Titan Versus Tanks

I've never actually had a chance to play with my Warhound Titans. I've been thinking, since I'm going to be playing with them at an Team Apocalypse Tournament in a few weeks, I should actually get them on the table and try them out. I tried arranging a couple games with my partner for the Apocalypse event, but he's had to bail on me a couple times. So, this evening, I tried setting up a little battle on my own to play solo and suss out how good (or bad) they are.

Going into it I had a general feeling that they're just not worth the points. In the last two Chapter Approved books they actually INCREASED the points from what they originally were in the Forge World Index books. Luckily we're playing with Power Level and not points, but I was still not convinced they were worth it - at 75 Power Level for a Warhound Scout Titan - especially looking at the damage dealing some of those new Knights can do at half the power level!!



Set up one of the Warhounds on one side of the table (75PL)

Now there isn't an Codex: Adeptus Titanicus - at least not for Warhammer 40,000 (8th Edition), so I was really limited in terns of Warlord Traits - only the three basic ones in the main rulebook to choose from - and nothing like special Stratagems or Legion bonuses (like the Guard Regimental Doctrines and such). I ended up taking the Tenacious Survivor



and all my tanks on the other (78 PL) - including the Shadowsword, a Vanquisher tank commander, two regular battle tanks, Punisher and Demolisher.

I chose Tallarn as their Regiment - because... that's what they are.. but also because they have some great Regimental Doctrine rules for armour and Tank Orders and stuff like that. I gave the Warlord the "Old Grudges" trait (pick an enemy unit on the other side - guess which one I chose!? - friendlies within 6" of the warlord can re-roll failed wound rolls when targeting that enemy! OUCH!!

Come to think of it... I think this is the first time the Shadowsword, and, indeed, most of the Leman Russes have seen action!!!



I didn't really have any titan-sized LOS blocking terrain, so it was basically line-em-up and shoot. Gave the tanks the first shot (wanted to see worst-case-possible).



This seemed like an inauspicious start - the Tank Commander shot first and, despite having a BS 3+ (for having a bad-ass veteran guard crew) MISSED BOTH of her first shots with the vanquisher cannon... The secondary gunners totally made up for it though, the co-drivers lascannon blew through the void shields and knocked three wounds off and the Heavy bolsters even did two!! One tank and I was already down 5 Wounds!! 1/7 of my total... 5 more tanks to go - on one hand there rest of the Leman Russes only had a BS 4+... but there was also the Shadowsword!!!



The Shadowsword fired next and the Volcano Cannon carried off 17 wounds!! Half of my total!! It initially got 9 attacks (which was lucky - it was 3d3 and it all came up sixes!). it only hit with five (average) it wounded with four - after re-rolling one miss. I saved two of those with the invulnerable save (using a command point re-roll because initially I'd only saved one! and then it did 18 damage 2d6x2 - could have been a lot worse - probably SHOULD have been a lot worse. I did get my "Tenacious Survivor" rolls (d6 for each wound I would take, 6 means no wound) but that only reduced the total to 17... This damage alone knocked my void shields down to a 6+ save... the Lascannons did two more wounds and the three twin heavy bolsters did another three... leaving me with 7 wounds... and four more tanks to go...



Yeah... The tanks took out the Warhound in ONE TURN!!! But just barely... the last heavy bolder shot took out the last wound on the Warhound. And there were some insanely lucky rolls on the tanks part and some abysmally bad save rolls for the Warhound (four hits, 4+ invulnerable save = no saves whatsoever?!).

I pretended is had one wound left and tried shooting back - even with the reduction in BS. Dual-turbo laser vaporized the Shadowsword with ONE SHOT! It has 26 wounds... I did 44 to it... But that was about it...  the Titan Vulcan Mega-Bolter did NOTHING at all to the tanks...

This game did nothing to dissuade me of the feeling that Titans are totally not worth as many points/Power Level that they are!

Lessons Learned:

1) Find titan-sized LOS blocking terrain and hide behind it

2) Dual-turbo-laser just WRECKS titanic vehicles - find them and blow them the fü¢k up - especially any with titan-killing weapons (like Shadowswords! or those awful, awful knights)

3) be prepared to lose each match on Turn One or Two...

