Epic Knights and Epic box art

 During our game of Adeptus Titanicus the other week, I also dug out my Epic Knights and admired once again the fantastic box art and model photography of these big box games.

AT88 box art.

Number 1 son had fun playing with all the various weapons I have.  I won an eBay lot of 16 Warlords many years ago and have lots to use!  I have a couple of metal Reaver Titans there too.

 I started using some of the bits to build some alternate weapon heads for my Titans, inspired by the Colin Dixon-designed metal ones that GW released around 1990-91.  I constructed a carapace landing pad too, though it's only a square of plasticard with a magnet mounting underneath, more work needed!

 The Imperial Knights (presumably the "one man titans" mentioned in an earlier White Dwarf as something that would have been in the never-released Codex Titanicus II) were a bit of an oddity.  I really loved the models, and got a set of each, but never really got to use them.

My Knights Paladin are accompanied by a couple of plastic Knights from the Titan Legions box.  I never had Titan Legions, but did pick up a second hand set of the Knights to bolster my forces.  The plastic Knights were obviously based on the metal knight on the left, with chainsword and battlecannon.  I was slightly disappointed in the rules, I had hoped for more weapon variety, the same as larger Titans, but they all counted as a battle cannon and generic close combat weapon.  That Paladin with a power fist and multi-melta would have been great!

Knights Paladin

I have a couple of Warhound Titans, one of which is seen here leading my Knight Lancers.  I picked up an extra Lancer from somewhere, handy because the rules in WD gave minimum unit sizes of 4 and the Knights were sold in packs of 3.  These all had a las-cannon and 2 multi-lasers.  2 of the 3 designs clearly had las-cannon, but the lead Lancer weapon looks more like a battle cannon.

Warhound & Knights Lancer

Wardens were slow-moving, heavily armoured units, with a battle cannon and 2 multi-lasers.  That fits the centre & right models, but the left one obviously has a multi-launcher instead (would presumably count as a grade 2 weapon for AT88/SM).

Wardens

 The model photography for Adeptus Titanicus and Space Marine was comparable to that which appeared in White Dwarf at the time.  These were obviously much more involved photo shoots than those which appeared from 1990-91 onwards.  Time was taken to disguise the bases with flock, "smoke" was blown across the battlefield to give a greater sense of atmosphere.  Most of the scenery was scratch built or modified model railway or 1/300 WWII resin scenery.  The AT88 pictures exclusively feature the prototype metal Warlord Titans.  Within a year or two, photography focussed more on the individual paint jobs, with models simply grouped on a gaming board with some scenery arrayed around them.  They would still "tell a story", but not with the same atmosphere that you got from these older images.  A lot of the artistry was gone.  Make sure you click on the images to view them at a larger size so you can appreciate the amount of detail in them!

AT88 model photography.

The same city walls can be seen in the box art for Space Marine, but here the Titans are plastic Warlords, along with the metal Reavers, Warhounds and Eldar Phantom.  The Space Marines, Land Raiders and Rhinos are the metal ones released for Adeptus Titanicus, not the plastic ones included in the Space Marine box.

Space Marine model photography.

The Warp Runners "Sunburst Group" task force picture from White Dwarf made a big impact on me when I originally saw it.

"Sunburst Group" Warp Runners Titans.

It's interesting to see where much of the scenery in the original AT88 photo-shoots originated.  The towering scenery, tiny Space Marines and smoke all come together to make a great battle scene.

Original battle scene.

"Legions of Power" toys have been used for the block structure atop the tower on the left of the photo, augmented with some lattice steelwork to help give a sense of scale.  A hemispherical Legions of Power connector sticks up from one corner, with a Blue Zoid gun and dish antenna on top.  Incidentally, a Legions of Power cockpit made its way into a 40K scale Scout Titan that appeared in a later issue of White Dwarf, along with parts from the Red Scavenger Zoid.  Guns from the Dark Future plastic kits appear in various guises.  Some were also used in White Dwarf to convert Rhino APCs into what looked like an early form of proto-Predator tank.  There looks to be an electric motor used as the base of a tower.  The warehouses in the foreground are from a resin WWII/modern scenery range sold by a long-closed company, I think it was TableTopGames ("TTG").  I ordered a lot of their scenery (from a photocopied paper mail-order catalogue - no internet then!) to use for BattleTech and recognised the warehouse when my order arrived.  There are obviously bits from various railway model kits in there, probably N gauge.  Those fuel silos on the left - maybe started life as ping-pong balls?  I'm not sure, but the storage tank, back right, might have been 25mm scenery from Ainsty Castings.

