Transcendent C'Tan vs Tesseract Vault

Been kind of debating on getting the Vault or not, based on how each of these units would work with a smaller list with escalation.

Tesseract Vault:
BS-5 F-14 S-14 R-14 HP-9
Base 315 Points and then chooses two shooting attacks, which are identical to the C'tan's shooting attacks and same point price.

C'Tan:
WS-6 BS-6 S-9 T-9 W-6 I-5 A-8 Ld-10 Sv-3+/4++
Base 420 points and is required to take one of three additional rules costing 50 to 120 points, and the two shooting attacks same as the vault.

Extra rules:
Storm of Heavenly Fire: (50 points) At the end of the Transcendent C’tan’s Movement phase,
place the large blast marker centred over the C’tan. All models under the marker
(friend and foe, other than the C’tan) immediately suffer a single Strength 6 AP3 hit
with the Ignores Cover special rule. Vehicles are hit on their side armour.
Transliminal Stride: (120 Points) Instead of moving normally, a C’tan can choose to move 18" in
a straight line, ignoring intervening models and terrain. Any models passed over
(friend and foe) suffer a Strength D AP- hit. A C’tan cannot charge in the same turn it
uses this ability. (Seems really good to potentially snipe characters since it is stated as model not unit)
Seismic Shockwave: (60 points) The C’tan’s Stomp attacks are resolved using the large blast
marker rather than the blast marker.

My question is the min extra 155 extra points worth the invul save, FNP, much smaller profile, and the fact that taking it down is worth 1 less victory point to your opponent? To me it seems it does even though it doesn't leave much room at all for the rest of your army.

Thoughts?

It should also be noted that you get a lot more for those extra points, even if one of those "mores" is technically a better "less".

The C'Tan is freaking tiny, to the point where it is actually rather easy to completely block LoS to it. In addition to that and offering up fewer VP's on death, it is also generally harder to hurt (Las Cannon wounds on a 4+ with a 4++ and a 5+++ to balance that out, where as the same weapon brings with it a chance to do d3 extra Hull Points with no save afforded), and gets at least one additional phase in which to punch your enemy in the face (the C'Tan can kill models in all three phases if you take the stride). Finally, in the event it does bite it, you know much more reliably where it's detonation is going to happen, where with the Vault who knows where that template is going to scatter, or even if it will. This means that you can drive it straight into the heart of your enemy's force, and when they deal with it, which they'll have to, he's going to take at least something with him.

T-Can is just silly good.

Planes wrote:
T-Can is just silly good.

That's an understatement...

Oh it is silly lol, and against say Lance attacks (or equivilent like Melta) I don't have to worry about armour being reduced to 12 or double dice for Pen's. Just scared with how little I have left to fight with if he gets whacked in the face with the silly stick.

Silly sticks aren't really that scary, between being T9, 4++, 5+++, a respectable WS, and only taking additional wounds from instant death weapons instead of straight up croaking. Poison is rather weak against him, too.

Stuff like Grav weapons are a weakness to him, if I hadn't had first turn against Paz the other day or he had seized it would have been really bad for me, it's only cause I did enough damage to his Centurions and sniped his missile pot termie on turn one that I only took 3 wounds the first turn. There are very few weapons like that, but the ones designed for MC are always a problem, but you are right, they are less common than those that can take off hull points.

I would argue that the ctan breaks a major fact of eeevery other escalation creature. 

It's tiny. Super tiny. You can run it with almost any fig.

Do the vehicle. It's a beautiful thing, and if it slays half an army, one can't be that mad, with all the work one would have to put into building and painting it.
Getting crushed by a terminator sized creature just feels cheap.

It's what 1/2" shorter than a C'tan shard?

Personally, I think the vault might be better, because it's cheaper and can shrug off lascannons easier.

If the C'Tan faces a bunch of S10 Hammerhanded Grey Knights, it's dead in one turn. It's also weak to psychic attacks (hallucination, dominate, puppet master, enfeeble, misfortune, and others)

Also, instant death wounds still ignore FnP....

It stands the same height as the regular C'Tan if placed on the skimmer stand it's provided with.

oh my... wave of withering for 120pts on it. Str D ap1 hellstorm template... well. that will ruin pretty much everything out there...
other than grav guns how does one deal with that lol?

The Tranny is easily one of the best out of a handful of escalation models. Really you have to have either a flying gargantuan creature with a better melee D weapon or at least one (preferably more than one) ranged D weapon.

It can be brought down with high strength shooting, but it is stupid easy to hide behind terrain.

Don't forget you can barf one out of a Monolith, too.

for this tournament with the D weapon changes its insanely hard to kill, its hard to rebalance D weapons when you need them for some things...

And This is why it's silly. I thought escalation was there to let you play your big models, not give absolutely silly rules to a tiny model.

Paz wrote:And This is why it's silly. I thought escalation was there to let you play your big models, not give absolutely silly rules to a tiny model.

Yeah... this.

just note that if you Tranny slide, you cannot assault that turn.

disappointing, i know, right?

also note, if you tranny slide...you're going to be paying alot of therapy bills for your wife.

creepy lotr dude adblocked.

He has no power here.

I haven't played against it yet to see what it's like.

So, Jeremy and I had our game yesterday. It ended in a Tie. (I *nearly* took it, although if the game didn't end, I was going to get rofl-stomped).

The C'Tan *is* scary and does stuff, however, it takes up half of Jeremy's army.

It's incredibly weak to Psychic Powers. (especially the telepathy tree)

1) Psychic Scream
2) Dominate
3) Terrify
4) Puppet Master
5) Hallucinate

Luckily for Jeremy, I failed a couple of key Psychic tests, or the game would've been very different!

Pyromancy has Spontaneous Combustion, which just, does a wound!

If you can force a high number of blind tests on it too, that'd really cripple it.

My List (some jank, some silliness)

CS Main
Balestar Sorc
2x10cultists
Heldrake... with an AUTOCANNON! (I should've taken the flamer, I'd've won the game, although, the Drake took out Jeremy's Doom Scythe)
2xForgefiends
3xOblits
Allied Daemons
Kairos
2x10 Pink Horrors
Tzeentch Prince, Wings, Armour 2xgreater, 1xlesser, lvl 3 (rolled all Telepathy)

Another tie Jer? Lol, your ctan is cursed!

Paz wrote:Another tie Jer? Lol, your ctan is cursed!

He'll get another chance at losing tonight when we have a game.

Flying Monstrous Creatures are hard to take down even for him, and Mark made every grounding test (around a dozen by the end of the game), I could have ignored them but puppet master needed to leave the board in a hurry. If I had popped one of his forge fiends it might have made a difference on the end score since we played big guns never tire. I don't think I would have played any differently though.

You didn't make any critical mistakes, barring initial placement of the C'Tan, as I was able to put my DP outside of LoS.

You *could* have taken out the forgefiends sooner, but that would've left you with another turn of a daemon prince kicking your ass, so... I think you made the right call.

==

edit: Tyranids with 3 Crone's would smash that list in the face.