Ehhhhh... I'm not that worried about that, though. I knew going into this it was unlikely we'd win any games. (I mean, I'M playing!?) It's never really my motivation for playing. Painting cool toys and getting a chance to put them on the table and roll dice and make shoot noises and hang out with some fun people that share some of those interests is what I'm there for. It is entirely possible, that our turns will be short, our games will be short, and we'll have lots of time to hang out and watch all the other games... Which will be cool, because I'll get to take a lot of pictures for the game reports!!!

I did mention this all to my partner, and he said usually at these events, to cut down on the "alpha smite", whoever has the first turn often gets a -2 to hit... which would have really helped a LOT and given my titan a fighting chance... Perhaps I'll have another go at it on Sunday afternoon.


Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

It's a SECRET! but I can tell you it's BIG. And it will be coming very soon!!! I'm just going to go and paint some finish on it now...

More Tank!

As I mentioned at the end of the previous post I got briefly excited about participating in an Apocalypse event at Dragon's Den Games (my FLGS) next weekend (not, like, tomorrow, that's International Tabletop Day, NEXT weekend, like 5 May 2018...) but as it turns out, Amanda is out of town, and I have to take The Girl to dance classes and we wouldn't be able to make it there until later in the day - too late for massive reserves to come rolling onto the table... but I got excited about the idea long enough to get another tank done for the Tallarn!



Leman Russ battle tank from Games Workshop.

This one I picked up used and assembled off a local guy - along with two others (a Vanquisher model and a Demolisher) and a Basilisk self-propelled artillery piece. I still have two more brand new ones I need to assemble - one is an older Battle Tank like this one, and one of the newer models that could be built as a battle tank or... whatever they call the ones with twin-linked auto cannons...? Eradicator...? I don't know... I'll probably build it as another Battle Tank.



I've redone how I wrote "Tallarn" on this and the other tanks as I realized I did it wrong. I mean, I'm no expert at Arabic, so my attempt at trying to phonetically spell "Tallarn" might STILL be wrong... but I had realized my previous attempt was super wrong - wrong consonant sound and... BACKWARDS! I think what I'd written on the tanks was something closer to Nralath...

Which, y'know, now that I've typed that there, I'm kind of wishing I'd left it... I mean, I don't play with Catachans, I play with GUAIACANS! Why should I play with Tallarn!? I could have my own desert people from my own desert world - Nralath!

Bah! I've gone and changed them now... I'll leave them be...



This tank is called "Sawm" or "Fasting".



The bags and cans and bits are actually from Tamiya 1/35 scale WW2 detail kits (I just hope GW doesn't sue for me mixing their stuff with other companies stuff!!)



the Tank force so far... With the four others I have to finish up, that will make SEVEN!? Might as well pick up 3 more and make a full company!? Is that getting a little silly... Seven is probably silly...



The backsides of them - 221 "Sawm" (Fasting), 222 "Sala" (Prayer), 223 "Zakat" (Almsgiving). Originally the plan was to have only two more... 224 and 225, "Hajj" (Pilgrimage) and "Shahada" (Faith).

But now I have two extras... I was thinking maybe the Vanquisher could be the "Troop Commander" (a Tank Commander in the game) I might renumber it 221 and call it "Shahada" and renumber "Sawm" to be 225... (why don't I think about these things BEFORE I paint the damned numbers on then!?) What do I do for the last member of the troop? Another Battle Tank? The Demolisher?

I had been thinking possibly the Demolisher could be attached from an assault engineer unit...? A vehicle like that seems like it wouldn't be part of a regular armoured unit? But then what do I do with the other one I have!?

I didn't really think this through, did I...?

Story of my life....


Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

There will probably be an post about the rest of the boardgaming we did this month... including all the games we'll be playing tomorrow at International Tabletop Day at Dragon's Den Games.

After that...? Well, even though I'm not going to be participating in the Apocalypse event I think I'm going to try and finish up the stuff I was planning to finish up for in next: the Vanquisher, the Shadowsword, and maybe even the Warhound Titan.

I've also been thinking about busting out some of the Epic scale stuff and painting a bit of that... perhaps I should just try to stay focused on ONE SCALE... stick with the plan... and the PLAN for this year was to paint 28mm 40K stuff and English Civil War stuff (speaking of which - some pikes arrived in the mail today from Warlord Games... So, I guess there's that if I need some "Oooh! Shiny!"

Tallarn Command

Just two more Roughriders to do before the weekend after this lot...



The Command elements I finished up over the last few days... (all from Games Workshop!)

