Adeptus Titanicus landed on the scene a couple of years ago with an excellent ruleset capturing the feeling of commanding mighty war engines while wrapping it up with some jaw dropping plastic models to represent the titans themselves. Over the last 3 years we have seen 2 starter sets and 5 supplemental books released for the game enriching the options available for players and expanding the system further from its initial release. Today, alongside the incredible new Warmaster Titan, we have two books up for pre order – Loyalist Legios and the Adeptus Titanicus Rulebook. Today we will be taking a look at both of these, what they add to the game and if they are worth picking up.

If you would like to support the website, then why not order these through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself 20% too?

Our full written review of Loyalist Legios and the Rulebook follows below, but we have also filmed a full look through these books over on our YouTube channel which you can watch here:

Bless the Machine Spirit and power up your reactors, as we are about to did into the Loyalist Legios supplement!

Adeptus Titanicus Loyalist Legios Review

While Adeptus Titanicus has had some brilliant support in the years since it has been released, one of the few complaints regarding playing the game is that the rules content was scattered between 6 different books, sometimes meaning that you needed to carry around a small library with you to have access to everything. With Loyalist Legios we see the first of two volumes that act as a “codex” of sorts for Adeptus Titanicus. While light on brand new content, Loyalist Legios gathers together (almost) everything you need to field any of the Loyal Titan Legions and their associated Knight Households along with stratagems, upgrades and useful stats such weapon profiles.

Battlegroups

Kicking off we get a section with updated rules for assembling a battlegroup and how the new Warmaster Heavy Titan fits into this. Basically it is an Auxiliary Titan in the same way as the Nemesis, this means that for each Maniple you take in your battleforce you can also take a single attached auxiliary titan. For each Maniple you can also take two Knight banner in your battleforce, one of which can be an Acastus banner – This all makes it possible to control the impact of these powerful Titans by ensuring that a maniple has to be first taken to unlock them.

Likewise Knight Households can be taken using the rules for them found in Doom of Molech – Sadly the rules for constructing lances are not duplicated here, which I feel is a shame especially as this book is aiming to be a one stop shop to consolidate all the rules. Again limitations are placed here for supporting Acastus Knights preventing their impact on the game.

You are free to take multiple Legions and Households in your Battleforce, however for each different one that is in your force you give your opponent 2 Stratagem Points meaning you will want to weigh up the tactical advantage of drawing your force from multiple Legios.

We also see Battlegroup Allegiance abilities added, these have restrictions on what engines you can take (No Blackshields or Corrupted Titans for example – both a tease at future releases perhaps) but offer additional benefits – A Loyalist Titan Battleforce for example gets the ability to immediately swap a single successful order with a different one once per game, while Questoris Knight forces can once per game do a Valorous Charge and add 2″to their speed. Finally for Questoris Mechanicus forces they can once per game be given Coordinated Strike, Split Fire or First Fire orders without needing a command check. For both the knight factions we also get some new charts of knightly qualities that can be rolled on instead of the ones from Doom of Molech or the household specific ones later in the book.

Warmaster Heavy Battle Titan

The Warmaster gets a nice double page spread explaining it’s background and also an in-universe reason as to why we have not heard of it before. Apparently the Mechanicum of Mars kept the existence of this engine secret to even The Emperor himself, perhaps feeling they only need to share what is necessary with Terra. I guess having a top secret super power class of Titan named after Horus Lupercal is bad PR during a civil war! We also get a really nice technical drawing of the Warmaster which I would love to see as a poster, perhaps in the 2021 Black Library Advent Calendar!

Titan Maniples

In the book we get reprints of 18 maniples we have seen across supplements so far (one traitor specific maniple has been excluded here) and these are much the same as those seen previously, with only the Lupercal maniple substantially changed (they no longer get a bonus for coordinated strikes!). Gathering these all together in one book is a brilliant quality of life change

Axiom Battleline Maniple

The classic maniple needing 1 Warlord, 1 Reaver and 1 Warhound with an additional optional Reaver and Warhound – makes it possible to keep granting orders when one is failed.

Myrmidon Battleline Maniple

2 Warlords and a Reaver with an optional Warlord and Reaver. First Fire and Split fire always work on a 2+

Venator Light Maniple

A Reaver and a pair of Warhounds with an optional 2 additional warhounds, let’s the Reaver fire out of sequence if the hounds drop the shields of a target, pretty nice as can allow the Reaver to fire multiple times in a turn.

