Somewhere the Tea's getting cold...

Friday, 22 July 2016

Clash of the Titans

Well hello dear readers and apologies for the long bout of radio silence! A mixture of enjoying country life...

... getting stuck in to a new job (albeit on a short term casual basis) ...

... and generally being completely knackered of an evening has meant that it's been a bit quiet round here.

However, I have not been entirely idle! I've managed to get down to meet up at least once a month with my old gaming group consisting of various old salts up and down the M1 between York and Nottingham - far too good a bunch to lose regular gaming contact with. There is therefore a bit of a backlog of games and pics to share of the games I've been playing which have included such curiousities as Space Fleet and Adeptus Titanicus as well as old stalwarts like Rogue Trader.

It is the speed with which Bring Out Your Lead 2016 is approaching that prompts this post and as I'm running a game of Adeptus Titanicus on the Saturday (and may be persuaded to play the odd game on the Friday afternoon unless I get a better offer!) I thought I'd best prove that I'm both alive and have played the game at least once to check that it all works!

My combined Traitor force of Fire Lords Warlord Titans and Warlords and Warhounds of the Deaths Heads Legion.

The Crater Good

One of the big things for me that really makes wargaming enjoyable is the terrain on the table top. Not only does it add to the whole spectacle but it often enhances game play and adds new tactical dimensions. In fact the whole narrative of a game can centre on a particularly important piece of terrain and the desperate struggles to control it.

Now most of my terrain is geared to Warhammer Fantasy as that is what I've played most of over the years. Happily much of it has been usable in Rogue Trader games as well - I still plan on playing an RT Siege game one day with Imperial Army units assaulting the Mighty Fortress, defended by feral and Space Orks!

Epic poses a slight problem in that you have to create a new set of scenery to cater for the much smaller scale. I've got by in the past with just plonking down the card buildings on my grass mat and getting on with it but that's always bugged me a bit - where are the streets and roads that make the presence of massive gothic sky scrapers on a grassy plain believable?

A new step forward in Green Belt development - road-less High Rise accommodation!

The Prima Incubatoria

The secrets of Titan construction are shrouded in the mists of time. There are even those who believe that they were not manufactured; that these monstrous machines are the Emperor's very will, manifested in cold plasteel and adamantium. That these ancient machines blaze with a machine life of their own is well known amongst the Adeptus Mechanicus. Indeed each Princeps' first challenge is to attempt to master the fierce spirit of his Titan, lest he be consumed and the machine run wild.

Though the knowledge of their forging is lost and though many and varied are the rituals and incantations involved in preparing a Titan for battle, fret not dear reader. I have anointed myself with the sacred unguents, lit the incense and chanted the litany of awakening, More to the point I have solved the complex mathematical algorithms involved in working out points values for different Titan builds according to the Codex Titanicus!

Many Grox were sacrificed to bring you this post.

Entropy! Entropy!

They've all got it - Entropy!

Up Close and Personal

The Imperial Guard are not exactly renowned for their ferocity at close quarters in general. However I was rather pleased, after I'd had a root around my Epic bitz box the other week, to find that somehow I had acquired enough troopers to form an Assault Company and an Ogryn support detachment!

In a war torn galaxy, full of such terrors as Daemons, Ork Nobz and all manner of Tyranid beasties, it seems there are still men out there who are willing to strap a jet pack on, holster a pair of Laspistols and get up close and personal with whatever Xeno threat they are facing - with not a scrap of power armour to be seen!

Ogryns have always been a favourite of mine and I still covet those excellent Rogue Trader Ogryns sculpted by Bob Olley. In 2nd ed. Space Marine they are pretty nasty in close combat with a big CAF of 6 and they even get a saving throw of +6. Their Ripper Guns may only have a range of 10cm but they do have a -1 save modifier. Led by their Bonehead - a relative genius by Ogryn standards thanks to the brain surgery performed on them, Ogryns make great shock troops as long as they survive long enough to get stuck in. I do like their childlike faith in the Emperor, believing that each of their orders, no matter how trivial, has been personally issued to them by the Emperor himself!

I'm looking forward to trying the Assault Company out in the next game I take the Guard to. Not sure how effective they'll be with their terrifying CAF of 1 and it's quite a small Company by Guard standards at 15 stands of troops with the usual 2 command stands and Rhino. It'll certainly make a nice change to have my infantry bounding forward at 30cm a turn on charge orders and ignoring terrain thanks to their jet packs!

