As armies clash and valiant soldiers fight for their very lives against the horrors of the 41st Millennium, looming war machines stride across battlefields entirely removed from the ground level of war. So powerful are these Titans that some mortals revere them as god-engines, while even the most level-headed sceptic stands in sheer terror as their apocalyptic weapons lay waste to entire battalions.
In short: Titans are very cool, especially in the new edition of Warhammer 40,000.
Overview
Titans are the largest and most powerful units in all of Warhammer 40,000, and each one inspires awe in all who behold them. Though rarely seen on all but the largest battlefields, they make a splash wherever they show up, and it’s a foolish faction who doesn’t have a way to deal with them – whether with enormous titan-slaying weapons, or towering monstrosities of their own.
Faction Rules
In the new edition, most armies find their Titan-equivalents in their respective Imperial Armour Index documents. The Imperium instead organises its god-engines into the Adeptus Titanicus, who have an Imperial Armour Index of their own, and can be seconded to other forces through the Titanicus Support rule. Much like their smaller Knightly cousins, this allows you to slot one ADEPTUS TITANICUS unit seamlessly into any IMPERIUM army, and even includes provisions for you devious traitor types.
Unit Spotlight
So why would you want to bring a model the size of a small child along to your next casual throwdown?* To put the new edition’s biggest numbers on the table and see what happens, of course.
Where do we begin?
The Warlord Titan is, put simply, the largest and in-chargest unit to grace Warhammer 40,000. It has a staggering Toughness characteristic of 16, a Save of 2+ with an invulnerable save for shrugging off the biggest guns, and the small matter of 100 Wounds to chew through. Its arioch power claw can smash other vehicles for a wild 24 damage per swing, while the belicosa volcano cannon is the most terrifying gun in the entire game – it can even wound another Warlord Titan on a 2+.
Now, this does all come for a commensurate cost in points, but that’s the price of getting to see what peak performance looks like. Utterly glorious, and a true tribute to the Omnissiah God-Emperor himself.
The Imperium isn’t the only faction to deploy titanic war-constructs, though. The Aeldari prefer grace and speed to vulgar brute force, and the Phantom Titan is unnaturally agile for a behemoth its size – whether it’s dancing between hordes of enemy troops with its wraith glaive flashing, or picking off vehicles from miles away with a pair of Phantom pulsars.
Tyranids regard mechanical engineering as little more than the crunchy coating around a delicious biomass meal, but they still manage to spawn towering monsters of their own. The Hierophant is a gangly bio-titan that looms above a Tyranid swarm, striding over walls with its pointed legs and spitting great globs of bio-acid on unfortunate victims. It can even carry a brood of lesser creatures with it as it goes.
Also keeping on the biological end of the scale, the Orks breed some of the largest, most belligerent creatures known to stride the battlefield. Any boss who dreams big will aspire to thunder through enemy lines on the back of a Gargantuan Squiggoth.
Though it’s more around the size of a Warhound Scout Titan, and wouldn’t stand up to a slug-fest with the larger god-engines, this tusked terror still packs a mean punch in close combat. It’s also got plenty of room in the howdah for a gaggle of Boyz – or Ghazghkull Thraka, if he fancies riding into combat in style.
Here’s a brain-teaser – when is a Titan not a Titan? When it’s a spacecraft moonlighting as an atmospheric dropship, that’s when. Freed from the constraint of legs and kept aloft by the combination of powerful engines and the T’au Empire’s mastery of grav technology, the mighty Manta can focus all its attention on bulk, transport capacity, and outright firepower.
No fewer than 16 drone-controlled burst cannons bristle across the hull, organised into a pair of deadly arrays that can blanket landing zones in deadly pulse fire, while two heavy rail cannons punch tank-sized holes through… pretty much anything, actually. We can’t talk up the Manta without looking into its transport bay, which has room for an entire Hunter Cadre – 200 Fire Warriors, eight battlesuits, and four tanks, which themselves can be carrying even more troops.
And that about does it for our Faction Focus series – if you’ve been following along from the beginning, congratulations! It won’t be long until you hear a few tantalising launch dates for the new edition, and in the meantime, you can head back to our #New40k hub to see everything we’ve revealed on the long road to new horizons.
* To be clear, we’re talking about full-size Titans – the Adeptus Titanicus boxed game is great fun, but you shouldn’t bring along a titchy Titan to Warhammer 40,000.