Annotated battle scene.

I hope you've found these ramblings of interest!

Adeptus Titanicus 1988

 I tried a game of the original Adeptus Titanicus from 1988 with Number 1 son.  AT88 included 6 Warlord Titans with interchangeable weapons, 8 expanded polystyrene buildings, 2 range rulers, dice and rules.  20 or so years ago, I magnetised my Titan weapons and started painting my loyalists in Warp Runners colours and traitors in Death's Heads' colours.  One day I might summon the courage to try painting the flames on the Warp Runner legs and carapace!

We played a simple game, 2 Nemesis class Warlords on each side.

Death's Heads.

Warp Runners.

We faced each other across a city using my card/plastic Space Marine buildings.  I only used the tall ones, so that they would block LOS completely.

The battlefield.

On the right, both sides gave Advance orders.  As the titans came into range, void shields flared as plasma fire, autocannon and multi-launcher missiles flickered back and forth.

Exchanging fire as they close.

On the left, the Titans moved more slowly and exchanged fairly ineffectual long-range fire.

Long range duel.

Turn 2 resulted in Charge orders for the Death's Head on the left flank, closing the gap quickly.  Both sides managed to repair a couple of void shields.

Closing the distance.

On the right, void shields winked out under sustained las-cannon, autocannon and heavy plasma gun fire, followed by a powerful plasma cannon blast.  The traitor staggered back as both close combat arms crashed to the ground.  The close combat titan was left without power fist or chainfist!

Goodbye close combat weapons!

Continuous fire pummelled the Titan, striking deep into the hull.  Plasma, lasers and explosive shells wreaked havoc, damaging first the plasma reactor, then the MIU (Mind Impulse Units - how the crew control the Titan via neural links), legs and a carapace weapon mount.

Leg, reactor, MIU damage...

 On the left flank, Charge orders bring the loyalist into contact with the traitor.  Weapons fire flickers back and forth as the Titans close, the Warp Runner losing a multi-launcher while the Death's Head's Defence Laser is blown off.  The Warp Runner's chainfist scores a single close combat hit before being disabled by return fire in the next turn.  Both Titans have lost their void shield generators, though at this close range the shields would have merged anyway, offering no protection from each other.

Damage mounts on both sides...

Finally, the inevitable happens. As the Death's Head on the right stands immobile, desperately trying to repair the reactor, the Warp Runner pounds it with every weapon.  Peppered by autocannon shells, las-cannon and maximal plasma gun/cannon fire, after 5 or 6 "no further damage" rolls, luck finally runs out for the traitor as the reactor loses containment and the Titan is engulfed in a plasma reactor breach.

First traitor Titan suffers reactor meltdown.

On the left flank, the Warp Runner is lucky enough to fire first.  Multi-launcher missiles spray armour fragments across the battlefield and a Defence Laser shot pierces the traitor plasma reactor.  Standing close to the traitor, the Warp Runner's MIUs are fried by the plasma explosion and the crew are left stunned.

Fortunately for them, the Imperial forces have triumphed.  All that remains of the traitor forces are 2 craters filled with radioactive lava.  The Emperor Protects!

MANTA Force vs Spiders

 Another game with the kids, this time involving MANTA (Multiple Air, Naval & Terrain Assault) Force!  The villainous Major Vex and his Viper Force have recruited some giant Space Spiders to help them in their fight against MANTA Force.  Who will be victorious?

Flying vehicles were perched on inverted jam jars.  I must invest in a pack or two of plastic Champagne flutes next time I'm in Poundland or somewhere similar, to use for this very purpose.  Now that the kids are playing more game, it'll be useful to have some sort of cheap flight stands, and plastic "glasses" are great because they can be placed over the top of some terrain features such as trees.

Major Vex and a Viper trooper.

 

Space Spiders ready to go..

MANTA Sharks stand ready.

 

MANTA Wolves and Hawks await orders.

Rocket Rammer wonders why it parked behind the rocks.

Sharks approach the woods.  Spiders ahoy!

Battle Copter hovers over the battlefield.  Target sighted!

Spiders taking missile fire from Battle Copter.

Time to use my counters to track damage.

Sharks and Stingray confront the spiders.

