to be the better swordsmen, though this is only a problem from a fluff and common-sense standpoint, as [[Games Workshop]] insists on giving captains and chapter masters the best profiles despite the fact that they spend most of their time administrating and leading rather than fighting (all though admittedly they did not start off as administrators and their sheer experience can explain their combat skills). Finally you face the problem that Cato Sicarius is no match for Calgar himself. The idea of a chapter champion is that they're supposed to be the best single combatant in their chapter, so even if you throw the "no officers" rule out the window, he's not even the strongest officer.

== Canon Conflict ==
He has something of a canon conflict, as [[Captain Titus]] is Captain of the Second Company in [[Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine]]. According to the developers, Space Marine takes place in an alternate [read: better] universe where Titus was promoted instead of Sicarius (although they probably still know each other as Sicarius will most likely still be the 5th Captain). Though Titus might have just as well been one of the previous Captains of the 2nd Company before Severus Agemman, or it takes place sometime in early M42 and Sicarius has died and been replaced with someone much more competent, given there's no set date for the events of Space Marine. Or most likely Relic just went with the default Ultramarine colors and didn't care about the company colors.

== On the Tabletop ==
{{40k-Nonvehicle-Model-Profile|name=Cato Sicarius|points=195|ws=6|bs=5|s=4|t=4|w=3|i=5|a=3|ld=10|sv=2|inv=4|type=Infantry(Independent Character)|clear=yes)}}

Cato Sicarius is pretty much the vanilla space marine captain in the setting. While not a unholy god of rape in combat, he's hardly weak and stands a fair chance against most nameless IC's. He's just kinda... Meh. Rules wise he has the typical ultramarine's ATSKNF and Chapter tactics, plus he has FNP, Furious Charge, Independent Character, and Surprise Attack (grants +1 to reserve rolls while Cato is alive). He also has a unique rule called Battleforged Heroes that allows him to grant one tactical squad of your choosing one of the following rules: counter attack, tank hunter, infiltrate, or scout. His wargear includes an Iron Halo, artificer armor, frag and krak grenades, a plasma pistol, and the (surprisingly not master-crafted) relic blade Talassarian Tempest Blade which is Strength user AP3 with the Coup-de-grace special rule which allows him to trade all his melee attacks for a single mighty blow with +2 strength and instant death. Which is cool I guess. Be cooler if it was AP2.

Like I said, in game Cato Sicarius is pretty vanilla. He's a bit harder than most with a 4++ and FNP and he's pretty mean on the charge, but he's also a bit pricey. He has some nice tactical bonuses with his two special rules and his warlord trait, Rites of War, which allows friendly units in his army to use his Ld for any morale-based checks. He's a pretty good all-rounder whose abilities are focused on improving his men, despite his fluff making him out to be a glory hound and a legendary single-combatant.

===In 8th Edition===
Now at 132 points, he is much cheaper than before. He now has 5 wounds, 4 attacks and a 4+ invulnerable save. He gives friendly Ultramarines within 6" re-roll 1s to hit (much like any Captain) and also Ultramarine Tactical Squads within 6" always fight first in melee. Not a very useful ability since it does not affect himself and Tactical Squads do not really want to be in close combat. A Power Fist always striking first can be pretty dangerous though. His Tempest Blade now has AP -3 and D3 damage. On any wound roll of 6+ it deal D3 mortal wounds. This ability is going to be used a lot, since he still strikes at strength 4. However, with only 4 attacks, you will not be rolling 6s every time.

All in all, he is a nice complementary piece. He is not very expensive and also a cheap 2+ save model (almost equal to a vanilla Terminator Captain and with much better stats). Never make the mistake of overcharging his Plasma Pistol though. he has 1/36 chance to die instantly (will you risk it?).

== Ancient Inspiration ==
In ancient Rome, [[Ordo Sicarius|''Sicarius'']] was the word for murderous street thugs, named after their sickle-like bent dagger, and the word carries on as sicario, roughly meaning hired assassin in Portuguese, Italian and Spanish. You could hide it (the dagger, not the thug) under your tunic. You had better, for the law prohibited being armed in the city. Because of this, using a ''sica'' was considered having no honor, while gutting your political opponent with, lets say, a ''gladius'' was totally okay, especially if you challenge them to get down in the Colosseum with you, while the crowd goes [[Khorne|observant cornflakes]].

One should wonder, what does this say about our smurf guy here? Considering GW usually picking telling names when speaking Latin? And Cato's visual appearance so clearly being that of a Roman centurion? Those connections make sense, as there are two renowned Roman Republic [[High Lords of Terra|traditionalist senators]] (who also served as generals without any formal training) by the name of Cato, Cato the Elder and Cato the Younger， great-grandfather and great-grandson respectively, and they generally make the [[Grimdark|High Lords of Terra look like very nice people]], like all ancient Roman politicians we have record of, and were also considered by their people as morally upright and incorruptible since they refused bribes and followed traditional virtues, [[Tzeentch|because that's totally all the credibility you need to be a good person.]]

Thought to think upon: More than once in ancient Rome, either Cato the Elder or Cato the Younger was mostly likely referred to, at least once, as "Cato Sicarius". A more grievous insult than what was meant indeed.

