House Raven Cerastus Class Knights
My three Cerastus Knight chassis are all built from plastic Lancer kits. I would like to add other Cerastus types to my collection in the future, but initially I decided that Lancers would best fill my need for a fast moving, hard hitting flanking force for use in mass titan battles.
The plastic Lancer kit is absolutely brilliant, giving a lot more scope for pose adjustment than the original Questoris kit which could only produce a single leg pose out of the box. You can achieve some really dynamic poses from the basic Cerastus kit which has clearly benefited from a decade of plastic R&D!
The main conversion I decided on from the start was an insert for the energy shields. I wanted them to be transparent textured energy shields rather than solid plating or the lightening strands I've seen used before. Leaving the shields empty never sat well with me as they're supposed to be mid-battle not powered down in dry dock!
I will detail the process of sculpting and casting the shield inserts in a future post as it was a more involved process than it looks!
For now, I'll go through each of the knights individually - I cranked all three out in a matter of weeks as I wanted them ready for my Chillcon display back in March. This included the shield manufacture from start to finish, so I was really pleased with the final outcome!
Arben
Arben has a custom head which I built to look closer to a Mechanicum knight like the Atrapos. I've honestly never been a fan of the standard Lancer head, so this was an easy target for conversion!
Arben has a mid-thrust pose with his lance fully extended and his shield arm held back as a counter balance. Although I tried to keep the placement of decals and colours to roughly the same positions as my other House Raven Knights, the difference in Cerastus place size and shape meant I had to tweak things slightly. I added the maker stamp to the rear right shoulder panel on all three knights to try and give some consistency.
Binant
Binant was the lucky recipient of a classic resin Forgeworld head which I traded for with a buddy of mine. I also had a couple of leftover Knight Magaera shoulder pads that I thought worked really well with the oval shape of the head an the overall Mechanicus knight aesthetic I was aiming for.
I wanted to really push the kit's poseability to its limits so I tried to capture a running pose with the weight of the body forward of the legs and arms as if the Knight is fully committed to a full tilt charge a bit like a Naruto run.
To further exacerbate the feeling of movement, I heated and bent both the arm and crotch banners so that they looked to be flying out behind the knight, the speed of his charge causing them to flap in the wind.
The wide open pose and single foot on the base made this model tricky to balance - I added plenty of slate to the base to ensure that it wouldn't topple over. It's a bit of a pain to box up for events as the reach of the shield and lance arms are huge compared to a Questoris Knight!
Epal
Epal completes the trio Lancers; again I created a custom head for this knight with a single large cyclopean eye which was partly inspired by Crimson Typhoon from Pacific Rim. Epal is unique insofar as his stripes run straight up his carapace rather than the typical arrow shape that House Raven uses.
I was a little apprehensive about this style choice, but I think the diagonal chest and crotch plates balance it out and are familiar enough to mark him as a member of the unit. I also think that this pattern suits the closed forward facing pose, giving a feeling of forward momentum to a more static pose. By contrast, Epal's pose makes him much easier to pack!
Out on the Tiles
Here are a couple of images from the Titan Walk in July when my terrible trio had their first outing. They threatened the enemy flank and spent a lot of time hiding, but ultimately didn't get the chance to engage the enemy. Next time I think I'll play them much more aggressively as although hiding kept them alive, they also didn't draw attention away from my other engines.
Regardless of their performance on the day, I was still very happy to see them on the gaming mat!
