Adeptus Titanicus – Reaver Battle Titan

The second titan of the Adeptus Titanicus coverage is the Reaver Battle Titan,

The Reaver counts as an medium class battle titan, almost twice as tall as a Warhound but still a lot leaner and smaller as a Warlord. Similar to the Warhound and Warlord, the Reaver has different produced patterns, but more dominantly different Marks of its design. The design of the Reaver is quite consistent, did not change that much during the decades, "just" more modern. A Lucius Pattern was produced by Forge World for Epic 40k in the late 90s, but that is a relatively unknown fact. It is more commonly know for the different Marks of the Mars Pattern. A Reaver is commanded by a Princeps and between 2 to 5 Moderati (Primus, Steersman, Navigator, Sensorius, Oratorius), along with an extended crew of multiple servitors and such. Models of the Reaver were available in different Marks for a long time and in the lore it is mentioned, that it might even pre-date the Warlord Titan.

As medium battle titans Reavers are typically deployed to support conventional forces in a shock or assault role, using the flexibility of the war engine to the maximum. Beside its taller size, the Reaver benefits from an additional weapon mount on top of the carapace, often used for a missile launcher. The here seen design is classified as a Mars Pattern from the Late Great Crusade era.

A Reaver is usually armed with two from the following arsenal on the arm mounts; Gatling Blaster, Laser Blaster, Volcano Cannon, Melta Cannon and Titan Power Fist, and in addition one of the following mounted on the carapace; Apocalypse Missile Launcher, Vortex Missile, Plasma Blastgun, Turbolaser Destructor, Inferno Gun or Vulcan Mega-bolter. The most common configuration for the Reaver is an Apocalypse Missile launcher with a laser blaster and gatling blaster, as covered with this kit. This kit gives you the option to build a Mars Pattern Reaver with an Apocalypse Missile Launcher on the carapace, a Laser Blaster, Gatling Blaster or Titan Power Fist for the arms. For Early 2019 another Reaver kit is scheduled, covering a Melta Cannon and Chainfist, as well as a Turbolaser Destructor for the carapace.

The rules for using the Reaver Titan with Adeptus Titanicus can be found in the Adeptus Titanicus boxed set.

This is a 122 piece plastic kit that Games Workshop sets at the price of 45 EUR. The parts for the Reaver are spread among 3 medium sized grey plastic sprues. The sprues are quite filled with little to no empy spaces. Casting is up to a high quality, as you would expect from a recent model, so a lot of sharp details and a only a few mould lines. Similar to the Warhounds, this is not an easy-to-build or push fit kit. A regular one multi piece kit, where you will need plastic glue to assemble the miniatures. As mentioned above, this kit of the Reaver Battle Titan "only" covers three different weapon systems, along with the missiline launcher on top. The armour plates and carapace are included in multiple design variants, to cover loyal and traitor legions. The decals cover insignia for five different houses of the loyal titan legions, Gryphonicus, Astorium and Atarus, and the traitors of house Fureans and Mortis. The same houses as for the Warhound Scout Titan, but the decals are different in design and size, to fit the armour plates of the Reaver. The kit includes a multipage construction leaflet and a 105mm oval base.

The sprues are numbered A, B and C and are the same size as the Warhound sprues. They pick up the mostly mirrored design, which makes it easy to find the parts (and counter parts) during assembly. Compared to the Warhound the Reaver design is more loyal and neutral, as the only traitor insignia are the Eye of Horus on the shoulder plates. The remaining alternate / "non"-loyal pieces are kept empty, but without the spikes around the edges, that the Warhounds cover. In case you want to build a traitor Reaver, I strongly recommend using the Chaos Reaver by Forge World as a reference, as the corrupted look is very stunning and sinister.

As most tanks begin with their tracks, walkers like these titans begin with their legs and groin. The taller Reaver build is much more flexible in the positioning than the pre-posed legs of the Warhound. The legs look like hydraulic cylinders, with rods around them to give them the ability to move more flexible. Thus enabling more dynamic poses for the kit.

It makes sense to just prepare the individual parts and only glue them in place once you are sure or have a vision about the final position. You could give the Reaver a walking pose or have one of the legs lifted / following. Once again, the feet are single cast parts, so in case you want them to be more dynamic or adapting towards the ground, you could cut them with a cutter and reposition / align them.

A bit more demanding are the linear drives around the ankles. These come in three different sized and are covered with armour plates. As the lower legs have embedded rails, you are quite free to position them, for example for the mentioned above walking poses.

Depending on how you want to paint them, you can add the armour plates now or leave them off until the last steps, so you can prime and more easily paint the metal parts of the Reaver. The knee pad is either blank or covers the Opus Titanicus insignia.

As you clearly notice, the Reaver is quite a tall build. The legs are already as tall as the Warhound up to his shoulders.

Next up the upper body of the Reaver. The hunched corpus is similar to the Warhounds, hunched, but a good portion larger.

The weapon mounts of the arms are T-shaped on the side and on top of the power plant you can see the four void shield generators. The back part of the carapace armour is added later, as the pipelines of the weaponry are guided towards this area.

