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Oh yes. Still using the Crusade legion rules from WD so it'll be good to update them. Quite good for maniples with supporting knights, or if one wants to intimidate enemy banners.

SamusDrake wrote:
Oh yes. Still using the Crusade legion rules from WD so it'll be good to update them. Quite good for maniples with supporting knights, or if one wants to intimidate enemy banners.

You'll be very very happy




Ok so I've barely scratched the surface of ryza but I thought I'd put together a custom legio to sorta get my head around things. What's new now is even if you're not doing a custom legio there's actually a cool new special rule you for going loyalist or traitor. They're both once per game abilities, loyalists getting to once per game change the order of a titan at the end of the repair phase, so you can go from say first fire to split fire. Traitors, once per game a titan in the movement phase can add 2 inches to its normal and boosted move and each cc weapon it has gets an extra attack dice.


So ya whether or not you're going custom legio, that's a cool new once per game ability both traitors and loyalists can now use.


For the custom legios, it's like the white dwarf system just a bit more refined. Basically you have a list of legio traits, wargear and stratagems. Your legion comprises 4 choices from those 3 lists, but you can't take more than two things from any list and you can't take multiple stratagems unless the specific stratagem gives permission to do so.

My custom legio is going to be loyalist cuz it matches my paint job

Using two traits:

Legio Trait "Vanguard Fighters": all warhounds in the legio get +1 to all hit rolls and can be issue first fire or fuil stride without having to pass a command check, provided the warhound in question doesn't have any other friendly titans within 6 inches. So basically as long as I keep my warhounds out on the prowl as lone hunters I'm all good.


Legio Trait "Duty and Honour": this allows one titan to use the adaptive tactics special rule once per round instead of per game, this is the special rule discussed earlier that loyalists get. So basically instead of once per game, once per round i can switch a titans order up at the end of the repair phase, so being able to first fire with warhounds without passing a command check and then one of them gets to switch from first fire to split fire, very cool.


Legio Wargear "Macro Charges": this one seems really cool for plasma and volcano lovers, basically for +20 points weapons with 3 inch blast become 5 inch and and 1 to their strength, only downside is when they get damaged they go boom real big so you add 2 to the strength of weapon detonations. Really cool for reavers with volcano or warhounds with plasma.


Legio Wargear "Tracking Gyroscopes": for 10pts you can upgrade fire arc on warlord's shoulder guns from corridor to full 90 arc like the arm guns. I really like the added flexibility this will give split fire orders and in general it will help out the much slower warlord bring its weapons to bear.




I decided not to go with any legio specific stratagems, I believe you're still able to purchase the core stratagems as long you follow the loyalist/traitor limitations so I figure I'll likely stick with some of the old staples for now like strafing run or titan hunter infantry. One of the very tempting legio traits lets you swap out any single mandatory titan in a maniple with a single warlord, reaver or warhound titan. It does stipulate however that if the maniples special rules only affect a specific titan type then the swapped titan only benefits if its of that type, otherwise if the rule is just maniple wide they get it. I was hoping they'd include the warbringer in that list but it does get a cool option in the wargear that lets you upgrade its shoulder gun to have barrage.


I think what we'll see is some players with existing legios make sorta their own custom take on any given legio and I think that's a good thing for the game. Some may not like that change to the game because they may be very attached to their legio or rightfully might think it gamey or cheesy for someone to convenintly change up the "fluff" of their legio every game, ie make a custom legio. But it's a double edge sword, how can players find a play style or strategy they like without trying different stuff out? I'm ok with it because even the core missions are mostly historical and ask players at a fundamental level to pretend the actual legios engaged in the scenario are now re-imagined conveniently as the two legios the players own.

The best part about the expanded wargear is it really gives light to cool conversion ideas. For one you can upgrade armour on either legs head or body so the +1's and +2's down the track don't take effect. So for those of us with lucius pattern titans its a neat way of explaining the extra armour and heavier look. On the likely more heretical side of things, an upgrade like armour spikes is really cool, it takes smash attacks from D3 to D6 on any size titan, so those bad ass chaos titans with spikes all over them really count for something.

