The fires of The Horus Heresy burn hot as 16 Titan Legions and their associated Knight Households have pledged for The Warmaster. God Machine battles God Machine as the followers of the ruinous powers unleash mighty engines corrupted by primordial evil and possessed by sinister entities from the Realm of Chaos. In Traitor Legios, up for pre order today, Princepts now have the full host of the Traitor Legions at their command in games of Adeptus Titanicus and even the power to taint their war machines in ways that would even chill the adepts of the Mechanicum to their core. In today’s review of Adeptus Titanicus Traitor Legios, we take a look at the book, all the Legios and the extra content packed within – and even take a peek at the kit for the mighty Warmaster Iconoclast Titan, a close combat behemoth with the ability to punch a Warlord Titan to destruction!

Thanks as ever to Games Workshop for sending us these a little early to take a look at and review for you guys, if you would like to support the site then why not pre order your copies from our affiliate Element Games and save yourselves 20% too!

If you would rather watch this review than read it then why not check out our full unboxing video and book review below or over on YouTube?

Still with us? Excellent, The Warmaster himself is pleased at your commitment – now let us dig deep into the forces that will tear down the very walls of the Imperial Palace to lay low the False Emperor…

Adeptus Titanicus: Traitor Legios Review

Earlier this year we excitedly jumped into Loyalist Legios, a book that contained the combined rules for each of the Titan Legions that did not turn traitor during the Horus Heresy. While this was great for my mighty Legio Ignatum force, I’ve been itching to put together a Legio Mortis maniple to face off against them, especially after reading the Siege of Terra book Mortis!

Thankfully, we didn’t have to wait too long for the sister companion, Traitot Legios to be released! The book acts as both a compendium of all 16 Traitor Legios, 12 Traitor Knight Households (Including those paired with their parent Legio to make for a thematic supporting banner) and all the maniples and stratagems available to them – like with the Loyalist book this contains a lot of the content of the previous suppliments, but also expands it with amended and new rules here to make this the closest thing Titanicus has to a “Codex” and single book you need to bring along when playing games.

The book also contains an exciting new section covering all the various mutations you can take for Titans that have been corrupted by Chaos!

Battlegroups

As with the previous volume, Traitor Legios opens with the full rules for putting together your battlegroups of both Titans and Knights (though again you do need Doom of Molech for the rules for putting together a Knight Household lance sadly – I’d have liked to have seen these reprinted here for completion!)

We also get the new Traitor Allegiance Ability “Unbridled Hatred” – this allows a single titan once per game to add 2″ to both its standard and boosted Speed while also adding 1 Dice to all Melee weapons! Ideal for some particularly aggressive close combat engines… like for example the Warmaster Iconoclast!

Warmaster Iconoclast

The real star of the show is the new Iconoclast, and the new book contains both a lore breakdown telling us that of a machine spirit that is even more feral and savage than it’s sister titans. Essentially a crazed wild animal, it wants nothing more than to charge across the battlefield and utterly annihilate other engines as it rips them limb from limb! I have visions of one going berserk Neon Genesis Evangellion style as the engine shakes from from the commands of its princepts as it descends into unrestrained rage as it lays waste to its quarry!

The command terminal is the same as the regular version, clocking in at 850 points before upgrades, but the big difference this brings to the fight are the ridiculous close combat weapon options available

The main weapon is the Desolator Chainsword that cuts through void shields like butter to unleash a 4 dice Strength 10 attack (And you can actually get this up to Strength 11 if it moves more than 5″ and an additional dice if you use your once per game traitor ability! )

You then get the option of giving it the Siege Drill or Grav Imploder

The drill is an insane Strength 13 (and again 14 if it moves over 5″!!!) making this easily able to rip apart most titans

While the Imploder gives you a short ranged Quake weapon (While also being pretty ace in close combat!)

As seen with all newer Titan kits, it includes cards for all weapon options along with a massive A4 terminal to control your titan with – its a shame we have not seen thick card versions of these with holes punched for markers, but I am thankful that this is all included in the box so you can use it straight away without having to pick up any other accessories!

The kit itself is gorgeous, using the majority of the Warmaster kit and adding a new sprue with the new weapon options plus a couple of new heads and and carapace Gatling array. I’m very much looking forward to building and painting this beast as the centrepiece of my Mortis force!

Titan Maniples

As with the Loyalist book, we get the full assortment of maniples available from which to assemble your forces. This is so much easier than having to page through multiple supplements to find the maniple you are looking for! These are the same as those found within the loyalist book, but I’ll run though them again here for completion!

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

The Precept was the basis of the recent maniple box (I hope we see this return as an xmas bundle box) and consists of a Warlord, a Warbringer and a Warhound with an optional Reaver and Warhound, allowing you to pick a single order and it to be successful on a 2+ for each engine.