Corsair Battleline Maniple

Reaver heavy maniple with 3 compulsory and 2 optional, lets the engines move at their full movement outside their front arc,

Janissary Battleline Maniple

Reaver and 2 Warhounds with an additional optional Reaver and Warhound, allows you to activate Knight Banners if you activate within 6″ of them.

Regia Battleline Maniple

A really intersecting maniple made up of a “King” and “Queen” in the form of 2 Warlords plus a Warhound and optional 2 additional Warhounds. the King and Queen can share orders within 12″ and the Warhounds can merge their shields with them to offer additional support.

Lupercal Light Maniple

This is the only one with any real changes, still requires 3 Warhounds with an optional 2 more and gives them the ability to form squadrons at will, not as good without the bonus to coordinated strikes this used to get.

Fortis Battleline Maniple

A Warlord and 2 Reavers with the option for an extra Warlord and Reaver, Allows the engines to ignore armour modifiers when in base contact and merge shields.

Ferrox Light Maniple

Another nice maniple, needs a Reaver and 2 Warhounds with an optional Warhound and Reaver, adds 1 to armour rolls when within a range equal to their scale and lets them use either WS or BS when within 2″

Arcus Battleline Maniple

A Warbringer and 2 Warhounds with an additional 2 optional Warhounds, allows the Warbringer to fire indirectly at a target it cannot see.

Ruptura Battleline Maniple

2 Warbringers and a Reaver with an optional 2 Reavers, allows Reavers to use power to Locomotors without pushing the reactor and lets each Reaver move if a Warbringer causes Catastrophic damage

Mandatum Battleline Maniple

A Warlord and a pair of Warhounds with an optional 2 warhounds granting the hounds bonuses to command rolls and hits.

Perpetua Battleline Maniple

A Warhound and 2 Reavers with the option for 2 more Reavers, makes Emergency Repair orders always succeed on a 2+ and lets them roll additional repair dice.

Extergimus Battleline Maniple

When you absolutely, positively need to kill everyone in the room, accept no substitutes. 3 Warlords with the option of an additional Warlord and Warbringer, allows you to increase the strength of your weapons by 2 at the cost of pushing your reactor!

Firmus Light Maniple

A Reaver and 2 Warhounds with the option of two more Reavers, allows you to force your opponent to shoot a closer titan than the one they targeted.

Dominus Battleline Maniple

Another nice defensive maniple, requires a Warlord, 2 Reavers and a unit of Knights with an optional 2 Warhounds and another Knight banner and gives the maniple a nice -1 hit aura if the knights are near to the titans, and also allows you to transfer hits from titans to your knights.

Ignus Light Maniple

3 Warhounds and a banner of Acherons with an optional 2 Warhounds and another 2 Archeron banners, lets you add 1 to the dice value of Firestorm weapons and allows Knights to take First Fire or Full Stride orders without a roll if a friendly Titan already has that order.

Precept Battleline Maniple

Finally we have the Battleline the new Battleforce box is based on, a Warlord, a Warbringer and a Warhound with an optional Reaver and Warhound, allows you to pick a single order and allow it to be successful on a 2+ for each engine.

Titan Legions and Knight Households

The next 144 pages are dedicated to every Titan Legion and Knight Household available to Loyalist armies The majority of rules are the same as those in previous books, so won’t be going into each of these here, however I will highlight the new ones and any that have changed from their previous incarnations. One thing that has been changed for each of these however is the lore, we now get a meaty couple of pages for each Legio and Household detailing their history, their famous battles and even a breakdown of what their current material strength is. This is a great addition that really gives you some flavour to the factions and how they are best represented on the battlefield – otherwise these are generally the same rules seen in other books with a couple of tweaks:

Legio Gyphonicus can now take the Gravatus Plating on any Reaver, not just those that have been swapped out using the Legion Trait.

Legio Defensor’s A Day of Retribution has been slightly reworded to make the rules intent a little clearer.

Legio Solaria can now take 5 warhounds in a squadron up from 4 and again get some reworking on the Motivators to make them a little clearer.

Legio Fortidus now clarifies that you can swap for a titan of scale 10 or less to eliminate any Warmaster swapping schenanigans.

