Warhounds 2 Warmasters

Test Match 2

The first test match didn’t have photos taken or anything remotely approaching organisation. I even managed to forgot to bring a spare Warhound for Alex to use to allow him to trial a full Regia Maniple (Two Warlords and Three Warhounds) so a blast marker stood in for the affectionately dubbed ‘GhostHound’. Real professional levels of gamesmanship 🙂

So, as I have my final tournament event of the year next weekend (Warfare 2022) Alex kindly found time to pop over and play a second game – this time with LSW (LongSufferingWife) in attendance so that she could refamiliarise herself with the game, be amused by our over-the-table banter, take photos at the top and bottom of turns and, perhaps most importantly of all, provide sounds effects for void shields dropping and being raised. We provide atmosphere round these parts.

Before moving onto a summary of the game, here seems as good a place as any to list the match details – as much as because I am liable to forget to add them later or will add them piecemeal, dotted about several unrelated paragraphs.

We were following the new Matched Play book and played a 2000pt a side match. This provides us with and a hand of Stategems – from which you may spend points from your Stratagem Pool as you choose during the game, a Strategem Pool of 6 points (7 for me as one on my Princeps’ traits grants one additional Strategem point)

Vulcanum

Extergimus Maniple

Sunfury plasma, Volkite, Turbo Lasers with Twinned Machine Spirit

2x Warlords with Mori Quake, Graviton Ruinator, Apocalypse Missile Launchers and Twinned Machine Spirit.

Aux Titan: Direwolf with Neutron Laser and Twinned Machine Spirit

Support Banner: Cerastus Knight Lancers, Scion and two Martials

Astorum

Regia Maniple

Warlord ‘King’

Sunfury Plasma, Bellicosa Volcano Cannon, Gatling Array, Tracking Gyros, Bastion Shielding, heat dumping wargear – allowed heat to be vented on 2+ for own round

Warlord ‘Queen’

Mori Quake, Graviton Ruinator, Apocalypse Missile Launchers, Tracking Gyros, Bastion Shielding

2x Warhounds with Plasmas, Vulcan Megabolters, Bastion Shielding

Warhound with 2x Graviton Destructors, Bastion Shielding

Support Banner: Cerastus Knight Lancers, Scion and two Martials

It is probably worth mentioning that Alex and I are fairly relaxed in our approach to playing games of Titanicus. We tend to chat as we slowly set the table and ease ourselves into the game. In this instance, close to two hours had passed and LSW decided that without intervention she’d likely as not be asleep before the first shots were fired and so, she had yet a further role to fill: Umpire. As we finished more-hastily setting up the table (I need a desert/Martian surface mat…) under her stern supervision, we reached for our shiny new Matched Play books and began the ‘serious business’ of determining deployment, objectives and priority.

I received Seize the Quadrants as my Primary and one of the new secondaries, which bears some explaining.

For Seize the Quadrants, the table is divided into 4 squares – quadrants – and you seize one by having the highest scale of titan alive on it at the game end. I would earn 5 victort points for a single quadrant. 15 victory points for two and if I managed to secure three quadrants I would secure 25 Victory Points.

For the secondary objective, I had to designate one titan a ‘Spear‘ and another the ‘Shield‘. The Spear had to kill a titan of it’s own scale or higher. The Shield had to survive the game. Once you have decided which is which – I chose my Plasma/Volkite Warlord as the Spear and one of my Quake/Grav Warlords as the Shield – you must decide which is ‘Alpha‘ and which is ‘Beta‘. If the Alpha succeeds in it’s mission, you get 9 victory points and if the Beta succeeds you get 6 victory points.

Alex received Retrieval and the same Secondary as myself.

For Retrieval, Alex had to place an objective token anywhere on a horizontal line across the centre of the board. He had to pick this up – an action performed automatically by having a titan begin the combat phase within 1 inch of the marker – and then take it back to his own table edge.

Deployment was 12′ by 12 boxes on the corners – obviously ignored by my Direwolf, who snuck herself into hiding behind the massive Mechanicus Forge Fane (this model was the spur to me purchasing Joel the 3Dprinter and is a massive accomplishment from GrimDark terrain) ready to dash into the heavy cover of some rocks running up against the table edge.

