+ Adeptus Titanicus: Eldar Revenant Scout Titan playtesting rules +
+ With the basic rules of the Phantom established for Adeptus Titanicus, I dived into White Dwarf 186 to read more about its smaller kin, the Revenant Scout Titan. Here's an excerpt:
With its lightning speed and deadly armament, the Revenant Scout Titan epitomises the Eldar approach to war! Each Revenant Titan is equipped with a pair of sophisticated jump jets which enable it to bound across the battlefield in a series of springing leaps. Armed with two pulse lasers, a missile launcher and a scatter laser, Revenants use their mobility to pick off vulnerable enemy units or crack open and explore any weakness in the line.
Eldar Titans
Eldar Titans are very different to those used by the Imperium. Imperial Titans are born in the boiling flames and arcing energies of the Adeptus Mechanicus forges, bolted and welded together with ceramite skin and adamantium bones. Eldar Titans are grown or extruded from a strange psycho-plastic called Wraithbone, under the control of the psychic morphing powers of the Eldar caste of Bonesingers. Wraithbone is an immensely durable material, tougher than adamantium and stronger than plasteel. Wraithbone has another important property, it can conduct psychic energy and respond to it in an almost organic way. This gives Eldar Titans a flexibility and finely tuned musculature almost akin to living creatures.
Eldar Titans are tall and slender, moving with a smooth agility and grace unachievable by human Titans. They benefit not only from the experience of their crews (who dedicate themselves to their TItan for the equivalent of several human lifetimes) but also from the collective consciousness of a large Spirit stone which contains the souls of numerous dead Eldar. The TItans's Wraithbone core permits the spirits contained within it to flow freely through the whole construct. This gives the Eldar Titan a consciousness of its own which, combined with its living crew, makes it a deadly fighting machines.
Scout Titans
The best known Eldar Titans are the Phantom and Warlock Battle Titans. These tall, elegant instruments of war are quite capable of crushing any opponent. Less common, but no less deadly, are the Eldar Revenant Scout Titans. These sleek, fast killing machines are deployed to add extra punch to the Eldar skimmer forces of Jetbikes and Vypers whenever they are raiding or scouting the enemy battle line. Revenants are well armed for their size, normally carrying twin pulse lasers for use against tanks and Titans, plus a missile launcher and scatter laser for tackling enemy infantry. With the aid of the Revenants, Eldar Jetbikes can sweep aside the opposing forces and launch deep strikes against enemy-held objectives.
To increased the manoeuvrability of the Revenant and enable it to keep up with the skimmers, the Titan is equipped with a highly efficient arrangement of jets powered by gasses siphoned directly from the Titan's plasma reactor. These very powerful jump jets allow the Revenant to make long, powered leaps which can easily carry it over intervening battlefield obstacles such as woods, marshes or buildings.
[+White Dwarf 186+]
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| + The original design for the Revenant Titan, shown above, was quite different – I'll look at various designs in a future inload. + |
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+ Take-aways +
+ Old White Dwarfs are a great source for background material, and while older rules sets get outdated, I like to get a feel for the designer's intentions when updating things. It's also good to see how the same information (on, say, Eldar Titans in general) is redrafted and presented anew. Little things that are implied are sometime made explicit – like the presence of plasma reactors in Eldar Titans, which was previously arguable. +
+ Holo field apologetics +
+ Likewise, there's an interesting note on holofields later in the article:
'Holo fields are useless against area effect weapons which don't rely on pin-point accuracy to hit. Therefore, the holo field save does not apply against hits from barrages, or any other attack that uses a template of any kind.'
+ That's a fairly straightforward statement, and brings up an interesting design quandry. Should this weakness to template weapons be applied to the updated rules I'm using? +
+ For the moment, I'm going to leave them as-is. The holofield mechanic I'm using – modifiers to hit, rather than an additional save – is based largely on a desire to use existing mechanics where possible. It does, however, make me feel that perhaps I ought to lose the scattering on a D6 even on a successful hit... +
+ Other sight-blocking wargear and abilities in modern Adeptus Titanicus (like Concealment Barrage) operate on modifiers, and I think this nicely reflects the lore of how holo fields work:
'Holo fields are not designed to block, absorb or shunt aside attacks like Imperium void shields and Ork power fields. Instead the holo field confuses enemy's locating and targeting systems by defracting [sic] the subject's image. When a unit protected by a holo field moves, its mage seems to explode into a storm of multi-coloured shards. The faster the vehicle or Titan moves, the more scattered the image becomes. When it stops, the cloud appears to coalesce into a solid shape again.'
