Legio Hellion: The Brazen Furies & Knights of House Paramour

[Achinadav]

Last night's game was probably the most fun I've had with AT so far. I think that's because the forces were asymmetric. So it felt like a proper match up, rather than training. Although it was my opponent's first ever game he knew the rules better than me! A non-blurry deployment photo:

 

My 1000 points were made up of my reaver, a warhound with VMB & TLD and the newly christened Incandescent Midnight, armed with a plasma blastgun and inferno gun. He's the 'hound on the middle right and the newest fruit of my labour. Although his carapace & leg plates aren't finished yet.

 

My opponent took a reaver, warlord and warhound. So we both had legal maniples, but again eschewed maniple rules, Legio traits and also stratagems. My opponent has done a lovely job of getting his entire Grand Master set painted. It was a real treat to see the GW terrain on the table. As you can see, we used a lot more than last week. There are plenty of clear lanes of fire, and paths across the board for every titan class, but it means that manoeuvring and positioning became a crucial part of the game.

 

I'm still trying to find the right level of aggression for AT. In this game I did most of the manoeuvring and basically split my forces into two flank rushes. After two turns, this is how things looked:

 

On my left, my cerastus and Incandescent Midnight rushed forwards. Due to my poor positioning in turn 1, the knights got in the way of the titan and the 'hound got blasted by the enemy warlord. He survived and got out of the line of fire here. On my right, our respective reavers, who were symmetrically armed, engaged in a duel whilst my warhound rushed forwards. My reaver got the better of it and put some heavy damage to his foe's legs. I made the same mistake I keep repeating; getting my order activation wrong. I'd given my reaver first fire orders to try and finish of his foe, but then chose to move my knights first in turn 2. This meant that the enemy reaver got to waddle sideways into cover. The upshot being that it survived an extra turn.

 

As you might guess from the above left photo, the enemy warhound & warlord unloaded everything on my cerastus knights. Those little fellas are tough! They only killed one of them, leaving the second damaged.

 

Turn 3 saw this happen:

 

I was very happy! If I'm remembering rightly, my knights got up in the enemy warhound's grill. And then got wiped out. They'd tied up two titans for a couple of turns, so I was quite proud of them!

 

By this point:

I think we might have been on turn 5. My warhound on the left was doing his best to survive. That resulted in him being crammed up against the edge of the board and me messing up activation order and all sorts. Meanwhile, my reaver & other 'hound repositioned around the tower in the middle of the board.

 

The final stages of the battle saw the enemy 'hound circling around Incandescent Midnight and them going toe-to-toe. At one point I had to use emergency repairs to get IM's shields back up and then turn to face the enemy. So we had my titan with shields unable to fire facing the enemy titan without shields who could! On turn 6, which we decided to call the final one, this happened:

 

Incandescent Midnight used his inferno gun to drop the enemy shields and then fired his blastgun on MAXIMAL POWER! Two hits to the head lead to two devastating hits and two criticals! It was awesome! Then my reaver used his missile launcher to target the heat and blew the titan clean away! I loved that the head was magnetised and could be removed

 

This is the final state of play:

 

Right up until the end I'd have called it a draw. But I got some horrendously good luck on void saves and armour rolls in the last couple of turns. So it turned into a nice win. None of my titans had any shields left and the righthand warhound had some damage to his body due to a reactor overheat.

 

Stuff I learnt from this game:

(1) warlords are tough, its tough to get the shields down and even tougher to damage them.

(2) I need to pay more attention to activation orders in EVERY phase.

(3) a coherent plan works better than charging into a Ferrox light maniple

(4) the mega gattling blaster thingy warlord weapon is a lot better than I thought.

Edited August 28, 2019 by Achinadav

[noigrim]

For a beginner you've got an impressive terrain collection

[Achinadav]

For a beginner you've got an impressive terrain collection

Or I play with folk with lots of scenery :) The blue & white cube buildings are some pre-coloured terrain I use for 40k 2nd ed. The rest was from my opponents' collections.

[Achinadav]

This weekend's hobby time was spent working on my knights and terrain. Yesterday I put some basecoats down on my acastus and my questoris. Boy are the acastus fiddly! They're chunky, but their armour plates are quite small, or at least the bits between the trim is. There's going to be a lot of clean up work.

