We've finished our second week of our late spring Titanicus League. We have eight players.
We've set the campaign on Tallarn. During the Heresy it became a vacuum drawing in forces from both sides into a boiling, confusing, enduring conflict where forces faced death not just from their enemies but also from the toxic soup of the environment.
While the corrosive toxic environment provides little threat to titans, the lack of visibility and ambient heat and radiation from orbital bombardments, previous battles and explosions of methane pockets, makes locating and targeting the enemy more of a problem in many cases.
Our forces are as follows:
Loyalists:
War Griffons
True Messengers
Iron Vigil
Warp Runners
Traitors:
Godbreakers x2
Ember Wolves
Tiger Eyes.
In the first week the War Griffons triumphed over their Godbreaker opponents.
While the other contingent of Godbreakers fell to Legio Xestobiax.
Both loyalist forces were trying to establish beachheads on the planet against entrenched traitor forces. Both were successful and allowed reinforcements to arrive in the secured landing zones.
Legio Audax went after the True Messengers in an abandoned city, the building spires rising out of the sand and dust that had flooded the streets.
The Ember Wolves tried to stick to cover as the True Messengers attempted to outflank them.
Eventually the Ember Wolves broke cover and, with knight support, charged the True Messengers' left flank. With that broken the remaining Praesagius titan withdrew from a field they knew they could not win.
Meanwhile the Warp Runners were trying to liberate a promethium refinery that had just been claimed by the Tiger Eyes.
The Traitors had set a trap for the loyalists though. The leaking promethium fumes were not concentrated enough to cause serious damage to a titan, but were enough to cause a massive flare. When the loyalists had come close enough the traitors deliberately set opened the vents and ignited them creating a massive fireball that momentarily blinded their opponents.
Despite pushing on the objective, the Warp Runners were forced back and eventually into full retreat, losing a number of titans in the process.
The Tiger Eyes were as determined in their resistance as they usually were furious in their attacks.
With the loyalists and the traitors tied with one win each, we headed into the second week.
The combat mostly involved either retreating from or taking the city of Falkhir.
As Legio Audax pursued the retreating True Messengers they detected the Iron Vigil moving through the Shalazar Canyon to come and defend the city. The faster Ember Wolves moved into position for an ambush of the loyalists.
Amidst the fog shrouded rock walls both sides took heavy loses, combat occurring at near point blank range.
The ambush was sprung soon after fighting started with three Warhounds firing up their engines and emerging from the gloom in the rear of the loyalist forces.
The attack swallowed up the rear elements of the Iron Vigils' forces one titan falling almost right away to the attack and the others being forced to address the enemy appearing in their rear. One of the Warlords abandoned the frontal attack to turn and face the threat in the rear.
It was not enough and that Warlord was brought low by the Malinax knight allies of the Ember Wolves.
Eventually the three remaining loyalist titans retreated. Both sides had suffered heavily in the fighting.
After the pounding they had taken the week before the Godbreakers retreated to Falkhir. One force faced the threat of the Warp Runners who had entered the city but were able to repulse them in a narrowly contested fight.
This was another bloody battle for both sides and loses are going to start to tell going forward as many Warlords have been lost to both loyalists and traitors.
A portion of the Godbreaker force moved through the city to try to intercept the War Griffons as they pushed on toward the city from the West.
This contingent was only fighting a delaying action and with minimal forces held out as long as they could against the superior numbers of their opponent.
The last battle of the weeks saw the Tiger Eyes and the True Messengers duke it out in the wilds. The True Messengers had retreated into one of the most radioactive zones on the planet after their losses to the Ember Wolves in Falkhir.
They hoped that this would keep them safe while they refitted and reinforced their legio.
Their hope was in vain. The Tiger Eyes were following the Warp Runners and came upon loyalists in the radioactive smog.
With the fog and radioactivity blinding their senses titans could only be seen at a short distance. The Tiger Eyes were marginally better equipped to deal with the distortion as their supernatural allies whispered secrets to the princepts about the location of the enemy.
The True Messengers were roughly handled by their opponents in the miasma and fell back with further losses.
The second week ended on a brighter note for the traitors.
They won 3 games and lost only 1.
The total for the first two weeks is now
Loyalists 3
Traitors 5
So far the best moment in the two weeks was when the traitor knights were attacking the Xestobiax Warlord and one of the knights fired his graviton weapon and missed the massive Warlord standing right in front of him. The shot deviated and hit one of his allied Ember Wolves titans. It destroyed that titan and that titan fell down and hit the Audax titan next to it, taking it out two.
He managed to kill two Warhound titans with one shot. Too bad they were his own sides titans. He later killed the Warlord but I still think the pilot is going to have some splaining to do.