This finishes off:



Company Commander and Command Squad. I decided the officers needed a bit more "bling" that the standard troops, and that the Command Squad for the Company Commander could be similarly jazzed up. I'm not sure it works now... but I'm going to leave it as is (for now) too many other things needing paint on them to start repainting finished things now!



A second Platoon Commander and Command Squad. The Platoon Commander is a "Platoon Commander" in name only (for the fluff), they will likely always be fielded as Company Commanders in game terms not because they're a better deal - but because I have so few Headquarters options to fill up the necessary HQ slots for Brigade Detachments, and far more Elites units than I have slots for (Platoon Commanders in the game are Elite options - as are Command Squad - so a Platoon Commander and a Command Squad eats up TWO Elite slots of which there are only eight)



The entire force so far.

What we have here is:

HQ
3x Company Commanders
1x Lord Commissar

Troops 
6x Infantry Squads

Elites
3x Command Squads
5x Special Weapon Squads (2x Sniper, 2x Melta, 1x Plasma)
1x Commissar
1x Veteran Squad

Fast Attack
1x Scout Sentinel
1x Roughriders

Heavy
2x Heavy Weapon Squad (mortars)
2x Leman Russ Tanks (1x standard battle tank, 1x Punisher Variant)

Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

Two Tallarn Roughriders - so I can split the group I have into two smaller squads of five and six, respectively (giving me three fast attack elements and enough to fill out a "Brigade Detachment").

At that point I'll probably take a picture of the 1000 point force I'm taking to the tournament on the weekend.

Leman Russ Punisher

The Astra Militarum Codex refers to this tank as an "unsubtle built hose" due to it's Heavy20 type - with the new Grinding Advance rule that's 40 (FORTY!) dice to throw at one unit. I... couldn't resist putting one together for my Leman Russ troop.

As mentioned in the previous post, I've gone and  signed up for a TOURNAMENT on the 24th of this month! Those that have known me for a well, and for a long time, may be a bit shocked by this. For the longest time, the whole bring-x-points-and-play-a-"competitive"-battle style of play was anathema for me. To be honest, I still don't love the idea, I'm more about fluff and narrative than competition. But I thought it might be a good opportunity to actually get out and meet some of these guys in the league and see who else is into fluff and narrative...

Conveniently it's at a place that's, like, four or five blocks from my house and only 1000 points. Despite easily having that in Guaiacan Commandoes or Tallarn, I got it in my thick head that I'd like to put a Brigade Detachment of Tallarn on the table for this event... Which means I needed to paint three more Infantry Squads, another Mortar Squad, two more Commanders and Command Squads, another Sentinel and THIS TANK...

Okay I didn't NEED this tank. I already HAVE a Tallarn tank. But I WANTED this tank, because... FORTY DICE BULLET HOSE!!! Okay, so they're only Strength 5... but now that ANYTHING has the potential to wound... Quantity has a quality all its own...



Leman Russ Punisher tank from Games Workshop. I have two more of these to paint and assemble - one is one of the older version - with the individual wheels (looks like a nightmare to assemble - especially without instructions!) - that I've had kicking around the lead/plastic pile for years...

I know, I know... I glued the forward bolt gun in upside down... I discovered this as I started to paint it and was furiously angry. despite my best efforts to pry it out - I couldn't do it without damaging the model so I decided to leave it for now and hope no one notices (honestly, would you have, if I hadn't mentioned it?). At some point I'll just carve it off and glue on a new one... Ugh... so annoying. I'm usually pretty careful about this sort of stuff!

My megalomaniac plan was to eventually have five - to fill out a "troop".



The writing on the turret is my attempt to write "Tallarn" phonetically in Arabic after skimming a wikipedia article on it. If there are any Arabic readers - I apologize profusely if I have mangled your language/script here...



The writing on the back is, again, my attempt at Arabic script - it's supposed to say Zakat - or "almsgiving" one of the five pillars of the Tallarn version of the Imperil Creed.

Most of the stowage on the tank is from a Tamiya 1/35 kit - Allied Vehicle Accessories Set. As everything on GW Astra Militarum tanks is goofy-cartoony-exagerated, they don't actually look out of place, despite being a larger scale!



The troop so far.


Coming Soon to Tim's Miniature Wargaming Blog:

More Tallarn!

I have an Infantry Squad, a commander and a Command Squad on the workbench that I'm actively working on this week.

I'm hoping to get in another game of The Pikeman's Lament later this week, so stay tuned for a report of that game as well!