Welcome back to Goonhammer’s series for aspiring Titan Principes. We here at Goonhammer’s own Collegia Titanica know that Adeptus Titanicus can seem intimidating to players unfamiliar with its particular quirks, but this series aims to equip you with everything you’ll need to play out epic clashes on the battlefields of the far future with your very own Titan Battlegroup.

This week the UK contingent of the Wednesday Warlords went to a Horus Heresy weekender hosted by Greetings from the Warp, in lieu of our regular programming, read on to see how they fared.

The Event

This weekend was the continuation of the previous event, a narrative Horus Heresy/Titanicus campaign surrounding Loyalists attempting to retake the Hive World of Kemerova. The first instalment saw the Loyalists failing rather poorly…

Spoilers: This trend would continue.

As per the last event, the campaign used a map based system to fight over territories – where the defender of a territory would gain a small bonus if they were fighting there in addition to the campaigns to decide the world’s fate.

The format of the weekend was four 2000 point games spread over two days – this relaxed pace meant there was more time to hang out, have pick up games in the evening or play bingo on the Saturday night for some nice HH/AT prizes.

The variety of forces was quite decent, with a Knight Household present, a full Audax force and less commonly seen forces like Legio Astraman or Damicium.

Soggy’s Weekend

I haven’t had much time recently to play Titanicus or work on the Psi-Titan that I had bought to take to this event. This mean that I ended up taking a very similar force to what I took at the last event.

The thinking here is exactly the same as what I had planned for the last time – with the exception of finding out that I had paid too much for my Atropos last time, which meant I had the points to take a Direwolf in place of one of the hounds.

Game One

My first game was against Nathan, who had a lovely Damicium Battlegroup consisting of a Mandatum and Ferrox. His Titans had been fairly corrupted with Preternatural Grace, Immaterial Shield and Organic Protrusions on several of his Warhounds – in a making them Perfect for charging into their foes with a pile of smash attacks.

The first game involved taking an objective from the centre of the board and taking it back towards your board edge. I deployed very conservatively due to the amount of melee threat – which probably cost me the game.

Nathan was able to quickly nab the central objective under a Concealment Barrage and run off to safety. Despite all the best attempts made to shut him down with the Dire Wolf or stun it with the grav on the Atropos.

Peak Titanicus happened in a turn where I pulled my Dire Wolf away from the Clawlord in case he decided to charge it and commit it towards a Reaver that had made a charge move against my Fire Support Lord.

I sadly didn’t get the initiative, meaning the Reaver activated first and killed the fire support ‘lord – which then took out the Dire Wolf. The Dire Wolf then got the Wild Fire result – which shutdown the Reaver which started everything off.

Game Two

My second game was against Rob‘*s Audax battlegroup. Legio Audax isn’t something you come across too often and play a rather different game of AT to everyone else. Aside from some games testing this out when their rules came out this was my first game against Audax – and it ended up being a banger.
*who I am told is very handsome

Rob’s battlegroup consistented of two maniples, one Canis maniple and one Ferrox. Rather than opt for pure bolter/plasma spam, Rob had opted for Shock Lances and Ursus Claws en masse – a true king.

The objective in this mission was to simply slay the other player’s Princeps Senioris. Things were not looking great for Rob until he enacted a hail mary play:

• Ignoring everything I had and moving at full speed towards my Warlord on Turn three.
• Using a Haywire Barrage to deal the first crit to my Warlord’s body – bypassing voids
• The two Full-Striding two Warhounds on my flank and used Warp Conduit to bypass my voids and score a second Crit on the body – disabling my voids and leaving me defenceless to the rest of his hounds in position

Despite this onslaught, I managed to slay his Princeps his turn and hang on for dear life – fully tracked on the body and with three crits. I then did the scumbag manoeuvre and popped a concealment barrage directly on top of my Warlord – meaning nothing could target it, even in melee.

Titanicus does not tolerate such cowardice.

While first firing a plasma at my Fire Support Warlord in the corner, Rob missed with his plasma and rolled a 10 for scatter – directly onto my Warlord and killing it before the damage control phase.

Peak Titanicus would not end there, as most of Rob’s remaining forces would cook off that Damage control phase. The game ended at the end of turn three – with only three models left on the battlefield: My firesupport ‘lord, Dire Wolf and an Atropos.

