Titans of the Legio Mortis

I haven't updated in a little bit, but thought I'd share the finished models for my other Adeptus Titanicus force - an Axiom maniple of the Legio Mortis.

The Legio Mortis brings death to the enemies of the Warmaster!

I actually managed to get in a small game the other day. It was a simple meeting engagement between two scout forces and saw both sides' Warhound Titans taking a beating. The game ended with one of my Warhounds rushing a Reaver Titan just in time for its reactor to overload. The Warhound exploded for maximum damage and blew the unhurt Reaver apart as it died.

The entire maniple ready to do battle.

The Warhound Lupus Venandi. These kits are a dream to paint up. 

And Warhound Lupus Umbra. Both kits are magnetized so I can
swap out the weapons into multiple configurations. 

Next time should be some hot Horus Heresy action. Stay tuned!

Cheers!

The Legio Gryphonicus Walks

The Warhound Titan Lupus Rex leads the way into battle!

This past week I finally put the final touches on the Warhounds and Knights of my Legio Gryphonicus force for Adeptus Titanicus. This means that I've completely painted the Grand Master Edition of Adeptus Titanicus and that I only have a pair of Warhounds for the Legio Mortis left to paint! The excitement is palpable.

A complete Axiom Maniple of the Legio Gryphonicus walks! Let the enemies of the Omnisiah tremble with fear!

First on deck were the new Warhound Titan kits. These are absolutely fabulous kits - just the right level of detail and complexity. A total dream to build and paint - my favorite kind of model!

Warhound Canis Dente ready to hunt. As with the other kits, every
weapon option is fully magnetized.

These models have a great sense of motion while still maintaining
a feeling of weight appropriate to a multi-story engine of war.

Warhound Lupus Rex armed with a Plasma Blastgun and an Inferno Cannon. 

The glow of plasma coils is always fun to paint!

I really dig the sculpted on scroll-work. 

Once the pair of Warhounds was done, all that was left was the Knight Banner. Ever since painting a trio for the Legio Mortis force, I've been absolutely dreading assembling and painting these models. I committed to get it done with a quick, neutral paint scheme that would put them on the table fast and not clash with the War Griffons. I settled on a grey and white scheme and just got them D-O-N-E. It was a relief to have them finished.

A Banner of House Kurg Knights ready for battle!

I also made some time to expand my scenery collection by downloading some paper craft buildings for the game Dropzone Commander that are available here for free. I scaled them down by about 20% and printed each on cardstock. I like the addition of these buildings because their high will let me use the cover rules more and means that every game won't devolve into two forces just pummeling each other at range. 

Each building prints out as a 8.5 x 11 sheet.

I think they fit reasonably well with the plastic terrain and I really couldn't beat the price (basically just the cost of a pack of cardstock!)

The great height of the buildings means even a Warlord might claim some cover.

I think the next step is to make some highways with black construction paper. That should really tie the whole room together, man.

Next steps are to complete my Legio Mortis force and then play some more games of Adeptus Titanicus. 

Cheers!

Reavers Ready to Roll

The forces of the Legio Gryphonicus and the Legio Mortis grow!

This post sees all my Reaver Titans finished and ready to go for Adeptus Titanicus. Hooray! I couldn't be happier. The Reaver kits are very nicely done, but just a bit more of a chore to assemble than the mighty Warlord Titans. I guess this goes with how I enjoy painting models more than building them - I found the work of magnetizing the weapon arms and working out the posing more of a chore than actually getting paint on the Reavers. Thankfully, these kits are a dream to paint once you've put in all the effort to assemble them.

The Titans Bellum Est Dominar and Ulalate Furoris are joined by the second Reaver, Ferro Interitus.

I did the checker pattern using a technique I saw on Twitter - I used
a stencil ordinarily used for painting finger nails! Cheap and easy to apply
it gave me a really nice base to work from. After filling in the stencil, it
was a simple matter of removing it and then neatening up everything with
a brush.

The forces of the Legio Mortis are bolstered by the arrival of the Reaver Titan, Quatuor Mortes. 

Again, I went for a pattern on the main hull. This was just done using painters
tape cut into fine strips and applied over the hull once it was painted red. Then
it was a matter of just filling in the black. Easy, peasy!

I'm in the home stretch with finishing my two maniples. I have two pairs of Warhound Titans en route and still have 3 last Knight models to do for the Legio Gryphonicus (which I'm dreading building. 21 parts. Ugh.)

Cheers!

The Great Work of the Omnissiah continues!

Forces of the Legio Gryphonicus and the Legio Mortis grow!

I've been neglectful of my blog for the last couple of weeks but still managed to get a lot painted in the meantime. My painting area is mostly consumed with titans of all sizes from the latest incarnation of Adeptus Titantanicus. Like a complete madman, I've decided to create two forces for playing AT - a Loyalist Legion and a Traitor Legion.