 

Terrain-wise, I've been drybrushing and washing Santorini buildings. I prayed them with rustoleum textured spray, drybrushed with ushabti bone and then washed with seraphim sepia. They've come up a bit redder than I would like. Although OK for the speed at which I cranked through them all. Scale photos with cerastus:

 

and with Razortail, one of my questoris:

 

You get a lot of these buildings in Santorini. Here's the 42 of them (I did the first 20% yesterday, the rest tonight whilst sat in a hotel for work, might as well do something useful):

 

When they're dry, I'll go over them all and make sure that I haven't missed any bits. Or rather, I'll touch up the bits I've missed If I was doing it again, I'd spray them black on the inside first. I might try careful brush work, as I think that'll improve them. Just the domes to do! Because of the colour of the buildings I'm going to go for black, with a nice glossy ink over the top to make them shiny.

 

I did try some cheaper textured spray I got in Aldi. But its too coarse. Probably OK for a road, bigger buildings or something. I quite like the idea of an elevated roadway. Goodness knows when/how I'll get to that.

[Fajita Fan]

Your custom weapons and heads look great.

[Achinadav]

Your custom weapons and heads look great.

 

Thanks. Largely kept it very simple, bit more elaborate on my questoris. When everything has got a lick of paint on it, I've got a minimal Ferrox maniple waiting in the workshop (their boxes!). I'm going to convert the hell out of them, I think.

 

Here's a few shots from the two games that I lost horribly last night. 1250 points a side. I had

 

Battlegroup Geryon

 

Venator Light Maniple

 

Righteous Indignation: Reaver with volcano cannon, laser blaster and apocalypse missile launcher. Princeps Seniores with trait that lets me reroll a to hit or shield save

Raucous Euphoria: Warhound with Vulcan mega-bolter and turbo-laser destructor.

Incandescent Midnight: Warhound with inferno gun and plasma blast gun.

 

Cerastus Banner

3 x Knight Lancer

 

Cerastus Banner 

3 x Knight Lancer

 

Stratagems: Over-charged cannon (super-maximal fire for +4 Strength), Experimental weapon (add always-on maximal fire) and Ablative armour (ignore a hit).

 

My opponent was using a Legio Astorum Ferrox Light Maniple made up of two reaver and two warhounds. The reavers were both armed with a chainfist, a powerfist and a turbo-laser destructor. One warhound had a plasma blastgun and a turbo-laser destructor. The other had a pair of Vulcan mega-bolters. The maniple was accompanied by two single knight Acastus banners. The acastus were armed with conversion beamers.

 

Here's deployment from our first gameL

 

I piled stuff up to the right of my centre. Basically, I knew the enemy battlegroup would want to close range, because of the punchy reavers and the Ferrox benefits. I figured, refuse the left flank and let the terrain get in the way of the acastus on that side, then send [incandescent Midnight and one cerastus banner up the close terrain to get the other acastus. The rest would advance into cover and then prepare to ambush the enemy as they closed in.

 

This plan did not survive contact with the enemy. If I'm remember correctly, the acastus wiped out all but one knight in a single turn of firing. The Astorum titans used their special rules and Full Stride orders to come screaming up the table. I tried to maneouvre [incandescent Midnight back to the centre, hugging cover. Turn 2 (I think?) and it looked dire:

 

Raucous Euphoria was ripped apart in a single combat turn. Having survived an acastus barrage, but ending with its shields stripped. Righteous Indignation had been plugging away and doing OK. No spectacular damage. I did get to use the Venator special rules once!

 

So in turn 3, [incandescent Midnight decided to sneak up and use his Over-charged plasma blastgun. That was dumb:

 

It was an absolute gift to my opponent! One punchy reaver splatted the 'hound, the other charged the reaver and ripped his legs off. Ouch. You know, we might have got to turn 4. I honestly can't remember, but everything was dead.

[Achinadav]

So. An hour & half in and the God Machines of Legio Hellion lie decimated. Time for another game? Yes, says, why not, its only half 8.