An interesting side note too for anyone whose considered doing count as tau just for the fun of modelling tau titans, one of the new wargear upgrades is similar to the tau stormsurge, basically lets warlords plan stabilizers in the ground but they can't move that round. There's also a custom legio stratagem called target lock that lets a titan forgo shooting to basically light up the target like a christmas tree for all other titans in the legio, very marker light.

Anyway, I'll have more stuff on ryza pretty soon, if you haven't already pick it up, it's every bit as useful to have on hand as molech and the custom legio rules alone are worth the price of admission.

Here's the most recent board we played with. I modified it a bit before the game to add some more colour. Really happy with the tmg roads, gonna try the ruins next game probably.

So working on version 2.0 of engine war now that ryza is out.


The basic idea of engine war is a simpler entry point scenario/mod for newer players. One of the issues with matched play we never liked is that both players have a different mission and a lot of it feels like arbitrary scoring for sorta random stuff. We really like end game scoring with a few secondary objectives. A lot of the battles we were seeing online, the scores just sorta got away from players and didn't always feel relevant.

So the core mission is always objectives, 3-5 each worth 3 victory points. Scored at the end of the game.

Changes we're considering is axing the section with command bastions being required to purchase battlefield assets, originally the idea was to sortof be able to cut off your opponents ability to use strategems but it's a bit too messy.

Moving forward, we're going to be using stratagem points at a high level than the normal game, always 10sp regardless of points. The scenario has a reserve and outflank mechanic built into it and that's not going anywhere, currently you can pay 1 stratagem point to put a titan or banner in outflank and we feel although perhaps too cheaply costed, it adds to much to the game that it's not going anywhere, but we may take another look at how much it costs to put a unit in outflank.

Ryza sorta throws a bit curveball our way in terms of the overall game meta because of the new custom legio rules. The other aspect of the game we're trying to make work in engine war is titans of legend.

As it stands, our plan is as follows for titans of legend, they will be locked into loyalist or traitor, meaning if you plan on taking one it must conform to your allegiance, this is also something new introduced in the ryza book so we're just following forgeworld leads on that part. With that said, we do want to open titans of legend up in the following way in engine war, a loyalist or traitor legio may take their respective titan of legend as normal. If they wish to take a titan of legend not from their legio they can but at the cost of a stratagem point. The current thinking is also adding another 1 stratagem point tax to put said titan of legend into a maniple, again if it's not part of the legio its for.

Basic idea is you can get a special character titan even if your legio doesn't have one yet. Out of the 5 loyalist and 5 traitor titans of legend, 1 of them, the loyalist reaver "Iracundos" belongs to a legio with no rules currently (legio ignatum). So that throws a bit of a curveball our way.

Titans of legend are a bit of a sore point because of access, so this might need more consideration.

Titanicus is a historical game, but its has that problem a lot of them have where because its historical in nature, a lot of the scenarios force you to re-imagine the factions involved for sheer practicality of getting a game in without having to paint a whole new legio every time.

With that, ryza also sorta throws us all a curveball because nothing is stopping players from trying out new legio rules every game. Which was always true of existing legio rules assuming your opponent didn't mind. No matter what now we'll have the duality of an existing legio still wanting to try custom legio rules instead of their older ones and I think that's fine and inevitable. Further more, it's arguably needed a bit to help get more players in IMO. I can tell my friends now that they're not forced to choose an existing legio and paint scheme but truly make one themselves.

Cards on the table, I've been using the legio tempestus rules up until the release of ryza. I've always felt a bit weird about it, I enjoyed their rules but my titans are sortof a custom paint job so they're just green. I know that ruffles some feathers of the players who take great pride in their paintjob and legio. But to top things off I've gone with a very loyalist theme, everything has aquilas and there's no eyes of horus in sight. The thing ryza changes no matter what is sort of having to choose loyalist or traitor (or blackshield). To bring it back to the titans of legend, the only one for I'm aware of for tempestus is a traitor one, so again I feel like I'd get a few stares running a loyalist looking traitor legio "just to use the titan of legend". So anyway to tie this off, the 1 stratagem tax to take one (and only one) in your battlegroup plus an additional 1 stratagem point tax to take it inside a maniple is hopefully enough to keep things reasonable, We're still debating if we need to limit wargear on titans of legend or not, the concern is just absurd or broken interactions. The good news is a lot of the weapon wargear in the custom rules has their own limitations, most weapons only being able to take one upgrade anyway. We've also limited wargear upgrades in engine war to the amount of servitor clades a titan has. So 2-4 usually.



