Legio Ventus & House Qattara - or - 'How to hide a Titan'

[Sherrypie]

He looks pretty swell. Oddly enough, perhaps because of the colours or the way you've angled the lines, he does have a calmer look than your previous engines. Like the sea, gently flowing along on a sunny day, with a hint of a breeze rippling the surface.

[Lord_Borak]

Wow, Now that looks awesome. One of the best Warmasters I've seen. Where is the base from??

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I wonder if the calmness comes from my using perspective properly on the lines?

 

As for the base, I made it. The railway embankment brickwork was made from a model railway kit, I made the L shape and glued it down to the base, I built this as I was building the legs of the titan, using a lot of trial and error to guage just how much step the titan can take down. This is about the upper limit of the pose without really cutting the legs up, and it meant I had to keep removing lines of bricks from the cutting. (The 'real life' Warmaster could probably do more as the straight sections of the legs are capable of extending and contracting.)

 

I then used sprue to build a frame to hold the street level up. Like a scaffold.

 

I then made an oval template of the base top using Word and cut it out if plasticard. That made the street height base. (Simply creating an oval shape in Word 88mm tall by 116mm wide does it spot on.)

 

I then cut a load of the little round stud like bits off a sprue (the circles which protrude from the sprue) I glued a line of them a millimetre back from the base rim and the underside of the street oval.

 

The rim was then encircled in a rectangle of very thin plasticard, which glued to the sprue circles and a line of styrene glue. (I'm still pleasantly surprised how well it turned out.)

 

I then cut a hole in the base under the tunnel to make more clearance for the railway. The track is a resin piece, I bent it using boiling water so it's flat on the base, and curves down below the bottom of the base.

[Mandragola]

Lovely stuff. This is a really unique Legio and works very well. It’s great to see someone try something really different and for it to come off like this.

[SkimaskMohawk]

Really love your scheme on all the titans. Ironically I find the trim really helps keep the silhouette, which is kind of the opposite point of the camo, but helps us appreciate them more.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

Really love your scheme on all the titans. Ironically I find the trim really helps keep the silhouette, which is kind of the opposite point of the camo, but helps us appreciate them more.

Yes, that's a key feature really. The real issue with a very effective camouflage scheme is that it doesn't work on models, I find that the pre-trim stage looks great in terms of effectiveness, but awful as a miniature. For instance, this is a WIP of the Warmaster when none of the trim was painted, the scheme works well, but it's lost too much definition to be recognisable on the Tabletop. (This photo also includes an attempt at a different scheme on the cowl panels, but it didn't work.)

The only exception I made to this was the top. I wasn't convinced that the panel joins were trim like enough to justify being painted as trim. Therefore I simply left them as is, with a panel line wash around all the joins. (This pic is pre-washes, but gives an idea:)

Lovely stuff. This is a really unique Legio and works very well. It’s great to see someone try something really different and for it to come off like this.

Thank you. I'm well aware that it's a bit of a joke/themed army, and those can often devolve into ridiculousness very quickly.

Fortunately, keeping the colours (largely) consistent, across the Legio, even though the patterns vary quite widely, still gives them enough coherence for them to all be identifiable as members of one force.

Here's an attempt at a group shot of the whole force: (Only two left to paint now now!) I say 'attempt' as trying to take a decent shot of this many models, of varying sizes, and get them all in focus is proving difficult with just a smartphone...

Edited May 16, 2021 by Brother Adelard

[SkimaskMohawk]

Ya the wip shot is definitely hard to focus on lol.

 

All in all, really motivating to finish assembling mine knowing they can turn out so well.

[Bjorn Firewalker]

Excellent works. Are the stripes meant to be urban warfare camouflage?

[Sword Brother Adelard]

Not exactly. It's Dazzle Camouflage. Just designed to confuse your enemy enough so they're not sure exactly what they're looking at, or its direction or speed.

[schoon]

As usual, awesome work. The dazzle really works well on the Warmaster, with so much space on the armor plates.

[Mendi Warrior]

Absolutely wonderful, extremely cohesive force, well done 

[General Zodd]

Group shot!!! I was going to ask if you could oblige, but you’ve gone ahead and beaten me to it. This is a lovely looking battle group, really smart and very original.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I have a better one now, I just need to upload it somewhere else, it's too big for the gallery, and resizing it down to 2mb absolutely ruined it.

 

I learned how to 'Focus Stack' to get it all in focus at once. And I'm pleasantly surprised with the results.