Oh and the thought of 75 lunatics, plucked from the depths of some god forsaken Hive or Barbarian Feral world and given uniforms, training and rocket packs, coming screaming out of the air at the enemy is pretty cool too!

Lone Wolf - Battle for Magnamund

Something a bit different today and something I was much more excited to receive than chocolate eggs that's for sure!

This not so little beauty (the parcel was huge and pleasingly heavy) was waiting for me when we got back from a very pleasant Easter weekend with the family. Yup - one of the Kick Starters I backed finally came good. Well almost.

Lone Wolf - The Battle for Magnamund was and still hopefully could be a really exciting table top game set in the world of Lone Wolf. Gary Chalk has produced some beautiful new illustrations for both the board pieces and the card miniatures and after a first glance at the rules, the game itself looks like it has plenty of potential.

Gigantic Skeletal Death

Lexicanian Trask prayed the Rebel advance was faltering. Below him the Landraider and Predator continued fire on the Traitor Titan while the Ultramarines milled about trying to regain formation. Two Loyalist Titans raced forward on an intercept course. Trask upped the intensity of his magnoculars. Filters cut in to prevent him being blinded by plasma flare. He made out the insignia of the approaching allies: Warp Runners.

The enemy Titan loomed like gigantic skeletal death over the wasteland of twisted girders and broken buildings. Trask felt impotent and alone as far below his brother Marines fought to stave off the enemy advance.

The battle teetered in the balance. Trask hoped the Warp Runners could stop the Deaths Head before it reached the Bromium Refinery. He knew that it would take only one unlucky hit to make the whole ammo dump go up like an out of control reactor.

Excerpt and illustration from the Adeptus Titanicus rule book.

Right then - back to the Horus Heresy and some epic scale goodness!

Firstly I want to share with you some snaps I took of the lovely old Titan models in Bryan Ansell's marvelous display cabinets that can be seen at the Foundry down in Newark. Also worth checking out is Steve Casey's excellent posts of Bryan's Titan collection.

These were the original metal Titan prototypes that were used in the publicity pictures for Adeptus Titanicus.

Traitors and Loyalists were represented by the Deaths Heads and Fire Wasps respectively.

It was certainly a novel experience to study them in the flesh and take snaps for painting references rather than the usual casting about through Google images and peering through old rulebooks and White Dwarf magazines.

Suffice it to say that the Fire Wasps are next in the painting queue, although I'll also be painting up some Warp Runners and making a Bromium Refinery so I can make up a scenario based on the bits of narrative that appear throughout the Adeptus Titanicus rule book.

Seeing these venerable old minis has also strengthened my resolve to try and track down a MK1 metal Titan of my own although that will have to wait until my finances are in better health!

It is a shame that they didn't go with this original design in a way, as much as I like the old plastic Warlords, there's something about these MK1's that really floats my boat - the head and carapace in particular.

Anyhow, I'll have to keep dreaming for now! Here's my efforts in the mean time.

Deaths Heads Warlords advance through the ruins, supported by Sons of Horus Marines and Land Raiders.

These guys are the first in my preparations for the Adeptus Titanicus game I plan on running at BOYL 2016 - be great if I can nab one of the tables by the display cabinets and those great old MK1's who grace the Adeptus Titanicus box!

I had fun looking up some suitably moribund Latin phrases for names of these Deaths Heads.
This is Curum Perficio - My Journey Ends

I'm planning on painting up three Warlords each for three Loyalist and three Traitor Titan Legions. All these Titans will be magnetised so that weapon choices can be changed as per the players' preferences. The banners have also been magnetised but that's more to make them easier to transport!

I'm hoping to achieve a bit of balance by enforcing a points limit based on the rules for designing your own Titans that appeared in the Codex Titanicus expansion. Don't worry if you don't want to stump up the £25 or so for one on Ebay though as I'll be posting some guidelines on the process later.

For anyone wanting to bring their own Titans that are fully tooled (and glued) up it might be a case of bringing fewer models to the table to get in the points limit, or lowering the power of the weapons but more of that in another post.

Pulvis Et Umbra Sumus - We Are Dust and Shadow

I was quite pleased with how easily these were to paint up - the colour scheme is pretty simple and effective and the dazzle style camo on the carapace wasn't too onerous.

Even the banners were pretty straight forward with a steady hand! The eagle-eyed among you might have spotted that I used skull transfers from some old Undead transfer sheets I found.