Mandragola’s Legio Astorum (and Mortis and stuff)

[Brother Dallo]

That charging Warlord pose is pretty damn cool. Hope you don't mind if I do something similar?

 

Keep up the good work.

 

Dallo

[Mandragola]

Of course, go ahead and use it if you like the pose. Pretty sure I don’t have a copyright, and they do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

[Brother Dallo]

Of course, go ahead and use it if you like the pose. Pretty sure I don’t have a copyright, and they do say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery!

Cheers.

 

Would it be possible to get some side and rear shots of the running Warlord to see what angles you went for? Did you need to modify the toes much for the lifted foot?

 

Dallo

[Mandragola]

Sure, I can add some more pics.

 

I did modify the toes. To do this I attacked the hinge with a scalpel, cutting in from the side a bit so there was a bit less plastic and the toe would bend. This left an awful scar of course, so I cut away a few bits of scar tissue and then filled in the gaps with green stuff. This was fairly tricky to do as the hines are a bit complex, and the socket for the piston piece is right where you'd ideally want to cut. I went in at an angle so as to avoid the socket, but you've also got to watch you don't  cut into the little square armour plate (which seems to have no function other than armouring the ground) between the toes.

 

Anyway that's all probably as clear as mud. Sorry I didn't take WIP pics. Here are some more pics of the end result. Please forgive the very-much WIP paint job. Must paint some fire on this guy somwhere.

 

http://i610.photobucket.com/albums/tt185/Someguy01/36BD499A-1669-41B5-8E43-5915FB573724_zps2tsvrpzb.jpeg

 

 

 

http://i610.photobucket.com/albums/tt185/Someguy01/0B33991B-C98D-41CB-B438-486412216F24_zpshvhgx2w3.jpeg

 

http://i610.photobucket.com/albums/tt185/Someguy01/244B8F9B-DB46-4FD9-9FC8-523109F15236_zpsc82im9kz.jpeg

[Chaeron]

Thanks Mandragola - that's really helpful, if I get another Warlord - I'd be very tempted to try something similar!

[The Grim Badger]

The lean of the Warlord as he storms forward makes me literally want to move away! Nobody wants to get in the way of that machine!

Great work, looking forward to seeing it all progress :) 

[Master Ciaphas]

I am loving the pose on that Warlord Titan! Amazingly well done!!!

 

Faithfully,

Master Ciaphas

[Mandragola]

Sorry for the quiet few days. I’ve recently been making my change to Legio Astorum, which has required a lot of thin layers of white paint on blue panels, so as to be able to paint them yellow. It’s not particularly fun or pretty, But sadly it’s necessary.

 

It has also recently occurred to me that I’m heading to the finals of the UKGT in a worryingly short amount of time. For this I will require an army! The recent rules changes in CA, vigilus, white dwarf and the beta bolter rules have made my old crimson fists an awful lot better, so I’m planning to paint a bunch of new intercessors for them over the next few weeks. The Crimson Fists will have to take priority over the titans, but I’ll still do some work on my Astorum guys.

 

One decision I’ve made is not to start on any more weapon conversions. I’d been planning a quake cannon and Gatling for my warlords but these can wait. I’m in no rush and the new resin weapons could even come out before the GT - when I’d be able to pick them up. Or failing that I could possibly grab them at Salute. So the warlord in the Axiom maniple I’ve pledged will just have volcano cannons. I might see about converting its carapace missiles to take turbo lasers instead (hopefully possible with some careful scalpel work), as I managed to get hold of a spare pair of those.

 

Today I picked up my copy of Titandeath and one of the new reavers. Current forces are:

 

- 4 Warlords, one of which is still unconstructed.

- 3 Reavers, one still in the box

- 4 warhounds. Two are basecoated, two grey.

- 9 Questoris knights and 2 lancers

 

The idea is for these to form a Myrmidon and Venator maniple - or any other maniple! However this will give me rather more titans than I need - most notably a spare warlord. The temptation is therefore strong to build the spare warlord as some other legio - potentially a traitor one to fight against my Astorum guys.

 

For now I’ll hold fire with the unbuilt warlord anyway. And the knights will also stay unpainted - possibly until rules come out for them (which could be as soon as next Friday’s white dwarf). I’m not short of models to work on!

[Achinadav]

Your running warlord looks awesome! Its got a real sense of weight and speed. Did you start off with getting the supporting leg right and then add the rest? I've got a punchy reaver left to build and am tempted to attempt a similar pose...

[Mandragola]

Your running warlord looks awesome! Its got a real sense of weight and speed. Did you start off with getting the supporting leg right and then add the rest? I've got a punchy reaver left to build and am tempted to attempt a similar pose...