+ Secondly, the way armour and saves works in modern Adeptus Titanicus is very different to classic Epic – and oddly enough, the void shields in modern AT work more like the old holo fields! I want the Eldar to feel familiar but distinct to any player of the modern game, and that's why I'll stick with the playtest rules for the moment. +
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+ Interestingly, the approach I'm taking has a precedent here. I noted in an earlier article that I wanted to minimise book-keeping, and so while I toyed with the idea that the model would have to move a certain distance for various holofield effects, I rejected that as being too hard to track and too likely to cause arguments. Instead, I decided it would be the order the unit is on, rather than the distance it moves, which affects the holo field benefit. That's exactly what's described in White Dwarf 186:
'Because the effectiveness of the holo field is linked to the speed of movement of the vehicle or Titan, the saving throw varies according to the orders the subject is on. This makes the holofield far more effective when the target is on Charge orders rather than First Fire. [...] The saving throw is tied only to the unit's orders and not to the distance the model moves in a turn.'
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+ Jump jets +
'The Revenant is equipped with a pair of powerful jump jets which are powered directly from its plasma reactor. Gravitic drives cut in when the Revenant jumps, neutralising part of its mass to allow it to make long graceful leaps over obstacles and impassable terrain.'
+ This piece of wargear is characteristic, perhaps defining, of the Revenant. It's going to define the Titan. The older rules were simple in concept, though quite granular in detail. As noted earlier, I want this ruleset to be easy-to-grasp for players, so adapting existing mechanics seems sensible. +
+ At root, what made the Revenant stand out in old Epic was its ability to leap tall buildings (etc.) in a single bound. Its manoeuvrability, speed and ability to set ambushes are repeatedly referenced, so those are the things we want to reflect in the modern game. +
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+ Don't believe the hype: statting the Revenant +
+ The straightforward answer, then, is to give it huge Speed and Manoeuvre characteristics, but I'm not confident that will make for a particularly interesting game experience. Simply making it much faster than a Warhound will potentially cause problems with objective-based play, and could easily be frustrating. I also wonder whether it's really justified. One of the dangers of taking statements from articles like this in isolation is that you get a warped view. If you look at the equivalent lore for the Warhound, for example, you'll get similar emphasis on their speed etc. +
+ Looking at the actual in-game stats as well is thus a much fairer point of comparison. Here we find the Warhound has a movement of 25cm, while the Revenant has 30cm – so a bit faster, but not the huge difference we might guess from reading the Revenant article in isolation. +
+ So, with that in mind, how can we make the Revenant both interesting to play with and against? How can we differentiate it and not make it a 'Warhound +1'? My answer to this is as follows: +
+ Speed A higher bases Speed than the Warhound, but similar speeds when pushed. This ties into the idea that the Eldar Engines are inherently superior, but more risk-averse than their Imperial counterparts. +
+ Agility + There's not really much point in giving it a substantially greater Manoeuvre characteristic than the Warhound (3/5), as the Imperial Scout Titan can already turn more than 180 degrees in a turn. The background text in the Revenant article in WD183 – there, it's stated:
'The Revenant Titan is very fast and extremely agile, so unlike other Titans it can turn as many times as it wants while it is moving.'
+ However, I think that removing the turn limit in modern Titanicus would be a shame. You remove a key part of the engagement with the table, and strip the player of the considerations of manoeuvre. Secondly, it would stop it feeling like a Titan, and start feeling more like a Knight. Knights have the Agile rule which does exactly this – allows unlimited turns – and giving it to a Titan would blur things too much for my taste. +
+ To partly reflect the improved agility, then, I've instead taken the less abstract approach of simply giving it a smaller base, allowing it to move more freely on the table without simply bumping its stats too high. +
+ Jump Jets As perhaps the defining characteristic of this Titan, the jump jets need some thought, and warrant some unique rules. I can't think of anything quite equivalent to this in the existing rules, though there's some promising stuff in the rules for moving over terrain. This is defined by the Titan's Scale – you can move over blocking terrain up to half the Titan's scale in inches, as long as the base can clear it. (Another point in favour of having a small base.) +
+ It's thus a neat mechanic to use as a start – and all you need is a statement 'The Revenant counts as being twice its scale for the purposes of moving over terrain.' Further to this, we'll let it ignore Difficult and Dangerous terrain unless it lands within it. +
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+ The Revenant Terminal +
+ ...and so here's the Terminal, ready for playtesting. +
+ In addition to this, you'll need to know:
- The Eldar playtesting rules summary in this inload [+noosphericinloadlink embedded+],
- We're playtesting Revenants on 60mm bases. This is intentionally slightly smaller than the Warhounds, as it goes some way to reflecting their agility.
- You should use the Warhound turning/arc template for Revenant manoeuvres and checking arc.
- A larger version (v005) is available on the +Death of a Rubricist+ Facebook page, which you can find through Linktree.
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