Legio Favilla walks - Ashen Gods unleashed

[Sherrypie]

Thanks Captain! More nice tables coming regularly to an internet near you.

 

Since making more things is a bit slow currently, it's gaming time again. This time I had the pleasure of facing against a new Astorum commander, who besides being an all around great sport didn't mind playing a bit harder and... well, let's say the double Venator plan I devised earlier on for 1750 points is still absolutely brutal.

 

Full Astorum Axiom on Retrieval vs. Favilla's double Venator with Hold the Line, go!

 

 

With both sides using Strafing Run and me dropping more artillery on this once peaceful agrihub, the battle was off to an explosive start as the Warp Runners true to their name went on Full Stride across the line sans one tactical Hound in the middle. My hunters took positions on the flanks, even as my right flank was already struggling with heat problems (damn hot dogs always trying to catch on fire) but so did their furthest doggo too stop in its tracks as the uppity machine refused to run.

 

 

Foolishly, the tactical doggo ran forwards on its own and found out standing in the range of most of your opponent's line is bad for your health. Bazillion shots later a new sun was born as the first ENGINE KILL rang through the air.

 

Astorum got some payback though, as soon the Warlord running forwards blasted Cineres Immensis apart with pointblank plasma death, setting it to stumble into the field below.

 

 

Forgot to take more pics from that match (derp :P) as the game was too much fun to interrupt, even if quite onesided from then on. Bombardment and flanking doggos kept their fisty Reaver from getting away with the objective, Warlord was silenced and subsequently toppled on top of the dead Hounds in the middle and the long range Reaver in the middle found itself quite outclassed by the artillery Warlord pounding it ro dust from afar. Last remaining Warhound tried, in vain, to exact small revenge by gutting Aurora Terribilis but was stymied by its formidable shields before being blown up in return. Ouch.

 

But, being the absolute champ he was, the Runners' commander was up for another and we took a smaller 1500 game. For the sake of expediency, I just swapped the Warlord to the punchy Reaver and played the same Tempestus Venator + Ferrox list that I used against Mortis a while ago.

 

While less onesided, the second game turned brutality up to eleven immediately :D

 

 

Both sides took Vital Cargo, deployment was 18" upfield with the lightest engines and the Runners started with their package carrier rushing for the narrow canyon in the left flank. Oh boy, this can only end well. I blocked the way with my hounds, Ruina Superborum at the back ready to rush in and kill what is left of the inevitable crush, while keeping Aurora (and my cargo) on the right where it can take cover from the twin-Belicosa Warlord and rush ahead while everything dies on the left.

 

 

It's not the fighting, it's the wait as you watch gods walk from the horizon that gets you. Casting doubts aside, the second hunter pair kicked into gear and strode to war as bombers screamed above sowing the land with mines and bombs.

 

 

Cineres Immensis breaks formation and readies the infernoes, well aware of being the first sacrifice in the blocking maneuver that sees it blown apart immediately, but not before it takes its pound of adamantite spraying flames everywhere as the rest let rip and take down most of the Regia testudo's shields. The leading Astorum Warhound, its legs already molten and twisted from mines and flames, is soon immobilized by a bomber above while Echo Dolorum, having taken a foolishly high position on the hill, has its legs blown off underneath by the Belicosa Warlord.

 

 

Second turn kicks off with Ruina Superborum charging through Cineres' remains, jumping from its carcass like a ramp and punting the other Hound backwards, where it limps a bit to the side and makes way for Iram et Lux before being shot to pieces by Favilla's midfield guns. At this point it is starting to show that while Regia may initially be tougher to break from afar, if shields are being collapsed through them all at the same time the comeback gets a lot harder if your opponent doesn't give you any breathing room.

 

Astorum Warlord joins the fray, but misses pretty badly with its plasma gun and doesn't outright smash Ruina apart either, who then in conjunction with the limping Edax Rerum behind it proceed to rip out its power core with its fists, sending the mighty god-machine stumbling backwards, but before its limbs give way the princeps lurches forwards and crashes into the choked canyon. The falling giant buries Ruina under its mass as it furiously but futilely tries to claw its way up and batters Edax ever nearer to destruction, though the plucky dog does manage to make its way through the burning charnelhouse eventually.