== Gallery ==
<gallery>
File:Sicarius1.jpg|His mini, more lovingly crafted than most other 40k armies (Dare we say master-crafted?). Also, that fucking smug grin.
File:True_Captain_Sicarius.jpg|The old Space Marine Captain mini from the 4th edition was actually labelled as the model for Captain Sicarius.
File:Ultramarine_captain_sicarius_Medusa_V_Campaign.jpg|Sicarius's previous mini. Back during his wolverine phase.
File:Ultramarine captain cato sicarius by diegogisbertllorens-d7cml6y.jpg|Say what you will about this smug glory-hog, but he's a cooler and more well-rounded character than all the other "[[Torias Telion|I'm]] [[Antaro Chronus|the]] [[Varro Tigurius|best]] because [[Sammael|I'm]] the best" characters.
File:Cat-O Sicarius.jpg|Cat-O Sicarius, the most glorious of all house pets. (For extra laughs, read all the lines using [https://youtu.be/bM8YGsAmeqE?t=2m12s this voice].)
File:Cato Sicarius and the Space Thot.jpg|Cato Sicarius knows how to deal with [[Tau]] women.
</gallery>

{{Marines-Characters}}

Titan (Warhammer 40,000)

2018-08-18T03:10:04Z

2A02:587:3A12:6900:81AE:5B3:CC3D:5804:

[[File:Castigator_class_concept_by_hammk-dapfxdo.jpg|500px|right|thumb|A fan's idea of a Castigator leading an army of Emperor Titans like a walking cathedral leading other walking cathedrals. The Collegia Titanica in a nutshell, or more accurately our dreams.]]
{{Topquote|Day of wrath, day of anger will dissolve the world in ashes, as foretold by David and the Sibyl. Great trembling there will be when the Judge descends from heaven to examine all things closely...|Dies Irae}}

A Titan is a general term used by the Imperium for all things that are [[Rape|ridiculously MASSIVE]] [[Slaanesh|and carry HUGE FUCKING RAPE]] [[Dakka|GUNS that can blow the fuck out of the]] [[Xenos|opposing]] [[Chaos|side]]. The bigger ones are humanoid Giant Robots. <s>And they say the Tau are the only mecha-using weeaboos in the setting. Hypocrites.</s> {{BLAM}} {{BLAM|Heresy!}}

Most races own a titan of some sort. Each race's Titans reflect the design philosophy behind the rest of their armies. So Imperial Titans are walking Cathedrals with Gothic architecture with guns poking out of every crevice, [[Chaos]] Titans look like a doom metal rock concert made of spikes and evil, [[Ork]] Titans are cartoony and cobbled together out of odds and ends also with guns poking out of every crevice, [[Tyranid]] Bio-Titans are essentially (even) more toothy and (even) more tentacly forms of [[Monsterpocalypse|kaiju]], [[Eldar]] Titans are sleek [[wraithbone]] slendermen...that incidentally move like him too.

None of the fluff writers seem to have a consistent idea of how big a Titan is (other than that it's big); [[Graham McNeil]] says an Imperator is 43 metres tall, [[Dan Abnett]] says an Imperator is over 140 metres tall, and the cover of the graphic novel ''Titan II: Vivaporius'' shows a smaller Warlord with access ladders on its guns suggesting each barrel is the size of a house, meaning the Titan itself would be over half a kilometre tall. However, as Titans have to be shipped to where they are going to be used, they can't be a (very) substantial size relative to Battleships (the largest ship available to carry them); we can't be certain of Battleship sizes *either*, but best guesses place them at 8-12k long. Combined with the fundamental scaling issue that Titans can't fly but Attack Craft (commonly 70-100 meters) can, so Titans would simply never be fielded if they were substantially larger, and 43 meters becomes far and away the most reasonable of those three guesses. Though some source says the Imperator/Warmonger is 80 meters tall, matching a common pattern of Fury interceptor's length. Given how Titans are transported, this is also a reasonable size. That, by the way, is taller than a Boeing 747-8 if it were stood on its nose.

==Imperial Titans==
''Imagine a city that hates you. Now give it city leveling weapons and legs to walk on, then fill it with more things that hate you. You have a rough idea of a Titan.''

The [[Imperium]] has quite a variety of titans under the control of [[Adeptus Titanicus]], each has a name and no two are the same.

They are quite often referred to as god-machines due to their ability to blow the fucking shit out of anything in their way. They are so fucking huge that infantry can't do anything to them with their tiny ass guns. These titans can unleash unlimited amounts of [[rape|RAPE]] via their '''MASSIVE FUCKING GUNS''' that are mounted on their arms and sometimes on their shoulders. Well, actually there are guns fucking '''EVERYWHERE''' on a titan, so when you see one you are quite fucked. They also have [[void shields]] which makes them pretty much invulnerable to whatever shit you can throw at it. Although the way Epic rules work, anything, even infantry, can shoot at it enough to overload the Void Shields and bring them down, letting other Warmachines pummel the actual Titan. In 4th-7th ed 40k, Void Shields are each AV12, requiring anti-vehicle weapons to bring down each shield. And in 8th, they're simply a special Invulnerable Save that can even block Mortal Wounds, although the Save degrades depending on how badly damaged the Titan is.

Like all machines made by the [[Adeptus Mechanicus]] more complex than a toaster, Titans have [[machine-spirit]]s that reflect their nature. Meaning Titans have machine spirits full of [[RAGE]] that want to [[Rip and tear]] everything it sees. To combat this, Titans are controlled by individuals called ''Principes'' (singular ''Princeps'') who possess extremely strong wills which can override the machine-spirit's bloodthirsty nature. However, if the Princeps is not careful in synchronization, then he goes insane and his mind is instead consumed by the Titan's machine spirit which then goes berserk and destroys fucking everything it doesn't like, ala Evangelion.