The Traitor Legion I chose was the "Death's Heads" of the Legio Mortis. You can see the Warlord class titan painted up here. Next up was to add a newly released Reaver Titan to the force. 

The Warlord Titan, Mors Destinarat is joined by the Reaver Titan, Ferrum Gloria.

The Reaver kit was definitely less fun for me to build than the Warlord.
Mostly because I didn't find it to be as posable and it certainly was designed
to be less easily magnetized than the Warlord kit.

I ended up gluing the power fist option in place, as it would have required
purchasing some new, smaller magnets to do it right. I'm ok with this, though.
I find the power fist to be iconic and I know I'll field at least one regardless
of its in-game effectiveness.

The other arm, however is magnetized. It required using a
power drill to create recesses to countersink the magnets. It
was quite the effort, but worth it in the end.

For the Loyalist Legion, my decision was an easy one - the Legio Griffonicus. I've wanted a War Griffon's force ever since seeing this illustrated spread in White Dwarf many moons ago. Wayne England's fantastic art fired my imagination, and while the scheme and titan patterns have changed over the years I'm super excited to have an updated force of these cats.

The initial forces of the War Griffons; the Warlord, Bellum Est Dominar and the Reaver, Ululate Furoris.

The Warlord was every bit a joy to build as the first one. I'm super happy with the yellow
- looks like painting all those Imperial Fists has paid off!

I equipped the Reaver with two gatling cannons (one taken from the first Reaver kit)
so that running intro games has some variety. 

I also painted up the Laser Blaster and magnetized all of the weapons
and arms.

Just a detail shot of his behind. (Technically called the
"Caboosium" in Imperial High Gothic)

While I didn't love assembling the Reaver, its still a
GOOD kit. My main complaints are really the lack of
easy magnetization was compared to the Warlord kit -
especially as the Reaver doesn't come with all of the
weapons options available to it.

My plan is to do two classic Titan Maniples of 1 Warlord, 2 Reavers and 2 Warhounds, so I've still got add another Reaver kit to each. I will preserve!!! 

Cheers!

The God Engines Walk!

With the release of Adeptus Titanicus, and my impulsive decision to buy it, I guess it deserves a big blog post.  I'm half way through painting the Grand Master edition and I'm at a place where I can show off the Traitor forces, a paint step-by-step and the board I'll be gaming on.

Warlord Titan Mors Destinarat of the Legio Mortis supported by a
banner of Knights from House Malinax.

First up was painting one of the two Warlord Titans that come in the set. I opted for a paint scheme of the Legio Mortis. Initially my plan was to just build a Traitor force, but my love for the War Griffons and having two forces has won out - I'll be painting the other model in the colors of the Legio Griffonicus. This plan to build two Titan maniples is completely deranged; but in for a penny, in for a pound I guess. Nobody ever played these games because they were economical.

The Warlord is a stunning kit, equally on par with the 40K Knight kit in terms of
complexity and articulation. 

Its almost TOO much detail. The kit takes quite a while to build and I wonder afterwards if it wasn't
just a clever ploy to get me used to the idea of assembling a 28mm scale Warlord from Forge World.

The whole thing is very well engineered, however; and I was able to pose it how I wanted
with zero conversion work.

The level of detail is NUTS. They even got the railing on the platform for entering the Titan.

A banner of Knights supports each Warlord in this set. These guys are absolute BONKERS. 21 pieces each. For a model smaller than a Primaris Marine. While I appreciate the dedication, I think these cats were a little too complex for wargaming figures.

Once the Titan and Knights were done, I turned my attention to the buildings. These kits were a little frustrating - I feel like I've been spoiled by the absolutely fantastic 28mm scenery that Games Workshop has been putting out recently. While highly modular, the Adeptus Titanicus city models were fiddly and tedious to assemble. They forgo some of the more clever locking mechanisms of modern models and take time to get right.

I decided to keep the scheme on the buildings relatively simple. I want terrain to act as a backdrop for the models and
not compete visually when laid out.

My current 4'x4' board. I plan on trying to pick up some N scale bridges and maybe a refinery set to add to the city.

A closer look at some more of the buildings.

A veritable nest for the Knights to hide in.

Finally, I also managed to take step-by-step photos of painting the Warlord as I went. Anyone who follows me on Twitter or Facebook has seen these, but I'm collecting them here with some notes for anyone who wants it.

STEP 1. The Warlord is assembled. I left off 95% of the armor panelling - that
would be painted on the sprue and left the under skeleton easy to access. The head
was also left separate, but its Blue-Tack'ed into place in this photo. The gun
arms and rocket pods were also magnetized at this point. GW left recesses
5mm wide by 1mm deep so you can swap the weapons out with future weapon
upgrades.

