Monday, 4 October 2021

2 Events, an Exhibition and an Imperator Update

Titan Owner's Club Walk 2021

My engines arrayed for battle!

After a couple of years in lockdown, August finally saw Titan owners from across the UK gather for a Titan Walk in Milton Keynes.  Our aim for this year was to hit 100 engines (not counting Knights) in attendance; we fell just short of this, but it was still an absolutely epic weekend!  Here is a small number of photos I took at the event - I'd highly recommend anyone with a Forgeworld Titan registering with the Titan Owner's Club and joining us at the UK walk events as they are amazing!

Titan Parade

Each ToC Walk starts with the engines and knights being arrayed for inspection and photos before the start of gaming...
 











To War!

During the first day of gaming, I set up my three Legio Metalica engines and supporting knights (Drawn from House Raven and the Court of the Fisher King) on two fronts.  As there were a lot of engines on the field, my knights were deployed to the fore to screen titans as much as possible.  I decided that my Warhounds and Reaver would also be best charging the enemy gunline in the hopes that they would be able to take some traitorous dogs down with them!

The Court of the Fisher King screened their Legio Solaria allies on the left of our battlezone...  

...while my House Raven and Freeblade knights took the right flank 

Behind my charging Warhounds, my two Acastus knights planted their feet before raining death on the enemy from afar!
The Loyalist Legio banners displayed in all their glory!

Moments before the charge!

Absolute carnage ensued with my engines damaging their traitor counterparts but not delivering any deathblows...

...until Reef Thresher performed a vicious rear charge on a traitor Warhound!

Reef Thresher preparing her drill-lance for a very nasty proctological killing blow!

As the battle closed, while Reef Thresher finished off one hound, Excidium Rex performed a suicidal charge in a bid to take the enemy on a one way trip to nuclear death.  Alas it was not to be, with my remaining hound falling silent as the enemy perforated his armour with laser fire!

Legio Metalica Banner

Following an amazing weekend, I was even able to add some new engine kill pins to my Legio Metalica banner.  I also added a few extra seals to the banner - one with the incantation for the Legio Metalica Brotherhood of Iron and the other with a poem, a sign of allegiance from the Fisher King's Knights to the Forge World of Metalica.

My banner in all its glory!

Kill markings

My banner embellished with its seals

Greetings From The Warp 2021

The fabulous organisers of the Horus Heresy themed event Greetings from the Warp invited the Titan Owner's Club to put on an exhibition game at their event in September - deciding it would be rude not to attend such a gracious summons, we duly assembled for the second large scale battle of 2021!

In advance of the GFTW event, I threw together a suitably apocalyptic explosion marker for use during this event. It was made in an afternoon and although it wasn't perfect, it was a good learning exercise, enabling me to comfortably reproduce the marker for future events!

My 'Nuke' marker stands around 2 feet tall, representing a titan going nuclear!

The centre of the explosion contains LEDs which make the mushroom cloud glow!

For this event, I had the absolute pleasure of attending with Lyden P and Adie H, completing the mighty triumvirate; the 3 Muskratbeards!

The best of buddies! :)

We kicked off the day with some photos of Adie and Lyden's beautiful engines, as neither were able to attend the TOC Walk in August.  Following this brief glamour shoot, we progressed to full on battle!

My Legio Metalica engines backed by Adie's mighty maniple prepare to advance on the enemy

Lyden's engines begin to close the net

Adie's warlord surveys the huge engine melee which quickly developed in the mid-field

Pete C's Solaria Warbringer delivers the killing blow to a traitor engine with a well placed quake shell

Warhound titans in the centre of the battlefield start to die in droves as the close proximity starts a horrifying chain reaction of death!

After the battle, the victorious traitors would survey a molten valley carved into the planet's surface by the death of so many engines. 

I was of course utterly magnanimous after destroying one of Lyden's Reaver titans... 

A headlong charge into enemy engines is not advisable - especially when they are armed with a terrifying array of close combat weapons...

Ferrum Dominus lines up a shot with his carapace mounted turbo laser...

Pete's Warbringer continues to lob shells from behind the defensive wall, suffering no return fire at all!