Final though on changes, terrain. We're going to add a 1 or two pager about terrain. The core terrain rules are pretty good but we did have some thoughts. Again with the theme of this whole scenario being entry level, simplified and just sortof a primer to get people in, we wanted to focus on the fundamentals. Basically blocking terrain being the focus. The change we want to make is to simply treat it as 100% impassable, so we're axing the clunky stepping over mechanic, the reality for us was the way we had built a lot of terrain, there wasn't much a titan could step over anyway. We just want players to focus on how unforgiving just having to circumvent blocking terrain can be.

The other thing we've found is, terrain that slows movement for titans totally has a place and definitely enhances tactical play, but can be a bit of a bummer for new players. So we're to sortof move it to advanced rules and flesh it out a bit. We basically have 3 versions of simple area terrain, water, tar and toxic. The one cool thing for water is we'll be adding a rule where if your titans base is entirely within the water during the end phase you'll reduce reactor heat by one pip. Inspired a bit by the battletech video game. Tar pits will be self explanatory, just bog standard terrain that slows you with no benefit and toxic will cause automatic leg damage of 1 pip in the end phase. But as we said, when we're trying to sell our friends on a game where they have squad of bad ass super robots, its a bit of downer for their initial outing, they expect to be crushing stuff under their feet.

Also in advance will be ruin rules, basic idea is we wanted something titans could stomp through that knights could not. Basic idea is knight can't cc through them and titans wishing to must basically stomp the ruin out of their path, meaning likely having to close close than 2 inches to the knight they wish to attack in order for their base to make contact with the ruin. Titans stomping through ruins will be a simple D6, on a 1 or 2 the titan takes 1 pip of leg damage. The thought on terrain doing leg damage was it was a simple rule for new players to grasp and it treats all titan armour equally in terms of risk, warlords tend to have the highest armour values and at least with this they stand the same chance as any other titan to sustain leg damage if they stomp through enough ruins, Blast weapons will remove ruins if the center hole of the blast lands over a ruin wall. Currently the ruins themselves can't be targeted so only scatters or hits on units close would cause the ruin to be removed. Knights 100% in cover of a ruin can always take their ion save but only if the entire ruin blocks los, not in terms of the windows but the ruins overall dimension, think of a lattice work fence. For example imagine a square shaped ruin the height of questoris knight, the knight if entirely behind it would get its ion save, but a larger acastus knight being taller than the same ruin would not benefit and would need to find a taller ruin that obscures 100%. The unit wishing to target the acastus would still subtract the requisite amount on the hit roll for how obscured the knight is, but it would not benefit in this case from the added "guaranteed" ion save. It maybe prove a bit strong in favour of knights but with ruins destructibility the thought is enough blast weaponry will easily take down a ruin and reveal the target for all to see for subsequent activations.

Last but not least, as I touched on before with fun of terrain that can slow units, its also a bit of a debbie downer when just learning the rules and how to circumnavigate the board with your cool giant robot. So to that end, the only other terrain outside of blocking terrain in main scenario will be "destructible scatter terrain". Basically a catch all, very simple mechanic for stuff the big guys can step on or through and simply remove from play. We find this works great for stuff like small trees or small bases of trees/foliage. It can also work for smaller terrain pieces like aircraft or civilian vehicles like tanks or trucks. Even stuff like shipping crates or some of the smaller industrial pieces.


The only real distinctions here are if stepping on/through the terrain will hurt your titan. The thought is for normal natural terrain features like trees, no, titans would have no problem stomping through a small batch of trees. So they simply remove the trees or trees or base of foliage if they pass through it as part of their movement or end their movement on it. Knights are not slowed by the trees or foliage but may not move "through" trees or bushes so their path must still circumnavigate those elements.

