Planning an Adeptus Titanicus Gaming table

The last couple of days I spent quite some time researching what terrain options are available nowadays for Adeptus Titanicus, including any possible gaming mats from a number of manufacturers.

Obviously most gaming mats are in the wrong scale (designed for 25 mm) and only work to a certain extent if at all with 6-8 mm scale models. Only two manufacturers offer specific mats for Adeptus Titanicus, however either the mats looked rather blank to me or where too crowded and strongly restricted free placement of any terrain i.e. buildings or ruins.

After hours of browsing the net I did find a mat though that had all that I was looking for: small streets, ruins, dirt and destroyed areas and it allowed for pretty much free placement of terrain, not on the streets of course ;)

This mat is the Infinity Nomads game mat from deepcut studio:

The mat has a very industrial and worn look and certainly provides a nice forge world feeling with large destroyed areas, power cables, numbered landing pads or possibly cargo bays, and rust and dirt pretty much everywhere.

Scale wise it will fit the bill for Adeptus Titanicus I believe as there are no features on it that allow one to easily guess scale. It´s rather the opposite, many areas of the mat have really very small details (greebles) that belie any scale. I have ordered one of the mats and will possibly do a review once it arrives.

To go along with the mat, I will build some forge world style terrain, ruins and factories. I have some ideas already what to utilize for this terrain, more info on that is coming soon.

My plan is to build the terrain first and then use any leftovers on the Titan and Knight bases so that they fit nicely to the board. That´s it for now, thanks.

Face lift to the Blog

I have been making some changes to the blog for a more modern look and also to show off a little more of my projects too.

Hope you like the face lift! :)

Thoughts on making my Titan Legions unique

Over Christmas and in the holidays afterwards I have put some thoughts on how I wanted the two titan legions to look like and what type of conversions or scratch builds could be possible to include.

For a start, I am still a big fan of the old titan designs that date back to the 1st iteration of Adeptus Titanicus. In the meantime (30 years later...) most of the titan and knight designs were altered and modernized several times along developing their own look and styles. However I still have a sweet spot in my heart for the look of  the old "beetleback" Warlord titans and the old spiky, doglike Warhounds titans.

Hence I was rather happy, when the 2nd variant of the Warlord titan that was released by GW came with a new head that had a very strong resemblance to the 1st edition warlord titan´heads and also included some modified shoulder plates that are closer to the beetleback titan look.

Going forward my plan is as I said earlier to build two titan legions, Traitor Legio Mortis and Loyalist Legio Astorum, each with a distinct look.

Legio Mortis is rumored to be one of the three first titan legions ever to be raised on Mars, and based on this fluff, to me their titans should look the most archaic or primitive. For them I will use the old style Warlord titan heads and the closed shoulder plates for the beetleback look.

To add to the archaic look, I will build some archetypal titan weapon too i.e. the Multi Launcher, which is basically a giant rocket launcher. The old version of this weapon looked like a round cylinder while the modern one is more like a stack of rockets and overall box shaped.

For the old style one I believe that I have already found the right donator part too, the rocket pod from the 40k scale Imperial Guard Valkyrie flyer, here´s a pic of it with a EPIC 6mm Rhino tank of mine for scale. With some minor re-work this should look quite nicely on any of the Warlord´s of the Legio Mortis.

 

The titans of Legio Astorum will get the newer and more modern looking versions of the heads, weapons and shoulder plates to reflect the legion being significantly younger by its founding than the Legio Mortis and thus having likely been equipped with newer type equipment.

For the Warhound titans, first I intend to build one according to the given instructions for Legio Astorum. This should give me some ideas and insight on what could be possible to change or scratchbuild for the torso and possibly the head to reestablish the dog look of the 1st edition Warhounds for Legio Mortis. This might require some clever use and cutting of styrine plastic easter eggs for the torso, as the torso of the old style Warhounds was rather egg shaped.

Paint-job wise, in the old days of Adeptus Titanicus 1st edition many Warlord and Reaver titans had their carapaces or the shoulder armor plates painted not in the colors of their legion, but with various camouflage patterns. You can see this on the cover of the old game box too and also in some White Dwarf pictures.

This is something that I intend to establish on both of my titans legions too. One reason for me to do this is to break up the uniform and very rather boring look of the Legio Mortis currently established paint pattern, i.e. black shoulder plates and rest of body armor is painted black too...yikes!

From my point of view, all titans are high priority targets and thus trying to hide them a bit from (crude) enemy orbital sensors and satellites by applying a camouflage scheme, at least to the upper torso and carapace, sounds very grim dark style to me. So I will play around with a few camouflage patterns to get two distinctive looks for each of the two legions.

