Iron Spartan Build Part II

Warlord Titan Iron Spartan - Build log Part II

I thought I'd cover off the second half of my Warlord Titan build before I share some more detailed images of the engine in my next post. I'm very aware that my rambling posts can get very long (and possibly tedious) for casual readers so I'm trying to be a little more focused and make my blog a bit easier to navigate!

Base & Legs

Before I set the legs in place, I decided that I would create the base for my Warlord to ensure that it integrated properly as I'd be building the engine in multiple sub-assemblies and didn't want anything to clash with the base elements.

All of my titans have a theme running through them, with most of them striding across an imperial defence line. My Warlord's battlefield role was as a stalwart protector for my Imperator Titan Ira Metallum. As such, I decided that Iron Spartan would be deployed at the Imperator's side within the city limits to ensure that it could intervene should a reckless enemy attempt a close assault.

As the titan base would represent an inner imperial city, the safest place for a Warlord to take up residence would be the city square as it's nice and open, preventing the giant stompy machine from destroying the city it's supposed to be protecting! With this in mind, I created a fallen statue with a nice elevated base. Next, I cut Foamex strips to section off the ground and add a little visual interest instead of just having a large circle of concrete or plating.

 Next I cut out the large panelling sections for the surface of the city square. This would add some flat areas where I could add extra detail after marking out where the Warlord would be standing.

I carefully attached the smaller panels to the statue and stone separators before attaching it all to the base. This helped prevent warping and allowed me to place the larger remaining panels accurately with an anchor in place. It's worth noting that styrene sheets will warp with heat and glue sometimes so it's always worth keying the surfaces in advance - I did this with a rough sanding on the styrene sheets and thoroughly scoring the wooden base. 

Once I'd stuck everything down, I added small amounts of gravel and sand around the statue and stone dividers for some visual interest. I also added some plastic candles to the statue's raised base, making it look like a shrine.

Having the base built allowed me to set the pose for the Warlord and work out the placement of skitarii that I'd be adding to the base as a mobile defence line after everything was finished.

The leg build was pretty straightforward, although I did add an important reminder to my instruction booklet during the assembly process, reminding me to add the piston rings, avoiding the most infamous pitfall!

Once I'd set and pinned the legs into a pose I liked, I drilled through the underside of the base, going right up through the feet and into the ankle balls. Two hefty screws and a fair amount of epoxy glue ensure that my Warlord isn't going anywhere!

Predictably, I painted the leg superstructure and armour panels separately to ensure that I didn't miss anything. I like adding extra little details that will only be visible to the most eagle-eyed viewer such as hazard and maintenance decals. I kept the colour scheme the same as my other engines, with the black, white and red of Legio Metalica taking centre stage as well as the yellow, white and black hazard stripes which I have added to my titans as a nod to the original Legio Metalica artwork / miniatures and a visual tie-in to the House Raven Knights which accompany my engines into battle. 

Pteruges

One of the unique elements which I added to my Warlord were the Pteruges. I originally considered a Spartan-esque cloak, but decided that it would obscure too much of the engine details. I compromised by coming up with a way to add more detail without obscuring anything - that solution was gigantic metal chain links formed into Pteruges hanging from the titan's crotch and shoulder plating. These were modelled on the leather tassels / epaulettes used by Romans to both decorate armour and add additional protection from slashing weapons without impeding movement.

I sketched out some designs, settling on a simple Mechanicum styled cog with trim which was reminiscent of that which already existed on the Titan's armour plating. Keeping the design simple but recognisable would keep the pteruges from detracting from the other engine details as I didn't want them to draw the eye from the face etc.

I created a master mould for the chain links along with a connector to attach them to the body and an end cap to make them more visually attractive.

And this began the endless process of replication...

Eventually, when I had cast a gazillion of the chain links, I spent hours cleaning them up and assembling them into lengths of chain for the pteruges.

The crotch section was created first as a proof of concept as the shoulder lengths would need to wait until the arms were completed.

Once I was happy with the length and way they hung, I painted them up and completed the legs!

Lance Arm

When fielding my engines at titan walks, I found that my Imperator was generally unsupported as my Reaver and Warhounds moved into the mid-field with their shorter ranged weaponry and I could see a world where a canny opponent could skirt my other engines and engage Ira at close range.

In order to plug this gap, I decided that my Warlord would become Ira Metallum's guard and protector. Merely standing next to an Imperator is a waste of an engine, so I armed Iron Spartan with missiles and a Conversion beam cannon for long range support while the left arm was dedicated to a close combat weapon for intercepting any enemy foolish enough to brave Ira Metallum's point defences.