For vehicles, we feel for the majority of smaller ones, especially civilian should function essentially the same way as the natural terrain, titans can stomp on/through most without risk of injury, simply remove what they move through or end their move on, knights aren't slowed by them but if they wish to move through them, they must roll a D6 for each vehicle, on 1 or 2 they lose a pip of armour but may take an ion save against each result.

As I said earlier the scatter terrain a bit of a catch all for stuff that destructible but small enough to not really require a damage model. It's worth having a classification of destructible scatter terrain thats potentially hazerdous to titans too. Again likely sticking with the roll a D6 and on a 1 or 2 they suffer a leg armour pip damage. This could be reserved for like a fuel tanker or larger less civilian more military style vehicles like ships or things that might rightfully be carrying munitions. I envision a highway of discarded transport trucks, some easily crushed and forgot but perhaps a few painted with hazard marks to indicate they carry fuel or industrial waste of some kind and those perhaps could damage a titan if they explode. This again is stolen from battletech, one of the funner aspects in that game is watching mech stomp down a road crushing every car under food effortlessly like the tank on crack we all want them to be


As we don't have damage models for most of our buildings, we don't feel the optional destructible buildings rules work well for engine war, I do wish for a 4th terrain kit that's just a ruined version of the intact imperalis buildings, that would at least open the possibility of using the optional rules. What we will be trying to do however is transfer over legio abilities that tie to destroying buildings over to perhaps allowing those legios ability to target terrain features that others cannot like mentioned earlier when I discussed potential ruin rules. This still will require more reading though on my part. But basically if a legio has wargear or stratagem or trait involving terrain, especially if its terrain in the optional section, we'll look at maybe throwing them a bone so to speak like being able to target ruins or scatter terrain directly and so on.


Anyway, the end goal is to just have a fun baseline entry scenario/mod to the game that hopefully gets more players in. The game has a great deal of depth but it can be a bit overwhelming for new players. I've sorta given myself permission to try this from reading all the different scenarios outside of the matched play one. There's a lot of creativity, you see cool ideas like pretending the titans on one side are spun 180 at the waist walking backword or in another scenario buildings falling to horus and being occupied by supporters and actually being able to fire on enemy titans. But the requirements sometime involved modelling or a board that's not easily feasible. The historical side means they're often asymmetric in one or more ways. That and the historical nature makes you have to sorta re-imagine the legios or houses involved no matter what. The make a game nature of matched play mixed with the highly variable nature of amount vp's awarded for any givens secondary mission or strategem or trait or princeps senioris trait relative to the difficulty. The scores just sorta run away with ya, it can be a bit of a spoiler if you or your opponent reveal they've just been rewarded a lot of points for doing something fairly easy. Objectives with end games causality just works well because you can still just focus on beating the crap out of each other and not about taking and holding ground but unless you pretty much table your opponent you'll run into problems if they're standing on all the best real estate end game. Not to go on too long about objectives but what works well for us is, we tend to take the time to setup a fairly believable board, like there's distinct areas or features like a star port area or refinery area or more residential looking, so when we take turns placing objectives we tend to place it adjacent to one of the more thematic terrain pieces. And that's fun because in the end you can say like "the traitors held the hab blocks but lost the refinery to the loyalists, A titans plasma core going nuclear took the space port" and for those who may want to try this in campaigns you can always tie terrain features to post game ramifications for either side.

Hopefully should have it updated in the next week or two. Really encourage anyone on the fence to pick up the ryza book, it's a very worthwhile investment, especially for your first book outside of the main rulebook, the custom legios really are a great addition to the game.

I give you "Pyramid City". The pyramid and toxic pools were painted by SMM painting.

So I got some new terrain printed. A badass landing pad, I think it's a tau design but I'm gonna add some crates and fuel drums to make it looks more imperial. Also got a little shuttle printed for it. The other new piece is an ode to fufurama, it's a planet express inspired building. I'm debating going full planet express with the paint job or a more subtle nod to it. I'm leaning more towards subtle, one because I'm not a great painted and two because I wanna add some vanguard tech priests to different parts of it. Could always paint the little shuttle in planet express colours. Also got the fw warehouse/generator building painted.

Engine War 2.0 is here! New and improved and with terrain rules too!

