Forging a Legio. My Journey into Adeptus Titanicus



So which do I choose?


Around this time last year, Adeptus Titanicus was released with great fanfare and excitement. Despite not actually playing the game all those years ago, I have fond memories of Epic 40k from the Final Liberation series of computer games and so naturally the opportunity to play its spiritual successor piqued my interest. I have however had a love-hate relationship with Games Workshop boxed game policy in the past so I wanted to wait to see if there would be continued support going forward before investing my time and effort into the game.




Final Liberation; How 12 year old me spent his time in 1997..

I am happy to see that so far with Adeptus Titanicus there seems to be a plan to support the game for a while and from their designer commentary there looks to be new types of titan in the pipeline so hopefully we will be able to enjoy releases for many months to come. There also seems to be scope in the rules for additional units of differing sizes and also for other troop types so maybe we will be able to see various vehicles and other races represented if the game sells well enough.

OK.. So now I am playing with miniature giant robots. What exactly do I want to take?





From an aesthetic point of view, I always preferred Reaver and Warhound Titans over the larger Warlord so ideally I wanted to use them to try and fill out the points. Looking over the rules of the game, it seems to me that maneuverability is key. You can't get shot if you are out of arc and some of the missions actually require you to move to different parts of the battlefield so luckily this fits in nicely with how I wanted to build the force. Note that I only have been referring to titans here and not knights; I have never been overly fond of them in Warhammer 40k and I'm in it for the giant robots so it's unlikely that they will be playing a part in my force going forward.



Looking over the various maniple options in the three books released so far (core rulebook, Titandeath and Doom of Molech), the suitable maniple options for what I want to achieve looks to be as follows;



Of the three, I'm looking at either the Venator or Lupercal Light Maniples. The Ferrox is good but looks to be better suited for extreme close range fighting (which may or may not be possible with ranged weapons given the speed of a Warhound). Of these, the Lupercal Light Maniple seems the most flexible with the ability to seriously damage larger titans even with lighter weaponry. Being able to get round to the rear of a warlord for example, would mean a hefty +4 on the damage table bringing even Vulkan Mega-Bolters up to an effective strength of 8 before other damage modifiers. 

I did still want to include the Reaver titan however and the Lupercal does not allow for this as standard so I would have to look at either taking the Reaver separately or examine the specific Legio special rules to be able to fit it into the maniple;





The ability to replace a Warhound in the Lupercal with a Reaver and some cool Wargear to allow the Warhounds to act as spotters for pre-measuring ranges and making Reavers faster with less stress on the reactor. Lust for Glory also seems to be quite strong against forces with fewer Titans as you can reroll 1s to hit with +1 armour rolls against your chosen target (boosting to rerolling all hits for your princeps senioris if you and your opponent agree to choose traits).






This Legio is all about the Lost Sons special rule. Unlike Legio Gryphonicus, the titan you replace in your maniple counts as the titan you replaced, meaning the Reaver would count as a Warhound for the purposes of the Lupercal Hunting pack special rule. The Reaver does not have the Squadrons rule on its command terminal so it cannot join other warhounds in a squadron normally but using hunting pack we are able to gain all the squadron benefits. From my reading, the interactions should be as follows;

  • The Reaver doesn't have the squadron rule so it cant join at the beginning of the game with any other warhounds.
  • For the rest of the warhounds, I have to choose at the beginning of the game if they are joining in squadrons and with which titans.
  • At the beginning of each turn I can choose to form any or all of the warhounds in the maniple into a single special squadron (including the reaver), which allows the reaver to make coordinated strikes, merge voids, etc just like any other warhound.
  • All warhounds in the maniple get the +2 to coordinated strikes with other members in their normal squadron anyway even if they aren't arranged into the special squadron.

Overall I think Legio Fortidus gives more to the Reaver and is overall more flexible then Gryphonicus so that's what we are going to go for.



So What's actually in the force then?





  
I have built the Reaver to take advantage of the Lupercal and Fortidus rules. Given that it can squadron with the Warhounds to get +2 to the damage rolls on combined strikes I've opted for weaker multi-shot weaponry complimented by the melta cannon for some serious punch. It's effective range caps out at 24" so no doubt it will need to quickly cross the battlefield and will use the squadron rules to make sure that it gets there in one piece. I'm still not sure if the increased range on the Volcano Cannon is better then the fusion rule on the Melta Cannon so more testing will be needed.



Probably the titan which can put the most damage onto both other titans and itself, as long as it can hit. It normally squadrons with the Reaver using the Lupercal and Fortidus rules so that the Reaver has more ablative voids. Given the shield-stripping loadout on the Reaver, it should be able to shoot and hopefully help to cripple enemy titans before they have the chance to do some serious damage.






The idea behind these two warhounds is that they are all rounders, being able to both strip shields with their Mega Bolters, and then put some damage onto the hull with the Plasma Blastguns. They will normally Squadron up to give some more survivability by merging their void shields and can coordinated strike with each-other for extra damage.



So given that double flamer titans are cool and that I wanted some more variety, I decided that it would be fun to include one for both knight hunting and to put 6 automatic hits onto any larger target that may come in range. The idea is that he will usually run off by himself using cover to try and keep out of harms way for long enough to get in flamer range.

All of the above fits neatly into 1250 points. I've been having fun playing it so far and have loved painting the models so overall it's money well spent for me. Now that I have the force painted I am looking into expanding it up to 1750 points by most likely adding another Reaver (probably with Warp Missile and Fist for some variety) but I may wait until the next wave of releases is out to see what Games Workshop will come up with next.

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