Turn 1

I opened up in the Strategem phase. Cursed Earth (Knights treat weapons as +1 Strength with regards their Ion Shields, Titans add 1 shield save to all attacks – basically adds Shieldbreaker(1) to every weapon), Command Bastion (can apply 1 Order to a Titan within 18′ after failing an Order roll), Titan Hunter Infantry (2 markers placed in cover each Strat phase – they provide low strength, short ranged fire to chip away at shields and give 2 extra activations. I hate them) and Augmented Servitor Clades on the Direwolf (+1 Servitor Clades).

I managed to get First Fire on one of the Quake/Grav Warlords and failed the next – the Command Bastion provided him the Order, but not being able to give Full stride to my Knights was likely going to hurt. Alex played Void Shield generator amongst his gun-platform Warlord and I realised, with a sinking feeling, I had been out-manouvred – his Warlord was going to be able to re-roll one attack dice or save dice a turn as his Princeps trait and he would be getting rerolls on failed shield rolls as long as that generator was in operation. Damn.

My first of the First Fires was aimed at the Warlord ‘Queen’ – an Extergimus-buffed quake-shell landed on target to catch the Queen, one of the Warhounds and the Void shield battery! Alex roundly saved each of the void shield rolls without breaking a sweat or expending a Bastion Shielding and I proceeded to fail to damage the Generator. Damn.

My second Fire Fire sent a once-more Extergimus-buffed quake-shell arcing up the table and to land on top of Alex’s Cerastus Lancers. 4 hits managed to provide 2 criticals (instant kills for 2 of the Knights) and then 2 devastating hits. The last Knight, the Scion, was left with the barest scrape of life remaining – but he hung in there, Shaken if not a little Stirred.

I moved my own Cerastus Lancers up to guard Alex’s objective – I had to keep him off of that until I could neutralise his Warhounds as they were the only realistic means of transporting the objective back to his table edge.

Alex advanced his Warhounds on the Queen-side of the table – using the Astorum trait to cover a pant-soilingly long distance and I suddenly realised that whilst I had drawn first blood and had the weight of guns in my favour, if his Warhounds were alive next turn they could easily be into my side arcs and peeling my Warlords to pieces – I had expended my Strategy pool almost entirely and had few options with which to reply.

I dropped my Direwolf behind the rocks, as intended and hoped he would be able to take down the Warhound that Alex was moving up to claim the objective. If I could manage to get a shutdown on that Warhound, the Knights wouldn’t have to weather a Maximal fired Plasmagun hit point-blank and the Warlord ‘King’, Dauntless, would be starved of a mobile Shield Battery.

The Damage Control phase was mostly uneventful – we both recovered any heat we had generated from firing/shield-boosts from ‘First Fire’ barrages.

Opening up the Combat phase, my Titan Hunters plinked shields from Alex’s Plasma/Vulcan Megabolter Warhound on the Queen’s side of the table, removing 2 of the shields and leaving an entirely too tempting target for me to consider come the joint Activation of my Quake/Grav Warlords. Alex responded by deleting my Cerastus Lancers in a salvo of Belicosa Volcano canno and Plasma Annihilator fire from the Dauntless. None remained.

Somewhat perturbed by the casual removal of my banner of Knights, I opened up with a Co-ordinated attack from my Direwolf and Plasma Warlord combo. The Direwolf’s Neutron Laser ran hot and generated 2 heat for the nimble engine – spicy – but it seemed worth it. Ignoring Void Shields, the shot was on target and dealt a Direct Hit point of damage to the Warhounds body. All I needed now was to roll a 3+ and the Warhound would be Shutdown – all voids would collapse and Alex would lose control of his own unit until the end phase! I rolled a 2. Of course I did. Direwolves are, apparently, swingy.

