Warhounds 2 Warmasters

My approach, as far as buying and building up forces for different Legios, up to now have largely fallen in with one of two reasons.

Reason the First

The familiar to hobby enthusiasts everywhere ‘shiny new thing’. On discovering a Legio I knew little/nothing of and then the exciting ‘Ooooooo What Does This Legio Doooooo?’ progressions of thought. Swiftly followed by a raid on an ever-dwindling build-pile and assembling a Maniple that synergies well in either a thematic sense or a gameplay sense. A prime example of this would be my recent Vulcanum force .

or

A fully planned and considered project with a suite of specific aims. The best example would be my Legio Mortis force.

My Fureans and Infernus are something of an unequal blend of the two.

There is now a third rationale for creating a Legio force:

To furnish someone else with a force to use.

Obviously, for this to work well consideration as to what is known about that person’s playstyle is needed and efforts should be made in trying to cater to allow for a force capable of leaning into it.

As has been mentioned, often, in previous posts my beloved LongSufferingWife had allowed herself to be dragged into the intellectual quagmire of Adeptua Titanicus and had even been entered into the Twisted Titanicus 2.0 tournament in February 2023. As the date looms closer, we took a look at the Legio I had assembled and part-painted for her: Legio Solaria.

Solaria’s main benefits come in their ability to swap in Warhounds to maniples and their unique wargear ‘cameoline cloaks’ that make them harder to shoot at long range. The real problem here was on inspection, LSW ideally wants Lupercal Light or Venator maniples… so not really much use for swapping in a warhound there. She also ideally prefers to get within shields and kill titans at point blank range: ‘Bite their ankles off’ to borrow her phrasing. Somewhat counter to how Solaria are packaged.

Before spending more time on a fairly time consuming (but enjoyable) paint-scheme, I reviewed the alternative Loyalist Legio options. What we wanted in an ideal world was any Legio that could offer ways to squeeze more shots out of Warhounds and anything that offered reliable, safe (for a given value) methods of getting a Warhound up in the enemies face. Enter: the Stormlords, Legio Tempestus.

Not only do the Stormlords (so Metal) have a trait that allows you to shoot back at titans that have killed you and a trait that gives a re-roll to resist Awakening Machine spirit roll – they also have a unique Strategem: Combat Drop.

It is worth taking a moment to cover this strategem. Combat Drop allows you to withhold a titan from deployment at the beginning of the game. The titan is not a part of the game until the Strat phase of turn two and then… well… you combat drop them in onto the battlefield. Restrictions are reasonable: You cannot target within 3 inches of an enemy titan and you will scatter 6 inches in a random direction – so aiming for 6 inches away minimum is a good idea to avoid collisions or losing your titan (instantly destroyed if it collides with a titan of a larger scale). Assuming your aim is true, this gets a Warhound across the board without all of the holes and burns that one usually earns whilst trying to run at bigger, heavier armed titans.

LSW was consulted and a Lupercal Light Maniple (five Warhounds) was seconded from the Solaria reserves and painted as Tempestus. A test game followed – with LSW fielding the Lupercal and a support Psi Titan (proxied as it was still on sprue) and to cut a long and painful story short, she butched my Vulcanum Extergimus and tabled me.

Tempestus it was to be.

I will update with pictures of the Maniples as they are completed. So far the titans painted/in progress are:

One Warlord Titan

Ten Warhound Titans

Two Reaver Titans

Two Direwolf Titans

One Psi Titan