Twisted Titanicus On Tour: Road to Beachhead 2024

So as Beachhead 2024 approaches, the Twisted Titanicus crew take through their thoughts and preparations for the community’s biggest get together.

We’re running two teams this year, Twisted Sword & Twisted Spear, with several of us being first time attendees to Beachhead. Let’s see what the gang have been up to.

Twisted Sword: Jim

As I write this, it’s currently 2:05am on Beachhead Eve and I have literally just finished sticking my last Warhound to its base ready to go in the box to head down to Bournemouth.

6 months ago, I decided I was going to paint up a brand new battleforce to take with me and opted to go for Ignatum. I figured 6 months was more than enough time to get stuff painted and be able to get some practice games in. How wrong I was.

Real life got in the way and apparently time moves exponentially faster when you decide to paint Ignatum, so I finally finished painting the engines in the wee hours of the morning on 8th February. Talk about cutting it close!

Anyway, they’re all done now and ready to hit the table and hopefully perform well. They better after the stressful last few weeks!

Overall, I’m really looking forward to the event as it’ll a great chance to catch up with people I’ve not seen in ages and it also gives us a chance to get to know new people.

List-wise I’ve opted for an Arcus/Venator dual maniple force. On paper, it should hold its own but as always, we’ll have to see what Nuffle has to say about things.

Now though I’m off to bed, we’ve got a gruelling weekend ahead of us…

Twisted Sword: Jake

So this will be exciting, my first ever trip to Beachhead. I’m looking forward to going and seeing everything it will have to offer. We have two teams that we are entering, Shield and Spear (got to keep that Titanicus vibe!) and we have written a little bit about our preparations for the event below.

For myself, I decided to start a brand new Legio, Tritonis. I unfortunately decided to start this back in September last year during the massive drought of AT models caused by the Legions Imperialis delay, but I managed to muddle through.

I liked Tritonis’ gimmick of swapping in Warlords where they shouldn’t be, they are my favourite Titan model, and Stygian Veil is just the icing on the cake. With the models I managed to gather I decided to put together a double Ferrox Maniple list and sprinkled in a few of the new Warhound weapons from LI.

I went a little bit extra basing these guys, I made little mini trench dioramas around their feet that took a long time but I think are pretty fun to look at (article showing my process coming soon!). Apart from a couple of friendly games and taking them to Board in Brum though the list is pretty much untested so it’s going to be five interesting games this weekend to be sure.

I’m looking forward to it though, I know a lot of people have been working on new projects to debut at Beachhead I can’t wait to see what everyone has been up to.

Twisted Sword: Frazer

Beachhead 2024 and how we got there…..

So; imagine it’s August. you’re having a game of Titanicus on a Monday night at your local gaming club and your opponent (Team Twisted member Jim) begins talking about upcoming events. We’re planning Twisted 5 at this point as well as discussing other events we want to attend and he says, “Fancy going to the Maximal Fire Beachhead teams event?”  Of course, you say yes ‘cos duh! IT’S TITANICUS!

Mass onset of group-chat messages between the Twisted team members and we have a team (actually we have two teams, but I’m in this one not that one!)

Cue even more group-chat messages back and forth and you realise your team are going to be using loyalist legios and you only have the mighty Fureans who as we all know are traitors.

That’s O.K we’ll start a new legio; a loyalist legio, Legio METALICA! (master of puppets playing in my head)

Problem 1: You don’t have any spare titans.

Problem 2: Games Workshop have stopped supplying titans as they have announced Legions Imperialis and are rebranding everything.

Problem 3: Time, it’s now October and you still have no titans and GW haven’t released LI yet, so they’re still sold out in stores.

Detective mode engaged, you recall a casual gamer at the Monday night club mentioning he has some Titanicus models he wants to sell, a deal is struck, and you manage to secure yourself a mega haul of titans. (WOOP, WOOP! we’re back in business) The issue we have now is it’s NOVEMBER and work is hectic. Mid-month arrives and LI goes on pre-order and general sale at the beginning of December. (excited noises ensue) Back to the last week of November and a week off work so hobby time takes priority (after 2 cars to the garage for MOT’s and a trip to the Vets) one Reaver built, three lots of armour airbrushed and three Warhounds prepped for painting. Figuring the pressure isn’t high enough we decide to run our new legio in an event in January, work goes from hectic to manic and all hobby mojo has gone and we’re now in December resisting the temptation to dive headfirst into LI (models built but remain grey plastic) and Christmas is fast approaching, we’re starting to run out of time! Luckily there’s a few days off before the festive period so hobby focus is set to 1000% and in 4 days, we manage to finish three Warhounds, all the weapons for said Warhounds and the three Reavers and based all six titans. 

We made it, a few days to relax and enjoy the new models before they suffer catastrophic meltdowns and become smoking craters on the battle mat!

Twisted Spear: Jay

During the early planning stages for forming our Twisted Team for this year's Beachhead, it became apparent that we had more players than were allowed but too few to make two full teams. Eventually, it was decided that expanding our roster was preferable to one of us missing out on Beachhead: enter Simon and Alex to the Twisted fellowship.

Jim, our fearless leader and diligent runner events captains Team Twisted: Sword whilst the honour of captaincy for Team Twisted: Spear fell to myself.

Having no restrictions on Team Allegiance this year made the team planning a much simpler affair and we were all able to focus on building and learning lists that we felt worked well in the current meta whilst providing some flexibility against unknowns - Alex and Simon can offer detail as to their own lists, whilst my own changed several times before I settled on the force I entered.

After rejecting my initial force and building and painting a corrupted Mordaxis Warhound Swarm, I had a ‘wobble’ and decided I wanted something else.