 

This time my cunning plan was to start in cover. This way the acastus wouldn't be able to spank me with First Fire. Also, don't dash forwards. Hold back, you know now they're going to be all up in your grill by turn 2 at the latest. This time I put Over-charged cannon and Experimental weapon both on Incandescent Midnight. This gave him a Strength 12 blastgun and Strength 9 inferno gun. Wicked, thought I.

 

We took random missions. My opponent got Retrieval and I got Glory or Death (or something like that, had to kill his Princeps Seniores). I missed a snap of deployment. But very rapidly, we ended up here:

 

The acastus ruined my knights again. Whilst I was in cover, they had to cluster together. The enemy knights just manoeuvred and fired diagnoally. Five knights dead. One remaining. A reaver right up next to me again. Incandescent Midnight didn't even get to shoot! Just got slapped about and then stood there like a statue.

 

Almost the same shot, but you get a slightly better impression of firing angles:

 

Raucous Euphoria bit it somehow. I think it involved a blasted acastus and warhound. Anyway, next turn my last remaining knight tried to charge the rear of the Princeps Seniores reaver. I'd put some damage on his body and a 9" charge would have given him 5 attacks. It would have been glorious! Alas, thermal mines did for him. So we came to this:

 

Thanks to a carefully placed First FIre order on Righteous Indignation he got to go before the enemy reaver got all punchy. So I targetted his body! IT was an awesome roll! Two 5's, a 6 and a 3! Hang on, did I just roll 4 dice....I felt myself staring at them. No way was this going to work. I needed 6's. One would probably have done, because the reaver's body was in a bad way. Glumly I picked up the high dice (because the ones that just scored the highest have got into the habit of rolling high) and chucked them again. And I rolled two 6's and a 5! The enemy reaver's goose was cooked! Blam, blam.

 

He blundered by and did a bit of a body slam to my titan as he went off to die. I think there were lots and lots of sixes. If memory serves, 3 criticals to the body, possibly with a little bit of damage already, or maybe just a devastating hit. That tends to end a reaver, so the game ended this way (it was more in focus in person, I swear, I was just a bit excited at the time and couldn't make my phone work properly):

 

I think I might have forgotten the Ablative Armour. And maybe something else finished him off? Whatever, it was awesome I'm going to claim a moral victory because I completed my mission. Even though I was wiped out in even fewer turns that before!

 

Things I learnt being completely wiped out twice in the space of three hours. I'm not very good at Adeptus Titanicus :) I'm finally beginning to pay attention to getting my activations in the right order in each phase. For example, putting First Fire on my reaver at the end there and actually using it to off the enemy before he clobbered me. But I'm need to start thinking about what my opponent might do to. I got out manoeuvred and had all my knights cooked twice because I fail to remember that the enemy get a chance to move before they fire. Acastus are definitely nastier than my first impression. I think the size of the game makes an important difference. Here it was two in a 1250 points battlegroup vs. 2000 points before. I won't be using them again, at least in small games, and neither will my opponent. Even though I was horrifically mauled, I still had fun. I love this game.

[Fajita Fan]

Everyone who has a terrible game with Acastus knights should email their customer service or reach out on Facebook. A friend moved back to the area so we’ll be playing soon, I plan to email my feedback on their points.

 

I still plan to use them in my knight list because I feel like a household doesn’t have many advantages.

[Achinadav]

So, apparently, it has been nearly 4 years since I did anything with my tiny titans. I don’t think it’s quite that long, but it has been a while! I got into Star Wars: Legion around the last time I posted, I think. It’s a really fun game with plenty of chances to make blaster & lightsaber noises. My Imperial army took up my painting time, though. And then I went seriously off the boil hobby-wise during lockdowns, etc. I’ve really struggled to get my mojo back for painting. Done plenty of assembly (I have an entire SWL army that I need to paint) and played a bunch of SWL, but painting just hasn’t happened.

 

What has brought me back to Titanicus is the announcement of Legion Imperialis! At the new club I’ve been playing at there are some other AT players so last week I went and introduced myself and this week I played for the first time since my last post. Had a tremendous time and am now back to happily sticking together my remaining titans. The plan being to actually paint the damn things too (assuming my paints haven’t all dried up in the interim).

