On the Workbench [April] - Titans and tiny tanks!

 

Hello and welcome back!  Today I'm sharing what I've been building this month.  Painting the Legio Ignatum Warlord got me motivated to get the last of the large titans built.  And so I give you Messorem Tormentorum of Legio Tempestus:

All the weapon options and arms are fully magnetized following on the pattern of my prior titans, with the exception of the flamers (I know it's a HTH titan, but no...) and the shorter range weapon in the fist.  It was going to be a pain to dig the little circles out if magnetized, and the titan needed some ranged capability anyway, even if short. Plus, in the end you can't even see it so I could play the titan with whichever fist weapon I want as long as the card is right, for casual games at least.

All of the armor is still on the sprue ready for painting.  It's going to be interesting applying the dazzle camouflage to this beast.  There are a lot of small panels here and there, so I think we're going to get a lot more Tempestus cobalt blue armor showing when all is said and done.

With the big beast built, I moved on to assemble the latest Legions Imperialis releases.  Above we have some Basilisks and below a bunch of soon to be Dark Angels stuff...

So many transport options for the Space Marines! First Rhinos, then Spartans, now Land Raiders and...

Drop Pods! I will likely pick up a second box of pods at some point. These four won't exactly drop a game changing amount of troops anywhere.  For now the hobby budget is stretched about as much as can be expected. Here, I have to pause and share the pure joy that is modern plastic molding technology.  Not only are all of these models perfect shrunk down versions of their 28mm counter parts in almost every detail, but the precision with which they are able to create these tiny pods with doors that can open and close is astounding. I entered this hobby in the 90's during 2nd Edition 40K when everything was a lump of lead and tin roughly approximating what it was meant to be and often warped and miss-cast. And plastics were as bad or worse in terms of sharp detail. I never would have imagined this level of precision and sharp detail in plastic.

To round things out, I went out to eBay for two more Sicaran tanks to fill the slots in my Battlefoam trays. 😂.  Speaking of which, I now need to plan out what new trays to get for this lot.  It's getting harder to economize space here.  There are drop pod trays, for example, but for 2 -3 times the number of pods I want. Same with the Basilisk/Medusa trays.  Might have to see if the custom tray creator has LI cut outs so I can plan out a custom tray for the collection...hmmmm...
 

Anyway, that's what's been on the workbench in April. It's getting on time to choose what to paint next.  I don't want to lose momentum on the titans, but I've been looking forward to painting tiny dudes and armor so, that's a thing. Check back next week to see which way I go.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

Legio Ignatum Warlord Titan for AT - TO DONE

 

Gladius Noctis walks for Legio Ignatum.  I certainly took my sweet time with this project; but at last, it is completed. I'm super happy with the results, esp. with how the scheme has stood up over time.  I believe my first Legio Ignatum engine was painted in the spring of 2020, almost exactly four years ago.

Hard to tell from this pic alone which titan was painted first or that there exists four years between them.  That's the value of documenting a paint recipe and then sticking to it. I most certainly would have forgotten details of the colors otherwise which would ultimately have affected the outcome. I'm happy to give the project a big seal o' DONE!

This proud titan even made it into a game!  below is my full painted collection minus the Legio Ignatum Warmaster battle titan.

Arrayed for Battle

Next is an end of game shot of the Legio Ignatum forces.  Gladius Noctis took not a scratch in her first walk, which could NOT be said of the rest of the battle group.

Models chosen and game under way

Here is the battle field at the end of the first turn, just to give an example of what a game in progress might look like. At the top of the board, you can see a Tempestus Reaver battle titan waiting in reserve to use a stratagem to drop onto the board.  More on that later...

Ignoring a lone wolf while futilely attempting to save the game

Legio Ignatum failed to win the day, mostly because I didn't pay enough attention to the open war card we drew for primary objective.  I therefore didn't realize how many points it was worth and allowed a Legio Tempestus titan to sprint to the objective and seize it in the final turn of the game.  Always play to the objectives, folks! We only had time for four turns - otherwise it's possible Legio Ignatum might well have pushed off the Legio Tempestus forces which were mightily abused.

Above is a fun mid-battle action shot of two Reaver battle titans squared off in the back ground for a fist fight. This, after the Tempestus engine used it's Legio stratagem to drop in behind the Ignatum lines for a charge...only it couldn't charge the turn it dropped, which allowed the Ignatum Reaver to come about and step up to give it a mighty punch the knocked it back a couple inches preventing it from counter punching! 

Then Tempestus lost the initiative in the next turn and it was charged by the Ignatum Reaver instead.  It did succeed in ripping the fist off the Ignatum engine in return, but it was too little too late for Tempestus. They lost initiative once again and the enemy Reaver was shot by fusion and laser weapons which ended its day with a mighty explosion.  The Ignatum reaver and nearby Warhound were barely scratched in the explosion...but the supporting Warbringer took four points of structure damage to the body even after backing away from the fight to avoid such a fate. How ironic! But that's Titanicus for you.

So now I'm in that blissful hobby place between projects where there are no commitments and the world is my oyster.  What to paint next??  Probably some Legions Imperialis, but we'll see.  There are still Titans to paint and the Lion of Caliban and his minions beckon...while I decide what to do next, I'll share what I've been building this month in my next post: On the Workbench [April].

