Not a battle report - Adeptus Titanicus 2 & 3

Afternoon #Warhammer Community I've been #PlayingWarhammer and yet another non-battle report but still Adeptus Titanicus. It started off well...

and then the power tripped out in Otty's shed and we were reduced to the rather atmospheric scenes we have here using a mix of candles and single extension lamps.

This pic is awesome too but for some reason I didn't take anymore. I think the only thing I remember of this game was this sneaky Warhound scampering in-between my Reaver and Liam's Warlord, stopping me getting the good stuff for some upstart welp of a titan.

Not sure if they went on to finish the game mid-week but the electrics eventually got sorted and a new plan for heating the shed was devised as Otty felt the electric heaters were putting too much strain on the supply. Although he had identified one of his kids had also run an extension lead to a tree house so they could watch telly and it had got a bit wet! 🤣

So, game 3 and we're building proper Maniples now, with Legio rules. We've also put down some more terrain so there's more LoS blocking and minuses to hit. Ben decided to choose a force devoid of Liam's beloved Warlord while I stuck with the 3 Reavers and 4 Cerastus. Legio Gryphonicus has a particular rule that means your titans can pick a target and get reroll 1's to hit. However, if any other of your titan's shoot at their target then they lose the bonus. So, in the short term it makes their individual shooting more effective but it means you can't really focus fire from all of your Titan's to bring an engine down, otherwise those bonuses evaporate. On top of that my Priceps Seniores had the trait to make all its hits on its target rerollable.

I tried to get up as far as possible.

Liam pushed up too but I was now in range of his Questoris with my Reaver's Thermal Cannon. I was able to hit the unit and just totally deleted every Knight within the household. It felt like overkill before I fired and the outcome definitely felt like overkill. Liam was definitely unhappy. 

In return his squadron of Warhounds and Cerastus started to push even further up the board, getting behind my Reaver and close to my missile silo that was missing every turn. 

My Cerastus moved up to get his Reaver.

The Lancers continued to chase down the Reaver, while my own Reaver moved toward the middle of the board to then turn and get a firing solution on his Warhounds and Lancers now firmly in my backfield.

Liam's force now castled up in my back corner. But it looks like I was able to take one of the Warhounds down. However, they work really well as a squadron and I bet if you can learn how to get their movement down so they move together that this is the optimal way to play them.

As they were now cornered the Reaver fell and the Lancers too by the looks of it. Whether they got consumed in the Reaver's fireball or fell to additional fire I'm unsure.

More of my Reavers began to converge and Liam and Otty felt it was done and dusted.

These are our faces afterwards, Liam and Otty completing faking any happiness as they were thoroughly convinced my Legio rules were too overpowered. It didn't help that Liam had been given a list that was not great [although it represented what Ben has in his Ork force so they wanted to see how that would fair - not good by the looks of it]. Also, he wasn't taking any of his own traitor Legio rules for Legio Krytos. I've since seen what they are and I'm not sure it would have been a benefit. Although, it does confirm they have a penchant for Warlords, just as my Legio has one for Reavers, which coincidentally reflects our passions in the game.

Not a battle report - Adeptus Titanicus 1

Afternoon #Warhammer Community I've been #PlayingWarhammer. This was my first game of 'new' Adeptus Titanicus. It was actually in December so I've almost no recollection of what was going on but I wanted to acknowledge it took place so I'm sharing the pics at least. All I can remember is my small force had to rescue the 'titan crew' that is the white 'dot' that's just a little to right of the middle of the board in the picture below. Liam and Otty's force was squatting on a Void Shield Generator so I had a long way to go to get my boys back while weathering the incoming fire from that Warlord.

Lets just say there was a lot of rules consultation to get to grips with how to play the game.

We struggled with the command phase, giving orders. I was just a bit luckier in that I failed one command later than Liam and Otty.

This meant my Lancer's were well in his face, but even so the next turn Charge was going to be problematic as you don't appear to be able to turn. I think the Knights can move in any direction, which is better than the titans, but it doesn't appear they can turn mid movement. Getting round that rock face was going to be an issue.

My titans weren't making much progress either, aside from getting in each other's way. I think I'd already started to take damage.

So we didn't get much further than this really. It looked like I was outgunned and we called it an evening. Subsequently, Ben went back during the week and finished the game off with Otty and somehow managed to steal a win. I think one of the Reavers managed to get to the Titan Crew and head back but there's no guarantee they got the victory conditions correct. 

There was so much of this that we were playing wrong and that's not helped by rulebook being very disjointed. It has both basic and advanced rules, but often in the advanced rules it refers back to the basic rules pages. There's also a lot of 'page furniture' that makes the rule book look pretty, but it does squeeze the content. Throw in the choice to use tiny, tiny text and it's really hard to see, let alone understand the complex rules system. That said, we are not dismayed by it and although it wasn't easy to pick up, like Turnip28 for instance, it was interesting and felt tactically challenging rather than based on pure luck or layer-upon-layer of bonuses or stratagems.