 

Here’s the fruits of my labour:

 

I’ve decided to assemble my remaining reaver and pair of ‘hounds less cleanly than to date. These guys are meant to be mid-Heresy; they’ve drifted into more chaotic practises and the hard fighting of the Heresy has led to field repairs (rivets) and more cosmetic damage. On the left is Ater Mortis, the Black Skull, a titan with a dark demeanour and unpleasant temperament. On the right is Harbinger of Pain, a feral beast of a titan who revels in the destruction it causes. Legio Hellion likes to use experimental weaponry, so I’ve got a Vulcan mega-Bolter with macro magazines put together, a volkite eradictor, a slightly converted natrix shock lance (I didn’t like the pointy end so I’ve replaced it with a drill bit I got from a bits site way back when) and I’m trying to build an incisor melta lance. I’m struggling to get the right look at the moment and have more bits on order for the barrel. Not sure exactly how I’ll pair the weapons up, I might have to wait until I know what the melta lance does.

 

Here’s another shot of the Dark Skull’s head, because I’m quite pleased with it :

 

Admittedly, it’s a bit big, but I think it works OK. I feel a returning need to also convert up princeps for my titans. I’ve got an old Bane from Knight Models that would be perfect here, I’ll just have to give him a bionic eye.

Edited July 15, 2023 by Achinadav
Spelling.

[Lord_Borak]

Welcome back to the fold! Great conversions, I especially like those rivets and braziers on the backs!

[Mandragola]

Great to have you back in the manifold Achindav. I'm really looking forward to LI too.

[Tar Aldarion]

Great stuff indeed! The rivets are a simple but effective measure. Ater mortis reminds me a bit of the old AT43 therian walkers.

[Achinadav]

Thanks folks. It’s good to be back :) I’ve had to order some more rivets, because I used them all up. I used that as an excuse to also get some wrapped wire cables and cable connectors from Zinge too. And then I managed to find some card sleeves that fit the weapon cards and stratagems. I also had to get another brazier for Harbinger’s other void shield thing and some more of the little circular plates with spikes for his joints. It’s been a fun couple of days wondering if the postie will bring them today! Of course, now I need to find something to keep all those stratagem card and the open war deck in.

 

After posting I realised I hadn’t included any photos of my 2nd reaver, whose destiny it is to lead the Black Skull & Harbinger. Here’s Carnifex:

 

He kind of looks like he’s dancing in that first photo. When I glued the torso, I twisted it a little too far to his left, so not quite the pose I was after. But I think it works. The chai fist uses a fit from an ork killer kan, or maybe a mega-dread. I plan on adding some rivets and cables, now I’ve got some more. His melta cannon needs some conversion done too, not spikey enough.

[Achinadav]

Behold! The Dark Mechanicus have forged new weapons for the Black Skull and Harbinger:

 

On the left is my kit-bashed melta lance. I used a turbo-laser destructor as the base with the muzzle from a hellbrute multi-melta. The armoured cowl was carefully carved out from the rest of the hellbrute arm (needs a bit of a tidy up, actually, there's some nasty scratches in there). The ammo pods are 40k melta bombs with nozzles and wrapped wire from Zinge connecting everything up. Its not perfect, but I'm quite pleased.

 

In the middle is my mega-bolter with macro magazines. They're made out of two ammo boxes from the space marine devastator kit and a wulfen gun used as some sort of targetter/camera for assessing the impact of the upgrade.

 

On the right is the lightly converted natrix shocklance. Still not sure where the drill bit came from, maybe ork mekaniak?

 

I think Harbinger will be armed with the mega-bolter and melta lance. I'm guessing the melta lance will be short ranged with fusion, one dice + 3" template. So she'll be armed to strip shields and then unleash punishment. That will leave the Black Skull with the shock lance and volkite thingy. In theory, if she fails to get the shutdown, she can hit you with 5 guaranteed void saves (yay beam!). If she gets the shutdown, she can choose her target location and get you with 3 guaranteed hits to hit.