Each legion will also get a number of Knight banners (squads) as their support. Legio Mortis will get a banner of Cerastus Acheron Knights instead of the Cerastus Lancer Knights. The head of the Acheron Knight is included in the Cerastus knight kit already, it´s now a question to simply scratch build a chainsword and the flame cannon. None of which should prove to difficult to do, as a number of Chaos Chainswords and Imperial Guard or Space marine flamers could be easily modified to look accordingly. Adding some fuel barrels to the back of the knight, and voila that should do nicely for an Acheron Knight, and the Acheron rules are already included on the Cerastus Knight terminals anyhow. :)

That´s it for now. Happy gaming to you!

EPIC revival - Adeptus Titanicus project for 2020

Happy New Year 2020 to everybody!

Well time does indeed fly, my last post on here has been a long, long time ago...my apologies!

But a new year is now upon us and  my plan for 2020 is to get back more into the hobby i.e. play more tabletop games and also do more hobby stuff. Also, judging from the visitor numbers, this blog still sees very frequent visits and over the years we have managed to get over 58.000 hits in total! So thanks a lot from me for showing by regularly on this blog! :)

Now in the past couple of years I dived into a several hobby systems, but none really stuck on for overly long. My interest in X-Wing expired with the move of X-Wing to Edition 2, but there are many other game systems out there to try and play.

One is an old love of mine that dates back to the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Games Workshop was still all but unknown outside the UK, but for some reason I as a teenager stumbled over a Rogue trader rule book and a few White Dwarf magazine issues, some of these are still in my possession today.

In one of the White Dwarfs a game system called Adeptus Titanicus was briefly presented with some converted Reaver and Warhound titan miniatures by John Blanche and I marveled at these miniatures for many years.

Some years later the games from GW became more accessible and I dived full head into Space Hulk and Warhammer 40k. Although Adeptus Titanicus was still of high interest to me, no copies of the game nor miniatures could be found anywhere...

Then the ebay platform started, and miraculously I was able to obtain a used but in good shape copy of the Adeptus Titanicus game from there! My gaming group and I had many fun games with the system afterwards, I collected many more titans and special weapons of all sorts for the titans from ebay, and today there´s enough titans there for two demi-legions I suppose!

Many years later in 2018 GW rebooted Adeptus Titanicus (AT) in a somewhat larger scale with new minis, but also with a rather steep entry price tag. After releasing the most common titan types, they went on with more esoteric knights, variants titans etc., which added a lot to the flexibility of the possible army list. A number of other companies started producing addons for AT, from buildings to gaming mats, and now in 2020 the time was right for me to get back into AT and call it the hobby project I would like to focus on for now.

Initially I had wanted to purchase the AT Grand Master edition, but the troops options in there were still slim and I wasn´t a huge fan of the provided buildings. Hence with some bargain boxes around like the Knight House Battleforce nowadays, I decided to pick and choose from the entire range of AT available and invest into some other scenery. On ebay I found a large mint set of EPIC Armageddon plastic ruins a few weeks back, in my opinion perfect for AT.

So far the titan forces I have bought include:

• 2x Warlord titans (with Plasma Annihilators and Power Claw)
• 2x Reavers (with Meltacannon & Chainsaw)
• 2x Warhounds
• 1x Knight House Battleforce (i.e. 12 Knights in total)

plus an English rule set.

My plan is to start with building the Knights first and then slowly work my way upwards through the scale to the Warlord titan, the largest kit so far in the range. I intend to magnetize all Titan weapons and possibly also the Acastus Knights from the Battleforce for maximum gaming modularity.

I will build both a Traitor and a Loyalist titan legion, and split the forces evenly. My main reason for this is to ease up casual games with my gaming group, as they have not yet started the path to AT...

Legion-wise I have decided on this, one of my old favorites:

• Warp Runners (Legio Astorum), Loyalist Legion

For the traitors my favorite legion is the Legio Magna (Flaming Skulls) but it has no official legion rules yet, so for now I will go with another favorite that has at least rules which is the

• Death´s Heads (Legio Mortis), Traitor Legion

Right now I have finished washing all plastic sprues from the kits in warm soap water to clear any release agents from the injection molding. Next up is a trip to the local kid´s store to hopefully obtain some railways N or HO scale street and concrete plastic tiles. I have used these before but I need to get something in a smaller scale for the titan bases. Then I´ll start with building the bases and assemnling the first set of knights.

