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 Knight Group Images

 House Raven Knight Group Images

Although each of my Knights were painted with their own heraldry and unique conversions, they all had to come together as a cohesive force.

Through the painting and basing scheme I was able to link each of the Knights to the same force as well as to my Legio Metalica Titans who share a number of basing similarities.

From above you can see more clearly that every knight's carapace displays their own unique heraldry while still sharing the decal placement and colour placement on the lower body.

Note that I have included three House Raven sentinel walkers who will have the unenviable task of scouting out the most dangerous foes for the household to face!

Armies on Parade and a Monstrous Engine of Pain

The Court on Parade

After a couple of years painting them and a few weeks creating their display board, the Court of the Fisher King were finally ready to be submitted for the 2020 Armies on Parade online competition!

Shock Manta prepares to enter the drop zone while Trench Runner leaps from his own platform

The court stalking down the shoreline to enter the icy depths

I created the staggered board so that all of my knights can be seen at once

The most challenging part of the whole build was getting the platforms to line up correctly with the base cut-outs; particularly as the water levels were also different for each of the knights!

Deep Dive and Barracuda Squall perch on a rocky outcrop where they can be easily seen above the knights on the shoreline

There's a real feeling of intent now that all of the knights are moving toward the ocean as a united force

Trench Runner is jumping into the depths from a vertical aqua deployment ramp (a knight sized diving board...)

From a more elevated position, you can better see the transition from sandy cliffs to shoreline platforms to the ocean itself 

I love this image so much! The smaller knights picking their way forward while the lancers easily traverse the cliffs up above!

It was important to me that the Fisher King took the prime spot, higher even than Reef Thresher; fitting as the most senior member of the Court, he can be seen towering above them all

Reef Thresher marches with the King on the top tier

The diminutive Mudskipper working his way down the flank

Quake Hydra towers over Mudskipper!

Sacristan Nautolex watches his mechanical charges deploying for battle 

Conga Blue leads the Court, striding out confidently into the bay

Shock Manta appears to be taking one last look at the horizon before his drop

I even managed to find a place for Snapper who is found near a cliff face entry hatch

Building the display board

In my last post, I showed a few images of the poly sculpting I was doing to get the basic structure for my display.  Here are some more images covering off the rest of the process!

The rather naked looking polystyrene shapes!

The next part of the build was to add all of the platform cut-outs and other plastic details which I made while poly sculpting.  I hot glued these in place then began the process of coating the display with external filler (on the cliffs) and plaster on the water areas

This stage was extremely messy and it was difficult not to get filler and plaster on the plastic elements!

I waited until the plaster was starting to cure before creating the wave patterns with gloved hands

After the whole display had dried (this took about 24 hours), I then went back and added additional sand and gravel before priming everything with a mix of pva and paint.  Note that I was using this mixture rather than biscuit spread which the jar suggests!

The base coat of glue and paint took a whole day to dry fully, but it was necessary to seal everything, strengthening the plaster and foam

It was then just a case of painting the rocks, sand and sea to match the army!

Once I'd finished the basic painting, I tested the knights on the display and made small colour alterations to better match them up, then blacked out all of the edges with a mix of thick black acrylic paint and pva.  Again, this took 24 hours to dry, but it levelled and protected the edges nicely for handling

A torture engine like no other!

I realised a couple of weeks ago that with all of the knights and titans on my blog, I have completely neglected to produce anything even vaguely resembling a giant monster for some time and that I needed to remedy this by finishing some of my kaiju backlog!

 

As a result, I finally completed my Drukhari Wrack Knight with a lick of paint!  I'm so pleased with how this monster turned out; he's so unique while fitting perfectly into the coven.

My Wrack Knight in all his gory glory!

Not as bulky as a regular Wraithknight, he is still an imposing presence!

The bladed sails jutting from his back project a shadow field over this mighty monstrosity

Just like his smaller kin, this Haemonculous' creation is studded with dark technology

Double jointed legs give this construct a much more alien feel

As with all servant of the Haemonculi, the creature's face is hidden behind a Wrack mask

The huge trophy rack on this beast's spine displays victims from a wide variety of species...

A twin disintegrator cannon makes for a devastating secondary weapons array

While disintegration is scary, the thought of being killed by a titanic husk glaive is terrifying! 

What Wrack is complete without an exposed spine and hunch back?

Like regular Wracks, the Knight wears his torturer's apron with pride.  The hooks at his back are used to hang trophies during battle

Where the Hex are the rest of them?

As I've not shown them on the blog recently, I thought I'd also take a few group shots of the Coven so far - enjoy!

The Hex in all their dark majesty

Last but not least...

I decided it was time to dust off the Tantalus and start painting...