Warhounds 2 Warmasters

A Journey Through Embers of War; An Emberlord Tertius’ Tale

The third article in this series brings to the writing table Tim, the newly crowned Emberlord Tertius and all around lovely away from the table. At the table, Tim is an exceptional player with a calculating, tactical approach to Titanicus that makes them one of the toughest players within the community. – Jay

Intro

Hi, I’m Tim, an Adeptus Titanicus lover and proselyte who’s attended the last few Beachhead events, held in Bournemouth and hosted by Maximal Fire, with my absolutely lovely team ‘Princeps Diaries’. I hadn’t actually played that many games outside of the Beachhead context (bar one opportunistic event day out when visiting a friend in Bristol) – until the tail end of last year when Adeptus Titanicus proved a wonderful piece of escapism from life/mental health difficulties and so I started going to events.

After enjoying a fantastically run narrative event in May hosted by Lost Legios and run by Simon (aka Badger) – where a single gust of wind weather effect infamously destroyed half my army – I gave it a shot competitively at Twisted Titanicus: Retribution in September. It was 3000 points which was every titan I had painted! I hugely enjoyed my first (and hardest!) game against (Ed Note – Drumroll……) Jay. I recall how impressed I was with how this true gentleman managed to make a miserable death crawl out of Krytos’ quake-jail (Ed Note – I’m stealing that term) an enjoyable experience, even after I had demonstrated the start of my impressive capacity for self-sabotage! I failed a machine spirit test which frustrated my mutated dire wolf’s charge and what could have been a warlord-crippling activations instead morphed into a gentle, lamblike amble towards the slaughter (serves me right for using a direbomb, really) (Ed Note – Yes, it does 🙂 ).

That game prompted me to get a ticket to attend Jay’s event, Embers of War: Two. Around the same time I was trialling new Legio rules for my homebrew Legio (Sagittar, the Weeping Hunters) and opted for the intriguing  combination of risk-reward trade-offs and potential for aggressive lunges (and what some libellous rogues regard as “ BS” sensor arrays) (Ed Note – People that don’t play Ignatum or Fureans, typically) offered by Fureans. It was a match made in heaven.

Fast and Fureans

Going into Embers Two, I was optimistic based on the flattering words of Simon and Jay about my gameplay, but I was still very much learning. Rather than opting for the strengths offered by old-faithful ferrox and the undoubtedly potent crusade/loyalist-only wargear, I had high hopes for my nasty little Regia. I’d first played against one when I lost against Simon at Beachhead 2024, and was mightily impressed by its tricksy resilience, potently assisted by the combo of #IgnatumBS and Simon’s masterful play.

Regia can share shields between warlords and warhounds and don’t need to be touching bases, this can be done up to three inches. This allows for lots of shenanigans largely around the very powerful combination of utilising Big Tough Battleships and Mobile Glass Cannons close to one another. (At least for most of the list – obviously a long range warlord with a double swarmer stripper hound couldn’t go far wrong). Better still, I was confident from my 4 games played with it that it synergised very well with Fureans’ desires to have one big maniple (Fureans’ Stratagem, Offensive Surge, can be played in the Combat Phase to allow all Titans within a maniple to attack TWICE with one weapon at the cost of taking on Heat to the reactor) push for shield saves (to get more machine spirit awakenings where you can pick the result), but with the fun risk-reward trade off of piling on Offensive Surge heat onto tiny warhound reactors (for this reason, Fureans Extergimus is notoriously solid, and Fureans Corsair (Ed Note – I distinctly remember someone or other doing a Fureans Corsair some time ago…) or Ruptura likely sleeper hits). Since my homebrew Legio lore held that the Legio was split by loyalties to Warmaster and Terra, I seized the opportunity to use the more synergistic Loyalist half with Fureans. And so I rocked up for my three games, with a full Regia and a combat reaver with apocs along for the ride (something something distraction carnifex).