I could have just used a standard Warlord Arioch power claw, but where's the fun in that?! After considering everything from a snippy crab claw, to a wrecking ball, I narrowed my list to a Saturnine pattern las-cutter or an upscaled knight lance. The spear felt more in character for a Warlord titan on guard duty and worked well with the spartan-esque head design and so the decision was made!

The first step was deciding on the design for the head of the spear. I based it loosely on the Cerastus knight version, but wanted to go for a more aggressive mace-like look. Once I'd settled on the profile of the edge, I drew the parts onto graph paper and cut them out with a scalpel blade. Note that each of the flanges would comprise a large centre spine and a smaller inner part to add some depth and interest to the design.

I reinforced the two templates with sticky tape (so that they wouldn't fold or tear) then marked out all of the parts onto a sheet of styrene.

Cutting the flanges out was time consuming, but worth it in the end. I find that scoring and snapping styrene is kinder on my fingers - you just have to be careful not to split the sheet and never try this on thin areas or inverse shapes as it will definitely split along the grain and leave a horrible edge.

I often find that as this is already a tedious stage, I may as well carve and sand away the small displacement ridges you get from cuts before moving on to the next piece. Back scraping most of it then giving both sides a light flat sand does the trick and also keys and prepares the surfaces for glue and paint later on!

With all of the parts cut and prepped, I could begin assembling the lance head!

I did create the two shaft sections before assembling the head, but I didn't really take any photos to track my progress, so you'll just have to imagine me doing some kind of training montage in its place!

The lance head had a rounded core to ensure that it would thread nicely onto the hollow lance shaft and remain true. I hate wonky angles, so made sure to reinforce the lance with a metal bare to prevent sagging or bending.

I really wanted the lance tip to look ornate and attractive as well as functional, with a focusing tip and electrical piping to channel the power. From the front it does look a lot like a dart or snow flake.

If you're thinking that it looks quite sharp, that's because I sanded the edges to a convincing point - I did end up with multiple puncture wounds before the project was done!

I reinforced the centre of each flange joint with styrene piping for extra strength.

Contemptor Dreadnought for scale! I also gap filled with some putty, thickened the cross plate supports and drilled 1mm holes along each flange so that I could add bearings for rivets.

The arm connector loosely resembles the Lancer version, with large pistons positioned either side for attitude adjustment. It was also designed to appear as if the lance shaft could move along the bracket on rails just like its smaller counterpart as that was an element I really wanted to keep. This would in theory allow my Warlord to interpose itself more easily by extending the weapon and gain reach while defending its charge or wind up for a massive puncturing hit by propelling the spearhead forward at high speed!

The rear end of the lance also received some detailing, but I kept it relatively simple so as not to pull focus from the spear tip.

Test fitting the lance was very exciting as it was the first time I got to see my freestanding Warlord with a primary weapon system in place!

Conversion Beam Cannon Arm

Right from the start, I wanted to arm my Warlord with a C-beamer as they're such a unique weapon. I've loved conversion beamers since I first encountered them way back in Space Crusade: Mission Dreadnought expansion. A weapon that gets more powerful the further it travels is awesome! It always made me think of a runaway chain reaction like a nuclear explosion.

As there isn't currently an official 28mm Conversion beam arm produced by Forgeworld, I had two choices - upscale the Adeptus Titanicus version or create a new design. I am not a big fan of the Conversion Beam Extirpator (the AT scale Warlord armament) as I felt it was a bit too far from the existing aesthetic that I was already comfortable with.

The Epic scale Conversion beam constipator...

This left me with the redesign option. I love the look of the Contemptor pattern Conversion beam cannon and decided to merge the barrel design with the rear of the AT version to form a sleeker weapon for my engine.

The considerably smaller Contemptor heavy Conversion beam cannon

The first step in the process was to create a suitable radar dish which is the most iconic part of the weapon. The dome-like dish was made by forming putty into an egg cup then using a large metal bearing to smooth the inside evenly. Once cured, I cleaned up the edges, sanded all of the inner and outer surfaces to give a smooth finish then built the rest of the nozzel from parts including a number of plastic counters and spacers of various sizes. I always keep a bunch of both in various diameters and thicknesses for projects like this as perfectly round shapes are notoriously difficult to achieve by hand!

The main barrel was made from a collection of small spray bottle caps and incrementally smaller lipped bases glued back to back. This makes the process sound simple, but it took me weeks to find the right sized pieces to make this staggered barrel work. In order to keep everything nice and straight, I drilled through the sections and inserted a metal rod. Note that I also sanded all of the bottle caps as their surfaces are hardened plastic which is made to specifically resist sticky substances. The sanding made sure that I could glue and paint them without it chipping away with even a light scuff.

