Big, bigger, Titanic

Welcome back to the Armoury folks.

Last November I finally got my grubby little hands on Adeptus Titanicus, one of the recent Specialist Games released by Games Workshop. 

Pitting Titan against Titan against the backdrop of the Horus Heresy, Titanicus triggered my hobby-senses in all the right places, so, with my gaming regulars Thor & Sam, we launched ourselves into a new game, and new hobby challenge.

I'll be talking you through the contents of the box after the break!

What has it got in it's pocketses?

Adaptus Titanicus: The Horus Heresy, to use the game's full name is a boxed game, released last august by Games Workshop. Like most of their other boxed games, Titanicus is a mix between a boardgame and a miniature game, leaning more strongly on the later. 

Story-wise, it focusses on the intercenine wars of the Horus Heresy, where the nascent Imperium of Man was torn in half by Horus turning renegade, taking with him roughly half of the Imperium's military might. Players take command of units of Titans, the Imperium's largest land-bound war machines, and their supporting units of the Knightly Houses.

So, let's take a look at the box proper shall we?

At the time of release, GW made several formula's available for players to get into the game. As always, you could get everything you needed (rulebook, gaming aids, models,..) separately. They also provided two bundles, combining the rulebook and gaming aids with a number of models, and a discount.

After missing the original release in august (the discounted bundles had sold out before Thor or me could order them online), we were lucky to find a couple of boxed at the Crisis gaming convention in Antwerp later that year (managing to get a 3rd box for Sam, another of our regular gaming buddies)

We got the Grand Master Edition of the game, which is the most expensive bundle you could get, but also the one with the biggest discount (€265 as opposed to €330 if we bought everything separately)

Contents of the box, picture courtesy of Spiky Bits.

Little overview of the boxed contents:

• Rulebook
• 2 Quick Reference sheets containing the most pertinent info you'd otherwise have to look up during the game.
• 2 Warlord Titans, so far the largest class of Titans in the game.
• 6 Questoris Knights (they're adorable, and pretty damn scary if they can get to your titans!)
• Command Terminals (stat cards) for the Titans and Knights
• A set of gaming aids (dice, blast & flamer templates, arc templates, stratagem & weapon cards, 2 rulers
• A fairly extensive set of the new Civitas Imperials terrain
• A set of Battlefield Assets

On to the models!

The Warlord Titan is a beauty. Standing almost as tall as an 40k Imperial Knight, it's definitely an imposing model, sharing almost all of the detail of it's larger, 40k-sized counterpart. The model comes in 3 sprue's, one being all of the armour panels. Really helps in painting, as you can prime the entire sprue and at the very least block in the colours. Working with sub-assemblies comes highly recommended, but it also very viable, due to the way the kit is designed. Bonus points to GW to also make room for magnets for people thusly inclined. Each Warlord comes with the bits to equip it with 2 arm-mounted Volcano cannons and a paired Apocalypse missile launcher on it's carapace. The 2 mauler cannons and lascannons sitting just under the top carapace plating offer some close range fire support.

From left to right, a Reaver Titan and Warhound Titan, with the
Warlord lurking in the back, side by side with a 40k Drop Pod.

Much like the Warlords, the Knights are as detailed as their larger counterparts, which is impressive. There's 3 models on a sprue, and each sprue builds 1 knight equipped with a battlecannon, thermal cannon and avenger gatling cannon. For melee, only the reaper chainswords are available, but given that all Knight melee weapons use the same stats, that's not much of an issue. For secondary weapons, each Knight comes equipped with a heavy stubber (for cosmetic purposes only). One in every 3 can instead be given a meltagun, which comes into play only from very short distances.

The terrain included is very easy to build. There's 3 tiers of wall section, which stack on top of each other, allowing you to get a very varied terrain setup going with the content from this box alone. The battlefield assets include among others, a void shield generator, a missile silo and a communications array. They can provide localized strategic effects during the course of the game.

Decided to get the terrain painted first this time around.

So far, Thor and I have gone at it, and yesterday saw Sam's first battle of Titanicus. We're super exited about it, and a first battle rep and game overview will soon be found right here, in the Armoury.

See you all next time!

Aam.