Canis Light Maniple

A bonus maniple that is exclusive to Legio Audax, consists of 3 Warhounds with an optional 2 Warhounds and works much like the “blips” from Warhammer 40k Genestealer cults – the player places a number of markers anywhere outside of 6″ of enemy engines then you can deploy the Warhounds anywhere within 3″ of these markers as long as they are 50% obscured – an amazing way of getting these titans up the battlefield early to harass from turn 1!

Titan Legions and Knight Households

The bulk of the new book covers the various Traitor Legios and their supporting Knight Households – Just like with the Loyalist book this section sees the lore expanded with a couple of pages of info about each legion up from the paragraph or two in the older supplement books. There’s a load of info here, but I’ll run though the highlights of each Legio and who their supporting house is!

Legio Tempestus (Stormlords)

A really cool Legio that allows an engine to shoot up to 3 of its weapons before it suffers Catastrophic Damage, potentially turning the odds in a battle!

In addition to this titans that have already suffered Critical damage get to add 1 to weapon strength, and yes this can be used with the above ability!

They are supported by House Aerthegen who have sworn loyalty to Horus.

Legio Mortis (Death’s Heads)

Mortis are all about killing titans, and their trait “Reaper’s Tally” rewards them for doing so by allowing a reroll of 1 per attack with a non-melee weapon for each Titan destroyed! They also get the ability to each ignore MIU feedback, Moderati wounded and Princeps wounded once per game!

They also get a cool strat that allows the entire force to move before the first turn at the cost of giving the enemy turn 1

Mortis are accompanied by House Morbinia

Legio Krytos (God Breakers)

Go big or go home with Krytos, these allow you to swap Warlords and Warbringers in the place of Reavers or Warhounds in certain maniples letting you go heavy into the larger scale engines! They also have some cool anti-terrain upgrades and stats giving increases strength to represent their role as city destroyers

These are backed up by House Caesarean

Legio Fureans (Tiger Eyes)

The Tiger Eyes are more susceptible for awakening the machine spirit, counting the blank as a Machine Spirit symbol, but they get to pick the result of the awakening – this is boosted by allowing them a little more control when a Corrupted Titan awakens by rolling two dice and picking the best result (As we will see later, Corrupted titans have their own rules rather than the standard awakened machine spirit chart to better represent their daemonic influence)

Their matched Knight Household is House Perfaxia

Legio Vulpa (Death Stalkers)

Close combat specialists, Death Stalkers get +1 WS when within 5″ of an enemy titan at the cost of -1BS, making them a tasty choice for some of the more punchy engines. On top of this they get +2 Strength to Melee weapons for a bargain 35 points! They do get some fun bonuses for ranged combat though with a strat that allows a titan who makes a kill to start shooting a fresh target!

House Hyboras fights alongside this Legio

Legio Vulcanum (Dark Fire / Lords of Ruin)

An unusual Legio actually consisting of a pairing between two Titan Legions, Vulcanum get a pair of Princeps Seniores instead of just one! In addition to this, for each fallen Vulcanum engine they get a single reroll per round.

While not strictly allied, House Devine are listed alongside this Legio.

Legio Interfector (Murder Lords)

A high risk, high reward Legio with a random element. The Princeps of the Murder Lords are quite, quite mad in their worship of The Warmaster and the player can choose to give into madness for a D3 roll in what they do in the movement phase

On a 1 it gains the Charge order and must charge the closest enemy Titan

On a 2 it gets First Fire but at +2 Strength and +1 Dice – however once the shot is completed the weapon is disabled

On a 3 the titan and all titans and knights both friend and foe within 12″ remove all orders.

Very risky and chaotic, but the potential to do some game changing things if the fates align!

House Gotrith are listed alongside these (However the book states these are also allied with Krytos)

Legio Infernus (Fire Masters)

Pyromaniacs, Infernus get additional range on flame weapons by placing the template 2″ away from the weapon rather than touching it, they are also blessed by the Dark Mechanicum allowing them to but more mutations than usual.

They are matched with House Mordred

Legio Mordraxis (Deathdealers)

The Deathdealers have a 4″ aura that subtracts 1 from repair rolls for nearby titans and in addition deal damage to nearby engines that have suffered critical damage – perfect for hurting the enemy then stomping in close to disrupt repairs!

They fight alongside House Vextrix

Legio Audax (Ember Wolves)

Scout Titan specialists, they cannot have any engines of scale 7 or higher limiting them to just Warhounds – they are however harder to hit than normal with a -2 modifier in the first turn for 25% obscured engines.

As big fans of the World Eaters they get stronger than usual Ursus Claws

House Ioeden are listed alongside these but they hold no formal bones with them

Legio Magna (Flaming Skulls)

Another disruptive Legio that not only reduces nearby command checks, but stops command checks from being rerolled, making them great with some quick scout engines to thwart the enemies plans!

