Imperator Titan Build Mega Update 5!

For the Omnissiah!

Ira Metallum Stands!

I've made a huge amount of progress on my Imperator Titan build since the last update I posted; mainly thanks to having booked a week off work and getting a lot of time to crack on with the beast!

My aim was to use my time off wisely and get the lower half of the body into a state where it could be painted.  This would allow me to fully and permanently assemble the legs, base and pelvis.  This sounded pretty straightforward, but in reality was actually a huge task as I had so much detailing to complete, some minor structural issues which needed to be addressed and the one part I'd been dreading - making the shin guards...

As much as I am chomping at the bit to work on the body, carapace, arms and head, I knew that getting the legs completed to give me a really solid foundation was key. I'm almost at the finish line with the legs and have continued to document the process as I've gone along!  Enjoy the pictures and my rambling...

Thigh Armour

Although I'd completed the first thigh armour plate in my last post, I still had a second one to make.  The build was relatively uneventful as I followed the same process as the first plate.

The two plates side by side - the left plate was still in progress when this picture was taken

With only a small amount of work left on the second plate, I did a test assembly to make sure everything fit.  I also test fitted the pneumatic hoses to see how they looked 

Note the titan's proximity to the wall which it required in order to stand at this point! At this point in the build I also hadn't added the hose ports to the rear of the legs which is why they're not fully attached 

Outer Shin Armour Detailing

I've mentioned before that I put together an assembly process for big projects like this one where I come up with the order in which I intend to build components as some need to be completed before I can fit the next part correctly.  Although they didn't have much of a structural impact on the build, the outer shin guard details needed to be added before I could construct the front facing shin guard plates which will be made to overlap the side facing panels.  I also needed to complete them before I could make the toe joint armour plating as that would also need to be made to fit a very particular area.

For clarity, the highlighted area is the panel I needed to detail on both sides of each leg as the shape is mirrored 

 

I traced out the shape on graph paper then drew up the design over a couple of evenings. I carefully used some high quality masking tape to thicken the paper then painstakingly cut out the design with a knife.  This would now act as a template

Once I had cut out the design on 2mm foamex, I tested the master on the panels to make sure it would fit as intended

Much to my wife's chagrin, I then created a silicone mould and set about casting up four copies of the design in resin in our kitchen. I added some reservoirs in the mould so that when I scraped off the excess resin it had somewhere to run other than the worktop!

I cleaned up the casts with a sander, making sure that they all ended up the same depth... 

...while burying myself and everything around me with a blizzard of resin dust

And here is a detail plate fixed to the shin with the rivets added. I had to glue on the rivets after casting because I needed the design to be usable for both sides

Toe Joint Armour

The groundwork for the toe joint armour plating was laid when I first designed and attached the toes, adding the circular joints on each side of the two side facing toes.  The intention was always to hide the join with armour and also make sure that the joint plates could move independently of the foot and toes to accommodate posability,

Here's a rough sketch showing how I intended to layer the armour plating and integrate the toes

I wanted the toe joint armour to have a nice rounded Mars pattern feel to tie them in with the rest of the titan

After drawing out the design on graph paper again, I made some templates then assembled four identical copies from foamex and styrene

I continually checked the fit while cutting the components, making minor adjustments as I went along

The final basic plates fit over the joint and clip into the circular toe joints. Each armour plate can be moved up and down so I can pose them exactly as desired in the final build.  It also adds to the realism of the build, as it has the correct structure for real world movements

Once I was happy with the fit for the plates, I coated them with epoxy putty and made some nice rounded plating before sanding them to a nice finish.  Note that I also hardened all of the joints and connections with putty as they needed a very slight bend to clip them in place so I needed them to be strong

Once I was happy with the filling and sanding, I added trim, details and rivets

Test fitting them to the toes went perfectly so I called this stage done!

Here are the four plates sprayed with a silver base coat - they look great once they're not a hodge-podge of coloured parts!

