Adeptus Titanicus- Fielding Vassal Knight Houses

The February 2019 White Dwarf brought new tactical options to your toolbox in the form of an integrated Titan and Knight maniple, called the Dominus Battleforce Maniple.  Today, we'll review the article and your new maniple option.

Vassal Houses are not Knight Houses that aid Titan Legions, but are entirely subservient and oathed to them.  A good example of this is House Procon Vi to Legio Solaria as we saw in the Titandeath novel.  These Knights act even more as guardians to Titans when compared to usual Knightly allies.

Titanicus Vassal Houses, as they are officially known, owe allegiance to neither the Mechanicum nor the Imperium.  They often bear the livery and devices of the Legio they are bonded to.  These Knights serve as scouts and skirmishers to the Legio.  This is somewhat of a curious development, however, since that is the main role of the Warhound.  The Vassal Houses also retain the role of outflankers and harassment forces.

Most Vassal Houses actually sported 200-300 Knight suits, which is quite impressive.  However, Vassal Houses suffered very high attrition rates compared to Imperium and Mechanicum aligned Houses due to their more perilous assignments.  The four notable vassal houses listed are Coldshroud (Gryphonicus), Perdaxia (Fureans), Morbidia (Morbidia), Vi (Solaria).

Finally there is the Dominus Battleforce Maniple.  It is comprised of a Warlord, two Reavers, and one Questoris or Cerastus Banner.  The optional components are two Warhounds and one Questoris or Cerastus Banner.

This maniple contains two traits:

Auspex Bafflers- The Knights configure their vox arrays to confound enemy targetting auspexes, but give away their position to do so.  Knight Banners in the maniple cannot benefit from obscuring cover, but attacks made by an enemy model that has line of sight on a Knight and the target Titan, and is more than 2" away, suffers a penalty to hit.  This will definitely help to put a target on the Knights early on, but will increase the Titan's safety.

Noble Sacrifice- This reflects the Knights taking brutal hits for their masters.  They can intercept any hit from a ranged attack that targets a Titan in their maniple within 6" of them and the enemy model has line of sight on both the Knight and the Titan.  Firestorm weapons cannot be negated in this way.  Expect shenanigans to ensue, since we have the mental image of a Knight jumping to a Warlord's head height to intercept a Belicosa shot.

What do think of the new lore and new maniple?