The sun was shining (sort of), the day was young and full of promise, and so naturally we went along to our function room of choice for a nice big game of Adeptus Titanicus. This was 3000 points a side, more or less, with my Fureans fighting alongside a battlegroup from Legio Vulturum (though looking suspiciously like the Murder Lords I had played the previous Friday). Our combined forces mustered the warlord Knightfall (presumably salvaged and hastily welded back together), three reavers, five warhounds and three knight lancers (allies of the Fureans from House Mordred).
The Loyalists, on the other hand, had two warlords (including the King of Crowns, aka Coronum Rex), three reavers, and another five warhounds. The scenario was one cooked up by one of the Loyalist players. Down one end of the table was a part-ruined city, containing command centres for both sides. At the start of the game these were shielded and invulnerable; getting the shields down required the titan legions to escort/deliver three squads of troops to an installation in the centre of the table (which we rather facetiously renamed the car park) from where the shields could be deactivated (eventually), at which point the command centres could be destroyed, winning the game.
My thought was that it would be best to have a heavy hitter near the objective when the shields went down so I put the reaver Iron Khan in the city, supported by the Mordred knights. Amica Ignis went down in a position between the city and the car park where it could fire upon both battle zones, while the warhound Celeri Victrix and its unnamed companion were given the job of screening the three Vulturum warhounds as they escorted the rhino APCs to the car park. The rest of the Vulturum engines filled out our battle-line. I was a bit dismayed to find that there would be a melee-equipped reaver and a warlord waiting for Iron Khan in the city, but the rest of the Loyalist deployment basically mirrored our own. (The Loyalists were a mixture of Legio Osedax and non- aligned titans, which meant that they had more strategy points to play with than our side.)
Chaos deployment.
Loyalist deployment.
It soon became clear that both sides were using warhounds to escort the APCs to the car park – the main differences being that the Loyalists were running theirs in a squadron, while the traitor legions had them outnumbered five to three. The exchange of fire here was brutal with even the merged shields of the loyalists taking a pounding.
Meanwhile, Iron Khan faced off against a loyalist reaver, flanked by the knights of Mordred. At least until Coronum Rex took a couple of volcano cannon shots from down the table and vapourised two of them. It’s a tough life being a knight sometimes.
Iron Khan kept moving forward, though careful to avoid putting itself in the sightline of the lurking warlord. It was Offensive Surge time for the Fureans and the enemy reaver took a lot of fire, dropping its shields and taking a heavy hit to the head from Iron Khan‘s melta cannon.
Back closer to the car park, the fighting intensified and a loyalist warhound scuttled forward to engage Knightfall up close.
The ground shook and windows shattered as Iron Khan blared its war-horns and lumbered forward to engage the loyalist reaver. A ponderous swing of the chainfist tore the enemy titan’s head from its shoulders, and its reactor went critical and exploded, badly damaging one of Iron Khan‘s legs.
There was more bad news for the loyalists as the crippled enemy reaver also exploded, the fireball also destroying the damaged warhound close by. The loyalist centre was collapsing, with only Coronum Rex holding the line.
On the left Chaos flank seven damaged warhounds and two reavers were still fighting it out, many of their reactors running too hot for comfort. But the carnage continued.
In the space of one round all the Loyalist warhounds were destroyed by enemy fire or chain reactions, along with the immobilised Celeri Victrix.
In the city, the warlord stomped forward, crushing the last knight underfoot, but Iron Khan moved in, revving its chainfist and roaring its lust for more carnage. The warlord took damage to the torso from the melee weapon and a carapace mega-bolter – the rules for the Ferrox maniple and the princeps senioris’ Titan Stalker ability synergised very agreeably, giving me +2 to penetrate armour in this fight.
The Osedax commander realised that if Iron Khan could put down the warlord, the game would be effectively over, and started trying to target it accordingly with Coronum Rex. But the missile pods were out of arc and the reactor was running too hot for volcano cannon shots to be worth the risk.
But the Osedax warlord was badly outnumbered and the last Furean warhound moved aggressively forward to outflank it, dropping its shields and damaging a knee with its plasma gun.
Knightfall kept up the pressure on Coronum Rex, damaging its body. Finally Amica Ignis had its shot, firing its laser blaster and further damaging the leg. Then the volcano cannon fired, hitting the weapon – but I had a re-roll left from Many Faces of the Omnissiah, and used that to get a body hit instead. The blast of energy punched into the chassis of the warlord – engine kill!
The expiring warlord fired its weapons in frustration at Iron Khan, volcano cannon fire clipping both the Chaos reaver and the Loyalist warlord as they contended with each other, and then crashed to the ground. The Loyalists were down to the warlord which Iron Khan was slowly carving up, a warhound still angrily headbutting Knightfall in the crotch, and a reaver at the far end of the battlefield, facing off against three reavers, a warlord and a warhound. There was little prospect of them hanging on until the shields went down and less of them being able to assault the Chaos command centre, and so they conceded.
Not 100% sure about this home-brewed scenario, but it was a memorable game with moments of despair (the warlord melting two of my knights with one shot) and triumph (Iron Khan tearing the other reaver’s head off and taking a chunk out of the other Loyalist warlord). I think our side had a bit of an advantage, in that both I and the other Chaos player were using full legion rules (and the Furean special rules are potentially very strong), while one of the Loyalists was basically running vanilla titans. The trade-off was that the Loyalists had 8 strategy points to our 6, but I’m not sure that’s a great exchange. Anyway, a fun occasion which has made us think about playing more big games in the future.
Great report here from Andy from the club.
Check out his personal blog here