Adeptus Titanicus – The Titans are coming!

With the 2018 release of Adeptus Titanicus, Games Workshop relaunched the series of the same name, 30 years after its initial release.

Adeptus Titanicus covered the battles between the Titan Legions of the Warhammer 40,000 universe in a much smaller scale than the initial 25 later 28mm, the so called Epic scale, where an infantry miniature was 6mm tall. But the game was set in M30, during the Horus Heresy and as the Space Marines fought a fratridical war, so did the Titan Legions against their traitorous brethren.

There were a couple of metal and even plastic kits, of the three most well-known Titans, the Warlord, the Reaver and the Warhound around. Including conversion parts.

(Pictures from SoLegends Citadel Catalogue Index.)

Adeptus Titanicus was later (1989) followed to the first edition of Space Marine, expanding the battles between the Imperial Titans into epic sized battles between huge battle forces, including tank companies and such. Two years, 1991, later a second edition of Space Marine was released, including a stand-alone boxed set of Titan Legions, which would once again re-vive the battles between Titans. In 1997 the third edition of Epic, Epic 40,000, was released. And with that, the Lucius Pattern Warlord was released.

And long before Forge World released the first titans, starting with the Lucius Pattern Warhound, there was another company, called Armorcast, producing those kits formerly only available in 6mm scale in actual 28mm. These kits were rather difficult to come by and are rare collector's pieces by now, and didn't just cover imperial war machines but other giants of the battlefield of the Eldar or Tyranids as well.

(Pictures from Rusty Magos Workshop.)

It is interesting to see, how the design of the titans has changed over the three decades. And even with today's most recent reincarnation, there are still a lot of nods to the past in the design. The Reaver is probably the steadiest from the design, but the very early draft of the Warlord Titan (third picture), bears a lot of resemblance to the most current Mars pattern Warlord. All pictures were taken from the Index Imperialis - Apocrypha artbook, that was released in late 2016 and is still available as a ePub by Black Library.

Where does that leave us today, roughly 30 years after the initial release of the first Adeptus Titanicus? The scale has changed from 6mm to 8mm and the available kits are made at the highest level that Games Workshop currently can produce in plastic. But you might say, similar to the introduction on Inq28, I would need a new set of matching scaled terrain for this, and it might be difficult to gather players for a "niche" system. I approach these models with a different view. I've been to the Warhammer World a couple of times, I have seen the huge and impressive models of the Titans in 28mm by Forge World. But the prices of 800 EUR for a Reaver or 1,500 EUR for a Warlord, will be out of the range of most wargamers. So I see this re-release of Adeptus Titanicus as an opportunity to build a smaller model of these epic warmachines, at a much more affordable price. They still might not be cheap, but it is Christmas time and I'll book them under "treat yourself". But a more elaborate argumentation in the upcoming reviews of the Warhound, Reaver and two different load-outs of the Warlord.

All I can say is, I'm quite excited to build them and am already researching the lore of the Titan Legions. So come by again soon and follow me on Facebook or Instagram for additional content.