Until then, the are more closeups of Gladius Noctis after the break.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

Legio Ignatum Warlord Titan WIP for AT - Part 4

 

Gladius Noctis

Greetings and welcome back! 

The Warlord titan is now standing proud with all of it's heraldry.  Honor and fealty are paid to Mars, the Legio Ignatum, the Collegia Titanicus and the Adeptus Mechanicus. I read a lot of complaints and frustration online with applying transfers.  It's too bad.  I enjoy both the practice and effects in equal measure; always have. I finally figured out that one of the honeycomb transfers went on the Warlord's knee armor.  So that had to happen here.

With the black and yellow quartered motif, I was looking forward to using the large yellow wasp heads on a black field. It also suddenly occurred to me that the quarter cogs would fit nicely on the gun shields to break up the black quarter.

Nothing to show from behind...I'm toying with adding Legio icons to the back shoulder plates.

One of the things I like most about the Warhammer universe is the depth of history and details.  It's great fun positioning my models in the background.  I spend a good deal of time looking over the relevant transfer sheets putting together a story for each model.

I took a couple close ups of the gun shields.  On the model, it's hard to see all the details. I continue to use skulls as significant kill markers. Engine kill! The matte coat should keep the light from washing out the Legio Ignatum icon. It's otherwise a bit hard to make out the symbol in these pics. I like the mix of heraldry and iconography, though.

And the previously repainted right gun shield is shown here attached to the gun. The repaint came out great and there's no telling there was a mistake at this point.  I was a little concerned that some hazard stripe texture might show through on the black; but the prior gloss coat seems to have filled it in.
 

So that's where the mighty Gladius Noctis stands at this point.  It's almost done, yet there is much left to do! 😆 I'm a big fan of the results so far though.  There will be some detailing of the volcano cannon and lots of highlighting to do.  Then I have to paint the base, attach the model, and then apply the weathering powders which tie everything together. So, more progress to share in a couple days I hope.  I'm really feeling the itch to paint some tiny soldiers and tanks, and this project is all that stands in the way of scratching that itch.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

Legio Ignatum Warlord Titan WIP for AT - Part 3

 

Gladius Noctis walks!

Greetings, and welcome back.  I'm catching up on progress with the Warlord titan today.  As seen above, the armor panels are finally attached and I'm ready to move on with transfers and the rest of the detailing and highlighting.  I love this part, where all the work on sprue comes together and I can see the color scheme all together as I envisioned it.  But I should back up a bit...

Once I had the panels ready to assemble, I took a break to build the base. I've used pieces of cork board (maybe 1/4 inch thick?) to build up the terrain.  When the glue had dried, I then covered the flat surfaces with Vallejo Black Lava texture paint. This makes the ground more, well, ground like; and it hides the obvious cork texture. When shaping the cork, I simply pick a way at the edges making things look crumbly and eroded.

Not so easy to see in the pictures, the Titan is stepping up out of a depression. I added lots of little cork bits around the where the back foot is to give an impression that the titan has collapse some of the terrain, or that the shock of its passing has caused cracks and fissures as well as crumbling.

Here's is the "naked" titan striding across its new base.

Clicking through to the full size pic above might give a better sense of the stepping up bit. Once the based fully dried over night, I primed it black and attached all the armor panels to the Titan.

I know I already mentioned this, but I *really* like these moments when working on the AT titans.  Seeing all the work to this point pay off is very gratifying.

I am very happy with my decision to quarter the gun shields and head with yellow and black. I have no idea if it fits with a recognizes Legio Ignatum heraldry patter but I approve the look!

This is possibly the best shot here of what the Warlord looks like striding up onto the higher ground.

Warlords look kinda funny from above...regardless, everything came together and I was in quite a celebratory mood...then this happened...

The last panel I happened to be attaching was the gun shield for the right arm volcano cannon. These gun shields are meant to be opposite so that the hazard stripes are to the front on both sides.  On the sprue, these panels are oriented/flipped opposite each other and I get this wrong almost every time I work on a warlord.  It's tiring, mostly because I really liked how these panels came out this time around.

But no matter.  There was nothing to be done but roll up the sleeves and repaint the damn panel.  Here it is (above) with a fresh coat of gloss waiting for shading.

And here it is attached lookign none the worse for where.  The finish is a bit patchy due to the effect of painting thinned GW Nuln Oil over the gloss finish. The final matte coat will sort all of that, no worries.

So that minor let down aside, the build was great and I'm excited to crack on with the transfers. This is when the fun really starts for me. Every step from here on brings the Warlord alive.  These are so much fun to work with.  There is so much detail for the scale and opportunity for variety in the building and painting. As I finish up this Warlord it hits me that I painted my first AT Titans (two Tempestus Reavers) five years ago in April/May of 2019. 

It's been a long on-and-off again road, but I have a collections of 1 Warmaster, five Warlords, six Reavers, and eight Warhounds to show for it.  It's great looking over the whole painted collection. I'll totally share a family photo when this titan is completed. Oh, and I still have a second Warmaster (Iconoclast), two Warhounds (thank you Legions Imperialis) and two Direwolves to complete.

Next week I'll have photos to share with transfers, showing off Gladius Noctis's full heraldry. Best of luck for your own projects.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!