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Indeed. GME is what, £180.00?

For that, I can get a Battle Group (£100), the rules (£35) and a second Reaver or pair of Warhounds. That’s a far better force for starting the game with.

Thinking about it, as a Knight player, things are a little more sunshine & buttercups...

Ruleset £35
4 x Acastus £60
Spires £20

...£115. Thats the rules, scenery, a Lance and 1 support banner. This is enough for an entry-level player and will also allow for an introductory, two player open game. Only problem with the logic here is that we are not including the price of Doom Of Molech for the household rules. In which case, stuff the spires, slap some paint on empty yogart pots and get DOM instead, bringing the price to £117.

You will probably have to fork out for the Acastus Terminals too, although with very basic skills one can just photocopy the terminal image(which some kind soul has posted earlier) and just ask about for the points cost for the weapons. GW will no doubt post the whole template in WD or make them a free download. Personally, when fielding more than one banner of the same type, I just use the primary terminal for the rules, and make smaller "strips" for the others - enough to keep track of orders and structure points( two plain D6s can take the place of the pegs and holes ). This is also very handy for saving tabletop space...

I don't think 4 acastus would even hit the 1k points mark to be considered as something to start.

And playing Knights first is probably not something I would introduce people to this game, as they ignore almost all core rule of this game. I.e what make this game "fun"

I love Knights but the simplistic rule and the boring expansion didn''t do them any justice here, They'd need a major rule overhaul if Specialist Game team really want them to be their own thing, for the time being, they remain as cool support unit.

Hopefully the Aircraft rule in AT would be a bit more interactive. I'd love to see a marauder destroyer launching 8 hellstrike missiles into the puny knights and "giant titan that somehow lacks dedicated anti air measure"

SamusDrake wrote:
Thinking about it, as a Knight player, things are a little more sunshine & buttercups...

Ruleset £35
4 x Acastus £60
Spires £20

...£115. Thats the rules, scenery, a Lance and 1 support banner. This is enough for an entry-level player and will also allow for an introductory, two player open game. Only problem with the logic here is that we are not including the price of Doom Of Molech for the household rules. In which case, stuff the spires, slap some paint on empty yogart pots and get DOM instead, bringing the price to £117.

You will probably have to fork out for the Acastus Terminals too, although with very basic skills one can just photocopy the terminal image(which some kind soul has posted earlier) and just ask about for the points cost for the weapons. GW will no doubt post the whole template in WD or make them a free download. Personally, when fielding more than one banner of the same type, I just use the primary terminal for the rules, and make smaller "strips" for the others - enough to keep track of orders and structure points( two plain D6s can take the place of the pegs and holes ). This is also very handy for saving tabletop space...

Isn't that like... well under 1000pts? I mean, if that's a viable list I am alllll in, but thats a tiny, tiny game.

 zedmeister wrote:

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
So I don't know how force-org works in the modern AT, but if I wanted four of these in a list. but also other small Knights, is that both legal an viable?

Yes and yes. You'd need to form a lance (or multiple lances). A lance is three banners of Knights. The knights can be of any type, but each banner of knights have to be equipped in the same fashion. So, for example:

Banner of 3 Questoris Paladins
Banner of 2 Cerastus Lancers
Banners 4 Acastus Porphyrions

They die quickly, but can brutalise Titan's if they get in close.

Hang on a sec... I keep seeing people saying you have to take a Lance of Knights. Since when? I don't have the Molech book, but I thought the Lance force-org restriction was only if you were doing an all-Knight army.

For a regular force of Titans plus Knight support, surely you can just take one banner of 3-6 Questoris armed with whatever, or one banner of 1-4 Acastus, etc?



... Regarding the best way to buy in: I'd go with the ruleset + battlegroup box. That instantly gives you two options for a legal maniple (formation)--an Axiom that uses all four models, or a Venator that leaves out the Warlord. It also works out to about 1200 pts for the Axiom depending on weapons, which is a decent size for a good game. Plus it gives you all four basic Titan types to try out.

Then you can just add a Knight box, or an extra Reaver to fill out the Axiom maniple, or a Warhounds box to finish off the Venator, or whatever takes your fancy.

After that it gets addictive.

GW will try to milk your wallet for extra terminals, weapon cards and so on... but you can cheapskate your way around that, as others have suggested.

There's nothing to stop you playing counts-as with your weapons anyway. If you only have a handful of Titan models on the board, it's easy enough for both you and your opponent to remember who has which weapon.

And it's worth keeping in mind that you don't HAVE to use the maniple (force-org) rules at all. You can just turn up with a bunch of Titans and add up the points values if you agree with your opponent. Or not even bother with the points and go for Open Play. It's a pretty flexible game that way.

It's a surprisingly affordable game--by GW standards--once you realise that a single Titan model can be worth anywhere from 200 to 500 pts of your army. Reminds me of Battlefleet Gothic in that sense. I've managed to do it at Aussie prices, with a few discounts here and there, whereas I'd never so much as dream of trying to collect current-edition 40K armies these days.

