Mandragola’s Legio Astorum (and Mortis and stuff)

[Mandragola]

I wonder if its worth trying to convert the Warhound VMBs to fit a Warlord?

 

I don’t think it is, because they’re much better guns on a warhound than a warhound, so I’d never want to ruin the warhound guns. I did it with some reaver carapace ones and that looked ok but I do think the official FW ones are the best looking.

 

The issues are that VMBs are very small, so just look sort of diddy on a warlord. Warhound ones are the smallest of the lot of course. And honestly they aren’t great on a warlord, with just a 20” range and unable to fire at anything much within half that distance. The only real argument for them is as a cheap option on a melee warlord, but even then gatling or laser blasters are far superior if you have the points available.

 

The difference between S4 and S5 is really significant on a multi-shot weapon. For example against a knight where you need a 9 for a direct hit you do damage on a 4+ instead of a 5 – which increases your damage by 50%. Against armour 10 you need a 5 instead of a 6, so you do 100% more.

 

VMBs are good shield breakers due to the rapid trait. They’re excellent once you start boosting their strength due to outflanking, squadron bonuses and so on. But Warlords don’t generally get those kinds of bonuses – they aren’t usually in squadrons and tend to have to shoot things in the front. And gatlings do have the Ordnance rule. It isn’t quite as good as rapid (it affects fewer rolls on average I think) but it still helps.

 

Overall I think missiles are a great choice for a warlord’s carapace. Gatlings are great all-rounders if you’re advancing anyway to get plasma and/or gatling arms in range, though arguably the missiles are still very good in that situation. Laser blasters are a very different animal – much less good at range but able to do real damage to targets by landing multiple S8 hits on one location, and actually worth using shieldbane on, unlike basically any other gun. I can’t really make an argument in favour of turbo lasers or VMBs on warlords though. Fundamentally, you’ve got a slot on your warlord for either a reaver or a warhound arm. Reaver arms are better.

Edited February 4, 2020 by Mandragola

[Fajita Fan]

You wouldn’t want to split the gatlings on the Reavers?

[Mandragola]

You wouldn’t want to split the gatlings on the Reavers?

I’m not sure, but probably not. The idea is to have one reaver that operates in close and another to provide longer-ranged firing.

 

A titan with multiple shield-breaking guns is quite hard to defend against. If someone wants to boost their shields against all the guns on my dakka reaver then it’ll cost them 3 points of heat. But unlike a dual-VMB hound its guns are just about strong enough to damage armour, especially if I can get it in close.

 

I’ve got a friend who runs a double gatling reaver as a weapon stripper. If he has to shoot something without shields (sometimes after deliberately going into melee range) he targets the guns at close range, using the +1 gatlings get. Doesn’t kill many titans but it takes their threat away and means their repair dice have to be used putting their guns back together, not on their shields or reactors.

[Captain Semper]

Those fire patterns on the running Warlord sure look awesome! 

 

OK we need to see all the lists painted up and in nice pics! And a summary of the event with even more pics if possible! :lol: (preferably in a dedicated new topic)!

 

 

Regarding the diamond patterns on your Mortis, wouldn't you consider stencils? It seems tremendously hard work free-handing them... 

[Mandragola]

Ok well the event is next weekend. I’m hoping to make good progress on the painting tonight and be able to do just that. Various new weapons have now been painted up and I’ve done a bit of work on my Reavers. Two of those still need basing though.

 

I’m on track to meet the deadline, though without a lot of time to spare. I’m having to push my reactor quite hard because real life is also very busy at the moment.

 

I’ve never worked with templates for things like the diamonds. I think I can probably do it reasonably well by hand on small areas like this. The Mortis stuff is on the back burner while I get ready for WHW anyway.

[Guest]

I am looking forward to your progress on the Legio and the Event.