Secondary Toes

In my last post I showed the secondary toes I'd made - in order to mount them effectively, I needed to create the sockets.

The secondary toe socket was made in a similar fashion to the toes themselves 

I test fit the parts while making the sockets to make sure the fit was correct

Here is the final socket with the details such as trim and rivets added

I made callbacks to existing titans and my own designs during socket sculpting. Most people probably won't even notice, but the details are there! 

After a lot of deliberation, I decided that the toes didn't work on the front of the foot, so I went back to just adding them to the rear either side of the heel

Other little details which I was quite pleased with are things like the pistons which would control the toe movement.  Again, it just reinforces the realism of the piece even though I could have left them out

Toe Rebuild

During the build of the striding foot, I'd attached the side facing toes with a block to help keep them straight on an uneven surface.  It had niggled me for a while as it had extended the toe connection and by proxy their distance from the foot by approximately 10mm.  Although that doesn't sound like a lot, it just never looked right next to the other foot and made the toe joint armour plate fitting extremely difficult.  I finally decided that after sinking almost a year and a half into the project, I couldn't afford to bodge my way around a problem as I'd end up regretting it later.

As a result, I cut off the side toes, cleaned everything up and then reconstructed the joints of the toes.  It took a whole evening and was a little stressful, but I am very glad to have made the decision not to press ahead with a less than perfect design!

Here is the result of the toe removal and trimming off of excess material.  It was pretty rough taking a saw and knife to something I'd spent so many hours on, but the end result was worth the anxiety!  In this picture, you can also see the reinforced ribbing which I added to the inside of the shin plates

While I was working on the disconnected toes, I also added some heavy duty treads to the bottom - it's about 10mm deep, so it's got some brutal grip!

Shin Armour Plates

Ok, so this is the big one. Out of everything I needed to build for the Imperator, the thought of two perfectly smooth, tapering compound curved armour plates terrified me.  I spent hours working out how to get them looking the way I wanted.  I'll walk you exhaustively through the process I used... :)

I began the process by making cladding to match the existing shin plates then cut them to the shape I wanted for the finished greaves.  You'll notice that I had started marking up the area for the Vulcan Mega Bolters

Once I had the three panel sections glued together, I cut the shaped ribs which would help me to achieve the required curves when I got to the shaping phase.  The scrappy pieces of foamex were only there to add a little bulk meaning I needed less filler

Shin guards with the first layer of body filler

Annoyingly, at this point I ran out of filler so left them to cure overnight and sought out some more the next day...

The next day I put on the last coat with a nice new tin of Isopon!

I did some heavy sanding then retested the panels to make sure that they fit.  At this point, I noted that the heat of the curing Isopon had actually warped the plates slightly.  I broke the plates and fixed them in the right position before filling all of the gaps and lower areas of the plate's skirt

And here are the final plates after some painstaking filling and sanding to correctly profile them. 

While designing the shin plates, I had decided that I wanted to integrate a void shield emitter into each one.  The Imperator is so gigantic even compared to other titans that I felt it would need the emitters studded over its entire body in order to provide the whole machine with effective shielding.  I modelled the emitters on the Warlord version but slightly larger.

I made a master emitter on a flat plane so it could be moulded in one piece.  I have some standard counters which form the underside of each emitter

Two emitter casts next to the master mould

A rectangular gap was cut through into the void of both shins

The Vulcan Mega Bolter housing was designed to provide a mechanical connection, tightly fixing the plates together

The Vulcan Mega Bolters fit snugly into the housing to provide some brutal point defence for the legs

Adding trim to the armour plating is a fairly long winded process, but it it's much easier with the components I'd previously cast up to add flourishes on the plating

The skirt on this side of the plate between the toes was built up with epoxy putty and sanded into shape.  I deliberately left this area until the panel was fixed in place as it's over a curved area and was easier to marry up in post 

Painting

With only the shin plates and feet left to clean up and detail, I was able to start priming the legs and pelvis.  Once I've finished painting them, I'll be able to fix the hips and lock the legs into the shins and feet permanently.