Terrain, though... this is likely to be the part that makes you hesitate if you don't already have anything suitable. I don't really think the official AT terrain is well suited to Titanicus. You need height to block LOS to those tall Titans, and the Civitas buildings don't seem to provide enough of it at a cheap enough price. (At least one LOS blocker of Warlord size is invaluable so it can't see and blast everywhere on the board.)

I'd go with a third-party option or some homemade terrain instead. There's no reason it has to be city terrain either (in fact the fluff says Titans don't often fight in cities). A few fake rock formations from an aquarium shop will do just fine.

I reckon the boxy GW buildings are actually much better suited to classic Epic, where the Titan models are much smaller and you can put infantry squads on the rooftops.

I do rate the Spires kit though. So cool.

My only dilemma keeping me from pulling the trigger, is the need to buy-in x2, due to the wife and I both needing lists.

That means two Axiom bundles, etc... plus all those cool Knights I want. I need to basically budget $500 to throw at the game, or nothing at all. I want to do it... its just a weird mental hurdle.

From today's Twitch "AT18 Year One in Retrospective"

-- Future books - Seige of Kado (Hive world of Kado), Battle of Calth and Shadow Crusades (Ultramar)
-- Horus Heresy is fun because that's when the Mechanicum and Legios pulled out all the stops
-- At 8mm scale you can do far bigger battles than even Apocalypse - that's the goal
-- Andy and James Hewitt did most of the base rules
-- Owen and JTY have the helm for the game now
-- They did plastic because if AT was popular, it would consume FW's capacity, but this took time
-- The game was designed to be stately, as Titans tend to move slow, much like battleships
-- Titan machine spirits have personalities, though they are not strictly intelligent
-- Titans of Legend are those that have more divergent personalities - and thus special rules
-- Molech Knight only armies, even though their intent is to provide support
-- Knight only armies tend to have high casualties vs Titans - this was intentional
-- July White Dwarf has a collection of Legio Traits, Strategems, etc. for making your own Legio or splinter of an existing one
-- First AT rules in WD for 30 years
-- Acastus Knight is obviously on the way - largest knight
-- Most Knights are like cavalry - Acastus is like artillery

 schoon wrote:
From today's Twitch "AT18 Year One in Retrospective"

-- Future books -Seige of Kado (Hive world of Kado), Battle of Calth and Shadow Crusades (Ultramar)

EMBER WOLVES FTW!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
So the past fluff about the battle of Kado involved Crucius taking on Chaos Titans and Knights. Stands to reason that's the book where that stuff will start to be unveiled.

Well, I did say "as a knight player" and within the rules of the game, have covered both the option of open and matched play. Titans are indeed awesome but Knights are very entertaining for a quick game lasting 30-45 minutes. Depends on how you want to play...

Do the weapon-card packs come with any weapon cards not already in the rules-bundle?

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Do the weapon-card packs come with any weapon cards not already in the rules-bundle?

No. They're the exact same weapons. The difference with the packs is that you get multiples of each weapon, which allows you to field more than one using the cards (assuming you don't make your own, of course). The weapon cards included in the rules set only include enough cards for one of each weapon, and exactly enough multiples to run the two warlord titans included in the GME.

 schoon wrote:

At 8mm scale you can do far bigger battles than even Apocalypse - that's the goal

Bring finally Epic back!

Also at 8mm more people can afford Titans and several Knight Lances. Apocalypse had the rule, but not many people had the budget or storage space to actually afford all of them. Not a problem for 8mm game.

Chopstick wrote:
Also at 8mm more people can afford Titans and several Knight Lances. Apocalypse had the rule, but not many people had the budget or storage space to actually afford all of them. Not a problem for 8mm game.

Agreed. Looking into the crystal ball, I see an 8mm game involving super-heavy tanks. It could be an expansion for AT or even a new game altogether, but there is definitely an audience for the tracked wonders.

In terms of Epic, I rather fear FW are currently victims of their own success!

Blood Bowl, Necromunda, AT. All well received games. All have a following. And those followings need servicing, possibly at a faster pace than was first expected.

Until they've finished their expansion, which includes training peeps up on their standards etc, I don't think they've got much time on their hands to develop further products. Other than Aeronautica, which I'd largely forgotten about!

Eumerin wrote:

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Do the weapon-card packs come with any weapon cards not already in the rules-bundle?

No. They're the exact same weapons. The difference with the packs is that you get multiples of each weapon, which allows you to field more than one using the cards (assuming you don't make your own, of course). The weapon cards included in the rules set only include enough cards for one of each weapon, and exactly enough multiples to run the two warlord titans included in the GME.

Rather than buy extra card packs and terminals. I managed to pick a cheap extra rules pack. This seamed like the cheapest way to get extra cards and terminals unless you plan on having a huge amount of titans

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
In terms of Epic, I rather fear FW are currently victims of their own success!

Blood Bowl, Necromunda, AT. All well received games. All have a following. And those followings need servicing, possibly at a faster pace than was first expected.

Until they've finished their expansion, which includes training peeps up on their standards etc, I don't think they've got much time on their hands to develop further products. Other than Aeronautica, which I'd largely forgotten about!

