Mandragola’s Legio Astorum (and Mortis and stuff)

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I finished my Volkite Destructor last night, and have some warlord plasmas on the desk next. My sister has bought me the carapace Gatlings for my birthday, so I'm looking forward to paying my friend back in kind soon!

 

(My only painted Warlord only has Apocs, Bellicosa and Quake, I'm building up to an Extergimus next!)

[Noserenda]

I ran my Warlord Volkite out at our campaign event but it only got one good shot off, i suspect due to new model curse more than anything :D 

[Mandragola]

Finished my first building. Just another 9 or so to go!

 

 

It's a very simple scheme. Grey seer spray, Basilicanum contrast all over and ulthuaan grey drybrush. I put gloss nuln oil in the windows and painted the bronze bits and metal a bit more carefully. End result looks decent I think, though the overall colour is almost back to where I started!

[schoon]

Using the crane tower horizontally is really a great look.

 

Generarium - check!

[Mandragola]

Thanks. It's also a nice way to get effectively another level's worth of height. I think it looks a bit over-engineered for a crane tower, though these things do work fine as storage tanks.

[schoon]

Thanks. It's also a nice way to get effectively another level's worth of height. I think it looks a bit over-engineered for a crane tower, though these things do work fine as storage tanks.

Agreed entirely - I like to open-girder structure common to most building cranes that we see in the current day.

[Mandragola]

Agreed. I've made a crane tower from spare bits. It looks fairly good I think, except of course it doesn't block LoS!

 

 

I've painted up the second identical generatorium. My remaining buildings mostly need quite a lot of balconies applied so people don't fall to their deaths when they open doors on upper levels. Unfortunately it was quite late in the process that I realised I could use a hexagonal bit with a straight wall above to use up doors, as I've done here.

 

 

On the other hand though it's good that I have some big slab blocks. They'll block LoS effectively because they don't step in towards the top. Just needs a bit of work.

 

Anyway I'm going on holiday for a week and have the BT army set coming soon. Might take a while to work through this lot, but it's quite a fun little side project to have.

Edited October 15, 2021 by Mandragola

[schoon]

That crane looks great. Excellent use of extra "posts!"

 

I'm going to steal that idea!

[Lord_Borak]

Yeah, that crane is awesome!! You just need a teeny tiny ladder between those hatches ;)

[Mandragola]

Yeah, that crane is awesome!! You just need a teeny tiny ladder between those hatches

Well yes, I suppose I do. I think 4D models do something at 1:200, though I'm not sure if the scale is quite right.

 

https://modelshop.co.uk/Shop/Model-Detail/1-200-Scale/Ladders-Stairs/Item/1-200-ladder-3-9-75mm-Pk2/ITM5772

 

Not sure I can be bothered ordering just that, for a piece that's of pretty limited use, but we'll see. I might need more of the plasticard for roof tiles.

[Mandragola]

This plog has been very quiet lately. In about 10 days I'll be going to the Maximal Fire event at Beachhead. I'm going to be taking an Extermigus Maniple of my Astorum. Unfortunately I've got to submit my list before I'll have had a chance for any practice games, but I think I've drawn up something reasonably good.

 

Today I got the models out of the box to check I actually had everything I needed. I've done a bit of touching up here and there. There's more detail I could add but ultimately I have a battle-ready force assembled. I'm kind of thinking about adding flags, so we'll see if I get round to that. Don't bet on it!

 

So with my two practice games I'm expecting seven games over the next 10 days. Can't wait.

[Mandragola]

Well I've picked my list for Beachhead and sent it off:

 

Extermigus Battleline Maniple     Warlord Titan - Princeps Seniores   Ironclad Tyrant   Macro-Gatling Blaster   Sunfury Plasma Annihilator   Apocalypse Missile Launchers   Tracking Gyroscopes     Warlord Titan   Sunfury Plasma Annihilator   Arioch Power Claw   Vulcan Mega-bolter Array     Warlord Titan   Mori Quake Cannon   Sunfury Plasma Annihilator   Apocalypse Missile Launchers     Reinforcements     Reaver Battle Titan   Gatling Blaster   Melta Cannon   Apocalypse Missile Launcher

 

I had a practice game today against Zach from Goonhammer. Didn't go well, at all! I had kind of an awkward deployment zone with a big building and made a bad call to try and send all three Warlords through one gap. That left my Reaver elsewhere isolated and meant the Warlords got in each other's way loads. The highlight was when my Quake cannon Warlord died, wildfired and killed my clawlord. Oh well!