[RipOffProductions]

Anywho, enough of my ramblings, here he is:

awesome pose and accompanying terrain/set-piece, nice use of the kit's built-in toe flexibility, but shouldn't that small pillar be crushed? after all that's where the foot/back-toe used to be before lifting up as the titan strides forward...

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I'd have to check the top down view. It definitely got kicked over.

[Mendi Warrior]

or that is because the titan is advancing on tip-toes to remain unnoticed? 

[Sword Brother Adelard]

Finally managed to get them all in focus, and at a decent resolution!

[Bjorn Firewalker]

A fine Legion.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I've been home for 12 days isolating, but I've not been very sick, so I took advantage of the time off to smash out one of the three unpainted Warlords I have in the pile of shame.

It's mad really, the first time I painted a Warlord it seemed like a massive task, but this time, post-Warmaster, it seemed much more manageable. This was also a rescue titan, which is always a nice thing to do. It did help that the previous owner did a good job building it, left off the panels, and by good fortune used his magnets the same way round as I did!

[Lord_Borak]

That looks ace. That colour scheme would drive me nuts. Still, nice use of the time and those old Tank transfers. I have shed loads of those so might have to do something similar :D

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I have to admit, when they're all together they are a bit difficult to look at.

[schoon]

Great work on the Titan - that many stripes is a daunting task!

 

..and hope you recover quickly! (Even if it means not painting as much ;))

[Sword Brother Adelard]

These pictures won't quite bring this blog to an end, I still have a Psi Titan to do one day, and plans to return to the Knights in the future - if the rules are ever re-balanced. I can't see me running a Household list as things stand currently - this does bring my Titan Legio to a finish, as I have no plans to paint any more of the existing titans in the range. 

So, Dire Wolves! As one of the seeming minority who has liked these from the outset, I was ready at 10am on pre-order day, and, when I saw the surprisingly reasonable price, ordered 2. I went double Neutron Laser, because a) I didn't see the point of the Volcano on a platform that is going to struggle to strip shields at the range it wants to operate at, and b) I didn't know when I ordered that the Volcano would be +1 to hit at long range...

The kit is honestly lovely, and the quality was excellent in both cases. It offers a lot of options in its posing, meaning it's almost as fluid in the posing as the Warmaster. There's a lot of articulation, and if your good with drilling, you can extend the leg pistons to accommodate a wide range of poses. With this in mind I went for two very different styles, a loping walking dire wolf, with the legs quite tall, and a squatting pose, hiding behind the cover of a building, as I imagine a Dire Wolf would be doing in the fluff. This is a sniper titan after all. 

In terms of criticism of the kit, I disliked that the natural fit of the head is to make it look down, the highest elevation you can get out of the head is fairly low because of the way the neck joint is modelled. I fixed that by slicing a bit of the resin out of the neck socket at the top, and that way I could get the head looking level, or even slightly up, which makes posing look a bit more focussed IMO.
I wish the shield generators had been modelled as a separate piece, that would have made painting (and in my case, masking) the panel much easier, I also didn't like the thigh armour panels being part of the legs, but it wasn't the end of the world. 
On the plus side, with the use of magnets and not gluing the bolters to their mounting bracket, or the cables, the bolters rotate freely in the mount, and the arms twist at the body, this also made painting the titan easier, as I could remove them.
The Neutron Laser doesn't need gluing at all, simply glue the bottom of the elevation pistons to the torso, and the top of the pistons to the weapon and the whole assembly lifts in and out with a fairly snug fit; again, a must for painting ease. This will also mean that if someone like Battlebling ever makes a Not Volcano, I can swap one out easily. I also didn't glue the legs to the body until the very end.

In terms of game modelling, the titan hiding behind the building is magnetised to the base, so it can, if needed, face backwards to avoid any line of sight issues, (not that I'm expecting any tbh, I think it's pretty easy to work around. I also magnetised the top floor of the building so it can be removed if needed.

Painting them has taken a lot longer than I would have liked, but I am very pleased with the results. I went for the Berlin Camo again to complement the two Warhounds in this style, and on similar bases. Digicam was something I haven't done for a while, and now I've done it again, I remember why I didn't do it more at the beginning! This was also my first use of oils on a titan for streaking, and I'm not going back to trying to use washes.

So here they are: 'Ultimum Verbum' (The Last Word) in Berlin Camo and 'Tacet Vigil' (The Silent Watcher) in Digicam. Next to get them on the table!

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Edited August 1, 2022 by Brother Adelard

[Sherrypie]

Lovely work as ever, Brother Adelard. Hugging the ruined buildings brings the point nicely across that these engines are ambush predators.

[schoon]

I also saw your Dire Wolf on FB. Great work on the cammo and the weathering!