Warhammer 40,000 has always been epic, even in those old days of Rogue Trader when battles were fought between no more than a couple of squads of Space Marines and Heretics charging around a battlefield in a squadron of Rhinos.
But as the ambitions of the designers grew alongside the grandiose scope of the setting, it became clear that we were going to need a bigger war machine than an Adeptus Astartes Dreadnought. Thus were born the God-engines, bipedal behemoths of battle clashing in furious combat.
First among their number were the almighty Warlord Titans, an innovative plastic kit which rapidly earned these hulking war machines the affectionate nickname “beetleback”. They came with four interchangeable weapon hardpoints and loads of options on the sprues – allowing you to kit these very big lads out with power fists, chainfists, multi-meltas, assault cannons, defence lasers, macro cannons, plasma cannons, multi-launcher pods, and one very large rocket.* You could also swap out the heads with a choice of two on the sprue, while the bases came with a clever cardboard dial within, to record how many void shields remained.
All of a sudden, the biggest thing in Warhammer 40,000 – the mighty Land Raider – came up somewhere to the ankle of one of these gods of war. Colossal weapons briefly listed in Rogue Trader, such as macro cannons and defence lasers – which were really too large for the tabletop – suddenly came four to a Warlord Titan.
The game was an instant hit, and in many ways it birthed the modern-day plot of the Horus Heresy. There’s a prosaic explanation to this: as there was only time to design and make one Titan chassis in plastic, it made most sense to allow both sides in the game to use it – and so a civil war was the perfect setting.
But the war didn’t stay civil for long, and the plastic Warlords were rapidly joined by some fantastic metal upgrade sets, with loads more weapons, plus more obscure loadouts like Corvus Assault Pods, Chaos tentacles, and big old whippy tails. The customisation was endless, and all these unique Warlords were joined by slightly smaller metal miniatures representing Reaver Titans and nippy Warhound Scout Titans.
Adeptus Titanicus soon warped into something much more than just Imperial Titans at war – there were graceful Eldar Titans, precursors to the Aeldari Wraithguard and Wraithlords we see today, which were followed by ramshackle Ork Gargants, squadrons of vehicles, and even tiny little infantry**.
With all of these new units, the game was no longer Adeptus Titanicus, but Epic Space Marine, and we were off to the races. Eventually every major faction earned an Epic-scale army, and many of these models would eventually make it into Warhammer 40,000 scale, from Forge World Warlord Titans to Ork Stompas and Imperial Knights.
The original plastic Warlord Titan made it through two editions of Epic Space Marine before it was updated, eventually earning two separate metal iterations. And while epic scale Warhammer is in abeyance, the current edition of Adeptus Titanicus has brought many more God-engines out to play.
* These weapons would rapidly be renamed and upscaled when it became clear that a Titan-mounted laser would do rather more damage than a lascannon held by a single marine…
** With squads of infantry being mounted on one base to prevent the movement phase taking all day!