Imperial Titans are old. As a rule. No exceptions. These things are so old that they make some Eldar Titans look young by comparison. ''That'' old. The main reason that these titans are so bloody ancient is that the Imperium often lacks the knowledge, skill, or resources to build them anywhere but [[Forge World|Mars, Ryza, and apparently Lucius.]] In the good old days, every other Forge World had a Titan Legion. The second reason they are so god-dang geriatric is that when Titans get killed, they are usually so big they don't get killed ''dead''. This means that the Mechanicus can haul the thing back to the Titan's home world and fix it up again. (Not wholly true; there is a small number of highly highly-censured tech-priests that make, and even design, new Titans. However, the work is so nearly outright heresy that people don't talk about it much.) Regardless, there may be newly built Titans (as we see on Forge World Graia in the Space Marine game), but they each take at least centuries to build, and even then, only at the largest Forge Worlds with specialized Manufactorums to build them.

Oh yeah, we forgot. Imperial Titans have home worlds that run the upkeep for a whole Legion of titans of various sizes and classes. A single titan can be deployed by itself, though small ''detachments'' of titans are more common, typically the '''''whole legion''''' will "walk" together to end a threat. Because, for the Imperium, if we need to send one titan, we might as well send thirty-plus titans just to be sure that ''that severe'' of a threat gets taken care of.

During the Horus Heresy, several of the Titan Legions defected to Horus, giving [[Chaos]] its very own supply of Titans. Most of them are relatively similar to their loyalist counterparts, but often they end up getting possessed by [[daemon]]s, making them far more dangerous.

===[[Imperial Knight]]===
[[Image:Knight paladin.jpg|thumb|right|Nice crotch-banner.]]
This unique walker is small enough (at "only" 9 meters) to be piloted by a single person, but is no less deadly than a true Titan. They were originally designed during the Dark Age of Technology to help with colonization, but had been repurposed for war by the Age of Strife when several members of the AdMech discovered feudal worlds whose leaders were willing to provide military assistance in exchange for the Mechanicus' aid in maintaining them. Although they are sometimes overshadowed by the full-size Titans, the Adeptus Mechanicus still deploys them as a reserve force on occasion.

There are a bunch of different types of Knights, detailed on their page. All of them have a reasonable points cost (by Titan standards, anyway) and also wield Strength D chainswords or giant power fists that can pick up and throw the wrecks or corpses of any vehicles or monstrous creatures that they kill. [[Cheese|Have fun.]]

[[Image:Warhound9.jpg|thumb|right|'''Where are your Dark Gods now?''']]

===[[Warhound Scout Titan]]===
The smallest traditional Titan class the Imperium has but it's still massive. To put things into perspective, the Warhound is around 14 meters at rest. [http://metalgear.wikia.com/wiki/Metal_Gear_REX Metal Gear REX] from the MGS series is around 13 meters high, just 1m short of a standard warhound. It looks like a dinosaur with no tail. It carries smaller weapons such as a massive megabolter which is like a minigun that fires off tank shells, or a Huge ass [[meme|LAZAR]] that rips your tanks a new one like they were made of cardboard. Or maybe throw a really big flamethrower on it. Can also be used to scout behind enemy lines and reveal itself behind a bush-[[Creed|CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEED!]]

===[[Reaver Battle Titan]]===
Bigger than the Warhound so therefore causes more RAPE, this titan can wield an absolutely HUGE powerfist for fucking Wraithlords, Defilers, etc. It can also carry a massive hellfire missile launcher for triple lehzar cannons and even a fucking Gatling Blaster.
They don't tend to get depicted or given much time in fluff compared to the other 3, possibly as the pack tactics of the warhounds and supersized death machine vibe of Warlord and Imperators tend to seem more impressive.

===[[Warlord Battle Titan]]===
It's really REALLY fucking big, one of the more common huge fucking titans that carry all the weapons you can imagine from megabolters to huge lazer and devastator cannons that should've been mounted on some kind of battleship. The Imperium seems to have almost as many of these as it has Reavers. Modified or custom built titans are known to exist such as the [[ANGRY MARINE]] TITAN with its HUGE chain fist, even moar massive Chain fist, oh and it launches Angry Marines and [[Land Raider]]s, fucking [[awesome]] rite? Now has an awesome new model.

===[[Imperator Battle Titan]]===
HOLY SHIT IT WEARS CASTLES!!! [[Meme|Over 9000]] times bigger and heavier than a Warlord Titan and too many massive fucking guns to count. It needs a whole ship for itself to get around. Unfortunately the Imperium doesn't have a lot of 'em anymore since those [[chaos]] assholes stole the majority of 'em.. They said that it's the largest thing to walk on land, because anything larger would produce its own gravity well. Oddly enough, it mounts a Ryza-pattern Plasma Annihilator, yet most of these things were supposedly made on Mars. Then again, they might predate differing planetary patterns of weapon. There is a [http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Ordo_Sinister#.T_TbV5HhcYI|special detachment] of '''twelve''' Emperors that serve one purpose — '''SCARING THE SHIT OUT OF ANYONE THAT MIGHT THINK OF REBELLION AGAINST THE IMPERIUM'''. And <s>they FUCKING do.</s> considering the amount of planets and hell, even whole sectors, that regularly defect from the Imperium, their one-hat trick isn't as effective as most people would think.

