Tallarn Titanicus campaign

[Pictors Studio]

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. 

[Vanvlak]

Good fun, nice to see some Epic action. There's some good colour schemes there too, I always like the old Warp Runners' scheme from the early days of Epic. 

[Pictors Studio]

It was good fun.  I've had more fun playing Titanicus than just about any other game I've ever played.

Last night we played our third game.  One of the players was out so we had 3 games, 2 one-on-ones and a two-on-one. 

The Warp Runners and a portion of the Godbreakers clashed in a breached defensive tunnel system built deep within massive natural caves.



The Godbreakers had smashed their way through the initial defenses and now the Warp Runners had entered the caves to try to stop them from getting any further.



In the pictures the flat topped sections indicate cave walls, so those go the whole way up.  The fallen in pieces are just what they appear to be and will obscure without totally blocking line of sight.



The players reported that it was a challenging game as it made them do things they wouldn't normally do.  As the range was pretty limited a lot of the carapace weapons weren't able to fire much of the time because smaller titans were inside their size/range limitation.


In the end the Godbreakers lost, but neither side suffered too heavily and only one titan was destroyed.






The Tiger Eyes were defending a newly constructed forgefane in the heart of the captured city of Falkhir.  The War Griffons came in from an unbroken series of victories to try to destroy the fane and deprive the traitors of a manufactorum on the surface of the planet.





Ultimately the Tiger Eyes were successful.  Things started out great for the War Griffons who were up four engine kills to two. 



The loyalists were pushing in on the enemy and getting close to shooting up the Mechanicum structure.



But the wheels all came off the wagon at once.  A battered Warlord was hit causing a catastrophic meltdown.  The subsequent explosion then killed the Warlord next to it and damaged the Reaver near it, the Warlord then fell into the Reaver killing it too.

After that the War Griffons had to flee as their three remaining titans were no match for the damaged but unbent might of Legio Furreans.

The final battle saw the remnants of Legio Praesagius fleeing before the combined might of the Godbreakers and the Ember Wolves. 



The battle started with a suicidal charge by one of the True Messengers.  The Reaver titan streamed towards the enemy, blazing away while moving at full stride.



Getting right into the heart of the enemy he managed to tie up much of their formation for a turn.



Unfortunately, it was not enough and one-by-one the rest of the True Messenger titans were hunted down and destroyed.



With Legio Audax hot on their heels they really did not have a lot of options for escape.



The traitors come away with two victories to one.  This leaves the campaign at:

Traitors: 7
Loyalists: 4

[Pictors Studio]

The Tallarn campaign came to an end on Tuesday night.

The battered loyalists were trying to survive the traitor onslaught.

Legio Audax had won every battle they had fought so far in the campaign.  They had only done so at great cost, though.  With few titans remaining they attempted a desperate attack on the same population center that the Godbreakers had failed to destroy last week.



They wanted to use speed rather than brute force to defeat their enemy.  They saw their chance to speed past the Warp Runner defenders and get into the complex and then cause havoc before the Warp Runners could successfully pursue them.



Legio Astorum had different plans. 

While the Ember Wolves concentrated on the enemy left, a unit of Cerastus knights started a run to intercept them.



The collision when it came was catastrophic for the traitors, with two of their Warhounds shattered compared to the loss of not a single knight.



The traitors had not been completely idle, though and they managed to destroy one of the Warp Runner Reaver titans which exploded.  It's engine rocketed out of the torso slamming into the leg of the loyalist Reaver behind it and shearing it off at the knee.  That titan collapsed. 



It was something, but not enough to allow the Ember Wolves passage to their target.  With the fire from the Warlord and the advancing knights, another two Warhounds were reduced to wreckage and the last one managed to flee. 



Meanwhile, the titans of Legio Praesagius were surrounded by the Godbreakers.  The Godbreakers needed to annihilate their foe before they could escape the trap.



The True Messengers had taken severe losses and were down to less than a handful of titans.



They went at the Kratos forces south of them hard, while using knights to tie up the forces in the north. 

It was almost enough.  After destroying the knights, the Godbreaker Warlord in the Northeast corner of the battlefield fired a shot at the loyalist Reaver.  It missed and hit the already heavily damaged Warlord next to it.



The Warlord exploded, killing not only the Reaver next to it but the enemy Warlord in front of it.

It was a costly victory for the Godbreakers who had lost two more titans, but the forces of the True Messengers were subtracted from the calculation when the loyalists would add up their assets going forward.


It was to be the only bright spot for the traitors this week.

An ambush by another force of Godbreakers was repulsed by the War Griffons.



In a dry riverbed with toxic mist still clinging to the surfaces was the site of the battle.

With the opposing forces barely able to see each other through the obstruction they maneuvered for position.  The loyalists dispatched a Reaver titan to try to get out of the depression and into the open to send a message to the Iron Vigil to warn them of the Godbreakers that were heading their way.



The messenger managed to escape the trap and warned the other loyalist forces of the Godbreakers movements.  The War Griffons were able to stop them anyway and turned Legio Kratos back.



Which was just as well, because Legio Xestobiax had their hands full. 

The second prong of the two part attack on the repair facility on the shore of the Pale Sea, was revealed when Legio Furreans emerged from the muck of the filth saturated water and attacked the Titan repair facilities directly.



A massive Warmaster emerged, the yellow of its armour only slowly revealed as the slime slid off of it, each step shaking more of the caked-on filth to the ground.



The loyalist forces moved in front of the repair machinery to protect it from the traitors.  The Warmaster quickly smashed aside the first of the loyalist titan as its weaponry blasted a Reaver apart.



The Tiger Eyes reaver stormed up the beach and engaged both a Warlord and a Reavery titan in a viscous close combat that would see some massive damage inflicted on the Warlord, but the traitor titan felled.



It distracted the loyalists while a Warlord emerged from the muck. But ultimately the Iron Vigil was able to hold on and while one repair facility was destroyed, it was not enough.  Without the second prong of the attack, which had been derailed by the War Griffons, the traitor attack failed.

The campaign ends with a very narrow victory for the Traitors.  In terms of games it was 8-4.

The True Messengers were wiped out, but the Ember Wolves only had one remaining titan so they were unlikely to be able to contribute much to the war going forward.

I think all the other Titan Legions were pretty much at a decent fighting strength.