New Board Setup. So I think this is the best table setup yet. I've sorta cracked the code I think. There's two main things I took away from the two hour or so I spent setting the board up. The first is, most if not all gaps should be around 5 inches or more, easiest thing to reach for is a large blast template cuz its 5 inches. Reason being, a warlord's base is 4.7 inches wide, and because it only moves 4 inches and gets a single 45 degree turn I basically made it so a warlord can circumnavigate the board without much problem. The other take away was pretty much always aiming for a diamond pattern in terms of layout/roads/fire lanes. Reason being is titans can move straight anywhere in their front 45 degree arc as long as they don't change their facing (turn) so you can basically strafe left or right while moving forward. If the roads/paths/fire lanes are all parallel to the board you don't make much use of strafing and full on side stepping costs half ur movement speed, so a warlord going 2 inches right or left is pretty underwhelming. Anyway, took a tonne of pictures.

Amazing stuff - really great terrain.

I like the landing pad with the little shuttle.

And that little Dreadnought gets around a bit!

 Pacific wrote:
Amazing stuff - really great terrain.

I like the landing pad with the little shuttle.

And that little Dreadnought gets around a bit!

Thanks guy

Gonna add some decals to the landing pad hopefully.

The dread's fast, he's very fast.

So I had to tear down the last board before trying it out to shoot a buddy's army, but chance had it we managed to get some shots with both our legios on the baord before tearing down. Not the fairest looking fight in the world but always cool to see.

Took way too many pics, started out with the wider shots and ended with some tighter stuff.

So me and my buddy wanted to try and do a battle report each using only what's in the starter box. We managed to make 1300 points lists each, 2 reavers, 2 warhounds and 2 lancers. It was a damn good game, legio fureans "tiger eyes" vs legio venator "iron spiders".

Only managed to record 4 of 6 turns before the card ran out of memory so we had to sorta jumpt from the end of turn 4 to the end of turn 6 and sorta summarize the end game. We're use to doing battle report for 30k, where it's about 5-6 turns usually so fairly manageable but with at's alternating activation it made it a bit hard to shoot everything, so we sorta had to abridge a bit of the phases and just explain what happened.

We're playing the engine war scenario, it's an entry level matched play scenario we cooked up to help get people into the game. Our current selling point to friends and acquaintance's are that unlike the commitment of a lot of games, AT actually is quite affordable. Only need a handful of models and realistically the starter box really is an battlegroup in a box. A lot of gamers are bit more intimidated by more historical style games so if we can give potential new players a sorta 1 page scenario that's very straight forward, you're basically just fighting over objectives, the hope is more people will bite the bullet and paint up a battlegroup of their own.

New board setup, a bit rushed, the palms arrived today. Might wash them, not sure yet. Fortress wall is still only half painted, gotta finish that. Basic inspiration is rogue one.

As always a swell job on the table, Crablezworth.

Top points for using a Little Pig and Rogue One's Scarif for inspiration. Maybe call the Arvus "Hog One"?

SamusDrake wrote:
As always a swell job on the table, Crablezworth.

Top points for using a Little Pig and Rogue One's Scarif for inspiration. Maybe call the Arvus "Hog One"?

Really wanna get this thing eventually: https://www.warscenery.com/product-page/stronghold-landing-tower?fbclid=IwAR1tbHjhCd5YrPsqcexblTgrB9GwYBUZE7cNC03Bkwjh87i45e86RNaRmnE




the elevator is moveable

OMG thats well thats well good.

Moving elevator as well!

Great idea putting deathworld forest trees over those toxic pools, it really works.

Reminds me of Scarif Beach from R1/Battlefront 2.

Loving the deathworld swamps

SamusDrake wrote:
OMG thats well thats well good.

Moving elevator as well!

Yeah, only design worry is what to do if there's a shuttle landed on the pad


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 lord_blackfang wrote:
Great idea putting deathworld forest trees over those toxic pools, it really works.

Thanks, hoping to come up with a rule to let flamers incinerate them.


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 gorgon wrote:
Reminds me of Scarif Beach from R1/Battlefront 2.

