New year, new you, new rules. Not content with all the Grotmas treats handed out last month, we've got some new content coming in hot to kick off a new year of Warhammer 40k. Leading the charge, fresh from carving up Tyranids and <redacted> in Space Marine 2, we have Captain Titus and his retinue. Let's find out what they can do!

Thanks to Games Workshop for providing us with a review copy of these Datasheets.

Captain Titus

Credit: Games Workshop

Captain Titus has one job - ripping through hordes of enemy Infantry until forcibly prevented from doing so, which often means killing him twice. He sports an extra tough Captain-style profile, with 6W and a 5+ Feel No Pain, and offensively he’s a spring-loaded buzzsaw. His master-crafted chainsword swings eight times at S5 AP-1 D2, with Anti-Infantry 2+, ensuring that hordes and enemy Marines alike will get scythed down. When leading a unit, he also gives the squad Sustained Hits 1, just in case you need any more horde clearance.

Rob: I think you’ll find he has two jobs: Ripping and Tearing, thank you very much.

This offensive profile combos very effectively with his unique trick, a spin on the (always potent) stand back up on a 2+ ability. If Titus is killed by a melee attack when he hasn’t yet fought (so don’t let him get shot to death), then on a 2+ he gets to Fight on Death after the enemy finishes attacking. When he does, if any enemy models are killed by his swing, he stays alive on d3 Wounds instead of being removed from play.

This is more hoops than the normal version of this but is vastly nastier for foes without the right tools to handle. His offensive profile is so good at killing Infantry that he’ll lift a model against even the most elite targets - even enemy Victrix (in some weird Ultramarine civil war) are odds-on to lose a guy to him, and if that happens it’s really bad for the foe, because he then gets to fight normally as well and is then likely to be alive in the subsequent turn to do more things (and many Ultramarine detachments provide Fall Back and Charge). The fact that he gets up straight away means you can potentially deal with him by multi-charging, but you have to be really sure that the unit you swing with second isn’t just going to get lifted by his Fight on Death. Also - there is no once-per-game limitation on this, which is a choice. One-phase melee armies are going to hate Titus more than almost anything else in the entire game, and are often going to be left crossing their fingers that a Grenade busts through his Feel No Pain or something.

To augment his potential further, he can of course lead various units - the standard suite of Primaris Infantry, Sternguard, Company Heroes (so Victrix too) and Bladeguard, are all options, and he gets his own special Wardens of Ultramar option as well, which we’ll look at below. Victrix and Company Heroes seem likely to be the most common choices, as they help with his goal of being a scary trade missile that’s a pain to prise out of ruins.

As an Ultramarine player you are spoilt for choice for Epic Heroes, which means Titus isn’t an instant auto-take all the time, but he’s very good for specific environments, and whenever the metagame swings towards melee Infantry, he’s going to be a good tool to have available. Depending on the cost, he’s probably also the kind of Character that might see play as a solo utility piece, thanks to how much of a pain he is to flush out from behind a wall. Finally, he means that every future Marine release is going to be immediately scrutinised for a good source of Devastating Wounds, because if you can stick that on him somehow he becomes an unholy terror.

Rob: The biggest problem with Titus is that he doesn’t bring enough to the table over a Space Marine Captain as an add-on to a unit. Instead, his value is as a solo piece - Titus has that perfect combination of 6 wounds and a 4+ invulnerable save with a 5+ Feel No Pain and the ability to repeatedly stick around by fighting on death which makes him an incredibly annoying mid-table solo model, particularly if you don’t have a vehicle or the shooting to just take him out from a distance.

The one thing I’m not 100% on here is the timing of Titus’ Fight on Death and something like the Counter-Offensive Stratagem. We haven’t had a situation yet where a model fighting on death sticks around, and I believe that under the current rules after Titus fights on death you could then use Counter-Attack to fight as his “regular activation” for the phase, potentially giving him two cracks at killing that second unit if someone wants to try and double-charge him. Note that this is because when a model fights on death it is a model fighting on death and not a unit. The question is whether you are still in the "after a unit has fought" timing for the use of the Counter-Offensive Stratagem, which needs to happen "just after an enemy unit has fought." Our internal rules guys believe you still are, but this is something that we'd like to see an FAQ address in the future.

Note that Titus' ability only works if he hasn't yet fought this phase, so while you can fight on death, then fight normally, you can't do the reverse, nor can you use his ability to cheat death multiple times per phase.

Wardens of Ultramar

Credit: Games Workshop

Titus’s special retinue of Ultramar superfriends gets a Datasheet as well, providing you with a fairly unique building block to work with. The squad is a big bundle of Wounds - it’s two veteran Marines (Sergeant Metaurus and Ancient Gadriel) with 4W each and four baseline humans, each of whom has 3W. Saves are all over the place - obviously the Marines have a 3+, and Metaurus has a 4+ Invulnerable from a storm shield, while all the humans have a 4+ with one (Gauis Silva) packing a 5+ Invulnerable as well. Offensively it’s also a mix - Metaurus hits properly hard, sporting 5A at S5 AP-2 D2, but the rest are a mix of vanilla power weapons, random punches and one swing with an astropathic stave (and at range, it’s just some mid pistol-equivalent shots).

Very flavourful, but not lighting anything up, so what’s the draw for them? First up, they have some abilities - bringing them along means that you get a three-unit redeploy after deployment, which is fine when it’s a freebie, and the unit gets +1OC while the Ancient is alive, and also +1Ld if Titus leads them (though you can just field them solo). By themselves, you probably don’t want them as a Bodyguard for Titus, but they do have a unique gimmick - they can attach into a unit of Intercessors, Assault Intercessors, Bladeguard or Sternguard, and if they do, Titus can attach on top of that (but other Characters can’t).

That lets you get very weird with it. Want a 17-model unit with a tonne of Wounds? Stick them with some Assault Intercessors. Want ablative wounds for more elite stuff? The Sternguard/Bladeguard option is there. There’s not an obvious slam dunk way of exploiting this, but in any detachment with access to defensive Stratagems it’s at least a consideration, and putting the OC boost in one of the Battleline options lets you stack spectacular amounts of control onto a point.

A lot of this is going to ultimately be price dependent - you get a bunch of wounds here, and there are certainly worlds and price points where that’s valuable to you. On rules alone, it’s not a terrible choice if you really want to get your Space Marine on, but Company Heroes are probably just better for a similar role.

Rob: I think these guys may have more value than Titus, just by virtue of the fact they represent 20 additional wounds you can tack on to a Bladeguard Veteran Squad with some solid ability to fight between the Master-Crafted Power Weapons and Force Stave attacks. That’s a unit which really wants the extra ablative wounds and having them with 2 OC is a solid deal. I don’t know if that’s better than giving them a Captain or Judiciar, but it certainly makes them more durable and interesting as a cheap midtable brawling unit.

Wings: I guess, again, it'll come down to the cost, because yeah I can see with something like Bladeguard that you might just take this instead of the second half of a squad - Metaurus is a slightly better Bladeguard model anyway, extra OC is nice, and you get plenty of ablative wounds to protect the good stuff. I still think Titus himself will see more play - he's such a complete nightmare for melee armies to handle, and there are some hot ones out there at the moment.

Wrap Up

Reinforcements for the Ultramarines, ready for a new year of battle - but will anything else be emerging alongside them? We'll have to wait and see - for now, happy new year to Macragge fans in particular.

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