 

Zach was running a Vulcanum Fortis maniple with Two shooty Warlords and two melee Reavers, forming two squadrons (Warlords in one, Reavers in the other). He ran the Reavers up behind a concealment barrage and then split them on turn 2, using the traitor tricks to get a long charge into my already-damaged Reaver. The second Reaver happily walked within 10" of my three Warlords (who shouldn't have been positioned to allow this of course) and made a bunch of shield saves. My Clawlord did then punch its head off, but as it died it tracked the clawlord's body, which set it up for three plasma hits from my own quake cannon warlord to really ruin its day. The clawlord's reactor then blew, doing almost no damage to anything. Titanicus is like that, sometimes.

 

Lessons learned:

• Don't stand three Warlords next to each other.
• Don't ever stand Warlords within 2" of each other.
• Stay away from melee Reavers, even if that means standing right at the back.
• Remember to play machine defiance, omg.

Anyway the point of practice games is to mess things up and learn from them. I definitely achieved the first of those. I haven't played since the LGT way back in October so it was good to just put titans on a board and try to remember the phases of the game.

 

I've got another game tomorrow against a hyper-aggressive list, so maybe some of these lessons will get used.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I think the list is decent. I'd personally go for top gats over Apocs on the princeps, but I imagine points are a bit tight/you may not have them. But Apocs are pretty similar, and you can always overheat them if you really need it.

 

It's not dissimilar from a list my friend runs. But he gave up on the clawlord. They just don't work in his view, and he replaced the claw with a Volkite, and they are pretty decent to be fair, espesh in an Extergimus.

 

That's also my favourite Reaver combo, Gatling and Melta. I don't think the Laser weapons work on Reavers. (Or generally tbh) and that combo with either a VMB or Apoc is a very flexible platform.

 

Is it a 2k event?

[Sword Brother Adelard]

Oh! And here's a trick my friend played recently which was devastating.

 

I charged one of his Warlords with a melee reaver, it was a turn two long traitor charge, and should have been the beginning of the end for his Maniple. When he played Earthshaker mines on my Reaver. The mines did a bit of leg damage, but I then had to stagger, which I did colliding with the target Warlord. He did it because he hoped it might push my Reaver out of melee range. But in fact, the collision did 6 hits to my Reavers already damaged legs and killed it. Basically lost me the game as I tripped at the finish line.

[Mandragola]

It’s a 1750 event so fitting in three warlords is tricky. I’ll have a look at those mines and anything else that might slow incoming threats. Zach’s two melee reavers behind the concealment barrage were pretty horrible but there are Legios that can do meaner things than that.

 

Various factors have combined to mean titans can run around a bit more quickly nowadays. It can make warlords look a bit silly if you mess up.

Edited February 9, 2022 by Mandragola

[Sword Brother Adelard]

The traitors have a few too many IMO. Loyalist melee can't really compete outside Gryphonicus really leaning into it with the 5 reaver Ferrox.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

How did beachhead go?

[Mandragola]

Beachhead was really great. My first two games went terribly, with my melee warlord suffering two catastrophic meltdowns, killing another warlord in one game (having previously been quaked into my reaver, killing that) and my reaver again in the second, costing me both games. In fact over the course of the event those three engine kills my own melee Warlord caused on me more or less equalled what enemy action caused. I did win my next three games, but never easily.

 

Overall my experience showed that the Extermigus maniple just isn't a good idea at 1750, particularly if you're using the open engine war missions. They require you to run around the board, sometimes into the enemy deployment zone, and warlords just can't do it. It's too much to expect something like a reaver or a knight banner to do that on their own. There was a traitor player using a Legio Tritonis Extermigus and he had four losses and a draw. I had hoped for great things from firing S12 sunfuries at things but in reality I quite often got 2 hits, one an extra point of heat from rolling a 1 and then didn't cause all that amazing damage. I actually used the Extermigus trait on carapace weapons far more than I expected to, as that turned out to be a good way to finish off damaged titans.

 

Perhaps surprisingly, the Loyalists did quite a lot better than the traitors. The only "traitor" player to get more than 3 wins out of 5 was a Krytos guy who volunteered to play on the loyalist side to balance the numbers. He ended up winning the best loyalist player award. Second place loyalist was a player with the event's only Psi-titan, working with a Ferrox maniple that wasn't from any particular Legio, meaning his opponent only got 3 stratagem points. I can see the logic of doing that in 1750 point games as ~750 points of your list isn't going to get Legio rules anway, but people felt a bit salty about it. He got 25 engine kills in his 5 games, which is a lot. Basically he cleared tables.

 

This seems to be telling me that I ought to finish painting my own Psi-titan. That and a Ferrox is a pretty scary combination. You can't really leave a Ferrox Reaver and 3 hounds alone because they'll hurt you, badly. But the Psi-titan is horrible.

