Editing Warhammer 40,000/9th Edition Tactics/Adeptus Titanicus (section)

==Why Play Adeptus Titanicus==
A quick note, everything you read below also applies for the Dark Mechanicum's Titans as they have precisely the same rules, although they have different names, come on GW, not even a [[Castigator Titan|daemon firing Gatling gun]] for the Warlord Titan?

===What’s changed?===
The transition from forge world to games workshop writers for the forge world rules has brought a number of changes, in line with the design ethos of 9th edition, and that games workshop actually has staff who can (for the most part) proofread their work.
*Profiles are more streamlined. Although this means that you have fewer Titan weapons available for each Titan, it has removed the chaff weapons from 8th edition which nobody used because they were rubbish (see warhounds plasma blast gun and reavers chain fist).

*No sky high strength and toughness stats. This is a factor present across all superheavies, toughness 8 is now the max except in a few exception cases. Superheavies are now made tough by void shields/invulnerability saves and butt loads more wounds.

*Reduced ballistic skill and stomp hit rates. Overall, your Titans are now 25% less Killy as previous editions, to make up for your ability to walk in and out of melee and shoot into melee.
**'''BLAST'''. A big deal this edition. Most of your guns have it, and it will dramatically effect what guns you use when and where. Not so much because of the hit bonuses you get, but because you cannot fire them into melee. This means that you now '''really''' have to consider have your ranged weapons overlap with each other, to ensure that you’re not lacking at any range (especially as '''POINT BLANK MELEE''' is now technically a range you can shoot at).

*No macro weapons. Macro weapons were forge worlds way of getting around the fact that they couldn’t think of a way for you to fight super heavy units when they had such tough stat lines. All weapons are now heavy weapons, which Titans don’t care about because they’re vehicles and '''god damn Titans!'''

*Everything is a bit slower and shorter ranged. This has made the weapons easier to balance, as before you just gave your Titan the longest ranged weapons, found a nice corner on your 10 metre board and shot everything to pieces.

===Pros===
*Insanely tough. Your weakest unit has '''50''' wounds, toughness 8, a 2+ armour save and void shields (new and improved tm).

*Low unit count will have you going first most of the time.

*Excels at taking on other super-heavies and basically everything else.
**You have tools for every eventuality, is your opponent spamming superheavies? Bring a laser destructor or Volcano Cannon. Are they spamming guardsmen? Bring a mega bolter or one of the reaver's missile launchers. And all of this variety comes on a super tough platform other factions would be paying through the teeth to replicate...if they even have a comparable equivalent. Many of them don't.

*You get a lot of CP's as everyone gets the same amount as standard, and as you will often be only running 1-3 models you will have a lot of CP to work with.

* The sheer amount of [[Awesome]].
**Don’t underestimate the psychological effect this would have on your enemy, the first thing your opponent will think when seeing a model as imposing, awesome and huge on the battlefield is “ow shit." from that point on your enemy will always be mentally on the back foot.

*Although expensive, titans are relatively good value for money. £430 buys you a warhound titan, which is 2000 points, and most armies will cost you that much, if not more, guard players will be reaching for the hatchet to prize out their last kidney to pay for one of their 2000 setups.
**The only faction which provides you the same points per pound spent are the custodes, take comfort in the fact that although your warhound Titan cost you the price of a reasonable tv, it costs about a fifth of the price of the guard that you're now [[RAPE|anally abusing]].

*You ''destroy'' balanced armies even harder than the Knights do - most opponents will bring a lot of low strength firepower and few high strength weapons, so just kill the high strength weapons first and then stride around the table safe in the knowledge you cannot be harmed.

*You no longer need just Titans in your Titan legion to be battle forged. The forge world admech units have <Titan Legion> as a keyword, so you now have some pretty good infantry to hold objectives.

*They’re giant mechs that every race in 40k fears that can destroy entire cities by looking at them sideways, what other reason do you need?