Game Three

My third game was against Toby, a good mate who I had come up with – yet we had not ever played a game with each other. Toby’s corrupted monstrosities use the Legio Vulturum rules with a great number of corruptions – however avoids some of the more typical combinations you’re using to seeing

This mission involved having to get your largest scale unit into your opponents deployment zone. The table we were playing on had a good amount of terrain on it – forcing you to commit to alleyways and really think about your moment.

With the corners deployment, I was able to park my Dire Wolf in his flank and make a right nuisance of myself while also running some heavy interference with my Atropos. I thought I had him, until at some point it all went horribly wrong but I’m not sure what exactly to point at.

What would ensue was a bloody slugfest between our forces – with some extra chaos from Ursus Claws, which have had had a huge glow up since their release.
They spun my Warlord round like a record, baby right round.

Game Four

Si, the event organiser had asked me to take along the Warbreaker Titan to the event for a special game. Being an unofficial model, there are some community rules available which I would use in a 3500 point game with Alex– who upon seeing it knew that it was his goal in life to put it down with a Vulpa Clawlord.

In this mission I had to walk the Warbreaker to the other side of the table – which is generally the last thing you want to be doing against a Legio Vulpa force packed to the brim with Shikaran Conduits, Disruption Emitters and Overwhelming Rage.

In this case I deployed the Warbreaker in the Corner – at least being able to deny a flank and making through one of the clear spaces on the board. Even with a Vox Blackout, the Clawlord was able to make his way up with Bloodthirst, Experimental Locomotors and the Traitor Allegiance ability and merely take it out with a single punch (with Unholy Benediction for the reroll.

It’s a shame I didn’t have the initiative this turn as I feel I could have at least won one of the key engagements on the table – the Iconoclast/Warlord or Warlord/Warbreaker. The Warbreaker ended up falling in a line along my deployment zone – thankfully rolling weapon as the otherwise STR 15 attacks would have oneshot everything. The Atropos Knights would have their revenge by poking the Warlord in the back.

I was grateful to have the chance to use the Warbreaker for it’s first game, as this is something that only has a place in narrative play. The general feel we got from looking at it’s performance is that the community rules have undercooked it a bit to avoid making it a bit too much.

I’d need a few more games under my belt before making an informed decision on how I would run it in my own narrative games but that’s part of the cool part with an unofficial narrative model – you can do whatever you want.

Summary

It was a great weekend, playing four games with four great opponents with some different lists to what I am used to seeing. There was loads of peak Titanicus bullshit going on which I am always there for. I also managed to snag Best Sports for Loyalists – which is is great to know my opponents were having a good time as well.

Bair’s Weekend

For this one I took my Legio Vulcanum, as traitors of course, and was keen to try the new Dire Wolf Titan since I hadn’t gotten a chance to play with it much yet (only one practice game, actually). I played around with a lot of different lists but decided early on that I didn’t want to take any mutations/corruptions since my Titans aren’t visually corrupted/mutated in any way and eventually landed on this:

Vulcanum Fortis

Warlord Titan – 520

• Princeps Seniores – Iron-clad Tyrant
• Apocalypse Missile Launcher
• Macro-Gatling Blaster
• Sunfury Plasma Annihilator
• Twinned Machine Spirits (with other Warlord)
• Tracking Gyroscopes

Warlord Titan – 495

• Princeps Seniores – Favoured by Fortune
• Apocalypse Missile Launcher
• Macro-Gatling Blaster
• Mori Quake Cannon
• Twinned Machine Spirits (with other Warlord)
• Tracking Gyroscopes

Reaver Titan – 345

• Vulcan Mega-bolter
• Melta Cannon
• Gatling Blaster
• Twinned Machine Spirits (with Dire Wolf)
• Unholy Benedictions

Reaver Titan – 335

• Vulcan Mega-bolter
• Melta Cannon
• Laser Blaster
• Unholy Benedictions

Support Titan

Dire Wolf Scout Titan – 300

• Neutron Laser
• Twinned Machine Spirits (with Reaver)
• Unholy Benedictions

As per the event pack my 8 chosen Stratagem Points to pull from for games were used on:

• Gifts of the Dark Mechanicum
• Profane Blessing
• Sabotage
• Concealment Barrage
• Last Ditch Effort

