Adeptus Titanicus - CoD March 21

Saturday was CoD March 2021 meet.

My first time back and rolling dice this year and if memory serves, my first since December 2020 (checks diary - where I rolled Epic with my titan list, and got smashed horribly! eeek!).

So everyone was playing 'other games' systems this month so Epic got a month off which is all good and fine.

The usual Epic-sketeers were spread across Battle Fleet Gothic (BFG), Kings of War, and I manage a game of Adeptus Titanicus (here-after AT).

[Spoilers: I have been assembling an AT force for quite a while now and there is an unpublished and extensive build log post (which will get well edited). As well as having other projects and things to do it's suffered from not having pending games approaching thus requiring completion. Additionally I like to paint my 'good armies' all at the same time to get consistent colours etc, I've had a few things on order from caster which I've only just picked up at CoD etc. Basically I wanted the entire force assembled before starting on (at least) any detailing.  This force will be replacing my Epic titans and knights forces so there's probably a bit more than would be required for just AT.]

I had an intro game back in 2019-09, and then two learner-but-includes-most-rules games in 2020-08 2020-09. Then last weekend. So a long time between session - probably enough rules remained in memory to be useful. Four games for me all up, and this was my opponent's second.

More or less matched forces, with variations being changes to weapon loadouts. About 1450 points per side - Warlord, Reaver, 2x Warhounds, sundry small knights.

The table was roughly 4x3 so the action/combat was virtually immediate. Last time I put on way too many buildings - less this time.

No real official objectives but it was a 'book mission', just basic 'cruiser clash' lasting 4 -> 6 turns depending on dice rolls from turn 4 onward. 

The Warlords immediately took positions across the middle of the board and blasted away at each other with the smaller titans and knights moving around a bit. Wont detail too much of the battle. I learned new stuff and re-remembered old stuff and by turn 2 we were both getting more confident with the rules (again).

This poor city copped a number of stray heavy plasma blasts (missed) that would have turned most of it to rubble unfortunately, and one of my Warhound got knocked back into one building by a concussion weapon.

There was not a whole bunch of strategic positioning but we did both try to keep the titans moving around rather than just blasting away napoleonic style.

Here we're about turn 4. We've both lost our knights and have damage on Warhounds and Warlords.

Fairly obviously, the red titans (mine) are targeting the blue Warlord, and the blue Reaver and Warhound (left of pic) are lining up my Warlord (and came close to doing some major damage).

The blue Warlord fell (just) to the barrage of fire with barely a dice shot to spare, exploding and collapsing where it stood. The explosion reached the Warhound and Reaver who too some hits.

Unwilling to take another round of hits my damaged Warhound rushed into the firing line of the blue Reaver (which had a melta gun that was scary powerful), valiantly blocking the Warlord.

The fun part: the Warhound exploded - rolled 10 which is the most powerful catastrophic damage possible - so my Warlord, the blue Reaver and Warhound all took hits. As luck would have it the Warlord shrugged most or all of the hits off with his shields, but the Reaver took maximum damage to it's legs, effectively sending it out of action.

Thus the game ended with a bang at the end of turn 5 (rolled up 'no turn 6') and that was that.

I was exceptionally lucky from about turn 2 onward to get and maintain the initiative (go first during that particular turn, which you roll off at the start of each turn), so I was able to at least attempt the most advantageous sequence of moves - It seems to provide something of an advantage or at least guide the strategic setup for that turn.

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Despite feeling like we were head in the rulebook for a lot of time (probably not as much as it felt like) the game was quite enjoyable.

I find it not entirely dissimilar to BFG in so far as the models require conscious manoeuvring and have directionality and limitations on turn capacity etc - aka, unlike Epic which is generally move however you want up to your speed distance (War Engines and AC aside).  

It is a fairly slow game to play in part because of this (disregarding reading time) - again, especially by comparison to Epic. Each titan has a control panel that reacts to damage or maneuvering and there's engine power to monitor, so far more 'simulator' than Epic.

Looking forward to playing again, hopefully it won't be a year or 6 months until next time though. There are possible half a dozen people working on AT forces at the club so it's nice to have people to play.

And it's given me suitable motivation to get to painting again, so that's superb. 

Until next time...