TL;DR They're what would happen if Cherno Alpha was made by Mormons

If you feel compelled to represent one of these monsters in a game, the best way to do so is to make the entire 6x4 (or whatever that translates to in metric units) board into the titan's back, load it up with massive fortifications, and fight a cityfight/planetary assault on it.

===Other Imperial Titan Classes===
While the Warhound, Reaver and Warlord are the most common Titan classes seen in the Imperium, at the time of the Great Crusade and Horus Heresy there were others. Some, such as the Eclipse, Nightgaunt and Nemesis were once just Warlord variants that FW decided to make new types. Others like the Carnivore and Komodo are entirely unique designs never before seen in fluff. A few are particularly noteworthy:

First is the Apocalypse Class, which is to the Imperator what the Imperator is to the Warlord and is the biggest Titan of all. Though there are no images of it, it would most likely be a skyscraper-sized monster that would make anything that saw it shit their pants. The second is the three-legged Punisher-class Titan, which was used during the War of the Beast. Third is the Warlord Sinister Class, of which only 25 were made during the Great Crusade. While the Eldar make ''exclusive'' use of psychic Titans, this is the only known ''Imperial'' giant psychic death machine.

The Legio Fureans came up with the Reviler class, somewhere between a Warhounds and Reaver.

===Castigator Titan===
{{Topquote|By the Fell Gods and the destiny of warp, by the death of the False Emperor and the dying of the stars, we bring to you, Warmaster Abaddon, Beloved of Chaos, Despised of Man, this tribute. For now these last days are the final fires burning, the black flames that consume a galaxy, the storms of the warp that drown out life, the End Times and the dawn of a galaxy of Chaos. We swear fealty to the Gods of Chaos and their herald, Abaddon the Despoiler, with this tribute that it might strike fear into the followers of the Corpse-Emperor and that through it they may see the true face of death...|The Castigator Titan, on itself}}

The '''Castigator-Class Autonomous Bipedal Weapons Platform''' is an [[Standard Template Construct|STC]] Titan believed to be the design all Imperial Titans are derived from (a claim supported by the Titan itself, which referred to all other Imperial Titans derisively as "pale imitations made by ignorant children"), and like everything else made during of the [[Dark Age of Technology]], it is to all other Titans what a [[Primarch]] is to a [[Space Marine]] by comparison (the Father of all human Titans). It was a towering giant of white and silver, with a faceless head except for its gleaming red eyes. Despite being far larger than any other Titan in existence (save the [[Gargant#Temple_Gargant|Temple Gargant]]) it proved to be far faster and more agile (standing completely upright instead of hunched over like 40k titans) than its bulk would suggest thanks to its unique locomotion system, which featured synthetic muscles supplemented by an automatic repair system. Its weapons were no less advanced, consisting of a Titan Power Fist and a heavily modified rotary cannon of uncertain origin (it fired [[Daemons]]). (Some theorize that this was what inspired the Angry Marines to equip their Titans with Angry Marine Launchers and Land Raider Launchers, but nobody has the courage to confirm if this is the case.) Unlike any of the other Titans, it has no crew and is instead operated solely through the action of an [[Machine Spirit|artificial intelligence]].

- SPOILER -

This turned out to be a very big problem for the Imperium, as the AI in question was advanced enough to fall to Chaos and went so far as to make a pact with the Ruinous Powers, although the book is a bit ambiguous about that too as [[Grey Knights|Justicar Alaric]] claimed that it was a daemon that had found itself trapped inside the STC during the time the planet it was buried in was lost in the warp, and that it was in there so long it actually started to believe it was the AI. Only the efforts of an expeditionary force of Tech Guard and a single squad of Grey Knights were enough to destroy it, though fragments of its STC database was collected and stored by the Mechanicus shortly afterward to be reviewed at a later time.

==Orky Titans==
The [[Ork]]s use titans called Gargants, made out of scrap metal, wood, stolen stuff, and SHEER ORKINESS. They are supposedly effigies of the ork gods, but we all know the mek that built the first Gargant just wanted a bigger, killier thing than [[that guy|that other ork over there]].

Obviously, the Orks have no standard pattern of build, but Gargants are almost always <strike>humanoid</strike> Orkoid, wield over-sized guns, have a huge close combat weapon, and are insanely hard to take down (even compared to the other races' Titans!). The bigger ones usually move on treads, the smaller ones usually waddle. Either way, these things are slow. But who cares, because they have enough guns to blast the enemy apart, and enough other Gargants to box them in as well!
They have Power Fields, which are so finicky that they can't be repaired in battle, which sucks, but at least they have them.

Ironically, these are the most realistic titans in 40k. Unlike the rest of the titans, these either have massively proportioned feet or use treads to deal with the problem of sinking into the ground, and are very bottom heavy in order to avoid concentrating the weight of the machine on the thinnest part of the structure. If anything, the Orks should have the most impractical titan designs, not the least. Not really though, just the most low-tech solution.

[[Stompa|'''Stompa''':]]
The smallest Gargant type. While [[Games Workshop]] would like you to think otherwise, the Stompa is bigger than a Mega-Dred but smaller than the current "Stompa" model, which is presently a small Gargant (don't get all smart and technical, we know the irony there). They come in bunches, and have no shields whatsoever. Their main armament is usually a gatling gun or stolen tank cannon, and then a giant close combat weapon. They eat infantry, buildings, smaller Titans, and tanks for breakfast, but only in close combat.

