Adeptus Titanicus Battle Report - Mortis vs Magna, Battle for Pad 13

Hello!

Another Titanicus game with The Claw, continuing our little narrative of the traitor Legios fighting for the spoils of Esteban V, as the Warmaster's gaze turns towards Terra. Mortis and Magna have been trading blows in the first three encounters (click for game one, two and three), so perhaps at the battle around this lone, but vital space port one side can land the killing blow?

We decided on a nice size of 1750 points, and a simple objective of whoever had the most stuff (by scale) of units touching the landing pad square at the end of the random game length would win. As it's a landing zone the terrain was fairly light in terms of completely blocking stuff, but there were plenty of little structures to grab some cover here and there.

I took a classic Axiom maniple, with the standard loadout Warlord as the Pitiless Princeps Seniors, a Reaver loaded out for shield stripping, a melee Reaver and Warhounds with double turbo lasers and double flamers. I rounded out the points with a trio of Questoris Knights. This felt very Mortis-y, the plan being to strip shields and feed engine kills to the Warlord.

The Claw took the Fortis maniple again with a Warlord swapping a volcano for a Quake cannon, a pair of mixed load out Reavers, and supported by a bunch of knights- six Questoris and four Cerastus Knight Lancers.

The forces lined up against each other, with Warlords pretty much central and faster elements on the flanks. Turn one initiative went to Mortis.

I decided those Lancers were a bit pokey and needed to go. As my last movement action I pointed the Warlord at them. One good blast with the Belicosa Volcano Cannon and all four evaporated before the second gun or the missiles could fire! New model syndrome in full effect for The Claw.

At the end of turn one, not a lot of damage elsewhere (I think I passed every single void shield roll this turn!), leaving the Mortis forces in the ascendancy - keeping the initiative for turn two.

Turn two and the forces started to converge on the centre. The Questoris Knight banner on the Magna side made a charge into my melee Reaver, losing one to the chain fist before hacking away at the legs. The Inferno gun Warhound got some shots in to little effect, and ended up eating melta cannon from a Magna Reaver, getting immobilised away from the main fight. The Magna Warlord took some punishment to it's shields but no serious damage yet. Since they were still moving into position it was unable to share shields with it's maniple.

Turn three and initiative to Magna. The Knights cut into the Reaver to disable it, leaving it a standing wreck. My inferno Warhound continued to suffer with emergency repairs failing to get it moving again. My left flank had collapsed, but the right was still pretty strong, Knights and Warhound moving in to be annoying and the shooty Reaver and Warlord still undamaged, pouring fire into the Magna Warlord, causing critical leg damage and getting it to spin away from the objective.

Turn four, the Magna Warlord made it's move onto the middle, reigniting it's shields in defiance. Mortis aligned Knights ran in to cause a nuisance of themselves. The Reavers moved around into closer positions, though the Magna one immediately behind the Warlord succumbed to the Machine Spirit and marched towards my badly damage Warhound.

All eyes on the centre, the other Reaver moved into position behind the Magna Warlord and their Knights engaged my Reaver. Once again the shields went down on the enemy Warlord but my Volcano cannons scattered and were unable to get the finishing blow. Random game length was rolled, and we went into turn five, with Magna stubbornly holding onto the objective.

In turn five, knights fought knights, Reavers blasted Warhound, and the Warlord swayed the wrong direction, repaired shields once more, then stood it's ground. Finally the Fortis Maniple was able to share it's shields and this was just about enough to hold off the firepower of the Reaver and Warlord - I think they ended up with two points of void shields between them.

Once again, random game length rolled, and this time it was game over. With the crippled Warlord hanging on just by the skin of it's allies void shields, Legio Magna picked up the win.

Another fun outing for AdTit. It's always a lovely looking game for me when there's a fully painted board and two painted forces, and it was awesomely cinematic to see all these big stompy robots converge on a central space that they absolutely had no right all trying to fit into! After that game our little narrative sits at two wins apiece, so I think sometime in the new year we will have to have a decider! 

Anyway, thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed, and stay safe!