In order to prepare the parts for their silver base coat, I cleaned the components one last time and then used plastic primer to seal them and help them to bond a little better with the paint

The first batch of components sprayed silver

I love this stage as it pulls everything together and allows you to see it as a single entity rather than a patchwork of layers

Sprayed detail on the outside leg -really shaping up well 

The inside leg features a service hatch and ladder as shown in my last blog post.  I had to remove and reinforce the ladder guards with metal wire as they were way too fragile in just plastic

The rear of the leg sports a number of huge pistons, service panels and other details.  You can also see the pneumatic hose port I've added to the upper thigh

I found that the teeth of the locking pins weren't long enough to lock solidly enough into the pelvis so I drilled into them, added 3" screws for the core and extended the flat surfaces with putty.

 The legs now lock into the hip sockets very tightly and once filled with epoxy resin WILL NEVER MOVE AGAIN!!!

I am particularly fond of the token storm bolter mounted in the rear of the pelvis.

I decided to paint the panels before fixing them permanently and have started with the crotch plate - I'm going with classic Legio Metalica colours, so black and white hazards are a must!

Basing

Although the base is still in its infancy, I have started working out what I want the Imperator to be striding on and over.  It's difficult to understand the scale of a model like the Imperator without visual queues.  One of the best places to show this is on the base...

I've marked out the footprint of the Imperator onto the base as I will be building up the rest of the base to simulate the weight of the titan pressing into the ground in a similar way to what I did with the Reaver's feet

Here is a munitorum armoured container...

...and here it is after an Imperator has stepped on it!

It was a lot harder than it looks to crush half of the container without completely ruining the detail

I ended up smashing the crate after assembly then heating, deforming, flattening and then partly reassembling the crate over a couple of hours.  Eventually it will be placed just under the back half of the striding foot

A Final Look at Ira Metallum Standing!

From above you can see how the legs and armour plates all lock together

As soon as I've finished the shin guards I'll be gap filling and detailing everything before getting the base done

From above you can see the large slot in the waist which the body slots into

It's all coming together!

Here's a 28mm miniature to give you an idea of just how huge this guy is!

Banner

Finally I'll give you a peek at the banner I'm starting to draw up - this will eventually be hanging between the Imperator's legs, giving me a fair amount of room to work with.  I've only done a few quick sketches so far, but I'm starting to form an idea of what I'd like to have on it.

This was my first sketch - I like the crenelations at the bottom of the banner and the two side sashes which will take the kill markings.  I wanted an armoured figure in the central window, so started trying to work out a look

I tried a crusader styled warrior, but this came a bit too close to the look of a black templar

A skeletal warrior in armour is closer to the look I want, to represent the iron skulls and their martial prowess.  I'll keep sketching until I reach an image I'm happy to translate into a banner image! 

Battlefleet Gothic - Tau Kor'vattra Fleet & Alien Auxiliaries

Defending the Empire

My Kor'vattra fleet with auxiliaries

Battlefleet gothic is a game system I dearly love and would say that although, broadly speaking it has more complex mechanics, I prefer it to other fleet based games such as Star Wars Armada.  The main reason for this is that it has a lot more variation, particularly with obstacles, the effects of gravity wells etc.  It's not a perfect game system and definitely has some balance issues (I'm looking at you Necrons...), but on the whole, it's amazing for creating narrative campaigns and special missions.  Planetary invasions / defences in particular are a blast!

Recently I decided to dust off my old Battlefleet gothic Tau Fleet which has been in storage for a number of years.  The models themselves were in good repair, but I decided to improve their original paint jobs (as my skills as a painter have improved since I originally did them) and paint their bases which gas clouds and stars rather than just having them plain black.