Rolling up his proverbial sleeves, my Plasma Warlord got to work. His Volkite forced void shield save after voidshield save, but Alex’s Bastion Shielding saved him with a single shield remaining. I dropped the TurboLasers onto the Warhound – pushing my reactor for Shieldbane – and the shields fell at last. Gambling against the fates, I charge the Plasma Annihilator with the Extergimus trait AND fired it on Maximal Fire. This means that I instantly generated 1 heat on my reactor and would generate 1 additional hear for any rolls of 1 to hit the Warhound. One roll of 1 -further Spiciness – and three rolls of 4. The imbued shots had an effective strength of 13 (Strength 8 base, +2 for Extergimus, +2 for Maximal Fire and +1 for Co-Ordinated Attack) so the Warhound was dead so long as I rolled no 1’s – a 4, 5 and a 6 secured the first Engine Kill of the game. Alex rolled on the Catastrophic damage table and glumly reported ‘Laid Low’. The Warhound staggered in a random direction, collided with a boulder and then fell in a further random direction – not once causing damage or inconvenience to any of the titans fighting around him.

Over on the Queen’s side of the table, Alex unloaded his Queen down-range onto one of my Warlords (the one I had secretly allocated as Shield) and stripped 2 of his shields and gaining me 2 heat in the attempts to deflect the attacks.

I opened up with the Shield’s Apocalypse missiles on the almost shieldless Warhound and watched as Alex saved all but one of the saves. I forgot to Extergimus my shots as I fired first the Quake, which missed anything, and then the Graviton Ruinator, which hit once and gave a Devastating hit to the legs.

The twinned Warlord did not forget and after the Extergimus-infused Quake and Graviton shots were done, the Warhound was no more. Alex followed up with his dual-Graviton Warhound and missed with both. The first turn had gone in Vulcanum’s favour, but with a Knight and Warhound still closer than I would like to my lines and Dauntless facing off against my Princeps on the other side of the table, I was far from confident that the day was won.

Turn 2

First Fire orders were the ‘Order of the Day’ for Turn 2. Every Warlord, excepting my Plasma Lord ,on the table braced themselves to throw ordnance at one another in a slap-fest of titanic(us) proportions. The Plasma Lord had to use Emergency Repairs to vent the heat he had generated in the previous turn or risk cascading into self-immolation, which is not the direction I hoped he would go… this time.

I managed to finish off Alex’s Cerastus Lancer before it got into my Warlords on the Queen’s side of the table. Shots fell on the dual Grav Warhound but he weathered them and kept a shield up.

With the placement of my Titan Hunters, that Grav-Hound was going to lose his shields if he didn’t put some distance between himself and the two looming rock formations.

At this stage in the preceedings, my own faithful Warhound woke from her faithful slumber and notified all who would listen (and those who preferred not to) that she was hungry.

This is a shameless cameo of Emi, the Sausage. AKA: Emilems, Das weiner, The Wagon, Emi-lia Barkson, Dognaerys Barkgaryen, Barker of Woofs, Sniffer of Dinners, ‘Wurst of her Name.

I ducked my Direwolf around to the side of the Forge Fane to give it some respite from the Dauntless’ guns and a chance to bleed some of the heat it’s reactor had managed to generate in exchange for it’s underwhelming shooting the previous turn.

The final move of the turn had Alex’s GravHound dart forward and into the side arc of my Warlord – the one 2 inches to the left of Shield. This presented a marching series of issues for me:

1. Now inside my shields and side arc, the GravHpund was firing directly into my armour and with a +1 strength to boot.
2. The positioning Alex had managed to get with his enhanced movement meant that I couldn’t respond in the firing phase – he was in my side arc and with only one 45° manoeuvre available a turn there was nothing I would be able to do to change it. Once he had toppled that Warlord, Shield would fall.
3. As we started the Combat phase, a lead weight settled in my gut as I realised the potential outcome of this assault – if the GravHounds hots resulted in my Warlord staggering backwards, it would hit Shield on any distance over a two. This would cause both titans to receive collision damage d6 Strength as Scale(10!) to a random location. This could cripple or kill both titans – losing me what had, moments before been a safe table quarter.

I love Adeptus Titanicus. I love any game that you can pull victory from defeat with one or two clever plays or even some flukey rolls of the dice. It would sting that I was potentially going to lose 50% of my force to a single GravHound and there wasn’t really anything I could do about it – unless my Direwolf could make the shot from his fleeing path and get a shutdown on the GravHound… it was desperate and would likely generate heat he wasn’t handling too well, but the warlords had to be the greater priority.

