Adeptus Titanicus: Impressions

The Death of Innocence is Come.

Some 30 years after its original release, Games Workshop has released a new version of Adeptus Titanicus, a game that puts you in command of a maniple of colossal robots called titans. The game has been in development for a few years now, getting delayed substantially when Forge World decided to convert the 8mm scaled models from resin to plastic. It looks like it was worth the wait, as the titans are completely multipart and fully articulated. When pictures were first revealed of the models, including tiny Imperial Knights, my brothers and I knew we would not be able to resist getting some. While they sell the rules and models separately, we decided to buy the boxed game (called the Grand Master Edition), as we felt it was more likely that we would actually play the game that way. And while I am still far from finished assembling, let alone painting, everything that came in the boxed game, I wanted to give you my first impressions of Adeptus Titanicus.

A look back: The miniatures of 2014

It is hard to argue with the notion that 2014 has been a remarkable year for hobbyists, one which has seen the release of a huge range of fantastic miniatures. Similar to last year, we thought that it would be appropriate to go back and take a look at some of our favorite models released over the year. Fortunately, it was not just a single company that dominated the scene, with Games Workshop, Forge World, Wyrd, and Corvus Belli, each releasing a host of excellent models.  Without further ado, we are going to go through each of the aforementioned companies and talk about some of their standout models for the year and select our favorite.  Finally we will reveal our overall favorite model of the year.  Now to the models!

Basing the Imperial Knight: Dragon Forge

The mailed fist of the Imperium of man!

When I was writing about Forge World’s Cerastus Knight-Lancer a few months back, I mused over basing options for Imperial Knights and ultimately decided that I wanted to use the newly released Dragon Forge resin bases.  To my good fortune, when ordering the bases, I discovered that they had just released a few more variants, increasing their selection to an impressive 13 different styles, including a Tech-deck variant (my favorite of their base themes)!  I recently received the base in the mail and thought that I would show you the process that I went through basing my Knight titan, complete with some repositioning of its feet to fit more flushly on the base .

Cerastus Knight-Lancer Impressions

Punish the flesh. Iron in mind and body. Hail the Machine!

The plastic Imperial Knight was undoubtedly one of the most exciting Games Workshop releases in a long time, but when the Imperial Knight Codex was released a week later, it was hard not to be a little disappointed when the book did not contain rules for additional Knight variants or weapon options.  I am happy to say that we did not have very long to brood over this, as no more than a month after its release, Forge World revealed their own Knight model to capitalize on the wealth of other less common Knight variants.  The Cerastus Knight-Lancer is their rendition of the rather comical looking Lancer from the Adeptus Titanicus/Space Marine days.  It even already has rules in the form of an entry in the third installment of the Horus Heresy Isstvan saga: Extermination.

Imperial Knight Unboxing

Although the lineage is clear, the Knight has come a long way.

It is rare that Games Workshop really surprises anyone with a release, but I admit I was pretty shocked to see that they were releasing a plastic Imperial Knight. I was even more surprised and thrilled with how effectively it captured the image that I had cultivated in my mind of how a Knight should look, maintaining the bulky, hunched look of the related constructs of the Titan Legion. With their release slated to be Saturday, I decided to pay my local hobby shop a visit the Friday of, hoping to at least get a look at the new Imperial Knight. I was not really expecting to buy one because in the past GW has asked stores to only sell their new releases on the the actual Saturday release date. After talking with the store owner, he told me that GW was now letting him sell most of their new releases on Friday, and proceeded to go into the back of the store and bring out all of the Imperial Knights he had ordered for the shop. Interestingly, while the store had only ordered seven of the kits they received nine in total. Furthermore, eight of the nine Knights were packaged in the plain white, “Direct Order” Games Workshop boxes, rather than the proper Imperial Knight ones (likely confirming the rumors that have been in circulation of supply issues).

Imperator Rex: the Imperial Knight Reveal!

Victory does not always rest with the big guns; but if we rest in front of them we shall be lost.

Apocalypse passed by without me giving it so much as a second thought, despite Games Workshop’s hope it would crash into my life with the full fury of a Lucius Pattern Warhound titan kicking aside some wave serpents.  While the two models they released for Apocalypse (Lord of Skulls, and the Tesseract Vault) look excellent, the $160 price tag was hard to swallow.  And when I only get to play a game of 40k every few months, I would rather play a standard game and try to fine tune a list, as opposed to playing something filled with crazy world-ending monstrosities that are imbalanced and liable to make the game one-sided. Games Workshop was obviously unsatisfied with the sales of Apocalypse, because they quickly followed it up with Escalation, allowing the imbalanced Lords of War to be taken in regular games of 40,000.  Even with this release, I was still unmoved.  Honestly, Dreamforge Games got closer to convincing me to try out these rulesets when they released their Leviathan Crusader, than Games Workshop did with any of their efforts.  And while I bought and assembled a Leviathan Crusader, I never tried out either of the rulesets, as one titan does not make for a good game of Escalation or Apocalypse.  It looks like this is about to change, however, as last week images leaked revealing that Games Workshop is finally bringing titans out of Epic 40,000 and into Warhammer 40,000.