Horus Heresy Sneak Peeks & Adeptus Titanicus!
February 6, 2017 by brennon
The Horus Heresy Weekender showed off a lot of fantastic models and more for fans of Forge World to get stuck into. We've nabbed a few of the previews here below thanks to The Hairy Painter starting with some Legio Custodes.
Here we have a number of different characters for you to use when leading your golden warriors into battle. You'll have to forgive me for now having their names but they are looking fantastic and it's neat to see the Legio Custodes becoming more of a thing.
Supporting these characters in battle we saw some Legio Custodes who have forgone the melee weapons and their rather epic halberds in favour of regular ranged weapons.
Once again I'm loving the details on offer here and the helmet designs are fantastic. It would be fantastic to see them painted up to see whether or not the details still shine out when you've got colour on them.
It wasn't just Legio Custodes getting a look in however as we also saw the Space Wolves Contemptor Dreadnought...
...and these Occult Blades Terminators for those of you who love the Thousand Sons.
Plenty more was spoiled over the weekend for fans of the Horus Heresy and beyond but these were just a number of the key spots that we had to show off. Legio Custodes armies are going to look SO awesome once they start to get more warriors.
Adeptus Titanicus
James M. Hewitt and his team were also showing off a special game at the event. Folks got to watch them play out a game of Adeptus Titanicus using some of the big models in the Forge World and Games Workshop collection.
By all accounts, the game went down well and there was even a seminar which dropped some more information and talked about the history of this game.
It's neat to see diving into the process of how the game is coming along and hopefully, it won't be long until we actually get to play it on the tabletop!
Did you go to the Horus Heresy Weekender?
"James M. Hewitt and his team were also showing off a special game at the event. Folks got to watch them play out a game of Adeptus Titanicus..."
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Looks like it’s time to dust of the old first gen plastic titans and see if I can get the god awful glossy paintjobs off them… I still have the styrofoam buildings somewhere too!
Will be interested to see how Adeptus Titanicus is received. The initial reports seem good. I hope it is a success, but this is mostly because James M Hewitt has entered my elite group of games people that I like and I want to do well …..personality based gaming ??? … I may need a therapist.
great looking new figures a titan battle they/someone should try the Mechanicium Mars battle including an imperial class titan.
There is a a big playing base for Epic. I do wonder about them moving the whole thing to 8mm if they continue with infantry and tanks etc . It will alienate probably their biggest market
Well considering its a market they abandoned years ago now, the damage was already done!
Ah but they are making nice and re-releasing a lot of games. I’d have thought Necromunda/Mordheim and Battlefleet Gothic get first dibs though.
Those Legio Custodes models are looking really good. That Space Wolves Contemptor Dreadnought and those Thousand Sons Sekhmet Terminators are also really good.
Gee, looking at the size of those Titanicus models, when will there be remote controlled walking versions with laser pointers as weapons?
You know this are 40K models nt the one for Adeptus Titanicus? And he first Custodes was a event exclusive, which is sad because i really like him.
And a little bit more about AT:
“ONTO THE GAME ITSELF.
Mechanically i was not able to directly play the game but I paid as much attention as I could whilst taking photos, and I think I have a pretty good perception of it. Conceptually its clear as crystal (sans knights but its easy to imagine the game with them)
Imagine titans as something of a giant battleship. Vehicle so vast they have armour differences for each location – Legs are actually quite strong on most titans. This is done because most things a titan fight will be attacking from below and you might imagine that titan vs titan combat, gettingyour leg blown out is badnews.
(The rules are for a certain FW. They even have a similar layout (but a blueish tint instead of red) to the book. The models themselves im not sure, will likely find out sunday)
However, not as bad as getting your fucking face shot up. Which happened on at least two occasions that game.
If your void shields are down, and your hit in the face, you can expect your moderatii to die and your MIU’s severed.
A reaver titan may expect to survive about 3 bad hits to the face before being destroyed if memory serves me right (it had also been beaten up bad before)
You may be fearing “oh fuck alphastrike city” but you’d be very wrong (at least if your a titan, not sure on knights as none took part). Multiple reasons for this and I will explain the conceptual part first;
Ranges matter ALOT in this game. First turn only Apoc launchers and Volcano cannons were in range.
(The titan weapons seen, turbo lasers, plasma blastgun, sunfury plasma annhiliator, laser blasters, melta cannons and inferno guns, all weapons that were not in range turn 1 (aside from one instance of for laser blaster/turbo laser i’ll get to that in a moment)
Onto mechanically why: the game is done in phases like 40, however each “turn” each sides roll a D10 (yes the game uses d10s!) for initiative.
The side with the higher initiative activates a titan first.
For example (there weas a phase before this, which was not done in turn one, i;ll check my actual written notes soon) Team 1 moves a warlord titan. Team 2 moves a titan of their choice and so on.
Once all titans are moved, we enter the repair phase, where the tech priest on board will begin to repair any current damage. This can be stuff such as plasma reactors leaking etc. Then its damage control ; are these leaking system causing bad effects? what means are being used to dampen these?