STEP 2. Everything was undercoated using Rustoleum Aged Bronze.
Once dry, this was all drybrushed with GW Runefang Steel.

STEP 3. I began picking out the gold details and trim using GW
Retributor Armor. This was then washed with GW Reikland Flesh shade
and high-lighted with a drybrushing ofGW Runefang Steel.
The dark panels were painted with P3 Coal Black and washed with
Army Painter Dark Tone Ink once dry.
The head was base coated with GW Administratum Grey and then
high-lighted in several layers using White mixed with Administratum
Grey in successively greater amounts.

STEP 4. A continuation of Step 3, more and more detail was picked
out across the model. The heat stress on the barrels of the Volcano cannons
was added by heavily washing the fronts with GW Druchii Violet shade.
At this point, once I was happy with the under skeleton, it was time to start
adding armor plates.

STEP 5. I undercoated the armor plates while they were still attached
to the frame. The side of the armor facing inwards, towards the skeleton, got
a coat of Rustoleum Aged Bronze. The outward facing side then was sprayed with
GW Retributor Armor Spray. This saved me a ton of time - it was easier to neaten things
up after the spray (which I would have to do anyway after clipping them off the frame)
than pick out all the trim. The gold side was washed with GW Reikland Flesh shade and once that was dry,a quick drybrushing of GW Runefang Steel brought out the detail and highlights.

TOP TIP! - Rather than painting a panel and then picking out trim, its almost always
easier to paint the trim first and then fill in the broad surfaces with color. Its quicker
and more forgiving than doing it the other way. Trust me. Try it. You won't regret it.
The broad areas of the panels were painted P3 Coal Black and washed with Army Painter
Dark Tone ink for the black plates. The red plates were painted with Vallejo Dark Flesh and then
highlighted by adding progressively more Vallejo Red to Dark Flesh in several layers.
Finally, the striping was painted in over the red plates using the same Coal Black/
Dark Tone technique as the armor plates.

STEP 6. Decals were added and then weathering was applied by
using a small bit of sponge to dab random spots of GW Dryad Bark
around the plates. Once dry, a few thin lines of highlight red were added
around the spots. Then P3 Brown Ink was used to add streaks of wear and
rainwater damage across the hull. The feet were given a drybrush of
Vallejo Beasty Brown.
Craters were added to the base by using rings of modeling putty covered with sand.
Finally, the base was painted with GW Agrellan Earth. Once dry and cracked, the base
was coated with P3 Greatcoat Grey and then washed with Army Painter Dark Tone ink.
Then two layers of drybrush were added - first with GW Adminsitratum Grey and then
GW Ushabti Bone.
Lastly, the rim of the base was painted with Vallejo Black. 

Whew! I should actually get to play the game soon against a buddy with a painted force. Then its onto the Legio Gryphonicus.

Cheers!

Terrain Blitz!

I've been pretty quiet on this blog for the last few weeks, but I haven't been idle. Mostly it seems like I've been assembling and painting a couple of terrain kits for Warhammer Age of Sigmar and Warhammer 40,000. So with out further ado, here we go!

When the second edition of Age of Sigmar was released, I picked up a set of the new battlefield objects that was produced. The kit comes with seven objective markers with a lot of character. I've based and painted up six, I've still got one to do but its a big floating thing and I still haven't figured out how I'm gonna base it. These were nice kits, and allow me to get some characterful markers on the board with no fuss.

Each sculpt is really characterful and assembles quickly.

Well, except this weapon pile. This went together weird and took a
few passesof dry fitting to get right. 

I'm not sure why a wizard left his spell book/jar trunk here, but
its a lot of fun.

The interior of the sarcophagus is also well detailed.

Then its a jump over to the 41st millennium to work on some terrain. Games Workshop has re-issued some of their older terrain and I jumped on getting a few that I'd missed out on - the Skyshield Landing Pad and Honored Imperium. These kits were the polar opposite of one another, but in the end I'm happy with both.

This kit was a nightmare to assemble. Its super flimsy and tries to be clever with its engineering rather
than being robust. I'm happy to have it as a nice narrative objective for my games, but man was I happy
when this thing was done. Total pig of a model.

The blast shields raise and lower. Why? Why not! I guess!

Honored Imperium, on the other hand, was quick to assemble and a lot of fun to paint. 

I also made a decision my wallet will regret for years to come by picking up a copy of the new Adeptus Titanicus. I've already begun assembling a Warlord Titan, so keep an eye out for that in the coming weeks. I plan on working on this slowly, so I can savor the priceyness and keep pace with what I'm suspecting will be a glacial release schedule.

A game of Titanic Prices in the Age of Austerity. 

Cheers!