Battle Copter and MANTA Hawks strike hard.

Spiders swarm the MANTA Sharks.  SAM pulls them off.

Gundog and Sky Skeeter approach spiders in the bushes.

That's an impressive roll to hit!

Strike Bike is attacked!  Oops, Sky Skeeter delivers friendly fire.

Another impressive hit roll, Stingray strafes the spiders!

Blue Lightning is shot down by Viper vehicles!

Sadly, tea-time curtailed the battle.  It was an entertaining game, with several incidents of friendly fire (natural 1s on to-hit rolls) from MANTA force damaging their own vehicles while trying to clean off spiders which were close-assaulting. 

The rules were the usual style with range rulers indicating slow/fast move distances, weapon ranges (-1 to hit for every additional ruler of distance).  Weapons were mainly D6 or multiples thereof, with the occasional larger weapon (eg D10 missiles).

Zombie Survival Infection

 Our friend Graham loves zombie games (and comics, books, films...), so he brought his latest purchase round for us to try out.

Gentle, understated box art.

All the artwork is by the game designer.

Game description.

 

You start the game with a camp/hideout, initially an apartment building but as the game progresses you might get a prison, hospital, shopping mall.. or even be left without one!  You also start with a few survivors.

 

Each turn you roll the black die, and possibly the yellow or green die as well, depending upon the stage of the game. At the start, the black die tells you how many survivors join your group.  You might also get to roll the yellow die for some extra survivors.  The green die comes into play later in the game...

 

In the centre of the table is the pool of survivors, the draw deck and the discard pile.

 The basic rules are fairly simple.  Roll the black die, plus the yellow die if someone had given it to you at the end of their turn.  Your camp might grant you positive or negative modifiers to the number of survivors who join your group.  Having no camp/hideout has big penalties.  You then pass the yellow survival die to any other player.  Top up your deck of cards to 6.  Take an action, in our game the only actions we ever made were to play a card.  The game was never slow enough that anyone felt they could afford to spend their action discarding cards or passing instead of playing a card!

 Here's an example of my hand.  In the background, you can see the draw deck, discard pile, survivor pool (right), and the zombie pool (left).  As survivors get killed, the counters get flipped over and added to the zombie pool until all the survivors have gone.  You can see I have a Character that I could play - he'll count as an additional survivor, on top of the little counters I have.  Characters have extra rules printed on the card, for instance this one can be sacrificed to avoid something nasty happening to your camp.  Next are 3 Action cards that can be played on your camp or more usually, on an opponent's camp - there are lots of zombie attack cards that kill their survivors!  Finally, there is a Reaction card that can be played against an Action card to add to or cancel out some of the effects.  Reaction cards can build up in chains: "I play Zombie Frenzy to kill 3 of your survivors!" "I use my Shotgun reaction to cancel 2 deaths, and because I have the Police character in play at my base I get to double that to cancel 4 deaths!"  "I play this card to cancel your reaction so you still lose 3 survivors!" "Then I'll use my First Aid Kit to cancel 2 deaths!".

I lost my base quite early in the game when Graham played the Fire card on me.

 I had my revenge, playing the Zombie Frenzy, plus added a Reaction card to eliminate 5 of his survivors!

Laura was unlucky enough to be given the Carrier character by Graham.  Hidden in the draw deck is the Hidden Bite card, which goes to the player who has drawn it - unless the Carrier is in play!  Characters have various uses.  The Doctor interacts with a Reaction card to allow you to discard 2 casualties, but will sacrifice herself to save the Carrier!  The Police officer gives a bonus when you have a gun.  Some locations have extra bonuses too, for instance the Hospital allows you to search through the discard pile to find a First Aid Kit.

 The green Infection die now comes into play, and gets passed to each player in turn until everyone is infected.  The yellow survival die is removed from the game, and the yellow rules card is turned over to the green side, with a slightly different set of rules.  Now, when you roll the black die (plus the green die if it was given to you by someone), you lose that number of survivors.  In infection mode, the aim is to roll as low as possible every turn!

I was the first to run out of survivors (so got to become a zombie player, trying to kill extra survivors each turn), then Laura, leaving Graham the winner.  It was a fun game, but probably works better with more players, so that there is more to-and-fro between different camps.  There are also extra cards that are used in 4+ player games (1 of which had been accidentally left in the game and which I drew early in the game, taking up part of my hand with something that had no real use for the 3 player game).