Legio Metalica are a new Titan Legion added in the book. Their Legio trait allows them to activate another friendly Titan once per round after the first one makes an action, at the cost of an increase in reactor level on the second engine. Titans that are part of a Squadron cannot trigger this not be activated by this trait.

They have a specific Stratagem Harmony and Order which costs 1 Strategem point and allows you to ignore an awakened Machine Spirit

They also have a couple of upgrades they can take – Bastion Armour is a 15 point upgrade that works a little like Armoured Ceramite in 30k, making Fusion weapons roll D6 rather than D10 and makes rending only add 1 rather than D3 for rolls of 6.

Their second upgrade are Auditory Barrage for 10 points which can cause Knight Banners within 8″ to become shaken.

We also get new traits for House Coldshroud, Terryn, Procon Vi and Krast.

What is really nice about this section is that the relevant Knight Household is listed after each Titan Legion that is best associated with them to minimise having to flick back and forth through the book in order to find the details of them.

While the majority of this section is simply lifted from other books in the series, by compiling them all together in a single book it really does make things easier from a gameplay point of view in being able to find the rules for your chosen legion.

Appedix

We get a full appendix that collects together useful information for our games of Adeptus Titanicus. This includes the full rules for the Ordo Sinister and the Nemesis Psi Titan with it’s unique psychic powers, manifestations and upgrade costs meaning this info is always at hand and not buried in the original supplement it was printed in. We also get weapon charts detailing the stats of every titan weapon in the game. While we have weapon cards for every weapon, this does allow you to compare these at a glance and inform you a little in your maniple building!

Finally we get a list of every Titan upgrade available to our engines along with an updated list of every Stratagem that can be taken – some of these have also been tweaked slightly to make them as up to date as possible and reflect any rules changes or feedback since first introduced, while I would very much like to see these re-released as physical cards I do find it much easier having these all collected in one place rather than scattered across multiple books.

Summary

While Loyalist Legios is light on brand new game content, it does an excellent job of collecting together nearly every rules content you could possibly need in a game. Between this and the main rulebook you have everything you need to assemble your maniple and take battle against the forces of the Warmaster. Hopefully we don’t have too long to wait until we get the Traitor version of this book too, fingers crossed with some Corrupted Titan rules and models to accompany it too!

Even if you have the previous Adeptus Titanicus supplements I would highly recommend picking this up for any Loyalist players if only for the quality of life benefits of having all this great content in a single tome!

Adeptus Titanicus Rulebook Review

Also up for pre order today is the hard cover Adeptus Titanicus Rulebook, and in contrast to the other great releases for Adeptus Titanicus unfortunately I am a little disappointed by this one. This is the same book that was in the original Adeptus Titanicus Rules Box, and I don’t even mean a reprint, this is the exact same book with a sticker replacing the product code with a new one! I suspect since the (brilliant) new Adeptus Titanicus starter box came out, there may have been a collection of the old boxed rule sets sitting around in a warehouse, and it appears these books have just been unpacked from those boxes, had a new sticker put on the back and rereleased as a stand alone book.

While this is a nice way of dipping your toes into the rules of the game if you don’t want to have to commit to the £90 boxed game, I do think the old boxed starter set was a better way of getting into the game as you also got all the dice, terminals, templates and cards you would need. Someone just picking up this book would need all that content anyway, and I don’t believe it was that much more expensive than this book will be.

As this is the exact same hard back book, this means that any of the errata changes made in the softback version are not present here – and while this isn’t the end of the world I do think this is a real shame, especially when the updated softback version can be picked up fairly cheaply from people picking up the new starter set for the models.

Now if you have lost or damaged your rulebook then this is a easy way of replacing it, however if someone was looking to get into the game I would probably advise them to try and find somewhere still selling the original boxed rules set or save for the new starter box as that way you are getting cards, templates and models too!

So sadly the “new” rulebook gets a pass from me, if this had been the updated one from the starter set sold as a hardback book I’d have been a little more forgiving and would have looked to replace my old one myself, but as this is the same as the book most of us already have I really can’t recommend here.

Thanks for reading our review today, we are aiming on having some video content on Adeptus Titanicus as soon as covid restrictions allow, so keep an eye on Twitter, YouTube and Twitch!

Games Workshop provided Sprues and Brews a copy of Loyalist Legios and the Rulebook for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

View all posts by Matt Crowther