A wide shot of our end of the battlefield

Although slightly outnumbered, the loyalists refused to back down in the face of the Warmaster's lapdogs and sallied forth!

Adie's gorgeous engines

Getting to field my three engines twice in one year was a real treat!


Until next year!

Warhammer World Exhibition

Finally, after a couple of years in the waiting, I'm very proud to say that my Imperial Knights, The Court of The Fisher King were finally put on display at the end of August.  They will be in the Warhammer World exhibition hall until the start of November - I'd like to thank everyone who has made the trip to visit them already, sending me pictographic evidence of their pilgrimage! :)



Imperator Titan Build Update

Despite my good intentions, I'm still a little slow with updates on the project due mainly to events, holidays and changing jobs.  Now those have all passed, I should be able to post more regularly (but don't hold me to that...)!

Painting underway!

As I mentioned previously in my build notes, I aim to complete the legs and pelvis including the base, crotch banner and other fixtures prior to making any more significant progress on the rest of the build.

Completing the legs was by far the hardest and most time consuming part of the build; my hope is that once the painting is complete, the rest of the god-engine should progress more quickly!

I started by blocking out the basic colours with regular acrylics

This was a little time consuming on the side sections due to the aquila designs

Once I had completed various sections of panelling I began to add decals

The rear access hatch was picked out with some hazard stripes which the small stabiliser toes received an aquila 

The Titanicus scale Legio Metalica decals were useful as points of interest here and there

I picked out the doors in gold and added more decals like the danger symbols under the shell ejectors for the embedded vulcan cannons

Here is the first leg after its oil wash

The oils add a nice filter to the metal areas and instant weathering to the panelling

I still need to do some tidying up and final highlights, but its coming along necely!

With the Vulcan in place and the armour panels now glued, this leg is almost complete!

A closer look at some of the inner leg details

The knee and thigh plates look right at home! 

A view of the base from above.  Once I've finished the final leg highlights, it'll be time to screw and glue this leg to the base!


While I had my other titans out, I took a quick picture with a Warhound for scale!

Starshatter Plasma Annihilator

As with literally every other section of the titan build, I started with some sketches to try and nail down how I wanted this gigantic monster of a plasma cannon to look.

A selection of my rough sketches to work out shapes and overall design I wanted for the weapon.  The final shape would be very important as its main armaments are a defining characteristic of the Imperator 

Although I had to make some slight adjustments to the proportions along the way, this is pretty much the design I settled on.  I drew the silhouette of a Warlord Sunfury Plasma at the top to show the scale of this beastly weapon

The nozzle of the main barrel is... big.  Very big.

These are the plasma fuel cannisters which are also... big.

I began by marking out the surfaces which would receive the plasma cells

I then set about the incredibly laborious task of cutting hundreds of sections of half round styrene to make the cells themselves

This is how the side panel cells looked once cut and cleaned up

I then fit them to the receiving side panels

I created the top and bottom panels, then used some pretty big ABS L sections to create brackets, screwing and gluing the barrel together

Again, big.  Note the original crenulations which were way too large and were later replaced

In order to keep the weight down, I kept the inside hollow with the exception of the ABS brackets and some foamex braces for strength and rigidity

I created this curved sanding tool to help me match the curve on the top sections of the plasma cells

This is the first couple glued in place. Doing the rest on all four faces took a LOOOOOOOONG time...

Here is the WIP barrel next to the leg. I was using the legs to check scale

The first run of top cells in progress...

The top row done.  I lost the will to photograph the process any further than this!

So here is the barrel's basic assembly prior to a lot of filling, sanding and detailing! 

The mocked up cannon

Big.

And that's it on the Imperator for now!  As I'm a bit titan'd out now, I'm taking a break from the far future to work on some fantasy miniatures for a while.  Given that Age of Sigmar 3rd edition dropped recently, I thought it was probably time for me to revisit something ugly, smelly and very, very stupid...

1 comment:

  1. Most impressive! The Club Walk always looks amazing. I can't imagine the amount of sweet, sweet resin in one room.
    Also great to see you putting paint on the Imperator. Looks like it's really coming together.

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