Hoard all your stuff before Specialist Game crash and reboot again , at least that's what I'd do

 gorgon wrote:
So the past fluff about the battle of Kado involved Crucius taking on Chaos Titans and Knights. Stands to reason that's the book where that stuff will start to be unveiled.

Also of interest - they mentioned that one of the new books would start seeing a more evident Chaos influence on Titans.

...and they opened the door to an eventual Xenos expansion, saying it would be in a slightly different period, though it's still far off.

Snitchey wrote:

Eumerin wrote:

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
Do the weapon-card packs come with any weapon cards not already in the rules-bundle?

No. They're the exact same weapons. The difference with the packs is that you get multiples of each weapon, which allows you to field more than one using the cards (assuming you don't make your own, of course). The weapon cards included in the rules set only include enough cards for one of each weapon, and exactly enough multiples to run the two warlord titans included in the GME.

Rather than buy extra card packs and terminals. I managed to pick a cheap extra rules pack. This seamed like the cheapest way to get extra cards and terminals unless you plan on having a huge amount of titans

I did something similar; found someone on ebay who had split the rules set and bought just the terminal pack from that for slightly less than an Axiom set from GW. Of course that includes extra Warlord and Knight cards over the Axiom too! Had to buy the full Reaver weapon pack as I like to run 3-5 of them.

Curious to see when the Acastus terminal will be available for download like the rest. Wonder if they'll wait until the current stock of cards has sold first, or just publish it on Saturday.

 schoon wrote:

Also of interest - they mentioned that one of the new books would start seeing a more evident Chaos influence on Titans.

...and they opened the door to an eventual Xenos expansion, at least not in the seminars i have seen/been in, saying it would be in a slightly different period, though it's still far off.

I don't think they ever said that they were ruling out Xenos, more that they weren't focusing on it at the moment as there was a lot of stuff from the Heresy to cover first.
Once the Heresy era titans were all gone, it stands to reason that they would look at other revenue streams for AT, and Xenos is the obvious choice.

Looks like no FW pre-orders at all this week. Disappointed they didn't follow up the Acastus with new Reaver weapons.

 xttz wrote:
Looks like no FW pre-orders at all this week. Disappointed they didn't follow up the Acastus with new Reaver weapons.

They did this last time with Deeproot and the Halfling and actually did a saturday release. In this, I reckon we'll see Blood Bowl star players and maybe some Adeptus Titanicus weapon packs tomorrow

Chopstick wrote:

GME is frankly...meant for Grand Master , it meant for people who have large budget that looking to expand their force.

Nonsense. The GME is intended for people who wanted a big box to open. It's clearly not an expansion product, because it was the first thing released for the game!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 zedmeister wrote:

 xttz wrote:
Looks like no FW pre-orders at all this week. Disappointed they didn't follow up the Acastus with new Reaver weapons.

They did this last time with Deeproot and the Halfling and actually did a saturday release. In this, I reckon we'll see Blood Bowl star players and maybe some Adeptus Titanicus weapon packs tomorrow

Those were plastic kits, and thus Citadel releases, not Forge World.

Well, regarding "Epic", I wonder how would Apocalypse work with Epic and AT minis? Maybe halving ranges and the like would work well enough... maybe even leaving them as-is would make them look more believable.

I have the Epic/AT minis and terrain, so I wonder if it would be too hard to get some players to test it.

IMO just measure all distances with the same value in cm instead of inches. Would be close enough and saves any calculating mid-game.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Those were plastic kits, and thus Citadel releases, not Forge World.

Deeproot (Forgeworld Resin) was released on a Saturday to coincide with the plastic (Citadel) Halfling release.

My mistake; I forgot that treeman was resin.

Maxime Pastourel had a blog article recently about playing the Imperial Knight: Renegade game with AT knights, doing the inches = cm swap as well. Seemed to work fine, so the same should go for Apocalypse.


Just...getting good Epic infantry and recent ranks is impossible unless you're one of those "I know a guy" types woth their fancy 3d printed stuff :( I'd literally buy hundreds and thousands of tiny doods! (And with 8mm Apocalypse rules more widely available than old Epic stuff I might get some of those 3rd party Not-Death Korps dudes and actually try my hand at it)

Deathwatch101 wrote:

 schoon wrote:

Also of interest - they mentioned that one of the new books would start seeing a more evident Chaos influence on Titans.

...and they opened the door to an eventual Xenos expansion, at least not in the seminars i have seen/been in, saying it would be in a slightly different period, though it's still far off.

I don't think they ever said that they were ruling out Xenos, more that they weren't focusing on it at the moment as there was a lot of stuff from the Heresy to cover first.
Once the Heresy era titans were all gone, it stands to reason that they would look at other revenue streams for AT, and Xenos is the obvious choice.

I also remember them saying somewhere that they picked the Heresy in part because it cut down on the number of different kits they'd have to produce at start.

I'm curious though if they'll eventually start putting out models/rules for Chaos specific titan/knight patterns as they move AT forwards through the Heresy and after?

I'd love to see the old Slaanesh super heavies come back along with Chaos refit weapon options for existing chassis.

Labelling it as a Heresy game is entirely an excuse to only release one faction for now and pretend it’s two because you have two insignia choices, yes.