Conclave of Har Game Review. Adeptus Titanicus

The wait for Adeptus Titanicus has seemed as long as a Warlord Titan is tall (36.7 m in case you were wondering). Of course ever since it was first announced it has had a number of delays. First the scale change, making the models 25% bigger than their Epic 40k counterparts and then the entirely sensible move to change the medium to plastic rather than solely resin. This was a pretty good move as Adeptus Titanicus is pretty expensive as it is and Resin prices may have made the entire thing nonviable I suspect GW realised this and that is why everything was changed.

Of course the cost of Titanicus has led to much wailing and gnashing of teeth regardless, and not all entirely unjustified. However, I believe that it is not purely the expense of the models but rather how the game has been marketed and presented that has caused the main problem and have a few ideas about what I would have done differently.

First of all, I did not buy the Grandmaster box set. I could have, I had the opportunity to, but in my opinion it is actually one of the worst sets GW has ever done, contrary to their claims. For one thing it is an exact duplication of forces. Ok the sprues come with parts to make ‘traitor’ titans (just different iconography essentially) but you are still looking at exactly the same loadout on each side, a real buzz kill. Imagine if Dark Imperium just came with identical forces. This makes reflection of the value quite poor. Of course it sold out anyway but in my opinion it was FAR from the perfect set. It’s not even the best way to experience the game. A long was from it in fact, giving you one admittedly impressive but slow and ponderous Warlord class Titan and three tiny weak but very fast knights each (assuming you take it as a two player starter). I would go as far as to say it is the most boring way to play Titanicus I can imagine. More on that in a bit.

So what would I have done differently? Well, for a start I would have NOT have included the Warlord in the starter kit. A Warlord is something you build up to, not what you start with. Maybe they were trying to mimic Renegade with its two knights, I’m not sure, but a MUCH more enticing way to do the box (again in my own humble opinion) would be.

2 Reavers  (2 Kits = 70quid) (or one Warlord effectively)

2 Warhounds 1 Kit  (guessing 40 for a pair though prices aren’t released just yet)

6 Knights (2 Kits £40)

And then the scenery and rules and stuff. Which comes in at about 55 quid

By a complete coincidence (honest) this happens to be what Matt and I used to play a game the other night and you know what? It was a lot of fun.  Not only did we have different weapon loadouts but there was a lot of movement and tactics and more units for things to happen to. I’ll give a brief breakdown of the game later on in this article but I think it was a lot better than the tit for tat games I have seen from the GM box thus far. And oddly enough the price of the contents would be less than the GM so you would be able to market it at a lower and more attractive price (that you don’t need to keep hidden till the week before release) Say £130 which would still represent a substantial saving (your Reavers for free) Make them exclusive and produce plenty (the Reavers being a month later and the Warhounds two –presumably) and they’ll fly out of the door. A PROPER two player starter that you could build on, say with another couple of small titans and THEN a proper Warlord kit with ALL the weapon options. But then, what do I know? It sold out regardless.

Me? I don’t want a warlord yet. Certainly not till other weapon options are available. So I just grabbed the rules and a box of knights. I’m going to review those right now quickly before I get to the game we played.

Knights:

Intricate would be the word I would use to describe these. Not only do they look like their much larger 40k counterparts they are also BUILT broadly similar. You only get one sprue but it is PACKED with very very small bits and there is bundles of detail with even the railings on the carapace being present. They are an excellent miniature. Each one comes in by my reckoning 22 pieces which is staggering when you consider the size of them and you can get a fair bit of posing in the upper part at least (the legs are a little static)

They also go together with ease and you could dispense with the instructions if you really needed to though they do have set let combinations ( I messed that up on purpose and just about got away with it. – I had to trim the banner and cables to fit)) By their very nature they are quite fiddly (even the tilting shield and heavy stubber are separate!) and require a bit more patience than a standard kit but the mould lines are more or less non-existent and they are a triumph of engineering. This kind of thing would not have been possible five years ago. The pinnacle of plastic miniature technology. A triumph. They are certainly easier to assemble than the Naggaroth Nightmares for Blood Bowl (what sadistic SOB makes the THUMB separate on a miniature?? )

Value wise, they don’t come off too well, 20 quid for three terminator sized models is a hefty bill, but when you consider the amount of work that has gone into them, the amount of parts, and the achievement and engineering involved, I think you have to give them a pass. Congrats to ** the designer. It also comes with a teeny tiny transfer sheet but I took one look at that and chucked it,. At that size my freehand work will be passable.