As the combat phase began, Alex’s Dauntless and my own Plasma Lord exchanged salvoes and in spite of boosting, my shields fell and Alex started to stack damage onto the legs of my Titan and disabled the carapace mounted TurboLasers. His own titan, Dauntless, expended Bastion Shielding and, with some extraordinary rolls, managed to stand his ground through a storm of incoming fire and still keep two shields up.

The Direwolf took aim and thanked the Dark Gods for an unimpeded shot into the GravHound’s side arc – with an effective strength 8 shot, the odds of shutting him down fell in my favour. Generating no heat, the direwolf landed a hit on the GravHound’s body and… I rolled a 1. Glancing hit. I now needed to roll a 6 for a Shutdown, as opposed to a 3+. I rolled another 1. Damn Direwolf.

As Alex prepared himself for the rolls of the GravHound, I braced myself for what would almost certainly be the deciding action of the game.

The GravHound missed on of the shots – having had to use his Weapon Skill at such short range instead if his Ballistic Skill. The shot that his scored a Direct Hit to thw body and now, the all important Concussive effect result. A d6 is rolled and on a 1 or a 2 the titan turns in one direction, on a 5 or a 6 the titan turns in the opposite direction. If, however, a 3 or a 4 is rolled then the titan stumbles directly away from the incoming shot d6 inches. This would almost certainly result in a collision and could in no way end well for me.

One of the Dark Gods clearly heard the prayers offered up to it and interceded, just not precisely in the way that the prayer had requested.

Alex rolled the dice and the titan was turned. The titan was turned to face the GravHound. A Warlord titan – which had not yet activated – was now facing the Grav Hound at point-blank range. It looked angry as it loaded it’s Mori Quake cannon and Graviton Ruinator with Extergimus charged shells.

As the smoke cleared, leaving naught but two comically smoking Warhound feet, I breathed one of the most grateful sighs of relief of the day (my life isn’t so very fraught with peril or angst that sighs are necessarily required so much.At some point, I just seem to have gotten into the habit of sighing and have found that it’s a fierce one to break, let me tell you!).

Shield and Alex’s Queen exchanged fire. Shield lost a shield and the Queen continued to save against all incoming fire with those damnable rerolls – now that the Warhound threat was over, I had to destroy that Emperor-Blessed Generator!

Turn 3

From this point, I failed to remember to use Titan Hunters again in the match – they might have managed to plink a shield here or there, but they had done enough by giving me extra activations and stripping some shields from the Warhounds enough for me to fell them with borderline-criminally overpowered weapons-fire.

With only two activations a piece left to us, the game began to speed up noticably.

Dauntless moved up to the objective and looked fairly set upon finishing my Plasma Lord. My Direwolf continued his run around the Forge Fane but only managed to get an obscured angle on the rear of Dauntless.

Clear of immediate threats, Shield and his twin began to ponderously move up-table to get better firing solutions on Alex’s Queen.

Quite unexpectedly, Alex turned his Queen to draw a bead on the rear of the now horribly exposed Direwolf. His plan now became clear – my Warlodds were too slow to move into and secure a new Quadrant. If Alex could destroy the Direwolf, it would deny me that area. A second ‘If’, if Dauntless succeeded in killing my Plasma Lord, I would only secure a single Quadrant and 5 victory points – meaning that the Secondaries would likely determine the winner. Bunning Castard.

The Repair phase saw us vent heat and raise a couple of void shields across the board – most notably I managed to get my Plasma Lord back into some form of working order, repairing his disabled TurboLasers AND have his reactor cooled down enough that I wasn’t worried he would spontaneously explode this turn.

Alex’s Queen opened up on the hapless Direwolf across the table. As the smoke cleared, the Direwolf still stood but had no void shields remaining.

In response, Shield threw an Extergimus charged Quake Shell at the Queen in the hope of also taking the Generator down in the blast but only succeeded in taking down one of the Queen’s void shields. Another void shield fell to the combined fire of the Apocalypse missiles and Graviton Ruinator – sheer weight of fire was beginning to grind those void shields off. The twinned Warlord followed Shield’s example with his Quake cannon and actually managed to strip a void shield and destroy the Generator! The Queen’s voids finally fell down under the rain of Apocalypse missiles which were quickly followed by the Graviton Ruinator (I forgot to Extergimus charge the shots) which started tracking damage onto the Queen’s body and spun her about to face further away from the twins.