In total, my Tau fleets (the Forgeworld Kor'vattra ships, the Specialist Games Explorer fleet, all of my alien auxiliaries and defence platforms) total 97 miniatures.  That doesn't sound like much until you realise that a decent sized game of BFG normally involves about 10 ships per side!

The ships I'll be showing today are from the Kor'vattra protection fleet and are in my opinion some of the absolute best ship designs not only in this game, but in any game system.  They have a grace and flow to the designs which really set them apart from the ships of other races; instantly recognisable from their silhouettes.

While the Explorer fleets tend to focus mainly on ordnance domination with huge numbers of fighters, bombers, drone guided torpedoes and masses of turrets to reduce the impact of any enemy ordnance, the Kor'vattra fleet is a much more resilient in a stand up fight, with a nice range of weaponry allowing for a broader array of tactical options than just disgorging waves of ordnance.  The Kor'vattra fleet in particular focuses all of its weapons arrays to the fore, creating a deadly kill zone in front of your ships, allowing for deadly alpha strikes rather than strafing broadsides like their imperial equivalents.  Being able to loose batteries, lances and torpedoes on an enemy battleship from multiple squadrons can be devastating!

The Kor'vattra Fleet

I still have a handful of Kor'vattra ships to complete, but the majority of them have been freshened up and photographed for your viewing pleasure!

The majority of my Kor'Vattra ships - I still have another Custodian, two more Protectors and eight Wardens to finish off before I move on to the merchant fleet and defences

The Forgeworld ships were the first ones I bought when starting my fledgling battlefleet - I started off with just two Protectors, but quickly added more and more ships to the fleet.  I found them fun to use although I did have a tendency to create unwanted pile-ups with poor manoeuvring!

The fleet preparing to make a system jump

One of the most fun and unique abilities of the Tau is their drone guided torpedoes.  The bane of my friend's Nightlord fleet, unlike normal torpedoes which only move in a straight line once fired, Tau torpedoes can be steered into the path of enemy ships, chasing them around the table like a hilarious Benny Hill sketch! 

Custodian Battleships

The flexibility of their armaments, a large ordnance capacity including fighters, bombers and torpedoes  makes the Custodian Battleship a solid core for any Tau fleet.  As battleships go, they are not as resilient as Space Marine Battlebarges nor as manoeuvrable as Eldar equivalents, but their major advantage is that all of their batteries, lances and torpedo tubes are forward facing.  This means that it's easy to make sure that you are facing your opponent with all of your weapons for an alpha strike.  This is because you are always moving in the direction you wish to fire, unlike ships which require more complex manoeuvring to bring broadsides to bear.

My Custodian Flagship, The Ulysses with its three dedicated Warden escorts

One limitation of this fleet is that you can only take warden gunships up to the capacity of grav hooks in your fleet.  Each custodian has three hooks, so you rarely find yourself without a decent compliment of escorts.

Each of my Custodians is painted with a unique colour scheme as are their matching Wardens

Warden Gunships are a mainstay of the fleet as they are armed with moderate batteries and a single lance.  As they're fast and manoeuvrable, they can easily keep pace with and eliminate most enemy equivalents, protecting your larger ships from being flanked and harried.

The Agamemnon was actually the first Custodian I bought and painted.  It's a veteran of many battles

I quickly lost count of the number of times its accompanying Warden Gunships were destroyed! 

The Heracles Revenant and its Warden escorts were painted with the film Tron in mind

I was especially pleased with the dust clouds on these bases

The Ghost of Honour is painted in a 'stealth pattern'

The paint scheme grants the ability to look bad ass!

Protector Cruisers

Protectors are effectively smaller Custodians with better manoeuvrability (certainly with the V2 ruleset which allows them to make crazy 90 degree turns!).

They are a brilliant line ship and can easily go toe to toe with an equivalent imperial cruiser.  With a large number of turrets and 2 hanger bays for fighters, they're almost immune to enemy ordnance, making them harder to redirect than many other ships of their side.