Embers of War Two: Too Fast Too Fureans

After a stay at the premier inn in merry Maidenhead, a lovely crowd assembled for some games of AT. My first game was against Quinn, with a Solaria hound swarm, who was new to AT and not yet used to tournament lists. He did a cunning Solaria deployment bait-and-switch play with his warhounds, but his plan hinged on his Dire Wolves and Acastus first-firing in concert to cripple opponent engines and I capitalised on this by sprinkling a tracer cloud (an avoidable large blast applying a re-roll hits malus) on his firebase to really punish it for standing still. He stuck to his guns and stayed still, and after comically fluffing my initial attempt, my fire support warlord ‘Don Giovanni’ picked off the Acastus in the combat phase with their eternal nemesis the long range Conversion Beam Extirpator (3s to crit, anyone?), with the Dire Wolves crippled shortly thereafter and the rest of my force advancing aggressively to seize all quadrants despite his valiant fightback. A win for me.

Next up was Dan Robinson, who was recently crowned the AT world champion after coming First at Beachhead 2025. Dan was taking a Vulturum Warbringer Iconoclast / Arcus list – something very firmly on the meme-end of the list spectrum. This was a fun challenge but the iconoclast is too many eggs in one short-ranged basket and after baiting out its warp displacement my machines proceeded to shred it (ably assisted by my very lucky shield and reactor rolls in the first half of the game) while keeping the hounds at bay by threatening a reaver charge, and then mopping up the rest. However, Dan played a great game and culled the weak to crash my swarmer-hound into my fire support lord, denying me of 4 secondary points which would prove crucial later!

Finally I played Justin’s beautiful Astorum Extergimus – another strong synergy but he had sportingly taken a mix of warlord top-guns, including vulcan mega bolters, which I proceeded to unsportingly punish by baiting that particular warlord to a flank to kill an exposed hound in deployment and then running that hound in circles around it while I mobbed the rest of his force. Justin also wasn’t helped by my good fortune: plasma blastgunning his Cerastus lancers. Denied their mobility, the Extergimus struggled to manoeuvre itself into prime killing positions and was eventually focussed down.

All in all, at the end of day, I walked away with the trophy for third place! (Ed Note – Hang on… *Checks notes* ) However, unfortunately it belonged to Alex.

What can I say, I was tired and trophies are beautiful but look the same through the hazed aftermath of battle.

In fact I placed Second, foiled by my loss of 4 VPs (kudos to Dan) to Taff’s well-earned triple 40 points. I also tabled all three opponents for the loss of (I think?) only two warhounds, prompting Jay to introduce a new “Tactical Genius” award for to the available awards at Embers of War events for scale killed less scale lost. Target sighted…

Embers of War Three: Emberlordling

Having thoroughly enjoyed Embers Two, I proceeded gamely to Embers Three, which followed Beachhead in February. Beachhead was a wonderful event and great fun, always such a great atmosphere and the heart of the AT community! Having plunged Icarus-like from a coveted podium spot after a combination of incautious errors and comic key rolls, I thought I’d give the Fureans Regia another chance in the sun, and took advantage of Jay’s generous 2050 points to give it a fully equipped ranged reaver and upgrade my brawer lord’s sunfury to the more versatile range-profile of a bellicosa. Embers Three moreover used Jay’s trial patches for the game, banning dominant strategist (I hadn’t used it anyway) and tertiary objectives (good riddance to a boring devaluer of secondary missions and reducer of available strat points).

Game One: I arrived uncharacteristically early but unfortunately still somewhat tipsy from an event the night before. Having failed in my blatant attempt to bribe Jay and Christina to rig the game one match up, I feared facing a top flight player game one who might punish my folly before I managed to fully sober up. Drawing the number “9” my heart (wait, no, maybe my stomach) dropped when I found myself on a table opposite Simon, truly a terrifying opponent. However, Simon also had a “9”. Was this destiny!? Were we, like two great princeps of Legio Vulcanum, twinned machine spirits? No. My “6” token was upside down. Well done, Tactical Genius indeed.