Edited February 10, 2020 by Wolf Guard Einar

[Sherrypie]

The new Warlord + 2-4 Hounds maniple is also a pretty tasty option for small games, especially if you want to go danger close with the Lord ;)

[Mandragola]

I’m certainly considering that maniple. Don’t think I’ll use it for this event.

 

I’m getting a couple of warbringers and I’ll try the maniple where they let reaver run around the place. Sounds like just my kind of thing, though I’m not sure warbringers are actually that good at scoring engine kills - that’s not what quake cannons do.

 

The maniple that lets them fire without LoS is junk imo. For a start it makes them horribly inaccurate and it also makes no sense to fire stuff like lasers with indirect fire. I’ll be interested if we get something like a WD maniple with warbringers in, especially if they combine with warlords.

 

For Astorum I can see a case for running Warbringers with double-Gatling and bellicosa. Strip shields and nuke stuff. They can afford to pump their reactors for a 9” move to get up the field early on. Maybe they should have melta and Gatling. Just generally none of the guns they actually come with! I’ll see about getting myself a bellicosa sprue at WHW and modelling a sprinting Warbringer.

[Sherrypie]

Not too sure about that, old chum. I'd rate Arcus quite high on the first glance. The fluff can be easily argued by not being fired in a parabole but simply through stuff. Most of the time people are using flimsy buildings and stuff that isn't really physically hard to penetrate with titan weapons, it's just not worth it to fire without coordinates that are now provided by the scouts. With only d6" scatter, firing indirectly isn't that much of a problem either given the expected 3-4" scatter will still hit most targets at least once even with the smaller template and there are legios like Mordax who can upgrade even those to 5" plates where there's only 1/3 chance of missing a Warhound if scattered from the middle. It's quite accurate, given the circumstances. You want to push Hounds forwards to good positions with lots of bolters to drop shields all day and blast away with the Warbringer, who can then drop the pain with surprise meltas and quake shots.

 

As for Ruptura, it'd probably be either advancing melta engines or long range volcanoes that exploit the mid-to-close range Reaver's work in dropping those defences to kill injured ones and send the fisty bois into flanking positions. Melta/fist/vulcan Reavers in the front could be interesting, first advancing with bolters spewing, eventually cracking some armour with the meltas and opening the targets for kill shots from the Warbringers to get that sweet maneuver. That's a bit tricky with blasty guns, though. Laserbringers in the second line? Interesting times ahead, again.

[Mandragola]

I just had a look at the warbringer online and spun the pictures around. It actually looks slightly harder to convert than I first thought. The issue is the magazines for the quake cannon, which would need to go and be replaced with something - I’m not sure what - for the bellicosa.

 

There’s actually a very strong case for me to not buy these and convert them to have weapons I want, at great expense and taking loads of time, when it’s pretty likely we’ll get a weapon sprue with the stuff I want sooner or later anyway.

 

I’m basically not that convinced by them with quake cannons. They have no long-ranged shield-stripper to go with their it. Reaver guns are generally short-ranged, which is where quake cannons don’t want to be. The only long-ranged arm weapon is the volcano cannon, which generally isn’t a great gun.

 

But on the other hand the good weapons, like meltas and the bellicosa, cost loads. This thing isn’t really that tough so spending loads of points on guns for it might not be a sound approach.

 

The maniple with three reavers and two warbringers does have potential but I think you’ll find the effect triggering at slightly random moments. And I just really like my Warlords.

 

I just spent £120 on a Psi Titan and some guns for for it, (and I’ve got a feeling they might be the wrong ones, d’oh!). I’ve got my Mortis and knights to paint too. I might hold fire on Warbringers for now I think.

[Mandragola]

Just saw your post Sherrypie. I forgot about the d6 scatter and that’s significant. If the hounds are equipped to strip shields then yes, the indirect quake starts to work very well. And as Astorum I could get away with the heat from two volcano cannons.

 

This could actually be something to consider for my Mortis. At 1750 I could have two maniples: Penumbral Reaper with two hounds and a Warbringer with two more. The hounds would benefit from +1 to hit while the Reaper was within 12” of stuff - which is where it wants to be.