 

I've also been working on the 4th titan for my Venator maniple, Obligatum Omnissiah Dominus (Obligation to the Lord of all Machine Gods, or something), another experimental weapons platform. After the success in my last game, her plasma blast gun has been upgraded to look like it is over-charged and I also added macro magazines to her mega bolster. Fun & shenanigans should occur in her second outing in tonight's game. Pics to follow, because I forgot. I really want to convert Obligation's head to look like the Forgeworld cerastus head upgrades, but it's already stuck in place and that might be challenging. I might add some extra scannery-looking things to her carapace, to help keep track of the performance of her experimental systems.

 

After posting I realised that I haven't mentioned Obligation's success! I can't remember if it was the first shot of the game or the second, but she had a clear line-of-sight to an enemy 'hound in the open. Fortunately, her mega-bolter was just in range and I got a lovely set of to-hit rolls. My opponent then whiffed his void saves and they collapsed. Lining up her over-charged plasma blast gun, Obligation got lucky with a long-range shot and hit with both dice. I then managed to roll three 6's and a 5 for the damage, which was 4 crits! (I think) Enemy 'hound was thoroughly executed. As opposed to a little bit executed.

 

One final pic; I've finished converting up Harbinger with the addition of some brass etch. Man was that fiddly! Didn't help that my super glue had gone off and didn't like bonding:

 

The second brazier arrived for her void shield node arrived and I've added some rivets to their housing. The leg plates are balanced in place. If the brass etch/super glue overspill has fingerprints, I guess I'll do some careful scraping. There's a story behind the Wordbearer iconography, which is a little too high.

Edited July 26, 2023 by Achinadav
Spelling, and because I forgot a story.

[Achinadav]

My most recent foray into trying to finish my cerastus knights didn’t go so well. Thankfully I had said in an earlier post how I did the bases, so they came out nicely. But when I tried to tidy up their armour plates and get some definition, things just got messy. I did find that a carefully run line of wash against the trim picked that out nicely and a quick visit to my local GW has furnished me with a couple of shades that I was missing that I think will help with both House Paramour & Legion Hellion. Somewhat dispirited, I returned to trying to finish off some truescale Word Bearer conversions that I started yonks ago.

 

However, this weekend I did get back to the Obligation and had a go at kitbashing her a unique head equipped with some experimental sensor equipment:

 

I’m quite pleased with how it has come out, although there were some mistakes along the way. For example, I snapped a flexible resin cable twice and ended up giving up. That’s why the big red wheely thing is where it is; it covers some damage and makes sure that the head is asymmetric. I’m now trying to work out what to do with the Obligation’s carapace. I found that the mechanicus icons from the 40k knight warden kit fit really well. There’s both the little ones that go on the back of the knight and the big ones that go on the knight’s carapace. Once I figure out what to do about the different curvatures that are involved, I think it will be perfect.

[Achinadav]

I think I’ve finished converting up the Obligation’s custom weapons now. She’s armed with a Vulcan mega-Bolter with macro magazines and a plasma blast gun that I always (twice in two games counts as always, right?) give over-charged cannon. Here’s a few picks to try and give you a feel for them:

 

My last addition was the ammo belt-thingy for the mega-Bolter. I ground out the ejection port on the inside with a file and was then able to glue it in there good and solid. I was worried that the cable, which is meant to synchronise the extra magazines with the normal ones, looked like it was meant to feed ammo instead. I think the ammo belt shows that isn’t the case. There’s quite a few doodads and gewgaws, especially on the overcharged blast gun. I’ve used some of Anvil Industries’ assorted sights to add cameras and whatnot. I figured that the mechanicum (dark or otherwise) would want to collect all sorts of additional data on the performance of the experimental weapon and/or other upgrades.

 

I’m currently working on adding some technical-looking widgets to the Obligation’s armour. I want to change the silhouette, so I’m adding some aerials and, maybe, some sort of radar dish. Not sure what I’m going to do to the leg armour, because I’d like to change the shape there a bit too. I don’t think I’ll be able to scrape the decoration of the armour plates that are already attached, though, which I’d quite like to do.

 

Found a place to put one of the little mechanicus icons from the 40k imperial knight kit:

 

These would also fit quite nicely in place of the eye of Horus that’s currently on the top of the weapon mounts. Not sure whether to go for it or not.

Edited August 16, 2023 by Achinadav