 In fact I was playing Lewis, a lovely friend of Taff’s who was gamely playing his second game of AT ever and was perhaps less than buoyed up by Taff’s briefing of his luck (Ed Note – Or lack thereof) in drawing me. At least his list was solid – I recognised that double Ferrox, even the borrowed titans in it, from a fantastic pre-Beachhead game against Taff.  I picked a sub-optimal but novel objective for the match up (Vital Cargo into an enemy that wanted me to get close) to make it a bit easier and more interactive for him, and we enjoyed a fantastic game with some hilariously poor reactor management on my part. I very much hope Lewis enjoyed it!

Game Two saw me opposite the gorgeous titans of Rob. Rob’s painting is right up there with Peter M (Ed Note – check out the Goonhammer article on Legio Atarus for a visual aid) (and I’m sure other artistic powerhouses) as one of the best painters on the Titanicus scene. I’d faced Rob once before which had been fun but a tad slow – it was a joy to see how much his game had relaxed, sped up and developed since, despite this being his first Titanicus game in ages. He brought a clever and spicy Crusade legio combo, with a huge double-Reaver Venator with macro magazine swarmers, a mob of 5 beautiful spiders and a brawler lord. I picked Honour-thy-Forebears (protect one titan) on my fire support warlord to force him to come into my killzones, and Rob went with Retrieval given the favourable deployment zones. I started the game running scared after my lead hound and lord’s shields collapsed and Rob’s tourney hound ran off with the objective under successive concealment and blind barrages. However after seeing that his deployment left little able to target my fire support warlord, I marched up a shield battery swarmer hound backup to surprise him – shield-sharing the brawler lord from behind in order to keep my brawler firebase operating. I slowly focussed down the Reavers to remove the Venator trait, and on the final round was left with the hound carrying the objective facing down both of my warlords (albeit obscured by cover from Rob’s other hounds in a shieldwall).

Victory seemed assured as they proceeded to Offensive Surge with a saved-up Fureans reroll and then whiff my shots hilariously, missing with basically everything and rolling double ones for the Conversion Beam Extirpator damage rolls! This eerily echoed a comparable moment in Beachhead – truly these warlords were slapstick pros, always falling from a challenge and stepping down at the key moment. As it was, the hound survived to escape with the objective and 4 of my secondary points (it was a target for my “Glory and Honour” secfondary objective), leaving a hard-fought 36-25 reflecting a close game and great play by Rob.

Dropping 4 points pushed me out of playing the 40-0s and my last game was against Loz, a truly lovely opponent and great sport with an “everything is -1 to hit” mutated hound swarm. Unfortunately he faced me on a fairly open table and I had lots of “ignore one -1 to hit penalty” hunting auspexes (Ed Note – #FureansBS) and good rolls to boot – a terrible match up for him. My Regia proceeded methodically to put down one dog after another like a vet (Ed Note – Where on earth are you sourcing your vets???) on a nightmarish power trip. Sorry Loz!

At the end of the event, the scores were tallied and I placed Third for the day after Alex. Simon, who took first place and a thoroughly deserved Tactical Genius award for total scale killed minus scale lossed (frankly, I don’t think anyone who’s played Simon would rightly deny him this accolade). However, my combined six high scores over the two Embers events that I had attended sneaked me into the podium for the overall Emberlord awards (total points over the whole series), earning me the title ‘Emberlord Tertius’ (aka Emberlordling?) behind Alex, Primus, and Taff , Secundus. Remembering how I had accidentally taken his trophy for Embers Two, Alex sternly and jokingly warned me he had his eye on me this time.

And so, all that remained was to collect my trophies… and then collect Alex’s trophies too, since he had rather carelessly left them unattended. After letting the lovely Christina know to pre-empt any actual panic/distress when he found out, I sneaked them under my coat. And I’d have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for those filthy TOs and their darned dog, who found the trophies during clear up while I had gone off to parking to stash my bags and (actually earned) trophies.

What a fantastic couple of events – thank you so much again Jay, Christina and Emi (the Emberlord of all our hearts) for running these events, and to all the wonderful group of players for bringing their sportspersonship and friendship to it.