My first set of Protector Cruisers, the Strike Freedom and the Infinite Justice.  I was watching a lot of Gundam at the time!

Rocking the signature paint scheme of my fleet, these stalwart defenders have seen off many enemy fleets as well as once being pulled into a black hole while fighting Necrons.  Don't ask... :(

The Sabre and the Rapier; another pair of solid ships which have seen a large number of engagements!

I liked the idea of opposite paint schemes on this pair of protectors

Protector cruisers work well together in pairs - individually I found that they tend to get picked apart by escorts because of their limited capacity for tanking damage, but in pairs, they are more than capable of punching through an escort formation or tag teaming and crippling a cruiser.

The Photronic and the Electross have different bridges to the other Protectors in the fleet. I like a little variation in my ship designs as they won't all have been constructed in the same shipyards

This pair of Protectors sport the same 'stealth' paint scheme as the Ghost of Honour - they are clearly part of the same battlegroup!

Emissary Light Cruisers

The Emissary light cruiser is a good support ship, but suffers horribly if outmanoeuvred by heavily armed gunboats like the Space Marine Nova.  Because of their low damage capacity and shields, they can be quickly crippled by a determined opponent.  I often found them to be best used for flank denials although they rarely survived any engagement unscathed!

Despite all of the drawbacks, I still adore the Emissary as the design is so iconic and for their size, they can still pack a nasty punch when used in pairs.

More veterans of my early fleet, the Firebrand and the Torchbearer were good in smaller engagements, but were a little weak against fast Space Marine Lance boats which frequently nailed them to the wall!

Despite their size, two Emissaries can still threaten an enemy flank or hide in a dust cloud and snipe with guided torpedoes!

My third Emissary, the Foil is painted again painted with the stealth scheme and sports a different bridge tower to the standard Emissaries

As it was painted after my last game of BFG, this diminutive little ship has never actually made its maiden voyage.  Hopefully it will one day fulfil its destiny (being destroyed in turn 2 by a Nightlord Nova Frigate attack)

Castellan Escorts

Castellans are the slightly larger cousins of the Warden Gunship, although they do not require grav hook capacity to be deployed.

Castellans trade the armour penetrating lance of the Warden for torpedo tubes and a slightly better array of gun batteries.  The Castellan is not meant for hunting enemy escorts, but for performing torpedo runs on capital ships.  Due to the generous torpedo capacity on Tau cruisers and Battleships, Castellans are by no means a must for a Kor'Vattra fleet, but they are fun to use when grouped in large enough squadrons to overwhelm a cruiser's turrets with a ridiculous salvo of Torpedoes!

The colour schemes and bases of my two Castellan squadrons make it easy to work out which group they are in

As with some of my other ships, these four Castellans got the stealth scheme to set them apart from their sister squadron

Courier Transport ships

I was unable to get my grubby mitts on some Forgeworld Courier Transports before they went out of print.  They were the ships I kept putting off buying as they were really only scenario / objective ships so were not really a priority.  Although I regret no buying them when I had the chance, I did eventually find a suitable replacement in the form of the rather ancient Spacefleet Thunderbolt cruiser which had a similar shape to the escort ships of the Tau Merchant fleet.  They were difficult and costly to track down, but I'm glad I invested in them as they fit in perfectly as Water Caste transports, making perfect objective ships for my games. 

Alien Auxiliaries

In addition to the core Tau fleet, I have also dusted down and tarted up my alien auxiliaries.  Although they are allies rather than part of the core fleet, the range of alien races available to the Tau add a little flavour (and unpredictability) to the fleet overall.

Kroot Warsphere

I scratch built my Kroot Warsphere as I'd decided that I wanted it to look more like a constantly spinning ball of gyroscopic hoops than a large solid block like the official metal miniature.  I still love the design even though I could probably have executed it better now that my scratch building skills have improved!