[[Gargant|'''Gargant''':]]
Orky Titans roit an' proppa. They are more in line with the "Stompa" rules GW and Imperial Armor put out, plus a little extra. Lots of armor, lots of staying power, lots of [[dakka]] (but not enough). Usually has a better close-combat statline than any other Titan counterpart except the 'nids. Due to the utter lack of design consistency, the weaponry varies ''roughly'' from stolen Earthshaker cannons to giant gatling guns or massive [[meme|friggin' laser beams]], plus a gazillion other little guns so the Gargant can fire at everything at once. One configuration has so many guns on it that the ''entire crew'' cannot fire them at once. And they somehow generate Supa-rokkits out of thin air.

[[Gargant#Great Gargant|'''Great Gargant''':]] The Great Gargant in ''Space Marine: Epic'' was what is today simply called a Gargant, and was armed with a Mega-Kannon, a Super Lifta-Droppa and a ridiculous <s>trouser cannon</s> Belly Gun. The latter fired a giant iron ball which wrecked the hell out of anything short of another Titan and had rules allowing it to roll through multiple targets!

[[Gargant#Mega Gargant|'''Mega Gargant''':]]
Here the line between giant robot and moving fortress blur. Where the Great Gargant is like a skyscraper, this thing ''actually is'' a fortress on treads. With a population in excess of a small city, these machines are always moved on huge treads which can literally crush [[Baneblade]]s beneath them. Slab-sided and covered with gun nests and extra armor patches, this large block-like fortress is home to thousands upon thousands of grot riggers, running to and fro. Powered by salvaged space ship reactors or dangerous Ork-made engines of questionable physical legality, these gods of destruction have more guns and bigger guns than any other race will mount on a thing of equivalent size. And this is a ''small mountain.'' Bristling with turrets, artillery cannons, rocket bays, launch hangers for aerial craft, high-caliber gatling guns, flak turrets, lightning lasers, autocannons, and ONE GIANT MEGA-CANNON, each Mega Gargant is not just as tough as a block of titanium, it can evaporate you through sheer volume of shot. Also, it has the obligatory close combat weapon, which is something easy to move around (like a hammer, axe, or buzzsaw) because it will be so large that the Gargant just may not be able to move it much.

Like the Imperator, the Mega Gargant originated in ''Titan Legions'' where it had the dubious honour of having the most complicated rules of any model in the game, requiring the player keep track of dozens of '''Hit Locations''' (which could each be destroyed or the subject of a fire that could spread), the '''Krew''' (and there were different types of Krew), the '''Steam Counters''', the commander's '''Shoutin' Counters''' to actually make the Gargant do anything... ''and after all that,'' one was destroyed in a battle report where a Space Marine side with only a basic Warlord Titan won by 105 VPs to 5. This appears to have been about the time [[White Dwarf]] decided to switch to narrative, rather than blow-by-blow, battle reports to make bullshitting the results easier.

'''Not all Gargants are created equal! For other Gargant Variants, see the [[Gargant]]s page!'''

== Eldar Titans ==
[[Revenant Scout Titan|'''Revenant Titan''']]:

Well, yeah back to the Titan: It's the smallest Eldar Titan, and it's also the most useful Titan, as it's both fast and agile, unlike some I could mention.

The Eldar field these war machines in pairs - they are piloted by Eldar twins with a strong psychic bond to enable a greater level of awareness and cohesion to the fighting unit. For a race who are dying out and don't breed much you'd think they'd figure out how to just network two titans together or just use the radio rather than building their doctrine around psychic twins but frankly the Eldar titans could only be more anime if they were powered by magic and could only be piloted by angsty teenagers.

These agile monsters are considered as scout Titans due to their speed and agility.

It's armed with [[Eldar_Laser_Weapons|a Pulsar]], which is pretty much made to tackle enemy Titans, like this [[Reaver_Battle_Titan|bitch]] here. It also has an Eldar Missile Launcher, a rapid firing missile launcher. And FINALLY, it has Sonic Lance, and it's a large flame template infantry killer, which even makes space marines look like pussies.

It also gets Titan Holofields, which works like reverse 4++ against hits (basically forcing your opponent to roll D6 for each hit and completely negating it on 1-3), which, mind you, stacks with cover saves your titan can get (by, say, hiding behind the building quarter its size, bonus points if it's a 3+ cover fortification), and in case you really want to make it even tougher your farseer may cast a Fortune on it - now you may wish your opponent good luck going through three successive 4+ saves to just touch this thing.

Well, short story, pretty much your basic, Eldar killing machine, and it's the SMALLEST of the Eldar Titans.

[[Phantom Battle Titan|'''Phantom Titan''']]:

The other titan available to the Eldar in IA11. Loaded up with all kinds of fun customizable toys. From the Phantom Pulsar which doubles the standard number of pulsar shots, the Heat Lance which turns titans to molten slag without too much difficulty, the Phantom D-Cannon which throws out an SD 10" pie plate at AP2 and does D3 STRUCTURE POINTS of damage, a power glaive which allows the phantom to take down pretty much any other titan in CC. And it's protected by the same bullshit holofields Revenant does, backed by AV13 and insane amount of hull points.

[[Warlock Titan|'''Warlock Titan''']]:

Old ''Epic'' rules included a Psyker version of the Phantom, armed with a big powerfist and a giant Psycannon. It has not been seen since then.