They are paired in the book with House Oroborn

Legio Vulturum (Gore Crows)

Like their namesake, the Gore Crows are known to pick on a weakened force like carrion, giving all titans +1 to hit if an enemy titan has suffered Catastrophic Damage that turn. They also get some cool abilities such as being able to “fire as they bear” against engines that move outside of their front arc.

The House Malinax are listed as their allies.

Legio Laniaskara (Impalers)

The Impalers are very fast with the ability to declare power to locomotors without having to push their reactors, this pairs really well with their ability to make both Smash attacks and attack with a melee weapon as part of a charge move.

Legio Kulisaetai (Gatekeepers)

A very reliable Legio who never suffer any penalties to command checks and can never be forced to reroll command checks, they also have access to a nice strat that extends the short range of weapons by 6″. They also have access to Apocalyse missiles that can be fired twice in a turn (Once per game) for the cost of 20 points

Legio Damicium (Unbroken Lords)

A very tanky legion that can ignore a critical damage effect per turn and can repair on a 4+ rather than 5+

On top of this for 10 points per titan they can downgrade the first critical hit with a devastating hit, making them quite hard for enemy engines to chew through!

Legio Tritonis (Dark Tide)

The final Titan Legion in the book are the Dark Tide, these can swap any Reaver in a maniple for a Warlord, however they do not count as that titan class for the purposes of any special rules.

In addition they get a +1 to command checks for each enemy titan destroyed during the battle!

Corrupted Titans

One thing I have been very excited about in this book are the rules for Corrupted Titans – these are traitor specific upgrades that can be used to enhance your engines with the power of chaos!

This does a couple of things in addition to the upgrade. Firstly, if you corrupt a titan commanded by your Princeps Seniores then you get a bespoke trait table to roll on – this includes some really cool stuff like the ability to increase the speed of a titan by 1 or a flat +1 to hit when targeting locations that have not suffered damage.

They also get their own Awakened Machine Spirit chart with results such as charging and Smashing with D3+1 attacks against the closest engine (friend or foe!) or disabled weapons being rebuilt with the power of the warp! Equally they can be drawn back into the warp causing them to flee backwards and take damage to their legs – so while there are some really cool results you do need to be careful you dont set up your daemon infested titan to be a liability!

Corrupted Titans start off with a single base mutation, these includes things such as allowing them to use Power to Locomotors without pushing the reactor for 20 points, increasing the dice value of melee weapons by 1 for 15 points of forcing enemy engines within 6″ to make D3 additional saves whenever rolling for voids for 20 points. There are 7 possible base corruptions here and give you a wide range of roles and options.

Once you have picked your base corruption you can choose to taint the titan further with some further additional mutations (This is based on the scale of the titan with between 1 and 4 mutations available as the scale increases)

There is some really, really cool stuff in these mutations – one of my favourites being the ability to essentially make it a 40k Obliterator and transform its carapace weapon into and other carapace weapon of the same cost or less – this is amazing for being able to adapt your weapon loadout on the go as the situation changes!

Another amazing corruption is Immaterial Shield which makes the engine -1 to hit it while its voids are active, and a 5+ save against any weapons that bypass voids!

In total there are 12 different mutations here, and people will have great fun tuning their engines with these devious upgrades! While theres no rules requirement to model these, I can see a lot of people converting their titans in order to represent their fall to the powers of chaos!

Glossary

Finally the book ends with a glossary covering all weapon profiles, weapon rules, stratagems and upgrades giving you access to all the tools you need while facing your enemy!

Summary

Adeptus Titanicus Traitor Legios, like Loyalist Legios before it is an absolutely essential book for your games of Adetptus Titanicus if you command the forces of the Warmaster! The game has gone from strength to strength, but at times in the past it felt like you needed to bring along a small library in order to have access to all your rules. Now that we have a book for each side containing their complete and collected rules this is no longer a problem and means that you just need to pick up the book for your allegiance to get the most out of your games of Titanicus.

From a lore standpoint we get a wealth of information about each of the Legios and lots of new lore to absorb between the book’s 176 pages!

The big question now is what is coming next for Adeptus Titanicus? With both the loyalists and traitors represented it seems like we may have come to a natural end point for this edition of the game – so could we perhaps see an expansion covering aircraft that incorporates models from Adeptus Titanicus (We do now have plastic Space Marine flyers that could easily be used for traitors and loyalists alike!) or maybe even the introduction of infantry and tanks giving us something akin to Epic? Or could we perhaps see the game shift away from the Horus Heresy and incorporate Xenos titans?

Either way, the game is currently in a great state with an amazing range of plastic kits, resin upgrades and books covering both the sides of the Heresy and there’s never been a better time to get involved!

Adeptus Titancus Traitor Legios and the Warmaster Iconoclast are now available to order

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews free copies for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

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