Otty's Tyranids

Afternoon #Warhammer Community Marc wanted more pictures of Otty's nids, so here we are:

 

I like big bugs and I cannot lie.

Or bigger!

Little bugs are cool too, but so are those converted Hive Tyrants.

A plethora of Warriors.

Carnifex.

A tide of gaunts.

An endless swarm!

Some of his Tyranid constructs - Forgeworld Capillary Towers, drop pods and defence line.

His Bastion, that I've shown before.

Hopefully this will scratch the bug itch 😉

6000 - Arbitrary milestone of the week

Afternoon #Warhammer Community my most recent arbitrary milestone is 6,000 and it's all about you, well mostly you and a bit of me - it's comments! Yes this little blog has generated over 6,000 comments, from compliments to critique, rules debate to advice on my print & play terrain, we've had it all. Now in the grand scheme of milestones, as I approach 4 million views I think this is much more important number. Granted, it's significantly smaller but this is people engaging with the blog and is legitimate.

Most of the spam posts have been filtered out and aside from the lost comments when Google+ commenting was lost to the ether these are mostly Q+As from people reading it. I may not have got round to every A to a Q [roughly 3,000 of them] but I still appreciate those who are still finding the blog worth of their attention. Interestingly it took 5 years to get the first 3,000 comments, and 9 years to get the next 3,000 maybe blogging is dying afterall 😂

After 2024 was my least active year so far I want to try and be a little bit more productive, to disprove my own assertion above. I'm going to try and post a bit more in 2025. I've quite a backlog of gaming pictures I want to share, I just need to find a way to balance my time between hobby and blogging. Thanks again for your interaction, I really appreciate it.

Hobby Spends 2024

Afternoon #Warhammer Community Following on from previous year's spending record I've kept another log for 2024 [and will do so for 2025]. Funnily enough when I first started writing this the final figure was just under £746. But now it's just over £858, representing a significant another increase on last years gross spend of £621, almost a further 30%! And there was me hoping 2024 would be frugal. However, I had saved up some Christmas money and my Google Adsense finally matured. That helped subsidise my spend on the hobby by £180. Then I just went on a second Christmas binge, with some early Christmas 2024 money so I could get some Warlord Titans [wait until you see the deals I got]. This brings my net spend to £582 which is around £48.47 a month. Here's the breakdown:

I'll admit I am somewhat disappointed in how much I've spent. It's a lot more than I expected to and again a lot of additional figures and games too. That said I know some of those purchases are a mix of getting the best value for those figures while they were still available; and also retail therapy. There were times when I said to myself 'just buy it, life's too short'. It's not a strong justification and not helpful when I get satisfaction from being frugal but ultimately it doesn't really matter - I can always try and do better in 2025. I genuinely want to crack on with some of these purchases. I've just restated my hobby goals for the season. Now I have a much clearer idea of what I want to do before August.

And actually it's not unreasonable to think I can be more frugal, even after such a blow-out. Last year I predicted I'd get the Armigers, Adeptus Titanicus and an Acheron, which I did. Going to the weekday MESBG tournament was unexpected but I refuse to feel bad about spending money, or on spending time with my friends. So, for 2025 we may well go to some more events. Although, there are rule changes for MESBG and none of us are prepared for a 40k tournament so maybe not. Figure-wise I can't foresee anything, unless the new Knight Codex brings new models...? As it is my plans focus on painting my Cerastus Knights and my Leviathan Tyranids as well as my new Titans. However, my hobby efforts are slowing a bit as there is less motivation, so they should keep me busy and therefore discourage any purchases - we'll just have to see.

What's on my palette?

Bless me #Warhammer Community for I have sinned, it's been 7 months since my last confession! Long time and a mixed amount of progress but I just wanted to take stock of my changing priorities for my hobby projects this season.

So my revised priorities are:

1. Leviathan Tyranid Prime
2. Leviathan Neurotyrant and Neurolids
3. Leviathan Barbgaunts x5 [x10 at a stretch]
4. Leviathan Von Ryan's Leapers x3 [x6 at a stretch]
5. Leviathan Termagants x20
6. Termagants x30 base extensions

• Genestealer Cult Sentinels
• Ironsoul's Condemnors x2
• Cerastus Knight Acheron
• Cerastus Knight Castigator
• Adeptus Titanicus Warlord Titan 1
• Adeptus Titanicus Warlord Titan 2
• Adeptus Titanicus Questoris Knights x3
• Adeptus Titanicus terrain

All the Tyranids are for next year's Armies On Parade. I've RAYG rated them. Everything highlighted green has been started and is at least over halfway done, some don't require much to get them finished. yellow ones need a bit more effort and orange ones are pretty much at the start point, maybe haven't even been finished building. The Termagant basing extensions haven't been started but I've no idea if that will get done or if it will be done instead of the Leviathan Termagants. it really depends on how onerous a task painting the Leviathan models becomes.