Edited February 10, 2020 by Mandragola

[Sherrypie]

Yeah, going from expected misses to expected clips is a big change. You rarely get double hits, sure, but singular hits pile up. Besides Astorum, I could see something like Crucius enjoying the life at the back just venting that heat away without sweat.

[Mandragola]

Ok so I drew up the Mortis list with two maniples. It might not suck.

 

Mandatum Battleline Maniple                   

                               

Penumbral Reaper                          525

                               

Warhound Titan                                220

                Plasma Blaster  

                Vulcan Mega Bolter        

                               

Warhound Titan                                210

                Vulcan Mega Bolter        

                Turbo Laser       

                               

Arcus Battleline Maniple                              

                               

Warbringer Nemesis Titan                            395

                Quake Cannon 

                Gatling Blaster  

                Volcano Cannon              

                               

Warhound Titan                                200

                Vulcan Mega Bolter        

                Vulcan Mega Bolter        

                               

Warhound Titan                                210

                Vulcan Mega Bolter        

                Inferno Gun      

 

So the basic plan is that the warhounds strip shields, then the Warbringer and Penumbral Reaper kill things. I've had to cut points back on the guns my guys have more than I'd really like, but I can live with it. The Reaper is kind of silly anyway so that's ok. The army would probably be better with a melee Reaver instead of the Warbringer, though then I might actually have more points than I knew what to do with. The Mandatum maniple is a big help in general for fielding the Penumbral Reaper as it lets me fit in two maniples. Both the big guys can be Princeps Seniores this way I guess. And the Mandatum's increased accuracy is a big help for both spamming Plasma blastgun shots and targeted turbo laser zaps.

 

So anyway, looks like I'll be getting one of these Warbringer things, but then painting it black. Makes for a slightly more interesting force than just zerging forward, I guess. It also means all my knights can be painted as a single force, if and when I finally decide what colour they should be.

[Fajita Fan]

I just had a look at the warbringer online and spun the pictures around. It actually looks slightly harder to convert than I first thought. The issue is the magazines for the quake cannon, which would need to go and be replaced with something - I’m not sure what - for the bellicosa.

 

There’s actually a very strong case for me to not buy these and convert them to have weapons I want, at great expense and taking loads of time, when it’s pretty likely we’ll get a weapon sprue with the stuff I want sooner or later anyway.

 

I’m basically not that convinced by them with quake cannons. They have no long-ranged shield-stripper to go with their it. Reaver guns are generally short-ranged, which is where quake cannons don’t want to be. The only long-ranged arm weapon is the volcano cannon, which generally isn’t a great gun.

 

But on the other hand the good weapons, like meltas and the bellicosa, cost loads. This thing isn’t really that tough so spending loads of points on guns for it might not be a sound approach.

 

The maniple with three reavers and two warbringers does have potential but I think you’ll find the effect triggering at slightly random moments. And I just really like my Warlords.

 

I just spent £120 on a Psi Titan and some guns for for it, (and I’ve got a feeling they might be the wrong ones, d’oh!). I’ve got my Mortis and knights to paint too. I might hold fire on Warbringers for now I think.

I think a better Warbringer loadout would be if it could take Apoc launchers for arms and then a volcano or quake on the back, then I would be more interested. 

[Mandragola]

Well I can already have a titan with apocalypse launchers and quake cannons. That’s called a warlord Titan though, right? I’ve got one of those and it costs 440 points. A warbringer with the armament out of the box costs 395, which isn’t a whole lot less. How do you sell me that warbringer, when I could have that warlord?

[Emicus]

It's a different quake cannon for a start? Indirect fire can be cool too.

[Mandragola]

It's the same exact gun. On the Warbringer it has a corridor arc instead of the 90 degree arc the Warlord's ones have.