*Dropping a titan on the board is going to be memorable for both players. As such expensive models there not seen often so when one comes down it's going to be a night to remember. . .In ways good and bad. See points bellow but you don't want to randomly spring a titan on a random player, doing so makes you that guy

===Cons===
*You are no longer the “toughest” kids on the block. A few lords of war now have toughness 9 as standard (while you have to go to the very '''expensive''' warlord Titan for toughness 9) such as the elder titans and mastodon. These units also either have access to high invulnerability saves or void shields of their own.  And remember that ALL chapters can use the [[Land_Raider#Terminus_Ultra_Pattern|Terminus Ultra]] now.  
**No longer toughness 9 as standard. In 8th edition a titan couldn't be wounded on anything worse than a 3+ (and most of the time you'd struggle to wound them on a 5+) by anything which wasn't a baneblade or larger. Now only the warlord titan has toughness 9, but this isn't too much of an issue with the extra wounds you now get and '''proper Void Shields'''.

*The titans have lost a lot of their toys with the moving from forge world writing the rules to GW. Although this is good because forge world were unreliable and slow at their work, it does mean that things like the titan chainfist no longer have rules.
**Speaking of rules, no more Macro weapons. This is fine in a way as the datasheets and weapons have been redesigned to be a bit more balanced, but gone are the fun days where you could say that you were dealing 100 damage with a single weapon to a baneblade.
**Overall your Titans are less Killy. A reduced ballistic skill (they are Titans, they should really hit on a 2+) and their stomp attacks dealing fewer hits means that you dominate like you used to. Stuff will still die, and die in vast numbers, but you’re not as satisfyingly devastating as before.

*All models are Forge World, and are the most expensive ones they have at that matter. Fielding more than maybe a couple of models will cost you more than a decent car and may very well force you to sell most of your children on the black market. A Warhound will cost you £430, a Reaver £701 - £721, a Nemesis Warbringer £1018, a Warlord £1334 - £1367 and a "value" box set of five titans is currently available for £3250.
**You also need (unless you're proxying weapons) to buy a variety of weapons to allow your Titan to be flexible, and to magnetise/rod and paint these weapons as well.

*Good luck holding objectives with only a handful of models. Most Titan bases will be larger than 6" across, so sitting on it will prevent the enemy from getting within 3" of the centre of the objective- but fat consolation if someone with an Objective Secured equivalent gets there first.
*No '''stratagems'''.

*And no '''faction traits'''. You do get <Titan Legion> but this is specified as being simply a fluff inclusion by [[Forge World]] and as a way to get a few infantry units.
**The lack of either stratagems or traits makes the titan legions a bit samey. There is no difference between a titan which was produced in mars or one which was produced in lucius (despite the two forge worlds having very different temperaments).

*''If'' you lose a model you're fucked, it doesn't matter how tough your army as you’ll only have maybe three models in your army at most, and are likely to have only one in competitive play (2000 point games, for example).

*More of a challenge than a con really, but titans are the most difficult models to build and paint, they have a lot of individual parts (not including almost mandatory magnetisation), all of which are Forgeworld "quality" resin, which need partially building then undercoating, followed by the buckets of paint and the several days required to apply it all. If you revel in this, however, this is a positive, as you’ll be working on this for up to a month and the results (if you put the work in) are glorious.

*Nobody will ever want to play you if you field a full detachment of them.
**Seriously, no one.
***Ever.
****...But it would be bloody worth it.

*Good luck transporting your titans from home to your FLGS. This might be solved if your FLGS is run by bros who'll keep them for you, but then again, it will take some juicy space for them to keep them on storage.

*Anyone who brings Titans (or Emperor forbid Titans and Custodes) to a casual game is only surpassed in Warhammer scumbaggery by the asshole who brings Custodes to Kill Team, or by those people that think a 4 man frag cannon build in kill team is fair.
**(Awkward coughs from many readers).
**(Further awkward coughing as those same people remember that the custodes have access to the psi Titan in 30k, and really want to play it in 40K).