Adeptus Titanicus is a game all about the thrill of seeing massive building sized Engines smashing seven shades out of each other. With the current edition released 5 years ago back in 2018, we now have numerous different supplements, leading to new players having the rules spread across many different books. But with The Adeptus Titanicus Campaign Compendium, up the pre order today, we now have all these rules collected together in the same place for the same time. In this review we’ll be taking a look at just what is inside the book and if this is worth picking up for both new and existing players.

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending us a free advance review copy to check out for the review. If you would like to support the site then why not buy your copy through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too!

So first of all, what’s in the book?

Well, essentially this book collates together a collection of content that was previously published in the previous Adeptus Titanicus supplements – Shadow & Iron, The Defense of Ryza, Crucible of Retribution, Doom of Moloch and Titandeath alongside some White Dwarf Legio creation rules. What this does mean is that if you already have all these books then there is probably less here that is new for you. There are some changes that we will talk about a little later, but the main draw here for existing players is the fact that this is all now gathered together in a single book.

The real winners with this book are new players however. No longer do you need to carry around a small library if you want to play through some campaigns – instead it is all here in a single volume!

So what do we have?

Across the 200+ pages we lore for the stories from the 5 previous campaign books. It’s great to see these included, as I worried that being a compendium we would just get the rules elements and not the narrative. However, here we get all this lore gathered together in order to help set the scene for the battles ahead, which is a really nice touch.

Next we get around 50 pages of narrative missions for Adeptus Titanicus. Again, these are all lifted from previous supplements, but it’s great to have them all in one place. Adeptus Titanicus at it’s heart is a more narrative game, and I’d highly recommend playing these missions if you are into the game. Titanicus has a small footprint at a 2×2 playing surface (for the most part, a couple of larger battles use a full 6×4 board) with a few engines each side, and these let you play through and recreate some moments from within the narrative.

In the book we also get the full Echoes of Glory rules reprinted from the Crucible of Retribution book. There are a series of battles over unique environments that represent some of the different worlds and locations that titan battles were fought over in the Horus Heresy narrative. This consists of 3 different groups of battles representing Death Worlds, Forge Worlds and Hive Worlds. All of these have special rules and maps to fully capture the feel of battles that take place in those environments. So for example, battles may take place on a particularly cold world that makes venting plasma easier and reactors run a lot cooler, but a hit to the head may have more impact as it lets the cold in to affect the crew. Or what about a battle on a forge world consisting of 4 narrow bridges leading to a larger section to fight over in the center of the board. Like with the narrative missions these are a lot of fun and for players with just the core rules this opens up loads of different ways of playing. With missions like this Titanicus is a great laugh, and certainly adds some variety to the styles of game you are able to play.

Next up we get rules for creating your own Titan Legions, and it’s here where we see some changes. You are still able to pick two different special rules to represent how your particular Titan Legion operates, but in the updated rules in this book they are split into two different types – Minoris and Majoris. Minoris abilities are lesser ones that have less of impactful effect on balance. As such you are allowed to mix and match any two of these, or use them alongside a Majoris ability. This includes things such as being able to reroll a repair dice or adding 1 to command checks while near an enemy titan.

Majoris effects on the other hand are powerful rules that cannot be combined with another Majoris effect. Most players will therefore be picking a primary Majoris option and then picking a Minoris one to run alongside it.

There’s 6 Majoris options in total and some of them are locked to a certain faction.

Plaything of the Gods (Traitor Only) allows your Titans to heal structure points on a roll of 4+ in the strategy phase, with a roll of 6 healing critical damage

Vanguard Fighters gives Titans with a scale of 7 or less +1 to hit, and lets them take full strike and fire first orders without a command roll when there’s no nearby titans

The Path to Ascension (Blackshield Only) allows titans to share shields with other titans on a Shutdown order, and allows them to reroll command rolls if 2 friendly titans are nearby

Dark Reputation causes nearby enemy Knights to automatically become shaken

Loci of the Cause allows Knights to add 2 to command rolls if a friendly titan has a successful command

Duty and Honour (Loyalist Only) allows a titan to receive a different order from the Adaptive tactics ability once a round rather than once a game.

The two faction locked ones seem the strongest here, but it seems a good idea to ensure that these more powerful abilities cannot be mixed and matched to minimise some of the silly stuff that could happen otherwise.

In this section we also get strategems and wargear that can be given to these custom Legios in order to customise them even further.

Reprinted from Doom of Moloch we also get the full rules for Knight households, allowing players to bring along an entire force of Knights if they so wish! This also includes the full matched play rules for using these, which help towards making games consisting of Titans vs Knights a little more balanced than they would be without these rules in place.

Included along with these are the expanded rules for standards and households out of the Defense of Ryza book, again making it easy for Knight players by including all the relevant rules for using them within a single book!

The Knight section of the book is closed out with the various Knight Households out of Doom of Moloch, again included here for completion – I can’t see any changes here from the previous version, and it just looks like they have been reprinted.

Finally the book ends with a section dedicated to playing campaigns and how to do so. With the large collection of missions contained within the book, this should give players wanting to have an epic Titanicus campaign loads of material to be able to do so, without needing to carry around a small library.

So who is this book aimed at? If you already have all of the existing Adeptus Titanicus supplements then I’m going to be honest here and say this book probably isn’t really aimed at you. That said however, there is something about being able to have all of this great content in a single volume rather than it being spread across multiple books. With all the Legios and maniples now spread across the two Traitor/Loyalist volumes then some people may want to consolidate their bookshelf by combining all this content into the one book.

If you are new to Titanicus however then I’d say this is a must buy. When used in conjunction with your faction book and the core rules, this book gives you everything you need to have some awesome and flavorful Adeptus Titanicus battles, and brings together everything that long time collectors have, but all in one place!

I do wonder if this is going to be the final release for Adeptus Titanicus as we know it, as a lot of games go on to set new editions or re-releases after 5 years. I (and I’m sure many of you) hope that we see AT evolve into something along the lines of Epic, allowing us to fight Horus Heresy battles on a much bigger scale than possible with the “full sized” game. Both Adeptus Titanicus and Aeronautica use the same scale, so it’s not out of the question that infantry and tanks are released to match this!

This book pretty much completes the rules material for Adeptus Titanicus, and even if a new edition or system comes along, people will be able to play games of awesome Titan combat using these rules for many years to come.

The Campaign Compendium is up for pre order today and is released Saturday 29th April.

Games Workshop provided Sprues and Brews with a free copy for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

View all posts by Matt Crowther