 

The Warbringer can only fire indirectly if you buy it in a particular maniple and one of its warhound friends can see. That's quite good, but to be honest my Warlords are tall enough to see most stuff.

 

Overall the Warlord just seems better because all of its weapons want to be at long range.  For the warbringer it feels like some weapons are either too close or too far away, no matter what I do.

[Fajita Fan]

It's the same exact gun. On the Warbringer it has a corridor arc instead of the 90 degree arc the Warlord's ones have.

 

The Warbringer can only fire indirectly if you buy it in a particular maniple and one of its warhound friends can see. That's quite good, but to be honest my Warlords are tall enough to see most stuff.

 

Overall the Warlord just seems better because all of its weapons want to be at long range. For the warbringer it feels like some weapons are either too close or too far away, no matter what I do.

Wait wait wait it’s got a straight line arc on the roof gun? That doesn’t swivel? I thought the whole point of this was being able to stand back and lob shots indirectly without worrying about LoS. If I have to aim its legs at the target with no long range shield stripper I’m not really inclined to want one at all...

 

I didn’t have the rules or points in front of me yet, I was expecting a 90* arc on the carapace gun.

Edited February 11, 2020 by Fajita Fan

[Mandragola]

Well I expected corridor to be honest. The gun is on a fixed mount - unlike the warlord’s carapace weapons which can swivel.

 

Anyway you can see the rules on the official GW site. The terminal and cards are shown on the images for the model as they come in the box. 325 points, most of the stats of a reaver but scale 9, speed 5/7”.

 

The quake cannon isn’t indirect fire. The warbringer can get the barrage rule for all its guns in a maniple that has it and a couple of warhounds. But weirdly that’s not just the quake cannon, it’s lasers, Gatling blaster and melta as well... somehow.

 

Oh and the quake and bellicosa cards don’t seem to have the carapace rule, so they appear to have no minimum range. That might just be a mistake, but lol.

 

I’ve just had a proper look at the terminal. It’s actually quite a lot better armoured than a reaver. Locations mostly require one higher number to be rolled to damage them (though some damage bands are the same as a reaver). It’s locations have one more pip of damage they can take before being compromised. It has a warlord’s reactor track, which surprises me, especially with four servitor clades, so it should t overhear easily. It has the same number of shields as a warlord as well, though it drops to a 4+ save one pip earlier.

 

All of this means it’s actually reasonably tough for its price. I’d been thinking of it as a bit of a glass cannon, but it isn’t really. Its toughness is more or less in line with its cost. It’s really a battle Titan that fits nearly between the Reaver and Warlord.

 

Bearing all of this in mind, the load-out it comes with is ok. It can fire effectively at decent range and easily handle the heat it generates, especially since it doesn’t really need to use heat for movement. As Astorum I could probably get away with a volcano cannon on each arm and just sit back blasting stuff, with about the same firepower as an Acastus knight*.

 

Bellicosa or quake is a tough decision. 35 points is a lot and draining is annoying, but the far higher strength and better accuracy are a big deal too. You definitely don’t want triple volcano cannons due to heat but some combination of the other weapons would give you a pretty good midfield battle Titan.

 

The maniple where blasts only scatter d6” is kind of major. It means you’re really quite likely to still hit even on a scatter. However the Ruptura maniple sounds much more fun, with Reavers running all over the place. You can then activate your reavers first, then aim your warbringers at something your opponent moves. Reavers have good arcs but even if they end up out of position you might get to move again.

 

*Seriously, warbringer gets 3 blasts at better strength and one is 5” blast. Acastus gets 4 at S8, plus shield stripping missiles. Warbringer might be a bit better but...

[Mandragola]

Well my battlegroup is all packed up and ready to go. Time to get a little bit of sleep. Alarm set for 4:25!

[Guest]

Well my battlegroup is all packed up and ready to go. Time to get a little bit of sleep. Alarm set for 4:25!

