Feedback on the Warhound titan was very positive, so let's press on to the next thing in the core box: tanks!
Two kinds of tank come in the core box and this is where the new edition of Horizon Wars: Midnight Dark outshines its 2016 predecessor, in which tanks in a single army all had to basically be the same. Now, rather than having to just sort of blur them all together, we can make these two distinct. In fact, they even have different weapons that we can distinguish between.
Leman Russ Battle Tanks
The Leman Russ is the smaller, lighter of the two, but I still don't think the Malcador is a "superheavy" tank (we need to save that for the really big boys!).
Element | P | M | F | A | D | Traits & Upgrades | Cost |
Leman Russ | 3 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 4 | Rapid(3), Reinforced Frontage | 40 |
The Leman Russ is, in many respect, a very generic tank. You can, of course, decide to upgrade their quality to veteran or elite, or downgrade it to untested or green, but I've stuck with the standard quality tank for the Solar Auxilia at 32 base points. I then decided that its smaller size, compared to the Malcador merited and increase in its A, and also I decide that the standard battle cannon variant would have +1 F to represent the longer range of the long cannon. Finally, to make it a little more interesting, and with a nod back to the very earlier conversions for the Leman Russ, I gave it a Reinforced Frontage armour upgrade.
The Vanquisher variant, meanwhile, would look like this:
Element | P | M | F | A | D | Traits & Upgrades | Cost |
Leman Russ Vanquisher | 3 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 4 | Rapid(3), Reinforced Frontage | 40 |
This one has a lower F but, to represent its improved mobility thanks to the reduced barrel length, it has a higher A. But in the end, the total points cost is exactly the same.
The Malcador
Now, I freely admit that I'm not as familiar with this tank, as when I last paid a lot of attention to the 40kverse, it wasn't a thing. But I've done a little homework. It's a larger, faster, temperamental tank with a mix of short- and long-range firepower.
Element | P | M | F | A | D | Traits & Upgrades | Cost |
Malcador | 3 | 5 | 5 | 1 | 4 | Rapid(3), Untested, Laser, Ablative Armour, Combat Drugs | 37 |
To represent that the Malcador is an easier target for the enemy, with a temperamental engine, I made it Untested, then gave it a basic M upgrade for 3 points. To represent its wider array of weapons, I gave it the Laser upgrade and, to slightly offset the risk of being Untested, I gave it Ablative Armour. Finally, mainly for a bit of grimdark fun, I gave it Combat Drugs upgrade to represent the fact that Imperial citizens believe very passionately that bigger tanks are, de facto, better.
You will notice that, despite all of the upgrades, making the Malcador Untested means that it still runs in at cheaper than the Leman Russ. Although the Ablative Armour will likely save it from the first Lucky 12 imposing the stunned state on it, once the fire really starts coming, your Malcadors may spend a lot of time trying to wrestle their temperamental engine back to life. And that's when you may want to use those Combat Drugs to offset the incidental impact of all of that incoming fire.
Anyway, the moral is that big tanks aren't necessarily better in the Midnight Imperium!