House Umbrawatch

[Magos Takatus]

Hello all, I'm migrating my Knights from my Adeptus Mechanicus page to fit in with the new forum structure. This means a new blog, for better or worse. 

I'm presenting my noble Knights from House Umbrawatch.  I only have a rough idea of the characters of the pilots and the background for the house but those will be developed later.

I've managed to cobble together some photographs for those interested. 

 

Unfortunately the new Codex is fighting me all the way for daring to build a Cerastus Knight as my Princeps. I was after Codex Imperial Knights, not Codex Imperial Squires!  I guess I will probably need to build more Armigers later down the line. I have one more Questoris Knight to build but I'm in no rush to work on that one as yet.

[sairence]

I'm in awe at those paintjobs.

[Magos Takatus]

Thank you kindly. I'm not sure why but the pictures look a bit artificial somehow? I think my phone is doing something to the images, like some kind of auto sharpen or something. I am happy that my group shot was all in focus, I've never successfully managed that in an army photo before.

[Lord Blackwood]

Fantastic Paint work 

How do you  do your golds? 

[Magos Takatus]

Thank you! For most of my golds I have used the Scale 75 Gold paint set. I start off with The darkest colour, Necro Gold and I apply it to the model. I then highlighted the gold areas with Elven Gold using an airbrush, (though some were hand brushed) and I edge highlighted with Citrine Alchemy from the same gold paint set. I also added some shading, probably with Agrax Earthshade wash. I didn't write down the recipe in great detail because I decided that each Knight is a war machine that has been built and maintained for hundreds of years or even longer and have been redecorated and repairs during that time, so minor variations were excusable.

Saying that, my Knight Castigator was completely different. I hand-painted Green Stuff World's Bronze pigment over all the metal before deciding to go over 90% of that using their Antique Gold pigment instead. These paints were mixed with the GSW master medium, which looks lovely but is a pain to have to keep to a workable consistency over a large model. I believe I highlighted with Elven Gold and Citrine Alchemy as before. Somewhere along this point I shaded with Skeleton Horde contrast mixed with (I think) contrast medium. This added a nice amount of shading between the edges of the gold. I also used Scale 75's Soilworks Dark Mud oil paint to shade the recesses, panel lines and rivets.

I know these are pretty haphazard recipes to follow but they should give a fair idea what I was up to. The Scale 75 gold and silver metallic sets are pretty good and the GSW metallic pigments are great if you can forgive having to mix your own paints and the risk of mess (for the love of the Omnissiah, don't sneeze near the stuff, that is something I live in constant fear of it happening! 

Edited August 24, 2023 by Magos Takatus
found typos long after I posted this and they were bugging me.

[Magos Takatus]

Here's my army ready for war tomorrow. One of the Armigers is not in my army list and is just posing for the photographs. I tried to get a photograph where the lighting wasn't quite so overpowering. Instead I have a picture showing the world that I still need to tidy the kitchen! The bottom half of the Knights seem to have ended up in shadow unfortunately. There are a few minor additions to the models since last time. I got some uv curing resin and made some chemical spills on the base of the Castigator (Which is probably obscured in this picture unfortunately).

I doubt I'll manage to log an entire battle report but I will try to take some photographs as I go. If I was right and my friend did indeed build a Chaos Knight force this is going to be quite an interesting encounter.

 

Unfortunately the game was cancelled due to illness. Shame, I was getting quite excited about this round.

Edited July 31, 2022 by Magos Takatus

[Interrogator Stobz]

Lovely looking force Brother.

Tha ks for sharing with us.

[Magos Takatus]

Thank you. I have one more Knight left to go but for now I'll skip to another project. I'll keep working on my photography though. My brother seems to think it's the HDR settings on my phone that are exaggerating the sharpness of the images. Hopefully future efforts will look a bit more natural.

Edited August 24, 2023 by Magos Takatus
Can't spell apparently

[Magos Takatus]

Hello all! I finally got to show my army off to my friends and I got to witness them getting destroyed by my friend's Chaos Knight Army. I got tabled turn 5 due to a combination of my tactical blunders and incredibly poor shooting in the first two turns. Highlights include my Castigator cutting down the Khornate Knight in melee, leaving my Gallant somewhat confused and wrong-footed, my Warlord blowing himself away with the Point Blank Barrage when trying to dispose of the Tyrant that was rampaging through my lines (He was probably going to die anyway but I helped him along sadly) and me running my Gallant around said Tyrant in order to crush the opposing warlord with his Thunderstrike gauntlet.

I got outplayed again but I had so much fun. I found the Blessed by the Sacristans Warlord Trait was great fun on my Castigator. He was given character status since I can't make a Cerastus Knight my Warlord. (Booo!). He didn't do devastating damage but the 2-3 mortal wounds he was putting out most turns made him more reliable than my otherwise woeful shooting. My Castigator eventually found himself tangling with the enemy Tyrant, only to be finished off by a flank charge from a Wardog. (Clever girl!)

I'll happily mess about with my Knights again but trying to get my head round the Code Chivalric stuff seemed more of a hassle than a bonus.

(one of my Armigers on the table was standing in for my friend's third Wardog so if it seems to be in weird positions, that would be why)

As a side note, I think my friend's Tyrant is fantastic, the gribbly maw from a Haruspex makes for a really creepy Knight. Perhaps that's why I couldn't harm him much, his disturbing presence must have ruined my chances to damage him.

Edited August 24, 2023 by Magos Takatus

[Magos Takatus]

I finally got round to finishing the House Umbrawatch intro video.It's a slideshow with a few short video clips showing off my Knights, my gaming mat, some terrain and an AI-painted backdrop. In future I might not cheap out and instead get someone to paint a bigger one so I can be more adventurous with my camera angles.

 

https://youtu.be/BUG8RrMMwyA

 

Also included are some portrait photographs that wouldn't fit the slideshow aspect ratio properly.