The rear portion of the arm was mocked up with some bases and foamex so that I could test the fit of the barrel and the arm connector which would need to fit snugly.

Working out the geometry of the main body of this weapon was a challenge for a number of reasons. Because I was changing the barrel, just directly up-scaling the rear half of the AT version wouldn't work as the length and weight of the barrel would result in an awkward looking front heavy weapon. As a result, I had to make small changes to the size, shape and location of some parts in order to re-balance the design while still keeping the design cues of the source miniature.

Mocking up the overall shapes like this really helps iron out any issues with the silhouette and make adjustments early rather than wasting effort! I used the AT scale C-beam for reference as it was useful as a loose guide for the proportions.

The shape of the barrel support frames changed slightly as a result of test fitting - things like adjusting the degree of the incline were best done at this stage as I couldn't fix them in place until the angles were right.

Once I had the barrel length and general proportions worked out, I began the process of filling and sanding the main body of the weapon. I did this before working on the rear power plant as I needed it to be solid for test fitting parts.

The rear of the weapon was by far he most complex part of the build as it has multiple cutaways and overlapping details which I needed to consider. I settled on building the giant power generator first then aligning everything and working out the spacing with the main pipes. Again, these were pinned in place to ensure that the structure didn't twist out of alignment.

Once I'd formed the main ribbing of the weapon structure, I packed the voids with foil before filling and shaping the basic shape of the surfaces with putty.

Once I'd got the arm sub assemblies fixed together, it was time to make the barrel heat shields. I knew this would not be an easy build as the parts would be tapering rectangles with grill holes which in and of itself requires a high degree of accuracy in both measurement and cutting. I drew out a basic template on graph paper then reinforced it with masking tape so that I could use it as a functional template. 

Once I had the basic shape, I put the central curve into it and tested the fit on the barrel supports. I made a number of small adjustments to make sure it fit naturally on both sides then cut two identical parts from styrene sheet. I gently warmed and bent the plates into shape over a jig, using elastic bands to hold them in place overnight. This did cause a slight split on one of the grill sections as the material has a tendency to tear from even a small nick in the surface when placed under tension. I fixed this with a carefully hidden styrene patch on the inside of the plate then sanded the outside back to a smooth finish.

I added a number of details such as the cabling and the rear pipe clusters - I ended up ordering lego pipe elbows as they were pretty much the only thing I could find that was the right size!

Next came the addition of trim and smaller details to main armour plating and the rear power plant. I was pleased with how the weapon was shaping up at and spent a lit of time gap filling with putty - as I've already said, there were some very complicated shapes to produce and any small deviation or inaccuracy left small gaps which needed filling / reinforcing. I tried to keep everything as accurate as possible as I didn't want to unbalance the arm by making the rear section too heavy with masses of putty.

Small flavour details were added to the surfaces of the barrel supports that wouldn't be covered by the heat shields. I also started adding bearings for rivets across the shaft plate connecting the support arm. This is one of those really small but important details which identify the weapon as belonging to the same family as other conversion beam weapons as they all have the same detailing and bracing plates.

I started adding the armour trim to the shield grills as I didn't want them to just be flat plates of metal; the detailing helped to bring them into scale with everything else and made the model more cohesive. 

Drilling tiny rivet holes in preparation for 1mm bearings...

Building miniature components at this scale and to this level of detail is not easy, but it is very satisfying once it's all painted and is pretty much indistinguishable from shop bought components! I was super happy with the final result of the C-Beam arm - especially as I managed to get both warlord arms designed, built and painted in a little over 6 weeks.

I haven't really focussed on the painting of my Warlord as it really was just a repeat of the same steps I've applied to my other Knights and Titans over the last few years. If you're interested in the painting side, go have a look back through some of my other builds where I cover that off in more detail.

I'll be publishing a couple of other posts shortly going through the upgrade and repair work I carried out on my other engines and the promised glamour shots of my finished Warlord.

Iron Spartan Build Part I

Iron Spartan revealed!

It's been a while since my last post and I suspect everyone thought I'd fallen down a hole. The truth is that I had fallen into a hole of sorts. Despite being busier than ever creatively, I either wasn't able or motivated to share what I was working on.

I decided that the Titan Owner's Club walk 2025 at the end of October would be my target to finish up some projects and start blogging again. And so dear reader, I present to you my (almost) finished Warlord Titan Iron Spartan!