But the upper back and chest armour is to be added next. There is a highly detailed with scrolls and banners, along with a sword, the other one blank, for your own design by brush or using the decals. The upper body is just kept in place with a bit of blu-tac and not glued. I suggest that you glue it only after you have painted it, as it makes handling much easier during that part.

Next the very iconic flattened head of the Reaver. The ball joint on the back gives you a bit of variety with the position or the direction the head looks to, otherwise no options here. The 2019 kit will cover a different head variant, sporting small tusk.

Now we're moving towards the armament of the Reaver, beginning with the Apocalypse Missile Launcher that is put upon the carapace. The base can be turned and angled. Depending on the angle, you do not need to glue the base to the carapace mount, as it will easily hold in place and be move-/turnable.

The Titan Power fist of the reaver can be build in to variants, either open or clenched and depending on your needs / taste, either as a left or right hand. I chose to build the fist open and as a left hand.

Now for the two guns, there is the Gatling Blaster with a six barrel gun. This weapon can be build either as a left or right arms, as you wish.

The compact Laser Blaster, a weapon system found on the Warlord as well, is the more powerful, three barreled version of the Turbo Laser used on the Warhound.

The back pages of the instruction cover alternate poses and angles for the weapons, some of them need a bit of modification towards the regular parts or not using the weapon pipelines, as they limited the angles of the mounted weaponry. But it would be easy to use a bit of wire or guitar string to replace those.

I went with the close combat weapon on the left and the guns on the right. You could easily put a magnet into the ball and joint connection to have a modular weapon load out.

As you can see above, the pipelines connect to the back part of the power plant, therefore the last part of armour on the body itself is added in the step after that. This might create a small gap, that you can take care of with a bit of liquid green stuff or "welding" with plastic glue.

For the last parts, the shoulder pads. These are available in three different designs, with the Eye of Horus, with the Opus Titanicus and a blank pair.

A brief size comparison next to the Warhound Scout Titan, along with the regular und Primaris Space Marine, as well as an old Epic Ork Boy.

As the Warhound, the Reaver is available as a 28mm resin kit for the Warhammer 40.000 range by Forge World too, starting at 355 EUR. The Chaos variant of the Reaver is available as well, and I really like the sinister look of the kit. A 28mm Reaver is four times taller than the Adeptus Titanicus kit. We continue with the newly invented Titan-benchmark euro per inch ratio, the Adeptus Titanicus Reaver beats the Forge World Reaver with 11,25 EUR/Inch (45 EUR for 4 Inch) to 52 EUR/Inch (834 EUR for 16 Inch). Interesting to see, that the price of the Reaver and Warhound is so close to each other with 11,25 and 11 EUR/Inch in the Adeptus Titanicus scale, and similar in the Forge World pricing of 52 to 44 EUR/Inch.

And to close on this review, the assembled Reaver Battle Titan, with the blank armour plates and carapace, as well as the Gatling Blaster.

With the traitor legion shoulder pads.

And a loyal Reaver Titan that wields the Laser Blaster instead of the Gatling Blaster.

Conclusion
Compared to the Warhound, you pay 10 EUR less for the same amount of plastic (sprues). You get a Titan that is a quite a bit taller and has a very distinctive design. This scaled down version of the Forge World Titan is well made and covers the most dominantly used weapon load-out. Yes, it misses a few of the options and I am looking forward to the additional sprue / alternative kit, but it is still quite a good box. The only thing that could be improved, would be a clearer traitor look of the non-loyal pieces. The spikes and arrow heads of the Warhound traitor armour plates were a subtle design choice that worked quite well and I would have liked to seen that here. It would have been cool, if the power fist would have covered the optional claw fingers, similar to the one in the Warlord kit.

With a price of 45 EUR it is somewhere in the middle between the newer Redemptor Dreadnought (55 EUR) and Ork Deffdread (39 EUR), so the price is fitting within the Games Workshop price model.

As mentioned with the review of the Warhound Scout Titans, there is not that much of information on the plans that Games Workshop has for Adeptus Titanicus next year, beside the weapon sprues for Reaver and Warlord. But it would be an interesting option to have Forge World - or Games Workshop directly - cover for example Chaos or alternative patterns or more weapon variants for these kits. As mentioned further above, I am a huge fan of the look of the Chaos Reaver and that could easily be created with just replacing the armour plates and the head. Especially for the Traitor legions you could probably use parts from kits like the Hellbrute or Forgefiend, or at least use them as a starting point for weaponry and such for your post-heresy Chaos Titans.

And as the 6mm Titans make great robots in 28mm, you could use parts from the (Armiger) Knights or Adeptus Mechanicus range to either convert them in one of the vast variety of variants of the older lore / background from Adeptus Titanicus or use them as some interesting sub-knight class for your Inq28 / Rogue Trader / Kill Team in Warhammer 40.000.

I have already covered the Warhound Scout Titans and will cover the Warlord Titan next.

Warhammer 40.000 and Adeptus Titanicus are brands by Games Workshop.

The reviewed product item was provided by the manufacturer.