Something unpleasant.

Legio Gryphonicus

Ferrox Maniple with a support Warlord Sinister Psi Titan.

Using the Gryphonicus Trait ‘Mainstay If the Legio’ to replace the two mandatory Warhounds with Reavers, this minimum maniple packs a lot of threat into the 3 engines. Each using the Motive Sub Reactors wargear available to Gryphonicus to move and turn at their boosted rates without having to roll spice-dice, the mobility offered is reliable.

The support Psi Titan is a monster - there isn't any other way to put it. Fielding one of these below 2000pts is not a polite way to play and outside of competitive environments is frankly a bit discourteous. This being, arguably, the most competitive event of the year however…

Noises of Psi Titan powering up

I've spent an evening reviewing the deployments for each game and choosing the most likely ‘best’ Primary and Secondary Objectives. These aren't locked in and I will make judgement calls when presented with my opponents as to whether these need changing.

My main issue was that I didn't have any Gryphonicus Titans and it was only 2 weeks to the list submission deadline. I ordered some fancy alternative Reaver armour panels from Battlebling (they are amazing, check them out) and pulled a few Reaver sprues from my pile of opportunity.

As the fates are unkind, I finished the skeletons and weapons but have been left with the Monday and Wednesday Evenings before Beachhead to paint the armour panels… if they look nice and I look tired for the weekend, that is why.

I have my Titans. I have my Plan. I have my Team.

Onward, to Beachhead!

Twisted Spear: Simon

This will be the second time I’ve gone to Beachhead having gone last year and my first time competing with the Twisted Titanicus team. Last year my team won the event, and I came sixth overall, having only lost one game.  Last year I painted up a new legio for the event and one that I’ve wanted to do for years – Ignatum. I’ve added several titans to it since then, but I wanted to take something different to Beachhead, which meant adding another two engines to the force.

For Beachhead this year I decided I wanted to take something different than what you typically see at events, so I settled on a Regia maniple. My main reason for this was that the warlord is my favourite titan and I wanted to take two.

A full regia maniple packs a surprising amount of firepower. I’ve gone for some different choices, namely my long-ranged Warlord has two draining weapons instead of the traditional quake cannon.

The main argument against this is the amount of heat it can generate, which can be a problem but the amount of damage it can do isn’t to be sniffed at. The Gravitonic Sensor array gives me +1 to hit if the target is at least 25% obscured. It is going to be quite hard to hide from this titan.

Finally, I’ve taken Favoured by Fortune as my Princeps Trait rather than the typical dominant strategist as I think it’ll compliment the warlord far better. The second warlord is your typical brawler except I have apocalypse launchers rather than gattling blasters, this is both to save points and I generally prefer the apocalypse missiles as they have both range and barrage meaning that this titan can always contribute to an engagement. Next up needs no explanation, two “tournament” pattern hounds with bastion shielding. They’re good, arguably too good. Finally, I had originally intended to take a conversion beamer hound with a mega bolter as a backup, but when the new Warhound weapon rules were revealed, I was not disappointed as now I could take a swarmer pod to compliment it. Then I decided that I could take two swarmer pods and use the points saved to purchase the Ignatum sensor array. This gives me a unit with incredible long ranged shield stripping potential.

I already had a warlord and two hounds painted for Ignatum after getting them ready for Twisted Titanicus 5. I needed to paint a Warlord and Warhound.

Twisted Spear: Alex

Towards the end of 2023, Jay was making noises that he wanted to go to Beachhead this year-neither of us had been able to make it to last year’s event and Jay was keen not to miss out this year. I knew he was likely going to form a team with some other members of the Twisted team, but as it turned out they were looking to take two teams. As I play Jay on a regular basis, he asked me to join him on his team.

I’ve only played Astorum as Loyalist since the beginning of my time in AT, so I was tempted to try something different for this event. In previous tournaments I had always run Warlord-centric lists as I love playing them and will always take two if I can. I’d had moderate success with a Regia and a Dominus previously, but against a more experienced opponent I'd be easily countered. Add to that the mental load of keeping my placement of titans at correct distances from each other (key factors in making these maniples work) over 2 days? That might be too much. So after a little thought (and a consult with Jay) I settled on the idea of running a Traitor melee list- more specifically, a double Ferrox.

Running two Ferrox lists would allow me to bring a good mix of Reaver’s and Warhounds. Corrupting them would allow Warhounds specifically to take advantage of the Warp Runner’s greater speed with no risk of spice dice ruining your day (those of you who have seen an Astorum warhound cook themselves after declaring power to locomotors will know what I mean). Two melee reavers, a corrupted warhound pack and a pair of (initially) Tournament pattern hounds would give me a 4-activation list. While this may potentially give my opponents an activation advantage against me, it would mean my play would be significantly faster-something I find is a better experience when playing multiple games in a day.

Thankfully the painting for this list was minimal- I needed two more Warhounds and around 10 weapons painted (it would have been less, but the changes made throughout the testing stage seemed to necessitate changing weapons every time I finished painting one….).

The list was first tested at the Board in Brum event in January, and in the following weeks I have since made tweaks-mainly to put in more Plasma Blast Guns, and to reduce the risk of any more moonwalking Reaver’s. I’ve had test games now against the lists Jay has been playing around with (including a psi titan, that was fun) and am feeling confident I won't let the team down, at the very least.  I’ll be spending the rest of this week reviewing objectives applicable to various scenarios and refreshing my memory on the legios I’m likely to face.

I'm looking forward to the weekend, it promises to be a fun one. Now to go and make the proper prayers to Nuffle in preparation……

So there we go, we’re all just about ready, everything is packed and we’re raring to go. See you all at the tables on the weekend!