So what is this list trying to do? Not die and make the Dire Wolf as reliable as possible. The biggest “problem” with the Dire Wolf is how swingy of a gun the Neutron Laser is. It’s a single shot S7 weapon that has Bypass (so ignores void shields at range) and Shock (so can shutdown a titan hit by the weapon) along with Draining. With a Short Range of 30″ with +1 to hit if it’s firing at an unobscured target it’s hitting on a 2+ which is great, and can even make targeted shots at unshielded targets on a 4+ if you wanted to for a sniper kill shot. For Shock to work the weapon needs to score at least a Direct Hit to Shutdown the titan on a 3+ but if you fail to deal any damage it can still shut it down on the roll of a 6; so S7 isn’t the best at causing damage, against more heavily armoured targets like Warlords you’re needing to roll a 5+ at the best on the armour roll. It’s also not a cheap platform that’s hardly any tougher than a Warhound and cannot go into a squadron natively, which means it can be picked up off the table pretty swiftly with a bit of coordinated fire from enemy engines.

Playing Vulcanum I’m able to have it join a squadron with another Titan, in this case I decided to pair it to a Reaver because they have more similar move values than a Warlord does so can move together more easily without hindering the Dire Wolf too much. Being able to be in base contact to share shields drastically improves survivability on the Dire Wolf. The better part of this though is coordinated attacks: being able to give that Neutron Laser +1 to armour rolls makes it far more likely to deal damage – which means it’s more likely to shut down an enemy titan. Even with that however if I want to fire at a Reaver titan the sequence is still: reactor push, hit roll (often 2+ or 3+), location roll, armour roll, shock roll. That’s a lot of single dice rolls one after another and a lot of room for that to go wrong, the machine spirit could awaken and decide to make the titan not fire at all, the shot can miss, you could roll a Weapon result (meaning you can’t get a Direct/Devastating/Crit so will only shutdown on a 6), if you do hit another location it can fail the armour roll and then if you get all the way to the end you can still fail to shut it down. This is where the stratagems and upgrade Unholy Benedictions comes into play. Unholy Benedictions gives a once-per-game re-roll of all of the dice from a single roll; until that’s used however the titan suffers a -1 penalty to commands, thankfully pairing up for squadron orders counters that (when taking a squadron order). A Profane Blessing on the Dire Wolf gives effectively the same re-roll token as well for more re-rolls. Lastly, Gifts of the Dark Mechanicum allows the Dire Wolf to “push” its reactor 3 times across the game without rolling the dice, giving the benefit of the push without gaining heat or any chance for awakening the machine spirit. All of this just to make the Dire Wolf as effective and reliable as possible. Other than putting it into a Ferrox Light maniple for even more armour bonuses this is probably the most reliable Dire Wolf you can build (Legio Venator can also create ad-hoc squadrons just without shield sharing, which would also work well).

Just a note: It’s not entirely clear how to deploy a Dire Wolf when part of a squadron, due to how niche a circumstance this is, so with the event organiser’s we agreed for the weekend that it would be deployed at the same time as the Reaver but be able to use it’s advance deployment so long as it was in a spot that would meet the requirements from any spot an enemy titan could be placed. This seemed like a fair compromise and to be honest with its long range and wanting to share shields with the Reaver this would be rare to not simply deploy it normally anyway. 

Game 1

After a quick trip to the greasy spoon down the road for some eggs, bacon, and fries the first game was against Connor’s Gryphonicus. This time in the shape of an Axiom maniple with 3 Reavers and a Warlord and support Warbringer. The Reaver in the back hiding had a chainfist with Motive Sub-Reactors for speedier movement and over all was a pretty straightforward game. The token in the centre had to be retrieved and taken back and the best titan for this job in my list was my Dire Wolf. Titans were not allowed to advance deploy in this mission either, instead having a 6″ deployment zone along one edge. The Dire Wolf didn’t do a lot of shooting this game but did make a coordinated strike with the Reaver to shut down an enemy Reaver turn 1; then hid in a concealment barrage to take the objective and tactically scamper away with it off the board edge for a win.

Coordinated strikes with Warlords are just brutal into any target, pretty easily removing a Reaver per turn when opening up into one, even with full shields and no damage suffered. Brutal.

Lunch Day 1

These guys do great food. They just do. Every time. It’s one of the aspects that will keep me coming back to this event – and the cheap soda and beer trolley that’s brought around while you’re playing! Lunch on the first day was a cheeseburger with slaw and nacho cheese sauce: delicious. There was also a side of burnt ends, and those can never be bad.