Good luck dude... We expect battle reports and hopefully good news :)

[Mandragola]

Thanks. This isn’t a competition so I expect the news will just be about fun games played and traitor engines burned. There’s at least one guy trolling Facebook about how he’s bringing 8 Acastus though, so maybe instead it’ll just be a tale of woe.

[Burni]

Saw your Astorum on the table (you were away between games) Absolutely stunning.

 

The Acastus Guy did bring 8 I believe. Not faced him personally though.

 

But good to see us Loyalists are current on top after day 1.

[Mandragola]

Cool. I think maybe I saw your stuff in the painting competition. Met a few people from on here - had a very short lunch break today with BBJ.

 

I need to upload some images and play around with them to do a proper post about the weekend. The main thing is that it was probably the best event I’ve been to at warhammer world. I’ve been to lots of them because I go to their 40k tournaments, but honestly Titanicus is just a much better game.

 

There’s been a lot of chat about the psi titans and new stuff in shadow and iron. I played Rhu James’ knights again in the last game and we decided to use the new rules. He got a seneschal trait for his malinax and I got to call in an orbital strike on my own melee warlord, which was surrounded by knights at the time, which was awesome.

 

He also corrupted the ground so my myrmidon maniple was hopping about complaining about things. One reaver repeatedly failed to go on first fire, Then when it finally did I tried to fire my volcano cannon but the machine spirit took control and moved the Titan.

 

So here’s a briefish report of what happened in my games:

 

Game 1 was 1000 points and we both had Axiom maniples. I was playing a guy called Drew but can’t remember what his Legio was. Mission was just to kill each other. This game started pretty badly for me with and I took a lot of damage. Nothing quite died though and I managed to take his reaver out with A good shot from my warhounds plasma blaster. not long after that his warhound, with three crits to the head, shut itself down and never woke up again. But meanwhile my reaver has managed to get its reactor into the red by repeatedly rooming double heat. Drew’s Titan hunte rinfantry got a fluke hit on it that killed it, so it died, went nuclear and got six hits on my poor old warlord’s damaged leg. So two kills to the Titan hunter infantry... who won’t have survived the blast either. I lose game one. Boo!

 

Game two was 1500 points against a guy called Matt, who does the full stride podcast. He’d brought Fureans with an Axiom maniple. His mission was to get models off my board edge. We though this could be quite easy to do as he only needed 500 points to get there.

 

I had to deploy first. Matt has all his guys run forwards on one side in a wedge. I played cox blackout in turn one though to prevent him from doing full stride, after he’d played the traitor arrest for +2” move. He came piling forward and a lot of fire was exchanged, without initially doing much.

 

Turn two was where things started to die, a lot. I had Lucius Praetorian charge into Mattms army and attack a damaged reaver. It had a magazine explosion with its melta, and was within the shields of two of my models - and of course of Lucius Praetorian. Lots of damage all round. Matt’s melee reaver them charged Lucius Praetorian and killed it - and then it’s melta’s magazine also exploded, causing even more damage to Matt.

 

From there I was in a good place. I had a warlord and warhound coming into the side of Matt’s force and my quake warlord in front, slowing things. All Matt’s army died, though his Warlord nearly made it across. There was a comedy melee between it and my artillery warlord, which tried to block its movement, then it eventually died about 3” from the edge, having failed a command check for full stride.

 

Game three was against a guy called Steve. He was a bit less familiar with the game than me so I explained a bit about how he could organise his titans into two maniples, as he had two reavers and four hounds. It was kind of an unfair mission for the traitors as the loyalists got points to kill models that we nominated - secretly. It was very hard for traitors to protect units when they didn’t even know who to try and look after. This ended up as a pretty one-sided win for me, without losing any of my titans. Lucius Praetorian got a bit lucky by going on repair orders and then running outside of arcs (rather than fire) so managed to survive, just, and I killed enough to win.

 

In the evening I got together with Drew, Matt and a Guy called Ben, to have fairly shocking performance in the pub quiz. In our defence it had questions about Aeronautica, which none of us play.