== Necron Titans ==
[[File:Tomb Stalker.jpg.jpg|800px|right|thumb|Only in 40k do centipedes eat Rhinos.]]
While no record of Titan-scale war machines exist in Imperial Archives, it should be duly noted that it is well within the reach of [[Necron]] technology to create them, and they most likely do exist. The only other race with knowledge on this matter would be the [[Eldar]], who we are sure have already purged the memories of such constructs from their minds to rid themselves of the PTSD.

While many fans speculate over what a Necron Titan would look like, most agree it would be a Necron version of the Iron Giant; i.e. an up-sized, unkillable Necron Lord with guns aplenty. Necrons have an advantage that Titans (or similar units) from other races doesn't have: they're more resistant to [[Graviton weapon]]ry due to their hyper-advanced technology. Their ships and weapons routinely ignore other laws of physics, why not ignore the Square Cube Law?

A machine suspected to be the Necron Titan looked like a worm. (Well, what would you expect from race that most time spends under the surface?) They are called Tomb Stalkers, and are strange beasties that walk and talk like monstrous creatures, but supposedly can take down Warhounds. This doesn't make them Titan-class vehicles in the strictest sense, but it's certainly up there in terms of vehicular homicide (ba-dum-tssh).

There are also the [[Æonic Orb]]s and the [[Tesseract Vault]]s. They're not titans per se, but they are REALLY HUGE battle vehicles.

Something that could perhaps be a true "Necron Titan" (or at least the closest that have been seen to have so far, it's more the size of a [[Wraithknight]] really) appeared in the old [[Necromunda]] comic ''Kal Jerico: Above & Beyond''. It begins with Kal's mother [[Jena Orechiel]] basically abducting him from Necromunda's underhive and whisking him away from his life of gun-slinging bounty-hunter shenanigans. She took him on a mission to the [[Space Hulk]] Kronos which had recently re-emerged from the Warp and where there supposedly rested a powerful alien weapon she wanted destroyed which, after a [[Grimdark|fun]] journey through the Space Hulk, turned out to be a giant Necron called The Setekh. Obviously the thing wakes up cranky and starts killing the shit out of Orechiel's retinue as well as the numerous [[Deathwatch]] Space Marines some asshole rival Inquisitor named Malva brought with him while taking zero damage from their attempts to fight back (at this point Orechiel comments that defeating it wouldn't be possible even with an entire Space Marine chapter behind them). The only ones to barely escape the hulk alive were Kal, his half-sister and his mother (oh, and her pet Kroot) who commandeered the Deathwatch ship and ordered it to perform [[Exterminatus]] on the Space Hulk which was heavily damaged by the ensuing barrage of cyclonic torpedoes and thrown back into the Warp. It's important to note this was before the changes to the Necron fluff so it's likely it [[Retcon|never even happened]]. A shame because fielding this thing in one's Necron army would probably be hilarious.

Another possibility of a Necron Titan happened during the Medusa V campaign where the Necrons tried to awaken a huge Tomb Spyder like construction called a Crypt Stalker. Unfortunately it got its ass handed to it by a bunch of Chaos Titans. However, since this was from a time where the Necrons were actually cool silent Terminator-death-machines and the C'tan weren't reduced to overgrown Pokemon, it has likely been shelved alongside the Setekh.

[[Image:Champs.jpg|thumb|right|600px|The Champ AND the President, ARE HERE!!! Everyone else, such as Roman Reigns/Brock Lesnar/Undertaker AND Trump/Obama/Reagan, are PHONIES!!!]]

[[Image:GiotaTsirouFaceboook.jpg|left|thumb|600px|Giota Tsirou, a 200 pound girl of short stature displaying unrivaled hotness!]]

== Bio-Titans ==
The tyranids' equivalent of titans are predictably giant versions of other tyranids, following the style of the army in the same way the others do. As in they're giant monstrosities that will either run at you and eat your face off or wield guns that shoot things that do. Obviously, they fall under the Gargantuan Creature rules, rather than any superheavy rules. There are three kinds that currently have models, the relatively small [[Hierodule]], the flying [[Harridan]], and the FUCKHUEG [[Hierophant]]. Another exists, in the fluff, a couple more, one called the [[Dominatrix]], which has an Epic-scale model but [[What|no rules for it]]. There's also the even less tangible Hydraphant, which is either a misidentified Epic Hierophant, an altogether new titan or a Dominatrix without the synapse organism, depending on whom you ask. Either way, the Hydraphant is the largest of the Tyranid bio-Titans. They are also, naturally, utterly impossible due to supporting huge heavy bodies on very thin spindly legs.

== Tau Titans ==
For much of the Tau's history, they never had Titans or any equivalent to them. This is worth mentioning here because they thought that the idea of any civilization that had the resources and technology to build something like a Titan would surely not be so absurd as to actually waste them in such an impractical manner by building one when creating numerous smaller war machines would be much more efficient. They laughed at the first humans to tell them of Titans, assuming that it was only Imperial propaganda to intimidate their enemies. Then the [[Damocles Crusade]] made them turn their blue skin several shades paler as they realized that [[Humanity Fuck Yeah|the gue'la were crazy enough to actually build them]].