 

 

At this point we actually reach turn three with 3/4 Astorum engines flaming corpses (3/6 for Favilla), their package lost and the Ashen Gods circling on the last Warlord already suffering from reactor problems (twin Belicosas are reliable and safe, err...). As a gesture of contempt it blasts Edax with everything, plasma cores screaming towards red, but the defiant Hound refuses to break (...I think I used Overloaded Voids on the bazillion Apoc Missiles and rolled only 2's. Why try harder than necessary, I guess :D) and eventually becomes the one to finally saw through the Lord's ankles with its megabolters after other guns fall silent, throwing a barrage after barrage into the falling behemoth as it unceremoniously fell deeper and deeper into the soft, fertile soil of the fields below.

 

GEEZ that was a blast. AT is great.

 

 

[Fajita Fan]

Awesome! Can I get a closeup of that dual cylinder terrain piece?  What is it?

[Sherrypie]

For once, this actually wasn't on my own terrain but at a club I recently joined. Their selection is pretty wide but sadly 6 mm stuff was somewhat sparse (thus far, might change now that I've convinced several others to pick up AT), this is probably more like 3 mm originally.

 

If you check the full size picture of the first game's firing line (https://www.dakkadakka.com/gallery/1044292-.html) you can see the silos better.

[Fajita Fan]

I'm actually trying to keep some of my 3d printed stuff able to straddle 6,8, and 28mm without too many identifying bits of scale but your pics of tables always look awesome. So jealous... 

[Sherrypie]

Good thing about 40k in general is the vast scale of everything, so many bigger structures slot in there in different scales until you see the smallest details signalling what's the order of the day. Got a house sized skull floating around as an ornament in the side of an inhabited mountain of steel? Sure, why not.

 

And yeah, I've played my share of "piles of books for hills and a green table cloth" level stuff as a child. No more, as an adult I can first have fun with making proper tables and play on good looking stuff instead :) 

[Sherrypie]

Final model of the original GME rolls onto the painting station, Memento Mori shall soon join its siblings on the field.

 

[Captain Semper]

Well, you can always do another Warlord and go for a Regia Maniple and call it Memento Vivere! :lol:

[Sherrypie]

Heh, even better would be a pair Ars Long, Vita Brevis :D

 

11 hours down, getting somewhere.

 

[Interrogator Stobz]

Soooooo Goood!

 

Cannot wait for the completed thing...

[Mendi Warrior]

I love it already!

[Captain Semper]

Lovely stuff! I was thinking about the Ars Long myself! :lol:

[Sherrypie]

Thanks y'all!

 

17 hours in, Memento Mori plods onwards. Getting nearer to the factory finish state before weathering, now to decide what to do with the shoulders. Plain? Checkered? Dance macabre'd?

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mendi Warrior]

I love it!

I would mix chequered and dance macabred, I think this would be super cool. Of course, that is your call. Whatever you choose I'm certain it will be superb.

[Brother Captain Arkley]

Man this is looking so good... :)

[Fajita Fan]

There's gothic and there's gothic. 

[Sherrypie]

There's gothic and there's gothic.

Gothic or gohome, that's our creed ;)

[Mandragola]

Nice batreps. Thanks for that. I'm puzzled to hear of Astorum losing, though fielding double-bellicosa warlords is a good first step to failure.

[Sherrypie]

Nice batreps. Thanks for that. I'm puzzled to hear of Astorum losing, though fielding double-bellicosa warlords is a good first step to failure.

Glad you like 'em, would do more if I'd remember to take more pictures :P

 

I do regularily beat Astorum to the ground even with rules most would think less of, like pure Krytos or Tempestus. It's not rare. Good play tends to trump on paper differences between legios and as haughty as it sounds, I am a good player. They are a solid but often predictable bunch, if you hamper their maneuvers in the early game or concentrate on killing isolated targets quickly their advantages aren't so much of a problem. Spreading fire or letting them run around without constant harassment lets them keep the initiative, which can be bad for legios that aren't as well built for drawn out slogging matches.

[Mandragola]

Yeah I’m not actually surprised. From the way you talk about the game it’s clear that you know what you’re doing. I’m a decent player myself and tend to win my games. It’s hard to see how much of that is due to skill and how much is down to Astorum’s rules, which I do think are pretty good. I expect to lose a bit more with my Mortis, but maybe not loads more.