[Mandragola]

Ok so day two. I’m up against Josh and his... , at 2k. Steve also had these, so it was hers Fureans in a row now. This mission had four artillery pieces that the traitors were trying to kill, which had to be deployed 12” from the centre. They got to deploy within 8” of any edge, then the loyalists set up within 12” of the centre. To destroy an artillery thing the traitors had to end a turn stood within 2” of it, with no loyalists within 2”.

 

This was maybe my favourite scenario of the weekend. Josh had quite an aggressive force of a full Axiom maniple, all with targeting auspex, and four lancers. I knew he could move to basically any of the points by turn one, but could only kill it if I wasn’t there. I had three warlords and two reavers, so I was durable. But Roche Cerastus are a huge threat.

 

I decided to have my melee warlord face his artillery warlord and punch it to death. My artillery warlord would defend another objective against the two reavers, which had no melee weapons. I stayed away from the place the Cerastus were attacking but pointed my quake cannons at them. My third warlord and reavers deployed more or less centrally to deal with whatever turned up.

 

Things started well. I won priority and first fired a quake shell at the lancers, which meant they lost their Charge order and could only move 4”. but my melee warlord failed his own charge and could only move up to the enemy warlord and do two crits to it’s body. Not too bad. On the other hand Josh’s plasma hound was able to run inside one of my reavers’ shields and blow it away - suffering a little damage from its exploding volcano cannon.

 

In turn two I decided I couldn’t afford to leave the warhounds in my lines like that, so my melee warlord was going to have to sort them out. This time it passed its charge order, pushed to turn, successfully swung around, pushed again to boost movement and then failed a command check for the machine spirit! So now it had turned away from the warlord it was punching and was stood there like an idiot. The hounds then proceeded to run inside my Seniores’ shields and blow him up as well, thanks to some deadly accurate plasma fire. Nightmare! My melee warlord was then able to partially redeem itself though, but killing one of the warhounds (with its ardex defence weapons, bizarrely). This hound’s magazine exploded, which was the third explosion its friend had suffered, and that was enough to finish it off as well. The Cerastus staggered through the quake bombardment and burned the first objective, while my artillery warlord weathered a lot of fire from the two reavers. My Gatling reaver found that the Lancers were basically immune to it. Their shields gave them a 2+ save.

 

The rest of the game involved me standing my melee and artillery warlords on two of the objectives, while trying not to die and kill stuff a little bit. I used repair orders a bit and a very flakey machine defiance on my artillery warlord, which got back four shields - much to Josh’s disgust after he’d finally got rid of them. I managed to kill a Reaver and all but one of the Cerastus, though it never got to another objective. I put-activates Josh later on so I was able to move models after he’d come inside my shields, which he couldn’t get rid of. By saving three of the four artillery pieces I got the win.

 

Game five was against Rhu’s knights. It represented a final assault against the traitors, as by now the loyalists were a fair bit ahead. This meant that points were based on how many points worth of traitors we killed, regardless of loyalist casualties, which meant I felt pretty confident about the win.

 

Rhu and I had a great game and there was true carnage. I managed to quake quite a lot of things and my melee warlord did great work, including by serving as a target for an orbital strike when surrounded. He eventually went down to a charge from an Acheron but when he fell surrounded by dead foes, including the silenced Iben Faruq - which incidentally sort of meant I’d faced Fureans for the fourth game in a row. I also lost my Seniores Warlord (which was becoming a habit) after a banner of wardens managed to structurally-compromise it’s body and then pour avenger shots into it. All the knights did die though, which gave me the win.

 

I came away from this event feeling very good. I was pleased with 4:1, but more importantly the games had all been fantastic. The standard of painting on display was phenomenal and the community was great. Credit to the crew at Warhammer World for painting buildings to a high standard for 32 tables. Looking forward to the next one of these. This is an awesome game.