That was the only models I got. The other purchase was the rules. This was nearly double the cost of the knights but really does come with a lot of stuff in it’s own right. It’s also presented VERY nicely. The rulebook nestles in a plastic tray above all the other gaming paraphernalia that you need. Looking at the book it’s a beautiful tome indeed though at a shade under 100 pages far from hefty. The presentation is really nice though reminiscent of the large black leather Horus Heresy books which is of course intentional. This means you will get the full colour spreads of the Titans and diagrams and all sorts. They really are nice and if you look carefully you’ll see a couple of models that aren’t released yet.

Some more fluff would have been nice, and maybe a bit more on iconography but the book is full of highlights and well worth a read rather than just a flick through for reference. Top quality stuff. It’s all very packed and skewed towards the experienced gamer too. It’s nothing like the big rulebooks for the two main core games, no assembly or painting guides and no pictures of young acceptably diverse people playing the game.

There are two detailed cheat sheets containing a lot of information. They are invaluable for while playing the game with a variety of tables and special rule explanations. They are nice and glossy but a bit flimsy, I’ll be laminating mine for sure.

There are two sprues in the compact box too, One is the templates. These are basically the hard plastic templates that departed from 40k. It’s nice they found a use for them again, this time cast up in a nice bright blue.

The other sprue is the beefy one and contains all the other plastic you need to play. All your battlefield assets are here in two or three pieces each, so are your turning templates. In addition all the tokens and counters you need for your command terminals are here too. There is even a wrecked titan head you can use as an objective.

Underneath all this you have your command terminals. Two each for the Warlord, Reavers, Warhounds, and Knight Banners. Plenty for most maniples you could wish to field. These contain all the stats for your titan and also allow you to track damage and reactor level for your war engine. 

There is also a deck of stratagem cards and a separate deck of weapon cards. You will need more weapon cards if you ever hope to field dual options on anything but the Warlord (you get FOUR Bellicosa cannon cards) The weapon cards are double sided with a red side to show they are disabled and the roll needed to repair.  

And lastly the dice, these are really nice and there are a lot of them,. 10 D6, 2 D10s, a location dice, a scatter dice, a reactor dice and six command dice.

So that’s the rules box and it really does contain everything you need to play. Very impressive all very high quality and premium and in my humble option worth the 35 quid they ask. Call it 15 for the rulebook, tenner for your cards and terminals a tenner for your dice and a tenner for your plastic and that all comes out at pretty good value in my opinion. But how does it PLAY?

Well Matt and I played a proxy game. A knight banner each a Warhounds (Ad Mech robot) each and a Reaver each (Armigers) A simple kill each other mission with the basic rules (so no orders) and away we went.

Positioning is key in AT (hey that rhymes!) and if you win initiative you can choose to go first or hand over the Opus Titanica (which also comes on that nice chunky sprue and acts as a first player marker) and go second. Going first is a bit of a double edged sword, you get to fire first but you also have to move first so your actions can be reacted to.  Such it was for me and I was caught out of position and lost two of my knights to the Warhound which was agile enough to get the drop on them. Knights work like a very basic kind of titan, with stats that change dependant on how many are left in the banner. My one remaining knight was unlikely to have much of an impact in the game.