I’ll go back to more specifics once i’ve covered damage because its quite important.
We enter the combat phase after this. Naturally this where (most) the attacking happens.
Titans cannot split weapons without giving an order beforehand (more later). First you roll to hit as per usual however other factors are taken into account; dead moderatii, range (seemed to be for certain weapon types) and cover all adjust these values to hit.
Then, the enemy rolls a void save. This is dependent on how many void shields they currently have operating. Shields tend to become less effective as the game goes on due to systems being damaged and the shields being bombarded so less are operating at one time.
Once the enemy has no shields (or they fail a save iirc) you will begin hitting them.
This is where things get interesting. the old familar D6+Strength, then a bonus if you flanked (there didnt seem to be side armour for each component. Probably for the best otherwise we might have 3 values for each damn piece and there are alot of pieces)
Then your total is compared against the various thresholds for that location. Normal, Critical, Devastating
Normal, obviously, just does damage. Critical and devastating you roll on tables.
These cause additional damage as well as special effects. Devastating ones tend to be permanent – such as a plasma reactor being blown open or a crew member being heavily wounded.
Thats the essence of the game. There are of course specific for deaths of a titan.
One such result is a rather understated “silenced” – crew is dead, perforated beyond function, but stands tall and remains on the board.
Another is “laid low” the titan scatters a short distance, then you roll for the direction it falls
Of course more dramatic explosions exist.
Before all this however (im not sure it applies first turn, it may of just been to help familiaries people with the game to skip it first turn) is Orders Phase.
Each titan has a number of orders. These include: Emergency repairs (bonuses to repairing but you either move, or shoot – you’ll actually do alot of moving in this game. ALOT). Stride – immiedately move (iirc) but again, you must either move or fire.
There was one more orders but alas it was not used. OH WAIT. CHARGE.
Charge; move. make immiedate attack.. you may of course make another melee attack later.
Melee combat, from what little i’ve seen is absolutely viable. A reaver punched another 4 times in the face, causing 2 criticals, forcing the enemy titan (which had a chainfist!) to back off like the Treasonous Legio Mortis pussycat it was
(Yeah repair was after move)
So how do you do orders?
Well if your the Princep Seniororous (no idea how to spell bullshit latin), you pass your order automatically everyone else makes d10 command checks.
Fail, and well, many guard players know what happens next; no more orders for that team.
We now also have something familar to Battletech players; heat! In this case its the plasma reactor.
You can boost certain actions by powering up your reactor.
For example movement can be exchanged for a better value that is listed in brackets, special rules of some weapons (for example laser blasters can be used to overpower a shield) can be activated ,some weapons require powering (Belicosa’s for example)
Plasma weapons can be outright simply improved using reactor power, though the boosts do not work against void shields because of how these weapons work (so much like tabletop, void shields are countered by chaffire, though some strong weapon types can defeat them)
Another use is boostingyour shields. Declaring power to your void shields (it done per instance of weapon fired, so not like jinking) gives you the ability to reroll 1’s.
So one believable tactic is to spook someone into keep overcharging their reactor, eventually they will overload it and bad things happen.
Bad things include the machine spirit trying to throw you off like a pissed off horse, forcing your princep to engage in a Machine-Spirit rodeo via a command check
As I mentioned earlier; titans manuervarability is limited. This includes arcs of rotation – you can charge and rotate btw
I believe thats everything besides some loose change intricasies.
This includes no premeasuring.
Yes, currently premeasuring is not allowed. No weapon uses fantasy cannonball rules currently
If you failed to hit witha blast weapon, you scatter d10 (no direct hit)
Orders that failed – unit carries on as normal.
Voiods do not work in melee – this might be expected.
Overcharging will not (at least as movement goes) cancel your action. Unless of coures your dead.
One order I forgot, that made the game very interesting; First Fire. You fire a single weapon in the order phase, you may not move.
Points cost as per usual are the basis of the game balance (in addition too force org) weapons them selves have specifiic casts
Shields can regen, just like table top.”
That information is from here: http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/51552131/
And here you can see the command panels: http://colhertford.blogspot.de/2017/02/adeptus-titanicus-review-part-1-command.html
I do believe its not event exclusive just WHW exclusive. The people at the event got first dibs on it. If I remember correctly a WHW staff member tweeted that its available from them.
Ah good. Just when I thought that I had to start curbing my wargaming excesses I see this Titanicus insanity!
I salute these crazy people. Blood for the blood god!
Games Workshop/Forgeworld has now progressed to the stage that if I won the Lottery I could devote my entire working week to the hobby without exhausting my interest.
What is the point of work? We are definitely living in a computer simulation 🙁
8mm Titanicus 🙂
I’m really looking forward to Adeptus Titanicus! They also just released the first Psi-Titan info since the 90s.
New rules + FW miniatures = pure win
Overall some very nice previews. Both Thousand sons and Wolves seem to have gotten so nice characterful rules and minis. Custodes are great and Sister stuff looks interesting.
Will be interested in AT but will see how it rolls out. Personally glad they are stepping back from epic to a titan focus.