New Year's Day Game - Adeptus Titanicus!

This past New Year's Day we gathered at Conscript Towers to play a big game and enjoy a big lunch! Conscripts in attendance this year from left to right: host Dallas (and Gilles), Kevin, Dave V., John, Frederick, Mike F., Indo, and Greg. Some spouses and a child even attended as well!

You can't exactly see it here but the lunch (prepared by Pam) was pretty amazing - a full traditional turkey dinner (roast turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, cranberry sauce, salad, rolls) PLUS an Indian component for our vegetarian guests - red lentil dal, roasted curried sweet potatoes. Thanks Pam!

After lunch the Conscripts repaired to the basement for the game. One of my Christmas presents was the excellent "Ruinscape" terrain set made by Hawk Wargames for Dropzone Commander. Notionally 10mm in scale, the set includes 20 card buildings and 24 double-sided card terrain tiles - perfect for Adeptus Titanicus. It did take a couple hours to fold and glue the buildings, and I was thankful to have some small clamps in my hobby toolbox as they were invaluable for the construction task.

Once the buildings were assembled, I laid out the terrain tiles. They're rather thin card so are prone to move around on the tabletop, so I stuck them down to handy 2x2-foot MDF tiles with magic tape.

Looks good eh?

Conscript Greg had organized a scenario called "Rescue the Warmaster" - Horus is visiting his embassy building in the administrative district when Loyalist Titans of Legio Ignatum and Legio Gryphonicus launch a surprise attack. Titans of Legio Krytos and Legio Mortis are dispatched to rescue the Warmaster. Each side comprised two Warlord Titans, two Reaver Titans, and two Warhound Titans. The Civitas Imperialis buildings fit quite nicely with the rest of the terrain, don't they?

Here we see a Warhound of Legio Krytos making a run towards the Horus Embassy. Some abuse was directed toward the forces of the Warmaster for detaching a mere Warhound to rescue Horus - in the words of Indo, "Hey, what is this bullsh!t... I ordered an Uber Black!"

The Legio Ignatum Titans were well-deployed to target the approaching Rebel Titans, while Krytos deployment was sub-optimal... unless you consider that being away from any of the fighting enhanced the survivability of the Krytos Warlord :-)

On the other flank, the Mortis Warlord advanced up the table. With the destruction of the Krytos Warhounds and heavy damage dealt to the nearby Reaver, it looked like the Warmaster would be getting his executive ride in a Warlord after all...

Here we see the Ignatum Reaver supporting its two Warhounds, along with the Gryphonicus Warlord.

...while in the middle, "McKillSteal" the Gryphonicus Reaver lurks, waiting to grab some stolen valour.

A Krytos Reaver finally gets into action, blowing up one of the Ignatum Warhounds in close combat. Sadly the fist that did so much damage would soon be blown off by the Ignatum Reaver.

The Mortis Warlord finally in position to make its pickup. "Cripes, it's been saying 'your ride is 5 minutes away' for an hour already...!"

Nearing the end for the Krytos Reaver.

The Warlord duly picked up the Boss, but no sooner had that happened than the Machine Spirit went loony, dumping the Warlord's void shields... and that is never good. The collective abuse heaped upon the Mortis Warlord caused its destruction, but fortunately Horus made good his escape from the battlefield. No doubt the Princeps of Legio Mortis suffered some dire retribution from the Warmaster for their failure (decimation? or maybe even duo-mation?) but fun was had by all.

I REALLY like the Dropzone Commander terrain for AT18 as it seems to fit the scale well, and gives a massively good-looking battlefield for a modest outlay of cash. Having said this, I'm now looking at augmenting it with some N-scale buildings from China (cheap on ebay). I'd say five or six more buildings would fill out the 6x4 battlefield nicely and provide some further variety in scenery. Somehow the giant engines of AT18 look that much better when striding through a dense urban environment - maybe it just helps the brain take in the massive scale of these battles. Or maybe it just looks cool!!! :-) 

New Year's Game - Horus Heresy Siege of Terra!

We usually host a lunch and big game on New Year's Day each year. However, this year the schedules didn't quite work out for January 1, so we postponed the game until January 7.

Many of the Conscripts and their significant others were able to make it out for the lunch, a delicious roast pork loin with vegetables and salad prepared by the amazing Pam (in apron). After stuffing ourselves silly with food, we (eventually) retired downstairs to Conscript HQ where the terrain had been laid out for the game - a Horus Heresy extravaganza using the 40K 8th edition rules and the excellent codex material from the forums at http://heresy30k.invisionzone.com/login/

I further amortized the trench terrain by laying out an 8'x4' table for the Loyalists to defend. The board was 30K'd up a bit with slurm tanks, billboards, statuary, a comms mast, and some Gothic looking ruins, not to mention a bit of Conscript trademark scatter terrain...

Terra would be defended by Conscript Mike's excellent looking Imperial Fists...

...supported by Conscript Greg's superb Solar Auxilia.

"God Box 2.0" makes an appearance, along with the Solar Auxilia commander "Marshall Facecane".

Nasty Imperial Fists Terminator squad "supporting the front line" behind a slurm tanks :-)

First wave of Iron Warriors and World Eaters attackers roll on. The Traitor objectives were the tanks at centre left, the comms mast on the ridge, and the statue column at centre top.

There's not a ton that you might consider "broken" in 30K but if anything comes close, it's the Iron Warriors Siege Tyrants at top left...

Racks spit out two krak missiles (or 2d6 frag missiles!!) PER MODEL per shooting phase... that's a ton of hurt heading downrange.

Defending Terra all day really works up a thirst! Fortunately there are ample tanks around to feed the Slurm machine.

Iron Warriors reinforcements arrive, in the form of a large tactical squad and Leviathan Siege Dreadnought (ooooh yeah!)

Massive traitor firepower facing off against the newly arrived Imperial Fists Land Raider Armoured Proteus (top right).

Warriors hop out of their Rhinos ready to assault the trenches.

But then... oh crap... Imperial Knight arrives.

It's great fun to take off the top of the ridge and play in the tunnels underneath. Infil-traitors under the bunkers!

Loyalist Sicaran is taking fire as a Traitor Rhino moves to block off the tunnel entrance.

A good view of Mike's Contemptor and Land Raider.
 

Iron Warriors approaching the trenches. Solar Auxilia are tougher than they look, especially when overcharging their lasrifles.

Siege Tyrants look right at home, don't they?

Iron Warriors have taken the frontline trench!

Terminators scramble to interdict the Traitor Marines in the tunnels. Sadly they would fail their charge roll with a double 1 - not the only charge that was failed that afternoon either!

Sadly for the Traitors their assault just stalled as time was called. It has to be admitted that we seldom actually finish one of these huge game, but they sure are cool to look at! Lots of stuff blew up, and I think the game pointed out to both Mike and me what we need to do with our respective forces. Mike came out with a bit over 100 power levels and I think he realized that he needs more BIG GUNZ :-)

The Iron Warriors, on the other hand, can muster close to 200 power levels and lots of big guns, but I think I need to paint some more boots. Most of my points are tied up in the 10-man Siege Tyrant squad (44 power levels by itself!) and the Typhon represents 26 or 27 as well.

Anyway I think we all had a fun time having lunch with friends, and playing with some amazing toys on some beautiful terrain, and isn't that what this hobby is all about! So thanks to everybody for coming out, to Greg and Mike for bringing their toys, and to Conscript Frederick for taking some great pictures!