Do the high armor values and hit-point totals of Colossals require another equivalent unit to effectively kill? Discuss.
Played several games with and against Colossals(/Gargantuans, let’s just condense to “Colossals” for all of them, for the purpose of this discussion) and the only time I killed a Colossal (a Storm Raptor) was when I engaged it with infantry and my own Colossal (a Revelator).
Recently, I played a game against Infernals where my opponent had brought a Guardian of Souls. Despite attacking it with infantry (Exemplar Cinerators!), light and heavy warjacks, it was still alive, and not near death, when we called due to time. Granted, I rolled a few snake-eyes on attack rolls, and my damage rolls were pretty subpar. Maybe if I’d had Kreoss and his auto-hit ability, I’d have killed it. But my previous theory that a Colossal could be brought down solely by lesser units has taken a bit of a beating.
So, what do you think? Have you seen a colossal killed solely by lesser models? Or do you need a colossal to kill a colossal?
Colossal/gargantuan damage grids are, essentially, equal to two heavy warjacks. Attacks that can destroy two heavies can destroy one colossal; it’s the same old probability curves applied in slightly different ways.
You have a much harder time crippling systems on colossals as compared to heavy warjacks, though. Likewise, colossals have a slightly higher per-turn damage output than two heavy warjacks, based on the natively-higher POW and being generally in possession of more weapons and more initial attacks, and because they take buffs somewhat better. (And, by the same token, they suffer debuffs much more acutely than two heavies.)
Having your own colossal helps, sure, but it is not required. You can absolutely bring one down via the application of multiple heavies and the application of the appropriate buffs/debuffs, same as anything else.
In my limited experience from Mk2 and Mk3 (didn’t play against too many huge bases, but it did happen on occasion), you can kill a colossal with two heavies. Or one heavily buffed heavy. Or a fair amount of quality shooting (eg. Butcher1 feat). Or the attentions of a single beatstick warcaster (Butcher, Stryker2, etc).
Yup, with buffs/debuffs I’ve killed Colossals with pretty basic stuff. A couple of Banes will do but under Gaspy1 (Parasite+Dark Shroud) I used to kill Colossals with POW 10 shooting.
This edition I think the award for the dumbest Colossal killers goes to Cygnar Stormsmiths. Under Maddox and Laddermore on average you could take down an ARM 20 60hp Colossal with just 7 of them. An ARM19, 56 hp Colossal required just 5 Stormsmiths to take it down with a shot to spare.
You buy Stormsmiths for 4 points per 3 of them, so yeah, you don’t really need a lot of investment here.
No, a single well buffed heavy can usually do it. Things like POW 23 Wold Guardians, Skin & Moans and such, but also other less buffed heavies if you managed to put a bit of damage into it with shooting before for example.
This here is essentially the most important bit. It’s also worth noting that most colossals have a lower DEF than an average heavy, so you can land hits reliably even with lower-MAT stuff. Colossals are harder to keep out of LOS, they don’t benefit from concealment or cover, and although they’re immune to some irritating effects, can be debuffed too.
Some armies have better tools for dealing with heavy armor than others, but anyone who struggles against a colossal would struggle against an army with several heavy warjacks/warbeasts, too.
Bronzebacks and Tiberion or models that are roughly that killy can be counted on yo reliably one round collosals in my experience… But then those models will reliably one round just about anything and everything…
