Grymkin, SR2017, and battle engines, oh my! We’re starting our next CID cycle shortly after SR2017—so, hold on! Battle engines are undergoing updates in this cycle; some are changing far more drastically than others. I’m here to explain a bit of the thought process behind the different battle engine archetypes in the game. I won’t be defining them in hard terms but more like broad categories.

The Tanks: The primary purpose of these combat-oriented battle engines is to disrupt the enemy’s plans through multiple effects, including creating terrain, knocking down large numbers of models, and simply being incredibly durable. Some of the new battle engines I see fitting into this category are the Khador Gun Carriage, the Trollkin War Wagon, and the Meat Thresher.

The Gun Platform: Deliberately removed from the fight, these battle engines usually bring the pain in the form of high-powered ranged attacks. I see the new Storm Strider, Arcantrik Force Generator, and the Transfinite Emergence Projector as being the perfect definitions of this style of battle engine.

The Support: Some battle engines do very little offensively but are focused on providing great support options to their army. Whether leeching fury from construct warbeasts (Celestial Fulcrum), removing continuous effects (Vessel of Judgment) or returning models to play (Siege Crawler), these battle engines usually have solid attacks but are primarily focused on their special rules.

We’ve spent a few months of internal playtest coming up with these new ideas and designs for the battle engines. For some, it was simply a durability issue, solved by adding additional hit boxes; for others, their role needed to be further defined by increasing their support potential or damage output. In the end, I hope you’ll enjoy these changes as much as we did while testing them out in CID.

During this cycle, please remember we are looking for feedback about how the models feel when you play them, about their power levels, and about their presence on the board. If you detect anything out-of-whack with them, please bring it to the CID forums (cid.privateerpress.com) and talk about it with both us (the developers) and the community. Together, we can create truly inspiring rules that give each of these battle engines a place to shine within their respective Factions!