House Raven Acastus Class Knights

 House Raven Acastus Class Knights

If you've looked through my blog previously, you've probably seen my Knights of Corbenic (tied to the Fisher King) which includes a heavily converted Acastus Knight Asterius on a very heavy scenic base (Quake Hydra). He was made primarily for display and wasn't really what I had in mind for my more functional House Raven Knights.

I have two Acastus Knights for my House Raven force and I decided that although I would tweak them, I didn't want to heavily convert them or their bases as they would need to fit in with my other Knights and be suitable for use at Titan Walk games where I'd need to move them around frequently.

Both Knights of my House Raven Acastus Knights were pre-owned and refurbished, given new life with some minor repairs, pose changes and a sprinkle of upgrades.

Siegebreaker

Siegebreaker is my Acastus Knight Porphyrion and was the first of the two Knights to be completed. By the time I was working on him, I had already built an Acastus Knight so was familiar with the chassis. As a kit, the Porphyrion is pretty straightforward to assemble, but due to the arm construction, you can get a lot more poseability from the Asterius. Despite this, I really do rate the Porphyrion kit quite highly and would recommend it as the best titan scale entry level model in resin.

I built my Porphyrion in a more static, planted position without much in the way of dynamic posing. It's effectively a mobile super-heavy gun platform, so it wouldn't really look right in a running pose!

In terms of changes to this kit, I replaced the flimsy railing on the carapace with a more substantial scratch built styrene version as resin railing are just horrible. They're incredibly hard to clean up are always warped and snap so easily that I decided completely replacing them was the best plan.

I also replaced the dorky looking bowl head from the kit with a smaller Questoris one. This required some alteration to the body in order to accept a different head, but with a small amount of sculpting I think it worked out really well.

The final modification was the levelling of the dual arm cannons. I really didn't like the staggered gun barrels, so I sculpted a small armour block to bring all four barrels back inline. This may not suit everyone, but I am a lot happier with how the model looks compared to the original kit.

The final little flourish was the addition of a large metal skull to the Knight's carapace rim which would symbolically tie him nicely into the Legio Metalica / House Raven alliance.

In terms of the painting, I followed a very similar scheme to my other smaller Knight classes, but due to the sheer amount of armour panelling space available on the miniature, I was able to add quite a few extra decals like some extra symbols either side of the face plate and a whole host of kill markings and honorifics on the arm guards.

Osiris 209

This Knight is an Asterius like my previous build Quake Hydra. Like the Porphyrion, I was never happy with the head of this model kit and so sculpted a new one which looked smaller and more in scale with my existing Acastus Knight while also still feeling aligned with the Mechanicus aesthetic.

Unlike my other Knights, I didn't want to use a classic face plate, but a more abstract glass fronted dome - I wanted it to look almost like a one-way mirror and I think the final effect was quite satisfying. I deliberately leaned towards the shape of Robocop's Ed-209 when making this face plate as a little nod to one of my favourite big screen robots.

I took the painting of Osiris' carapace in a slightly different direction to my other knights as I wanted him to look different to the Porphyrion. As large centrepiece models, I felt like the Acastus Knights could have some different symbols and patterns as long as they remained within the bracket of the House Raven colour palette.

Early on I'd decided that I wanted the Conversion beam cannon arm's cowlings to sport the distinctive House Raven hazard stripes in black, yellow and white. As these represented quite a large surface area, I decided to forgo the normal carapace stripes in lieu of a large unique cog symbol to give a bit of balance to the scheme. My worry is that it may end up looking like a deck chair with too much striping!

The colours of the cog symbol mirror those of a normal House Raven Knight, just in a new and interesting arrangement. As far as the painting process, I drew and cut out a template from layered masking tape which helped me keep the edges of the design nice and sharp!

Even though I wanted to keep the bases fairly level, I did add a dead House Malinax Armiger made from spare kit parts to the base. This was a little poke at one of my buddies (and regular opponent) Luke who runs a rather lovely House Malinax Knight force alongside his Vulturum Titan Legio. You can see some of his lovely engines here: Son of Xana

House Raven Cerastus Class Knights

 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!

House Raven Questoris Class Knights

 House Raven Questoris Class Knights

Questoris Knights form the mainstay of any Imperial Knight force and House Raven are no exception. The number of options available for the Questoris chassis mean that you never have to assemble two knights the same way (unless you want to I guess, but where's the fun in that!?) - prior to the release of the Knight Defender (which I currently have in my to do pile along with four more Armigers), there were 6 classes for the Questoris Knights and I built one of each!

My Questoris Knight banner (6 Questoris Knights working together as a unit in Adeptus Titanicus) have happily caused some chaos at Titan Walks by charging Warhounds and screening my larger engines. They're versatile and pack enough of a punch to threaten battle titans like Reavers!

As with my other Knight classes, I made sure that each one was unique with conversions like head, armour and weapon swaps as well as their own unique heraldry. I'll go through each knight individually as each one would be a centrepiece model in any other army!

Questoris Knight Errant - Arbiter

Arbiter was the first House Raven Knight that I painted way back when the original Knight kit was released.

At the time, no power fist option was available so I kit-bashed one from Defiler kit parts. I deliberately made the fist over-sized to look like the original Epic version that I remember fondly from the 90's - I even chose the 'no face-plate' head as it was the closest to the goldfish face of the original! 

Questoris Knight Preceptor - Rygan

I kit-bashed Rygan before the official Preceptor upgrade sprue was released using spare parts from the Cerastus Knight Atrapos left over from building the Fisher King. He also has a cheeky pair of spare shin-guards from a Knight Magaera kit. As Hous Raven are Mechanicum aligned, the mixed Imperial / ad-mech style works nicely for them.

You will also notice he has a circular saw blade rather than a chainsword - this was a fun little scratch build using a real mini saw blade.

The rear of Rygan sports a whole load of additional wires to support the extra power draw for his weapons! 

 

Questoris Knight Gallant - Furian

I wanted Furian to look like a young and impetuous knight - as a result, he has no carapace armament as he'd be too busy trying to close with the enemy to aim!

I decided to arm him with two Chainsword arms because... it just looked cool! The banner flapping in the wind does give him a bit of visual momentum while the pose suggests he's screaming at the enemy in a Wolverine-esque manner before charging!  

Questoris Knight Paladin - Cognis

Cognis was pretty much assembled out of the box with just a spare Magaera head swapped in to make him more Mechanicus...y.

Although he's a stock Knight, I was pleased with his paint scheme, with carapace stripes which only fall in one direction across the central panel. Multi-colour hazards are a defining characteristic of House Raven so I had to come up with as many different ways of using them as I could! 

Questoris Knight Warden - Vigilant

My Banner's Knight Warden Vigilant was lucky enough the receive some spare Magaera shoulder pads which I think go very well with the face plate.

The 50/50 red and hazard striped hull was actually really difficult to get right as the longer the strips, the more 'correction' they need to look right. Try drawing two lines across a curved surface and colouring between them. Without compensating for parallax, it just looks strange.

I get the general position and width of my hazard lines locked in with masking tape then once I have the basic colours down, I have to go back and manually shift the lines here and there to make it look right over the complex surface. It's tricky, but very satisfying when you crack it!

Questoris Knight Crusader - Furore

Furore is the Senechal of my Knight Banner which effectively makes him the leader of this unit. To make sure he stands out, I increased the height of his base with slate so that he stands just above his fellow.

Furore also has more banners, honour markings and extra decorations to mark him as a character.

One of my favourite tweaks to this kit was adding the shell casings to the Avenger Gatling cannon's ejection ports and battle cannon shells on the base!