Dauntless and the Plasma Lord continued to strip chunks from one another. I opened with the Volkite’s beam attack – taking the heat in exchange of risking any missus and watched as Dauntless’ final void shield dropped. Alex played his final Astorum Strategy which gave him an immediate repair roll opportunity to raise shields – which gave him a further two voids. The TurboLasers fired on Shieldbane (thankfully generating no further heat as the Plasma had spent most of the march dancing between Spicy and Too-Spicy) and Alex failed two of the three hits – Dauntless was shieldless once more. Somehow, Dauntless survived the three hits he then took from the Maximal-charged Plasma (one of the shots was a 1 – more heat 😦 ). His body was at the end of the damage track and he had a Reactor Leak critical damage, but he stood defiant and, as per his name, undaunted.

Dauntless’ return fire stripped his oppoenent’s voids and delivered damage to the legs and the head but failed to put the Plasma Lord down. As the dust settled on a ferocious exchange, both Warlords ended the round with their voids down and damage ramling up into the critical levels.

Par for the course of the Direwolf, he fluffed his shot into the rear of Dauntless. Somewhere in the galaxy, the parents of this Direwolf quietly shake their heads in silent disappointment.

Turn 4

Fire Fire Orders for all on the Queen’s side of the take and Emergency Repairs on the side Dauntless’ Duel. Excepting the Direwolf, who pouted.

Shield and twin threw further quake shots into the queen, yielding two points of critical damage to her legs which would hamper her mobility further. The Quake effect pushed her back and spun her off-target, exposing her rear armour. With her manoeuvres so reduced, she now would be unable unable bring any titan into arc and was

The Plasma Lord managed to raise two voids and shed some of the heat and Dauntless was able to repair the Reactor leak but only managed a single Void shield.

The Direwolf crept up into the rear of Dauntless, willing to weather the rear arc Ardex defences to keep him in a position to offer Co ordinated Strikes to the Plasma Lord.

The combat opened with fire and fury. Plasma Lord fired his Volkite into Dauntless and the single void shield dropped. Only two of the Maximal-and-Extergimus charged Plasma shots landed, but they were critical hits and left Dauntless vulnerable. A final Extergimus-charged volley from the TurboLasers provided enough damage to cause a Catastrophic explosion. Whether Plasma Lord survived or not, as the Spear he had met his Secondary objective of killing an opponent of his scale or greater and gained me 6 Victory points.

The Direwolf suffered critical damage to it’s legs and the Plasma Lord was almost killed, his legs suffering so much damage as to leave him Immobilised- he wouldn’t be able to offer much more to the rest of the fight as a single volley from Queen would see him destroyed. He stood his ground, laying claim to the area of the battlefield he had fought so long to hold.

Across the table, Shield and his twin poured fire into the sole remaining Astorum titan. Spun about and hampered into effective immobility, the Queen endured – barely.

The final turn was largely skipped. We rolled to establish whether Shield and Twin got First Fire orders – they did – and I limped the Direwolf into cover, claiming a third table Quadrant and ensuring I scored the maximum of 25 Victory points on my Primary.

If I failed to kill the Queen, Alex would still manage 9 Victory points as he had set her as his Shield and as the Alpha.

It is worth noting – We don’t normally play too aggressively with one another, I normally wouldn’t play an Extergimus in quite such a vicious combination with the Direwold. That said, this series of Test Matches is being played with a view to help us perform as well as we can in a tournament environment, getting us ready to compete in Twisted Titanicus 2.0 in February.

So, the undiluted fury of the Dark Gods was levelled at Alex’s crippled Queen. After taking everything that Shield threw at her, I had to Extergimus charge the Apocalypse missiles to ensure her fall. As the final reports of Shield’s twin Warlord fell silent, Queen entered the final stages of a critical meltdown. With no enemies or allies alive within range to take down into death with her, the explosion that tore the Queen asunder sounded for all the world like the cries of a God denied vengeance.