[Sherrypie]

Oh Astorum is absolutely on the strong side in the sense that it just works, whatever one's goal is. A good, solid middle of the road legio that can go mobile or do well in a shootout with no real drawbacks (besides meh personal traits, but that's not a problem given the generic ones have pretty good stuff in them anyway). Especially so as we all know you love your Warlords, who don't even immediately barbeque themselves to hotdogs by running hard on the first turn :D

[Mandragola]

Those personal traits are a real problem. The one that lets you (in effect) play the sabotage stratagem on your own Princeps Seniores is possibly the worst one out there. It’s especially bad that you do it before even rolling for your order, which would usually succeed on a 2+ on a D10. So you get to swap a 90% chance of success for a 16% chance, with an equal chance of shutting down your titan.

 

Even without the risk of shutdown it’s a very weird thing to do. Lots of orders aren’t at all beneficial if they happen in the wrong situation. Going on first/split fire when there’s nothing in front of you is kind of awful in a game about manoeuvre. You’re much more likely to do yourself harm than good. And this means that if we’re rolling, I never use the Astorum table – which is a shame.

 

It’s also true that the Astorum traits are far more beneficial to Warlords than smaller titans – especially warhounds. War march on hounds is extremely risky, for heat and also machine spirit rolls. It can easily result in warhounds losing their shields or doing random crazy stuff. Warlords gain much more from the extra 2”, can easily dump the heat thanks to their two rerolls and generally don’t go insane all that much. I run a Regia maniple where the Warlords war march and the hounds just move normally, so everyone moves 8” for the first couple of turns. That works pretty well.

 

Reavers are somewhere in the middle, with a reactor able to manage the strain and an all right command value. I did have a game recently in which Lucius Praetorian was carrying vital cargo and decided to repair instead of moving on the first turn, which was less than ideal.

 

Warbringers look like they’ll enjoy war march, if armed with shorter-ranged weapons. I’m not sure I’m persuaded that makes sense when you could just stick the shorter-ranged guns on Reavers. But a Warbringer with quake cannon and two volcano cannons might work, and probably won’t blow itself up.

 

The new Legios in Shadow and Iron look pretty strong. Some of the Titandeath Legios, like Atarus, Solaria, Krytos and arguably Mortis, have very lacklustre traits so Astorum looks great in comparison. But the newer Legios have some pretty cool abilities, which levels the playing field a lot.

 

Following the disaster of the Acastus rules I was pretty worried about this release. A lot of new Legios, Psi-titans and the Warbringer create plenty of opportunities for mucking up the game. It doesn’t look like that’s happened, for now.

[Sherrypie]

I think that's intentional, with strong legio traits you can balance it out a bit with weaker seniores bonuses. Contrast this with Atarus, who have quite gimmicky legio traits with low obvious power but boy do they hammer out pain if you run multiple minimum maniples all piloted by Veterans of Shedim Drift as their seniores.

 

For Warhounds, if using optional rules it's sometimes quite worth it to draw their first turn power from the shields instead of the reactor. When they are running behind hard cover, enemy is Full Striding or what not, if you need speed and aren't under fire it can be better to lose a shield that risk burning them all out. I'm still trying to learn to remember that with my long range laser Hound, who isn't under fire first turn and should just do that to Shieldbane with impunity.

 

I'm with you on that with the new release: could have bombed, but looks like an exciting delight instead. Even the legios tend to have drawbacks with their powers, like Praesagius only working on long range or Mordax having reduced mobility. Same with the maniples, without going to details at this moment I like the fact that they provide abilities that change your game and require different plans instead of simply making killing easier. Like the Ruptura maniple, which rewards tight order control to not activate things at wrong times and offers a great reward which is still signalled to the opponent ahead of time so they can interact with it to stop you. 

[schoon]

Beautiful work on this. Things are coming together nicely!

 

The vents are particularly nice.

[Sherrypie]

Repent, for tomorrow you die!

 

 

Memento Mori walks, crushing the fighting spirit of all those foolish enough to stand against the Ashen Gods as they gaze upon a reminder of their own mortality and weep. This poor fellow here has already dropped their gun, what teeth has a piece of junk against the doom of Man?

 

 

 

27 hours it took and the base might require yet some fiddling, but my first ToTH pledge is done and my original GME preordered when the game launched is finally DONE! Yeah! Took only one and a half years, but still.

[Brother Captain Arkley]

OH THATS YOU!!!!! :P

 

Seen that on FB its so nice...