Warhounds 2 Warmasters

I came to AT mid 2022, having seen it in White Dwarf previously and thinking “That looks so cool, I bet it’s too expensive to play, ah well, back to Warcry” I was in fact teaching someone Warcry at a local club when my attention kept getting drawn to shouts of “Engine Kill!” and uproarious laughter on the other side of the room. After my game was finished I wandered over, asked if I could watch and demonstrably expressed the the two players were clearly the people in the club that evening having by far the most fun. Which they were. It was a little while later that I actively looked into the game properly, and realising it’s basically a skirmish game with bigger models realised I could probably actually get into it – especially as there were clearly people playing it at the local club! (Spoiler, I played exactly 2 games of AT at said local club…)

Some second hand models and starter box later and I knew I was in – though still foolishly under the impression I’d own 5-6 titans total and would magnetise their heads so I could swap them out to represent different titans. But to avoid getting ahead of myself, I had some titans and I had an event I wanted to to go to Beachhead 2023 – which I believe I found out about while absorbing every piece of AT media I could find in those initial months. Two things were necessary, a Team (BH23 was a full 3 person teams, Attacker, Defender, Skirmisher affair) and actually building and painting a full force to a standard I liked and could do between October and February. The latter clearly got done as I went to the event, which surprised even me at the time, but the former involved convincing people to engage with me in the same level of madness. Fortunately Mike Lester (long time friend who I met via the power of Ciaphas Cain, honestly ask us about our meet-cute), and Tim Waters (at the time local club attendee, who I happened to notice had an unrelated gaming trophy on their windowsill during one of my “learning how to play” games), were onboard with the idea, and thus (and after several terrible ideas later) Team Princeps Diaries was born!

Without going into exhaustive detail about the Beachheads 23, 24, 25 & 26, suffice to say I absolutely fell in love with the game, and Team Princeps Diaries (even when it wasn’t a team tournament) have become a close knit force, that have exceeded all of my initial expectations both in terms of how much fun we’ve had together, and how well we’ve done (BH24 we somehow came 4th overall! and BH26 Tim came 2nd!).

One thing I will say about Beachheads past (and all the learning games in the run up to the first of them) is that I found a definite preference in how I want to play. That being, Traitor, Corruptions and Melee. I’ve run a few different Legios in trial games but will always have most of my force equipped for glorious melee combat – I felt bad at Lost Legios 4 this year having a reaver without a chainfist for the first time – and for Beachhead have taken Laniaskara (23, 24, 25) or Vulpa (26).

With BH27 being the first BH since 2024 where I can corrupt more than just 1 titan I know I’m intending to lean into that side of things once more, and with the pack requiring 2 different lists (but with a shared allegiance and legio) the specifics are still somewhat in flux. However on the list of “things I might need” are a selection of Warlord weapons, and another Warlord.

Last year I built a horrific “What if?” specifically “What if the traitors had access to something equivilant to a psi-titan?” a Warp-lord if you will.

And produced this:

In the (far too detailed and extensive) background for my Legio, the titan above (called the Magus) is the mostly successful result of a series of experiments with Titans and warp-reactive xeno-tech.

This time and to fulfil the “another Warlord” requirement I mentioned above, I’m building an example of one of the failed experiments that led to that success.

And I’m going to do it with this:

The Magus, uses some of a Warlord’s skeleton. Admonitus Mordicans as this new titan will be known, will use less. Preferably no Warlord parts other than armour panels, possibly part of a head and the weapons which will magnetise on. I envision a lot of greenstuff and milliput in my future.

Wish me luck.

But don’t pray for my sanity, the original Dawn of War put that best.

“Sanity! Is for the weak!”