One other motivation aspect that I have not mentioned here is the scale of AT. It is simply much fast to paint smaller miniatures where you don´t need to be super exact. I am not a huge fan of painting, hence a small project, small miniatures and miniature count is some something I can hopefully manage. :)

Below is a shot of the very first Adeptus Titanicus Edition from ~1988 on the left and the recent incarnation of Adeptus Titanicus from 2018 on the right. That´s 30 years in between!

More to come soon!

REVIEW: Anvil Industry - Missile Launcher (shoulder or vehicle mounted)

REVIEW: I have recently purchased a small number of Anvil Industry´s "Missile Launcher (shoulder or vehicle mounted)" to upgrade my Horus Heresy legions and wanted to provide a short review of my purchase for those interested. Nowadays, there are many companies out there who have specialized in various (upgrade) bits for hobby gaming and maybe this review helps you to make a good choice where to by your parts and what to expect from your purchase.

Service: First of all delivery and service was very quick, the shipment was received safely within 5 days within the EU as indicated on the website. Great!

Packaging: The pieces came in a solid cardboard box and were stored within a small plastic bag that was fastened to the box, so no flying parts in the box! Nice! No plastic blisters as I had expected for packaging, but this bag and cardboard box was more than enough to protect the parts during their journey. Great!

Bits: First impression, four lose parts, one part was still on the sprue. No damage at all to any of those lose parts though. The resin bits all feel really solid and sturdy, not fragile as some other resin products out there I have seen. In fact I would rate them to be nearly as sturdy as plastic bits. Great!

Design: I bought these missile launchers to convert a couple of my Terminator miniatures to carry missile launchers. I have provided some dry fit shots (not glued) to give you an indication of the scale and look of those pieces. One dry fit is with a Cataphractii Pattern Terminator, the later with a Tartaros Pattern Terminator. Looks great!

Conclusion: I think sizewise these parts fit very nicely with what I had in mind for my Terminators. Unlike many missile launchers from other bits manufacturers out there, these pieces are alot better fit in regard to their size and style then many others I have seen, which are typically way to big to look realistic. The Anvil Industry Missile launchers do a perfect job here with just the right size and look to them. 

So overall conclusion, would I order again and do I like the bits? 

Yes, definitely!

Cheers
invivos

HORUS HERESY: Adeptus Mechanicus Castellax Battle automata maniple - more work in progress

HORUS HERESY: Today I am showing you my weekend´s work in progress on the Adeptus Mechanicus Castellax Battle automata maniple. 

Working on the maniple is really truely quite time consuming, as I need to salvage my bits boxes for multiples of the same part (3x, 6x, etc.) in order to build three identic Castellax robots at once.

In the meantime I have mounted each of the Castellax Battle automata on a scenic base, the multi-posable legs I built worked very well allowing for some dynamic poses, like the one Castellax stomping/pinning the Space Marine down with his foot.

On this weekend after lots of trial and error, I finally came up with a nice, sturdy solution for the arms and particularly the hands. Though they are not fully detailed yet and will get more rivets and armor plating, I quite like the brutal look of them and the pincers. The arms have underslung Bolters or Flamers, the later not shown here. The arms parts for the remaining Castellax are mostly built and now need to be glued together. The assembled Castellax is not glued yet, just stuck together.

 

The gun on the back is a Mauler pattern Heavy Bolter. It is removable and fully pivots in all directions. I will not glue those guns into place, which allows me then to swap them out for other heavy weapons as needed. At the moment my plan is to build at least one to two Darkfire Cannons and probably Multi Melters as well.

 

Next up is finalizing all the remaining arms and to add more details to the torsos. It still needs to bulked out with cables and various bits and needs rivets too.

Last picture is a scale shot of the Maniple, as you can see they have grown pretty big now and are distinctively different from a Space marine dreadnought in looks.

That´s all for today!

Cheers

invivos

HORUS HERESY: Land Raider Achilles Alpha Pattern - Work in progress

HORUS HERESY: Today I am showing you some work in progress pictures of my newest project, a Land Raider Achilles - Alpha Pattern for my Imperial Fists Legion. 

I started this project just yesterday when I chose to recycle a leftover Land Raider kit. Some of the  parts of this particular kit were already used into the construction of the Spartan tank like the tracks, guns, etc. First I started with building the basic tank, than I scratchbuilt the forward track covers using leftover parts. After this I removed the entire orginal Land Raider top and replaced it with roof parts from a Space Marine Vindiactor tank. 

So far I am quite happy with the current built progress and the look of the tank, next up is to finish the tank´s front armor, after this I intend to scractchbuilt the sponsons. Stay tuned! :)

Cheers

invivos