 

I played against a guy with Armigers and was quite impressed. Something I'd clocked when I first saw them was that you can outflank them for 1SP, and that's a real nuisance. The downside of them (which is good design) is that you're not allowed them unless you have another knight banner. And their command value is awful so they're unlikely to get a charge off. Even so they're a little bit of a threat, an activation and an irritating thing to have to deal with. I think I might pick some up, though maybe just a single pack. A helverin to plink away at shields wouldn't be terrible. Alternatively maybe I'll get 3 packs to make a couple of banners to support my Astorum and one for my Mortis. Not sure.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

Looking at the pictures, the meta looked quite heavy, much heavier than our local events which have a lot more lighter maniples. I also thought some of the tables looked a bit open for my liking, one or two looked like arenas!

 

I'm not sure I agree with you on the Extergimus' value. I think rethinking the melee warlord might Bea better way forward. They're a bit of a trap as you have to sacrifice them firing to get them into combat, but I have to admit they do sacrifice board control. Especially if the combinations for deployment and mission are a bit off. We had a combo at Full Stride's event where we had the mission to destroy objective markers in your opponent's deployment zone. But the deployment zones were the really narrow one from a corner to about 10" up one side, which was physically too narrow to deploy the objectives. An Extergimus would have no chance there. (I got rinsed by an Audax list which had enough hard cover to essentially deploy just outside my deployment zone, and I never left it.

 

Did the krytos guy have to swap out any corruptions he had taken? Or did he just play as is?

[Mandragola]

The terrain was pretty good actually. It’s true some tables weee a bit sparse but some were very heavy with dropzone stuff and most were pretty average. It was much more than the Warhammer world event had. The only game I played on more sparse terrain had plenty for the enemy warhounds and knights to hind behind, but not much for my Warlords.

 

I actually like my melee warlord quite a lot. It’s probably true that in my list I should have a melee reaver instead and give that guy a macro Gatling, but he does real work… at least in theory. At this event he had an appalling series of dice rolls, including a charge that did no damage whatsoever. But he was still a real asset because he let me threaten the board and advance (often quite fast with war march) to put pressure on people.

 

I could definitely make the list better with a few tweaks. I think in general i overrated Extermigus sunfuries, which let me down throughout and heated up my engines a lot. I actually had better results using the Extermigus ability on weapons like the quake cannon and even apoc missiles. It let the quake obliterate some lancers and the missiles got me two engine kills.

 

But the weakness on actually achieving the mission hurts a lot. You really need to be able to go places. My Reaver is supposed to do that but it really struggles. A particular problem is that it’s not in the maniple, so it doesn’t benefit from the trait and the ironclad tyrant order reroll. I’m basically asking too much of it.

 

Two other people brought Extermigus maniples. One finished with four losses and a draw and the other did well with gryphonicus, having substituted most of the warlords for Reavers. It’s just very hard to do well at these missions when it’s so hard to move.

 

I think I’ll keep trying though. It’s a fun challenge and my warlords look pretty good. I’m thinking about running three warlords and a warbringer, which is just barely possible at 1750. It means taking a double quake warlord and two gatlings on the warbringer, but it could be fun.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

Ah, but double quake in an Extergimus is great. Arguably much better than the volcano. I'm thinking of running on when I get my third warlord painted.

[Noserenda]

Yeah my Extergimus suffered from having to move forwards and got more pesky knights behind the warlords than my backstop reaver could deal with, though that was with very dense (albeit destructible) terrain that our group favours.

[schoon]

Thanks for the report, Mandragola!

 

Sounds like a lot of fun, and I - for one - sometimes like the challenge of figuring out a sub-perfect list.

 

I've always thought Quakes were more valuable for their movement/arc disruption than for the damage they cause. See any of that at the event?

[Mandragola]

Quake cannons are great and there were loads of them at the event. I lost my Reaver in game 1 because a Warlord got quaked and collided with it. One day maybe I'll learn not to stand my titans next to each other.

 

The Extermigus maniple is very powerful. In the right situation it can cause enormous damage. The difficulty is getting to that situation, which it isn't especially good at. In future I think I'll full stride more often with my melee Warlord on turn 1 to apply more pressure to the enemy deployment zone. I can always use the loyalist trait to switch to some other order if something badly needs to be shot.

[Mandragola]

I've done some more work on buildings: assembling a few last bits and doing some stuff with plasticard. 

 

I'm not sure why this building has a hangar for two Arvus lighters, but there you are. Quite happy with it.

 

 

I've got two of these, now with balconies from Vanguard. I needed a lot of balconies!

 

 

 

I think the roofs need... something. Maybe these vents for the air circulation system.

 

 

I've also built these fiddly little things. The idea is that they'll be pedestals for statues of "heroes". I'll mostly use 30k marines but maybe also the odd Admech guy. Some might be ruined/defaced if the person in question turned traitor.

 

 

Similarly, I've added some balconies and a door (that needs detail filled in around it) to these big guys. The skull-faced one is going to represent Legio Mortis and the other one somebody else - possibly the Imperial Fists because I've got quite a bit of their transfers and so on. The Mortis one will have been defaced.