Thanks. Actually no, I had both legs together and moved them around to get the right pose. The relationship between the two legs is what matters for a pose I find, so it's really hard to do one at a time. It's just quite hard in general to be honest!

 

As I recall, what I did was to dry fit the pose (leaving the sides off the thighs until fixed, so the knees could still be bent). I glued the trailing leg first, then the standing leg afterwards because it needed to be pinned.

 

It's not all about the legs though. There's also stuff like the angle of the hips. So the titans pelvis is angled slightly to its right, meaning the left hip joint is slightly in front of the right one. And the left shoulder is back a little bit but the head is slightly angled right, so it ends up facing forward. I think that the hip to shoulder thing is part of what makes it look like it's actually running, rather than just waving its arms and legs around - if that makes sense.

 

Anyway I did quite a bit of thinking and looked at pictures of heavy men running to get my ideas. I'm working on a running pose for my reaver 2 (these are warp runners, after all), which I've done a bit of work on tonight. I haven't built its legs yet though.

Edited January 31, 2019 by Mandragola

[Achinadav]

Thanks Mandragola, that's really helpful information.

[Mandragola]

Some progress to report. I grabbed a reaver 2 at the weekend and I've started work on it. This guy is part of my pledged Axiom maniple, so I'd better get a move on - and indeed he appears to be in a bit of a hurry.

 

 

I bought a reaver 1 weapons sprue a while back for the extra gatling blaster (to stick on my warlord's roof) so I had a spare head. I'm glad this means that my three reavers all match, as I think the other version looks a bit chaos-y. I've done the same with my warlords. 

 

The carapace is just a place-holder as a dry fit. I'll pobably actually use the plain version with some flames on there. I'm using the more decorated version on my original reaver, which will tend to serve as the seniores in my Venator maniple.

 

 

I've got three reavers on the go at the moment - none of them anything like finished! Here's a group shot. The guy on the left was quite far along until I decided to switch to Astorum. He now has a bunch of yellow paint in need of being turned into flames and a lot of edging to re-define. Not to mention basing and loads of other work...

 

 

One day I will finish a titan. Not today, I fear.

Edited January 31, 2019 by Mandragola

[Kordhal]

Those flames are looking great, plus those Reavers are really nicely posed. Looking forward to seeing them completed :D .

[Mendi Warrior]

I like the running Reaver, it is cool.

[Mandragola]

Thanks guys. This weekend I've had to focus on building a load of intercessors for my Crimson Fists. When they are done I'll have a big undercoating party. The new Reaver and a couple of hounds will get their turn.

 

30 intercessors is a lot. There's such a thing as too much detail on a line infantry figure!

[Master Ciaphas]

Hail!

 

Very lovely Reaver titans!

 

Pray tell - are they all magnetized (and if yes, then how did you go about it?) and secondly, what is the recipe for those flames? I am also doing Legio Astorum, and have added a few flames to my two Warhounds I have completed so far...

 

Faithfully,
Master Ciaphas

[Mandragola]

Hi. Glad you like my reavers, even in their WIP state!

 

My theory for painting yellow is that yellow isn't the basecoat - white is. It's all about getting a truly white basecoat with no marks on it. Yriel yellow goes on top of this but the colour is virtually transparent and so everything under it will show through.

 

Once that's done I crack open the trollslayer yellow and the Lahmian medium and the blending is pretty straightforward. I use Dorn yellow for edging - though there isn't much of that to do on titans. The plates that cover the ankle pistons are one of the few areas it's needed.

 

Now that I've decided on Astorum I'll be spraying selected armour plates white, which will be a lot easier than going back and applying tons of thin layers of white paint to gold or dark blue. I'm worried that the paint is now so thick in places that my titans will be more difficult to hide behind terrain.

[Achinadav]

Great posing on the running reaver. Any chance of photos from the rear and other side? Would help see how all the angles line up.

[splayedpaintbrush]

I really like the running Warlord's pose, very well done. For my next Warlord I am going to attempt your posing. 

[Mandragola]

Great posing on the running reaver. Any chance of photos from the rear and other side? Would help see how all the angles line up.

 

First up, apologies for a bit of an interruption in service. It's the finals of the UKGT this weekend and I've got an army to prepare, and I'm also buying a house! These things have been slightly intruding on my titan-painting time.

 

Here are some more pics of that running reaver:

 

 

http://i610.photobucket.com/albums/tt185/Someguy01/617172E3-9C4C-41CE-9B04-7ED6523A5B32_zps2qx8f0us.jpeg

 

http://i610.photobucket.com/albums/tt185/Someguy01/741CF612-5F57-4BAF-A460-C54BA365D8F2_zps7xt7b7n5.jpeg

 

I've pledged, perhaps foolishly, to produce an Axiom maniple for the painting pledge thingy. I haven't done that yet, but I have assembled them and the skeletons are painted. So this is progress at least. The pressure is on to get these guys ready in time for the deadline though, and there remains a decent chance I'll become a servitor!