They suffered horribly at the hands of Imperial titans, but for some time they still considered titans too impractical to be worth building. The Tau utterly failed to understand the kind of wars the Imperium gets into. When you're up against a [[Vraks|defensive line 12 miles deep]], or an Ork horde large enough to make Soviet Russia blush, what you need is not 20,000 of something cost effective, but something that can just destroy large swaths of the enemy as fast as possible. In this kind of, admittedly uncommon (which is why Titans are not commonly deployed) situations, winning tactical victories is far more important that the most efficient strategic production practices. Building many smaller machines is useless if only one huge machine can wade though the fight to win the important battles. Besides, the Imperium of Man has such a powerful industrial base that they can (or at least could until they forget how) afford the cost of building multiple Titan sized units without even putting a dent in their more cost effective weapon production. To put another way, modern destroyers may be more cost effective in many situations then battleships, but [[Exterminatus|sometimes]] you really need a battleship.

So when the Tau faced off against the Titans they needed some ways to counter them. [[Manta]]s were in the same mass class as Titans, and had big enough railguns to threaten them, and while almost invulnerable to most Titan class weapons (since they aren't designed against flying targets, even ones big enough to be mistaken for real estate) they were too vulnerable to massed anti-tank weaponry (like Lascannons) in turn, and a bit too valuable to lose cavalierly. So they ended up manufacturing a version of the [[Tiger Shark]] bomber equipped with Manta-scale railguns. For a time, it seemed to work at forcing the Imperium to be more careful about deploying Titans against the Tau, since a single flight-wing of these Tiger Shark attackers can rip up a formation of Titans and replacements for those bombers can be (relatively) easy to manufacture compared to the Titans it threatens.

''Adside:'' Unfortunately this does not make a lot of sense, since if you think about it, the Titan's void shields and ship-level thickness of armor, plus the escorting massed anti-air support from the Mechanicus and Imperial Guard forces, pretty much made them impervious to anything. But GW has a massive hard-on for making things difficult for the Imperium, so it's hard to imagine a situations where attackers alone can drive back a Titan, unless one of two things, or both, are true. A: the armor on a Titan is like a tank, and thinner on the top, which is possible; or B: The Tau are using WWII-era "let's make that city disappear"-size bomber flights and assorted fighter support, swapping the carpet bombing for the more-accurate heavy ground-attack aircraft. Funnily enough, this is what actually happened in the real world, only replace "titan" with "battleship" and you have a perfect example for the air-dominance of modern naval combat. [[/k/|Although with the introduction of anti-ship ballistic missiles such as the DF-21d, and the high cost and maintenance, the relevancy and practicality of Aircraft Carriers are really stretching in the 21st century.]]

Back to the story at hand: due to the increasing number of Imperial Knights equipped with anti-aircraft weapons and Tyranid gargantuan creatures the Tau have been facing during their expansions, it has become clear that the tried-and-true method of spamming Tiger Shark attackers and Mantas is no longer sufficient to properly take down these new threats: Mantas were already too valuable to risk 1:1 casualty ratios, and the attacker wings cannot be mobilized or deployed fast enough for rapid deployment against unexpected war machines and themselves are vulnerable to lower-altitude anti-aircraft weaponry. In order to have a chance against these opponents, the Tau needed something that could go toe-to-toe with these towering monstrosities, or at least bombard them from long range while still being tough enough to withstand being a massive bullet magnet itself. In a move that would have previously seemed foolhardy and wasteful to try, the Tau just said "Fuck it!" and decided to take a page from Pacific Rim, building their own Titan in order to fight everyone else's.

The result was the '''[[Battlesuit#KX139_Ta.27Unar_Supremacy_Armour|KX-139 Ta'Unar Supremacy Armour]]:''' the first Titan-class Battlesuit ever made. Designed specifically to counter other races attempts to reclaim territory lost to the Tau expansion campaigns, this machine was designed around being a mobile Titan-hunter, heavily armed but under-armored. For its secondary arm weapons it can equip either a slightly-gimped-Multimelta-esque Fusion Eradicator (which more than overcompensates by being Heavy 5) for popping vehicles, TEQs, and monstrous creatures, or an Ion Cannon that can fire 6 normal shots, or 3 super-shots per turn, both of which are superb for massacring heavy infantry. But the ''real'' party is in the back, as the core weapons systems are mounted from an extended backpack/carapace/shoulder mounting point. The back-mounted Pulse Ordnance Multi-Driver is a 3-barreled naval gun system that slams naval-grade ordinance downrange at naval distances, and can be configured to fire all three guns at one point for [[meme|massive damage]], or in a spread-out pattern with explosive payloads. It can also strap one singular fuckoff gun in the form of the Heavy Rail Cannon Array, instead of three smaller fuckoff guns, or forgo direct fire entirely by mounting a Nexus Meteor Missile System to spam rockets like it's little brother (more on that later). Defensively, it has Knight-class armor that stands alongside the likes of other races' smaller Titans, and a powerful Barrier Shield that, while most effective against ranged weapons, can protect against close combat attacks. In consideration for the kind of threats the Ta'Unar will be facing, the Barrier Shield can focus all of it's energy toward one area, intentionally sacrificing all other defensive power to intercept a perceived "Deathblow" and greatly reduce the inevitable impact. This gamble will blow out the shield for a short while, but it allows the Ta'Unar to withstand (once) as much damage as it can dish out, especially since it's not as structurally fortified as other Titans, even for its weight class. As you may have noticed, something that uses an angry fusion cannon as an arm weapon is far from being a true Titan. The Ta'Unar Battlesuit sits around the Knight Titan classification.