This is the largest battleship class of Kroot Warsphere (they're all effectively the same, just with more or less batteries and hull points).  I decided I was only ever going to make one Warsphere as although it's fun to use one, they're not viable as a staple warship in your fleet.

The main reasons for this inflexibility are: 

1). It only has batteries, so its firepower can be easily reduced by obstacles, range or the enemy ship's facing

2). It is so slow and ponderous that it always counts as stationary so can take devastating amounts of damage from other battleships

3). It's renowned for being one of the most annoying ships in the game to manoeuvre as you can only change your facing if you move on all ahead full orders and roll 10+ on 2D6.  As such, almost every game I played with the Warsphere ended with it shuffling off the opposite end of the board having not made a single successful turn all game...

Kroot Warsphere; The Carrion Lord 

Nicassar

The Nicassar are a minor auxiliary race who don't fulfil a particular niche in the Tau force outside of being able to make a 180 degree turn.  Were they better armed, Nicassar Dhow escorts might have played an important part in flanking strategies, but as they only have a modest battery armament, I often just used them to slow down enemy ships by causing shield flares or intercepting ordnance in place of more important ships.

In a similar fashion to Warden gunships, the Nicassar Dhows require a 'transport' to hop between systems.  Instead of being attached to a battleship though, the Nicassar travel the galaxy strapped together on a rig, only detaching the individual ships when they need to move independently, such as when they are needed to stop a large torpedo salvo with their fragile hull or inconvenience a battleship as above.  The rig itself is an immobile platform which is effectively a small bunch of floating victory points for your opponent.  It can't shoot and your opponent will probably ignore it in favour of literally any other target, so in game terms, it may as well be a floating space turd for all the difference it makes!

As the metal Nicassar Dhow model had been out of print for some time when I started playing BFG, I had to come up with an alternative for them.  I ended up converting some Forgeworld Eldar transport ships to make the escorts, and some parts from my bits box to produce their pointless junk trailer.  I mean rig.  Ahem. 

My 3 Dhow escorts and their interstellar caravan

Demiurg

The Demiurg crew enormous mining vessels which fight alongside the Tau Empire when called upon.  My Demiurg contingent consists of three ship classes; the gigantic Stronghold Battleship, the Bastion Cruiser and the Trident Escort.

When I originally built my Demiurg ships, I decided that I didn't like the way which they were meant to function, so swapped the central section around so that the ships actually move in the opposite direction to the traditional design.  This makes my Demiurg fly the same way as a Star Destroyer which I found a lot more pleasing that the original versions.

The Stronghold battleship is an absolute beast being armed with batteries, ordnance and a short ranged but horrifically powerful forward facing mining laser which can cripple an unshielded battleship in a single salvo.  The main downside of these ships is the fact that they are about as fast and manoeuvrable as a tortoise encased in a block of concrete.  They're great for facing down other slow battleships, but are generally given a wide berth by the enemy...

The Bastion cruiser is a decent ship with similar attributes to its Stronghold papa.  They work well as a mid range brawler, but due to their mercenary status, most scenarios see them crippled and jumping out of the battle when you really need them the most!

The Trident escort models were part of a pack of metal Rogue Trader ships which Games Workshop produced - I thought they looked perfect with my other Demiurg ships so created rules for them using an article from the Citadel Journal (I think?) which ended up with them being roughly the equivalent of an Imperial Firestorm Frigate.

Every Fleet needs a Commander...

Finally, my fleet wouldn't be complete without an Admiral to bark commands from his flagship!  I generally just use these miniatures to indicate the ship carrying my admiral.  Made using the now out of print Tau Air Caste miniatures from Forgeworld, I just love the look of these guys - the cape I added to Shin always makes me smile!

Fleet Admiral Shin (on the right) is the overall commander of my Kor'vattra fleet 

The commander on the left heads up the Merchant fleet in his Explorer Carrier, the Archimedes

Well, that's just over half of my Tau Fleet painted up - keep an eye out for a future post featuring the rest of my Battlefleet Gothic Tau!