 

http://i610.photobucket.com/albums/tt185/Someguy01/3FB49D49-2DE1-446F-BD75-F3EC8116080C_zpsrsktppdf.jpeg

 

While that's still happening though, my other rather more painted (though definitely far from finished) titans have been walking! They took on the evil legio Sutorvora in a flame-off at my club last Monday. I took a couple of pictures:

 

http://i610.photobucket.com/albums/tt185/Someguy01/6D84DAB3-9B3D-4089-98F2-FB832E600174_zps8wjdaolt.jpeg

 

I made use of the Astorum rules for the first time, and in some cases to good effect. My warlord on the left managed to basically run past my opponent's melee reaver and pour shots into an enemy warlord - badly messing it up. Unfortunately it blew out its own shields with the heat it generated running up field, which is sub-optimal! The other warlord was happily jogging along, but didn't look likely to reach melee any time soon, even with the Astorum speed buffs. Deployment was these little diagonal slivers and we were pretty far apart, so melee never looked too likely.

 

My reaver also had its own shields blown out before taking a bit of a pelting from a warlord and pair of warhounds. Of all our titans it was the nearest to death, though by the end of turn 3 nothing had actually fallen. We ran out of time at that point. Must learn to play faster. These pics are only turn 2 - we had to pack up in a bit of a hurry so there was no time for the next image. I managed to keep avoiding the melee reaver.

 

http://i610.photobucket.com/albums/tt185/Someguy01/EF20B035-BAA8-4430-BCDB-EDA5B070592F_zpsarwcqxff.jpeg

 

Here's my warlord with a lovely side shot lined up on an enemy warlord. Slight shame his shields went down and there's another enemy warlord aimed right at him!

 

I was pretty unlucky with my reactor rolls, getting lots and lots of double heats when I trtied my sprint moves. So I outmanoeuvred the enemy a lot, but took more damage than he did. It was pretty cool getting to run right out of the enemy warlord's missile arcs before they got to shoot though.

 

I did make a pretty catastropic error at one point. I thouight my opponent's warhounds had already moved when they hadn't, so I sent my reaver way too close to them. It lived, thanks to my opponent having flamers instead of plasma, but that's a mistake I'll try not to make again.

 

I was using a Regia maniple. In all honesty I wasn't too impressed. Warlords and warhounds don't particularly want to be within 3" of each other. And the ability to pass an order to your other warlord isn't that helpful either. 12" feels pretty close for two warlords, and I didn't tend to want them to do the same thing anyway. The most annoying thing was that they got in each other's way, forcing me to activate in a bad order and delaying the warhounds' advance. In future I think I'd just take an Axiom in most cases.

 

It's clearly quite hard to argue in favour of a claw on a warlord, as cool as it may look. It's just so incredibly hard to actually get to combat. Double-moving means losing huge amounts of firepower, heating up your reactor and generally making a fool of yourself. I reckon I will take guns in future.

 

Glad to be back painting titans, even if it was just a brief interlude between intercessors. The maniple does look achievable, though whether I'll actually achieve it remains in some doubt.

Edited March 10, 2019 by Mandragola

[Chaeron]

Looking good Mandragola, especially seeing your models on the board (big fan of the terrain - have been tempted by that for a long time...). Great you're managing to get games in!

[Dark Bjoern]

Awesome work. My titans will be Legio Astorum too (as soon as they arrive). I love the terrain. Where is it from?

[Mandragola]

Awesome work. My titans will be Legio Astorum too (as soon as they arrive). I love the terrain. Where is it from?

Thanks. No idea where the terrain comes from to be honest - it's my club's. Chaeron might know!

 

I've done some prep work to get whine uncercoat for the yellow bits of my maniple. Not the most fun part of the task! I had the presence of mind to spray the armour plates for my running reaver white, saving me time on undercoating but forcing me to paint the edges properly.

 

Nothing's in a good state to look at yet, but some yellow is appearing now. Feels like progress!

 

Now I must paint more intercessors...

[Chaeron]

 

Awesome work. My titans will be Legio Astorum too (as soon as they arrive). I love the terrain. Where is it from?

Thanks. No idea where the terrain comes from to be honest - it's my club's. Chaeron might know!

 

I do! It's from GameMat.EU - from their Industrial range. Hope that helps!

[Dark Bjoern]

Awesome, Brother Chaeron. I will take a look