Danke, scarif is definitely the inspiration


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 Rolsheen wrote:
Loving the deathworld swamps

Thanks Rolsh, gonna try and work the beast rules into the game as a secondary so the swamps might be home to something scary







Been painting a lot, hopefully have some pics later this afternoon. Had a bit of an idea after talking to a friend about flamer weapons. Basic idea we came up with, building on the terrain rules in the engine war scenario, the idea is to allow template weapons instead of firing, as an actication may light a piece of destructible terrain or ruin on fire provided it's within range of the template. This would be done instead of firing the weapon so it's not an attack and anything else under the template would be unharmed,

Once the terrain piece is lit on fire, we put a smoke marker next to it. For the remainder of the turn the terrain piece, be it a ruin or a small base with a tree or two on it now counts as los blocking in a vertical column similar to the stratagems where you put down a 5 inch blast template that blocks los. This basically represents the ruin or clump of trees burning and covered with thick dark smoke.

If titans wish to stomp runs or tree bases that are on fire they can but must roll a reactor dice for each ruin or base of trees they stomp through (one at a time as they go). They don't risk damaging their legs as the terrain piece has been structurally weakened by the fire. In the end phase of the turn you pull any destructible terrain pieces that were lit on fire this turn and scoop the smoke marker. It's basically there as a reminder.



But ya, thought was flame weapons aren't bad but this gives them a bit of utility. Might be a reason to include one on a warhound or in a banner of cerastus knights. We'll likely wait till after the next book to update engine and add this officially but might try it in a game or two to see how it goes.

2000pts iron spider vs tiger eyes. Was a really good game, some highlights included accidently clipping my warbringer with strafing run and putting the killing blow on it and my princeps seniores reaver rolling 10 and having its reactor blow and badly damage the warbringer. Also so some lancer on lancer close combat that was very interesting.


The Board











The Game

Ah, good old red-spiked alien cacti

Looking good as always, you're really getting across the sense of someone actually living there instead of it being simply a gaming table.

Stunning work - thanks for sharing

The toothpick cacti from a WD tutorial circa 1995, are they there ironically

 Sherrypie wrote:
Ah, good old red-spiked alien cacti

Looking good as always, you're really getting across the sense of someone actually living there instead of it being simply a gaming table.

Thanks guy , Yeah the ole covid cactuses


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 Mr Morden wrote:
Stunning work - thanks for sharing

Thanks for the kind words good sir


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 lord_blackfang wrote:
The toothpick cacti from a WD tutorial circa 1995, are they there ironically

Some terrain should hurt

New board setup, finally got the air traffic control tower done. Also finished the fortress wall. The island battle mat is really becoming one of my fav's.

2000pts legio venator vs legio fureans

Had a chance to try the new legio venator rules from the crucible of retribution book that just came out. Gave all 5 of my titans the blind launchers wargear. Forgot to use them early on so the were sortof a mixed result. The positive thing is the -1 to enemy shooting can't be taken away by wargear that usually alters cover modifiers. The upside to them is the -1 to your own titan's shooting only lasts until the next combat phase, so it only really affects titans planning for first firing in the subsequen movement phase. I completely forgot to try their ability to make squadrons on the fly, I have yet to run any squadron so it just never came to mind. The game was crazy, out of 10 titans to take the field, 6 of them rolled a 10 and had a had their cores meltdown. Two titans had the final killing blows put on them by titan hunter infantry in their rear/side armour. The first shot from the warbringer's belicossa volcano cannon scatted off the furean's warlord and landed directly on their glaive (macro cannon battery) scoring a penetrating hit and killing it outright before it could even get a shot off. The game ended with a single titan still left on the board, the venator's warbringer nemesis, but the fureans held more objectives, holding their vital and one other with questoris/acastus on each. The final score was 6vp for legio venator to 7vp for legio fureans, The tiger eyes held two objectives including their vital objective, the iron spiders held their vital objective and killed the furean's princeps seniores.

What a crazy close game, 1vp difference. It was a total blast



One thing to note is how different the battlefield looks before and after the game. Lotsa ruins got smashed through or destroyed be errant blast weapons scattering into them.

Got the forge fane painted

New board setup with the forge fane.

New terrain, got some more imperialis buildings, wanted to round out the urban stuff. Also got some sweet crates from a friend.