The Cerastus Knights and the Warlord titans are a big ask. I'm stalling on making the models so I can dismantle them at the waist. I have at least primed the the legs on both of them. I need to do the Red Planet BASE! and then I may feel happier. But check out this sweet Warlord Titan I got off ebay and all its extras. It was a great bargain, with a decent starting point. I just need to try and fit it in with the rest of my Legio Gryphonicus.

Anyway, I've just had a look back at my To Do List and most of this commitment was unnecessary as pretty much everything was already on my list. Rather than streamlined it I've ended up adding things to it that weren't previously there! 😂 Regardless, I think it will help me focus on what I have to do in the new year.

Battle Report - Achtung Panzer!

Afternoon we've been playing games and the inaugural game in Shed 2.0 is one we've never played before - Achtung Panzer! No I don't know why we chose it either but Ben wanted to try it and however it plays it looks cool. Now I've called this a battle report, but we all know I'm terrible at writing them, particularly because I leave so long between the game and getting round to recording what happened. This is no different, but I promised this hobby season to find a way to keep track so I'm just going to ensure pictures are taken and I give the essence of what happened rather than worry about specifics.

Of course with this it's more about how the game works and hopefully you can make out each tank comes with a datacard, these were really cool, full of loads of counters to indicate if your crew is experienced and what armament it has. Despite the cool factor there was a lot to keep track of, perhaps too much, certainly in a first game.What is also important is terrain. Any piece of area terrain can be used for various cards, where things like minefields or infantry units may lie in wait to deliver vengeance on any nearby aggressor.

I was running the German force, sorry I have no idea which tanks they are, although I think the middle one is the obligatory Panzer. Otty had 4 smaller American/British tanks. There are a number of actions you can do each turn, I think it's 2. One can be a move, or to load a weapon, or to target a tank, or to fire [but you can't fire unless the gun is loaded]. You can also do a command check to try and speed up the loading process but that also depends on how big your ammunition is. If you fail the check nothing happens, but the checks also work for things like driving through a fence [as seen on my right flank, I think the smaller ones are Stugs]. 

Otty had a stratagem that allowed a bunch of GI's to appear in the woods to my left. They had anti-tank bazookas and given they were firing into my side armour easily took out the Stug. To say I was a bit miffed to be taken out by some card that didn't even have figures on the board was an understatement. Even Otty's kind offer to put some models in the trees to represent the tank-killers was little comfort. This was made more annoying by the fact he was able to fire with the tank at the end of the road. he rushed loading, fired, and either missed because you roll two dice, hit on 5+, but it has to be both dice. Or, the front armour was super tough and it just pinged off. it just illustrated that it was harder to kill with the tanks, while the ambushes seemed a little OP.

I managed to get my Stug forward. All my tanks had their commander inside with their hatches closed, which makes it harder to target but they're less likely to get injured. Otty was running the opposite, which kept on allowing him to spot, which removes one dice, so only has to score one 5+. Then if you target I think it makes it a 4+, but if you change targets you lose the bonus. I think my Stug hit his tank below, but the intervening terrain took the force of the blast. I also used my minefield ambush card, but didn't do much damage. 

With new cards I was able to send my own tank killing troops out of the middle farmhouse. They shot the small tank, and although it was not destroyed it was immobilised on the corner of the farmhouse. Meanwhile I'd drawn another strategy card that allowed my commander to do 3 actions. This allowed my panzer to fast-load an armour-piercing shell, target his nearest tank and fire all in one turn. Thankfully I passed all the command checks, hit with perfect precision, avoided the intervening hill and somehow blew up the tank. With that we called it a night with me sneaking a win, thanks to the smaller immobilised tank adding to my tally by a point.

OK I admit I was a bit underwhelmed. As a game, I did like the ambush cards, but they felt too powerful. They had much more impact on the game than being able to drive around  the tanks and feel like they were having the definitive impact on the game. Maybe with better understanding of the rules the tanks might feel like the star but currently they're support actors in their own film. Additionally it felt just too long to actually get anything done. Loading, spotting and firing takes 3 turns without trying to speed up. And if you miss it's all for nought. There is an interesting mechanic in that each game has a set amount of minutes, I think you roll D6, but whoever has the turn priority can choose to to speed the clock up and roll 2D6 - great if you're in the lead and want to burn the clock. But if a game is only 30 minutes long you can see how quickly that can be over and done based on good [or bad, depending on your position] dice rolls. An interesting but flawed mechanic. We may play again but for next time I think we'll try something else.