'''[[Battlesuit#KV128_Stormsurge_Ballistic_Suit|KV-128 Stormsurge]]:''' After the Ta'Unar was deemed successful enough as a proof-of-concept, the Tau would used their newfound experience with Titan-building to create the Stormsurge, a physically lighter class of the newly-dubbed Ballistic Suits, the Tau name for Battlesuits that are too big to be even jokingly considered "suits of armor", and thus the official name for all Tau Titans. Fio'o Bork'an Ishu'ron, the mad Earth-caste genius behind the Stormsurge, designed the suit to be a really big XV88 Broadside, capable of taking on specifically Imperial heavy armor so long as it is ''not a Titan''. It's main weapon is one of two variants of <s>Compensation</s> ''Pulse'' Cannon: the Pulse Blastcannon is a goddamn tank-sized plasma shotgun (what for killing lots of little things dead), and the Pulse Driver Cannon which is probably ripped off of a direct-fire artillery emplacement (what for killing one big thing dead). The Stormsurge [[Abaddon#The_.22No_Arms.22_meme|does not have arms]], instead having two '''WALLS OF MISSLES''' which it uses to ruin your day, and the days of all of your infantry. It even has stabilizers, all the better to shoot you with, just like the Broadside does! The odd thing about the Stormsurge is that it probably ''wasn't'' made with the engineering experience gained from the Ta'Unar, because Fu'Rious Bork'ed Iso'hedron [[wat|forgot to add a roof to his mech]]. Seriously, the thing is open-topped, showing off both of the two pilots to the sky. Maybe he thought that they would want to eyeball their shots from way up on top of their moving building of a suit. This compounds the matter of the Stormsurge's physical weakness, which is not as impressive as it's size would suggest. The Stormsurge, while as big as an Imperial Knight, can't really take one on at close range, so it is commonly deployed when the Tau need overwhelming firepower to face a larger force of conventional armor than they can handle with Hammerheads and Broadsides alone. Apparently the design philosophy of a walking tank didn't extend to its armor, still proving that even if the Tau can make a wall of guns, a wall of guns is not a structurally sound building practice.

== Fielding Titans ==
Unfortunately fielding a titan in a tabletop game will cause lots of [[RAGE]] and presents itself as a huge fire-magnet, so every fucking thing on the other side will try to shoot at it. Luckily it's got shields, so it can soak up a lot of damage. Should said titan 'get killed' it may take out the whole field (if its a small one), and all those units around it, enhancing its awesomeness. Too bad that, since you are forced to buy one from [[Forge World]], everyone who sees you with one will call you a rich noob who buys his way to victory. <s>(Anything larger than a Reaver has to be built from scratch.</s> NOT ANY MORE!! For the price of a mere £1240 you can now buy a warlord titan model from Forge World, sure it's a rip-off but who cares. It's an awesome model. If you want to make an accurately scaled miniature of an Imperator, it's actually easier to stand on the table while wearing a sign saying "Imperator Titan"- it's that big.) <s> AND, you have to play [[Apocalypse]] (or Escalation)[http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?prodId=prod2330053a] which [[rage|''SUCKS'']]</s> Lord of Wars permitted in normal games from 7th edition. But who cares? YOU HAVE A GIANT RAPE MACHINE OF DEATH!!!!! (If you really want to field a Titan and you are smart enough to realise that <s>apocalypse sucks</s>, you could always organize a game where it's 1 Titan vs an equal points number of normal stuff. Would be a weird, probably unbalanced but fluffy and fun game (Having witnessed a single Ork Gargant with crew take out an entire Imperial Guard regiment on table top, it's not as unbalanced as you think). Or just a titan showdown, possibly 1v1.)
DISREGARD EVERYTHING. FORGE WORLD JUST RELEASED A FULL BUNDLE OF LIKE 5 TITANS FOR THE COST OF ONE WARLORD TITANS. RIP APOCALYPSE. ALSO TITAN LEGION GAMES ARE NOW POSSIBLE WITHOUT BEING A DRUG LORD.

== EMERGENCY WARNING ==
Lukas the Trickster WAS able to troll Titans so hard that their owners and their dogs would rage quit instantly but, thanks to the 7th edition codex, he can't do that crazy shit anymore! His "The Last Laugh" special rule used to remove any model in base contact with him when he died, including Titans, but now functions only in a challenge, thankfully, meaning he can only threaten characters. His reign of terror is over (at least for Titans)!

== Gallery ==
<gallery>
Image:Titan_Space_Marines.jpg‎| Chaos is fucked.
Image:Warhamer-titan.jpg| In Soviet Russia, Titan remembers you!
Image:1258887158852.jpg|In times like these, one does not need Dakka to radiate awesomeness.
Image:Apocalypse.jpg|''Dakka'' still helps though...
Image:Emperortitan.jpg| Who's fucked NOW, Imperial fags? SUCK IIIIIIIIT!
Image:Imperator datacard.jpg|Jesus Christ. *BLAM* HERESY
Image:Stompa_Anatomy.jpg|The inner workings of an Ork Stompa. I kinda want one.
Image:20180101232417_1.jpg|All 4 main imperial titans in the Ultimate Apocalypse mod for Dawn of War. [[Awesome|Tactical marines included for scale]]. The model for the Warlord is kinda shitty but the imperator is amazing.
</gallery>

== External Links ==
* [http://gargant-owners-club.tripod.com/ The Gargant Ownerz Klub forums caters specifically to orky Titan scratch-builders]

[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]
[[Category:Vehicles]]