Warhounds 2 Warmasters

So, with another Community Focus article ready it’s time for us to take a look at a couple of the top players across the Matched Play landscape for Adeptus Titanicus, starting with Simon Simpkins aka ‘Badger’.

Simon has attended more Adeptus Titanicus events than any other person and has won a wealth of podium placements across those events and has learned how to list build and play at the highest level. Taking some time out from preparing terrain for the next upcoming event, Lost Legios 3, Simon has answered some questions for your consumption.

How long have you been playing AT?

I’ve been playing AT since it was relaunched. I picked up a Grandmaster edition (I still have my preorder collegia titanica coin) and haven’t stopped playing it since. It soon replaced 40k for me and became my main game. For the first couple of years I only had one regular opponent but it didn’t matter because it was a great game. Then we’ve gotten a few more people into it locally and I go to a lot more events so I have a regular pool of opponents now.

Are you affiliated with any teams or clubs?

I’m the events organiser for my local club, Lost Legios Wargaming in Hitchin, Hertfordshire where you can typically find me playing AT (or Necromunda). I also joined Twisted Titanicus last year and competed at the Beachhead AT team tournament last year with them, funnily enough, on Jay’s team. You’ll normally see me representing them at events

Do you have a favourite Legio (and why)?

I have several! I have always had a love for Ignatum as when I was a small child (well, child) I thought their colour scheme was amazing and from that point in they were my absolute favourite titan legio. I was originally going to do them for my legio when AT came out but most of my friends were doing loyalist Legios, so I decided to do my next favourite legio – Mortis, arguably the most loyal legio.

Mortis are the boogeyman of the Collegia Titanica, having wiped out a titan legion before the heresy prior to the heresy. They’re arrogant, ruthless and effective and have an amazing colour scheme. Their rules aren’t great but Reaper’s Tally (each titan gaining rerolls for each of its kills) is one of the most rewarding and interactive roles in the game. It’s just fun. My absolute favourite piece of lore for them come from one of the campaign books, where it is implied there are loyalist Mortis forces as they have crudely made aquillas on their shoulders and they lay waste to a continent when fighting other legio Mortis engines. After reading that I started playing my Mortis as loyalists and fully intend to model a true loyalist Mortis force in the future, along with all the other projects.

I’m intrigued by Magna, they’re an aggressive traitor legio with a cool name and even cooler colour scheme but in the 41st millennium they’re an active loyalist legio. So they likely had a small loyalist element that survived the heresy or were refounded. So they’re similar to Tempestus in that regard. 

Finally there’s Damicium because I love a good tragedy. They’re a traitor legio but they’re traitors by circumstance, Urdesh lost its ability to produce titans and upon unification with the Imperium they were entirely reliant on Mars for resupply of new engines as they were denied the knowledge to build new titans and other forge worlds were forbidden to share that information. They declared for the traitors as it was the only way to ensure their existence. They also have a gorgeous colour scheme with interesting details such as displaying how many times an engine has been resurrected.

Do you have a favourite Maniple (and why)?

I have a real soft spot for a Fortis maniple, it’s my go to list at 2k. I’m also a huge fan of regia maniples and have had some excellent results with competitive Regia lists. The Fortis is fun because it’s all battle titans including two warlords, which are the best titans. It’s all about keeping things alive which I like because I do try to keep my god engines alive. You can match to the middle of the board and then invite someone to remove you, which generally they’ll struggle with. The regia I love because it’s incredibly flexible and also contains two warlords. 

Do you have a specific approach to events? 

If I’m going to a competitive event I try to write a good list, some lists tend to be better than others. It might be hard for some to believe but the truly evil lists I’ve written for actually see the table. There’s some combos that just aren’t fun for anyone. Though I will say, I am particularly chuffed with the 3k list that could fire 24 warp missiles on turn 1. I go to competitive events to try and play to the best of my ability and see where that takes me.

I normally take something a bit more fun to narrative events, you’ll quite often see a warmaster come out to play. 

Do you plan objectives to maps or to rounds?

I never used to but have done at some events. What I normally find is that whenever I plan these things out I get a match up which makes me decide not to do that objective. I mostly just turn up and wing it.

What have been your favourite 3 events to attend (and why)?

Well that’s a difficult question, there have been so many good events especially since there’s a social side to many of them.

One of my favourites was the first Goonhammer narrative event, there was an entirely coincidental meetup of multiple sets of AT players at Warhammer World the day before, so it turned into three days of Titanicus. It was a great event, with great narrative missions and players. I enjoy the story telling aspect of Wargaming and so I feel narrative events are quite special as it’s about the team winning and not just yourself. 

Recently I went to Embers of War 3 and I loved that one, it had a brilliant crowd, I enjoyed each of the rounds, had some interesting house rules: some of which I didn’t agree with but it had the full objective pool which was a refreshing change.

My third favourite event might be Beachhead ’25 and that’s because I had five excellent games, which I’ve always found to be a rarity at two days events. I actually think the social side of that event was the best part – the best of any event I’ve been to, now that’s not technically a part of the event and nor was it organised as such, but I’m counting it. We had over 30 people attend the pub and simply hang out and laugh like idiots and it was a wonderful experience.

Do you have any tips for AT players on how they can raise their performance at events?

I think the best thing you can do is experiment, my regular opponent and friend, Adam and I seldom play the same list twice. We always try new lists and combos to try and innovate. We seldom run ferrox maniples as we consider them to be quite dull and easy to use by comparison to other maniples. We always try out new weapons and see how they perform. This brings me to what I feel is the most important lesson anyone can learn, it’s ok to fail, as long as you learn from the experience. Losing a game, or having something perform badly in a game is fine, learn from the experience, see what you could have done differently and then refine your ideas on list building or tactics. Something that seems unstoppable on paper might be easily counterable on the tabletop by the terrain, by novel adaptation by an opponent or plain old bad luck.

I would encourage anyone to up their game to try new maniples and new loud outs. For instance I’ve got some controversial opinions in that I think graviton ruinators are fantastic, that warmaster apocalypse missile arrays are actually useful and that knight magaeras are a hidden gem.

What events are you attending this year?

I’m intending on going to as many as I can and will naturally be attending the Twisted Titanicus ones. I’m running my own narrative event, Lost Legios III at my club in June. I don’t know if I’m going to any more distant events this year but I will be attending the LGT Titanicus event on the Friday as I went last year and had a great time and it would be good if more people attended.