Game 2

Those red titans are of Ben’s Legio Invicta, played as Praesagius in the form of a 3-Warlord Extergimus and 2 Warhounds in support. This mission was to kill the enemy Princeps (or choose one to kill if multiple, as was the case with my list). He kept his Princeps a bit further afield in the top of the photo there to try and keep it better protected but it wasn’t enough. The Invicta Warlords made short order of the Reaver on its own but turn after turn the enemy Warlords fell to coordinated fire from Vulcanum engines. Warlords are a more difficult target for the Dire Wolf to take shots at because of their higher armour, so instead it tried to ping shots at the Warhounds to slow their flanking advance but wasn’t successful in shutting one down until turn 3.

In the end Legio Invicta were left with no engines in tact while the majority of Vulcanum were able to walk away largely unscathed ready for their next quarry…

INTERMISSION and dinner.

With only 2 games on each day we were left a lot of time for open gaming in the evening as well as….bingo? Being under the age of 30 I’ve never actually played bingo before but it was pretty funny and the prizes being handed out were great. Complete with bingo visors for the man calling the numbers out – only complaint here is that no one shouted BINGO when they won??? Maybe that’s not RAW to be able to win, might need an FAQ.

Soggy: I would have gone with my Grandparents to Bingo if they were giving away Heresy kit.

There was also dinner in the form of chicken shish kebabs, which was great.

Soggy and I also played some Blood Bowl 7’s for the first time each, thankfully a couple of the guys hanging around run Blood Bowl leagues and go to numerous competitive events so were able to teach us the rules. Obviously I played a team of Dwarves and Soggy had his Lizardmen.

Verdict: Dwarves real good even though it was a loss for the bearded stunties.

Game 3

Top of the second day and another trip to the greasy spoon cafe for more eggs, bacon, and fries and the first game was set up against Dan’s Legio Vespa (Murder Hornets) playing as loyalist Vulpa. He was playing them as a 4-Reaver Corsair and a minimum Venator maniple – with a shocking lack of melee weapons and not a Disruption Emitter in sight!

This is where the Dire Wolf really really took off. Across the 5 turns it survived (narrowly) two Vortex missiles and it shut down Reavers 5 times. Absolutely insane. I thought I’d lost it early on after losing the lone-Reaver very quickly, but the Warlords were able to put out enough punishing fire after the Dire Wolf shut down shields to take out Reaver after Reaver.

Best part though was definitely his own Warhound slowly cooking itself off each turn, getting in the way of my Princeps full-striding at the end to get the objective for the win and the ardex defensor cannons killing the Warhound as it strode past it. Beautiful.

Lunch Day 2

Another day at GFTW another good meal. Pulled pork topped off with some grilled veg and apple sauce, what’s not to love? Seriously, probably the best event food I’ve ever had.

Game 4

I have played a lot of Titanicus, like, easily upwards of 150+ games at this point. This is at least in the top 3 games I’ve ever played. Facing up against Will’s Astorum in the form of a Ferrox Light maniple, Support Warlord, and a banner of Lancer knights. After 3 wins and only losing that lone-Reaver in each of my games with the rest of my titans surviving I was probably feeling a little cocky at this point too.

My Dire Wolf really fell through here. No matter how much you try and make something like this reliable with all those re-rolls and free pushes you can still simply fail to roll above a 3+ and do nothing instead. That’s exactly what happened in this game, it got one shut down before it died to some Lancers – it’s paired Reaver got a nice melta cannon shot in and wiped the banner shortly after.

The twinned Warlords and other Reaver did what they were doing before: cleaning up shop one engine at a time until nothing was left but the 3 Warhounds. The Fortis benefit here really did keep the Warlords alive longer than they should have, but between explosions and enemy Warlord power fist attacks it was still weakened enough. What was easily the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in game: between a Warhound charging and my then-surviving Warlord firing 7 god engines fell in swift order. Between mag detonations, wild fires, collisions and even a catastrophic meltdown 7 titans died from 2 activations. That last standing Warhound very nearly died as well but simply refused, taking just enough damage to track its legs but no more to kill it.

The only loss of the weekend but Titanicus is that game that you lose at but have as much fun the entire way through – this was incredible.

Report Ends

Soggy:

I’ll keep going to these events as they keep running them. The relaxed pace and vibe means you have plenty of time to hang out, play other games – I had my first game of IRL Bloodbowl and slam hams.

Bair: 

Yeah these events absolutely rule and I will go to a Greetings from the Warp Titanicus event every single time they have one. Even just got my ticket for the next one as I was typing this up, stoked!