Knights also can’t repair in the repair phase. Titans can though and void shields were regenerated. Turn two saw me push my titan’s reactor to get more manoeuvrability and I had to roll a dice to see what happened, thankfully it came up blank and I didn’t anger the machine spirit or damage the reactor. Matt was not so lucky and his rector level went up. 

It went up even more as I smashed his Warhound with my Reavers guns, seriously damaging its leg and body after stripping its voids with my Warhound. (voids are represented as a saving throw,. If you make it all well and good but if you fail you lose the void making future rolls harder)  Matt’s fire back from his titans only did moderate damage. My brave knight pilot had sacrificed himself and engaged Matt’s banner but his knights all fluffed their shots! Unsurprisingly so did my lone knight, still it had served amply as a distraction

Turn Three saw Matt retreat his damaged Warhound behind a building to spare it my fury. It failed to repair though and was left with a reactor on the verge of going critical. Meanwhile my Warhound and Reaver were coming up on either side of Matts Reaver . My Warhound hit the Reaver a few times but my Reaver missed or failed to damage with pretty much everything,. Matt’s Reaver tried to target mine with its apocalypse missile launchers (the only thing with a 360 fire arc) but missed. They did however scatter right onto my last knight, destroying the plucky survivor.

Turn 4 saw Matt’s Warhound go silent, and fall over its noble machine spirit finally overcome by the damage it had taken as the reactor failed. Not the most exciting of demises but it was gone now.  Matt’s Reaver advanced on my Warhound. Flanked by two titans it chose to take the weakest and exposed its rear armour to my Reaver, A risky gambit but he didn’t have much left and he had a good chance of destroying my Warhound.  His knights had taken a casualty as well and he was trying to bring his thermal lance to bear on my Reaver. His Reaver ripped into my Warhound at close range, bypassing it’s void shields. His chain fist heavily damaged my Scout titan’s head (melee weapons can choose a target) whilst his plasma blast gun disabled my gun of the same name. He failed to kill it though and at close range from behind my Reaver critically wounded it in revenge.

We called it there, quite satisfied for a first game.  I do feel that we could have easily got away with using Orders even if they are part of the ‘advanced rules’ ( I don’t think they need to be there) and they would have afforded a MUCH more tactically varied game. For example. Matt could have engaged repair orders on his Warhound behind the building, improving it’s chances of survival. He could also have charged with his Reaver, granting it an extra hit in combat. I think it is telling however even without the orders that we had a fun and fast paced game. The fact we were taking different loadouts really helped. I completely eschewed the combat weapons in favour of more guns. And I almost paid the price when I got too close to Matt’s Reaver at the end.

I can only imagine how dull playing with the grandmaster box with ‘Basic’ rules would be!  Two IDENTICALLY armed forces slugging away at each other till one falls over.  The game we played was a lot of fun and nothing at any stage convinced me that the warlord is the essential Titan to use. Indeed, I’m going to wait until at least some weapon packs are released until I pick one up.  Of course the problem for this is that the kit will then end up being a lot more expensive dependant on how much the weapons are. Surely it would have made more sense to increase the cost by a tenner and then have a sprue of weapons? There are also more knight variants to look forward to and these are just as critical in my opinion to providing a decent game as a banner of three knights is VERY quickly destroyed.

Overall I think James Hewitt has crafted a really good little game here, keeping track of you command terminals is a lot of fun and the locations (carried over from the old game) add another tactical level, you can target a damaged location but it will be harder to hit (unless you are using a melee weapon that is) The reactor mechanic is also very cool and atmospheric.

So in summary I think Adeptus Titanicus is an excellent game and one that I am looking forward to playing a lot as I build my forces (Legio Questriatus – The Deathstalkers) It certainly offers a very different gameplay experience from any of the other available games and from that perspective alone is well worth your time. I do have to say however that the way they have marketed and released it is surely the most unattractive and ineffective way possible. The scope and depth of the game rendered inert by a dull and unvaried box.

Final opinion,

Adeptus Titanicus great. Seniores Princeps

Grand master box, neither Grand nor Masterful. Engine death