You'll immediately notice that Iron Spartan sports several unique upgrades from the standard Warlord Titan kit, such as the arms, tilt shield replacements, head etc. I'll go through the build and painting process in my usual exhaustive* (*or exhausting) style, but I also wanted to mention that all of my engines have had a glow up to resolve some older niggles, repair damage and make some minor upgrades. I'll talk about these in a later post along with some exciting images from the Titan Owner's Club Walk 2025.

Initial Build

I must admit that opening those two large Forgeworld boxes was equal parts exciting and daunting. The sheer size and number of parts in the kit is pretty scary! I certainly wouldn't recommend a Warlord titan as your first resin kit build - it sits very firmly in the 'expert' category of kit based model makers!

This is the main kit with the mould gates removed and the parts sorted into two sub-assembly collections: body and legs. And speaking of mould gates...

...this bag is just mould gate garbage!! To put this into perspective, the gates alone weigh as much as a warhound titan!

The rest of the build was kind of uneventful, merely time consuming as the physical size of the kit means that reinforcing the joins is a must. I used a fair amount of JB Weld two part epoxy (24 hour cure) glue - you'll see in the pictures below that I used it to fill some gaps and spread it around the inside of the hollow body for some additional strength.

Getting the top panel to line up correctly was a bit of a pain, but I got there in the end; I coated the inside contact points with JB Weld, clamped everything in place then used a head gun on the top plate - this helps it settle and cure without constant tension within the structure.

It was possibly overkill, but given that I was planning to scratch build both arms and wasn't sure about the final weight, I added screws through the shoulders and into the body as well as gluing them in place. Those shoulder are never coming off!

With the main body secure, I made sure that the shoulder braces (which hold the carapace plates and weapons) fit properly and then sanded down two Reaver Titan Apocalypse Missile Launcher stems to fit the slightly tighter socket on the Warlord. I wasn't a huge fan of the vertical versions and I already had a painted Reaver apoc that I wasn't using anymore due to a refit (more on this in a later post).

As you can see, the Reaver apocs fit very nicely once the posts have been sanded down. I also drilled and added some 20mm diameter magnets to hold them firmly in place. 

The head

If you've visited my blog before to see my Imperator build logs, you will probably have noticed the head of Iron Spartan which I sculpted as a sort of prototype for Ira Metallum's gigantic noggin.

The base miniature was a Warhammer World exclusive Mars beta head which I extensively converted to resemble a MKII metal warlord titan from the 90's.

Despite having completed the sculpting a few years ago, I just wasn't 100% happy with the face as it had some asymmetry around the cheek bones and brow as well as really boggley looking eyes.

To bring Iron Spartan in line with my other engines, I decided that he needed green glass lenses and set to re-sculpting the eyes and fixing the facial feature issues at the same time.

These cosmetic changes may seem small, but they made a big difference to the overall model as his face was drawing the eye again.

Shoulder panels

From the beginning I knew I'd be replacing my Warlord's tilt shields with additional armour panels which fill in the insert space where the shields are normally located - the same as the Adeptus Mechanicus scale version never released in 28mm.

I much prefer this look as it makes the carapace a lot rounder and more like the original MKI 'beetleback' Warlords.

In order to make the inserts consistent with the rest of the miniature and get the curve right, I started by making a press mould of the underside of the shoulder plates and casting them in resin so I had something to build onto and act as a profile guide.

Press moulds are great for a quick and dirty copy of flat details like this, but be wary of warping. I would normally make a silicon mould, but as this was just a one-off and could be cleaned up later, I opted for the press mould as blue stuff (a thermo-plastic which becomes pliable in boiling water) is reusable and silicone is expensive!

With a fair amount of cleanup, sanding and reshaping, I was happy with both the angle and length of the plate bottom so glued it in place on each of the front shoulder panels.

It's also worth noting that I clipped off the shield nub and sanded the little locator arm flush with where the back of the new plate filler would need to go as it would act as a handy brace for the plate back.

The next step would be to create the curved rear plate. Anyone who has ever tried to sculpt compound curves by hand will know that they are a massive pain, so I tried to make the process as easy as possible using some scraps of my secret weapon - Worbla. It's another useful thermo-plastic which (prepare to be shocked) becomes pliable when heated and can be re-used. I gently heated the Worbla and used it to map out the size of the rear panel. Using paper or a flat piece of styrene would have worked, but I wouldn't have captured the extra millimetres needed to accommodate the curvature.

This meant that when pressed flat and used as a template, my styrene back plate would be the perfect size.

Black styrene was the best choice here as I find it to be slightly softer and less brittle than its white counterpart, meaning that I could gently heat bend the part to fit but retain its strength once it cooled.

Next I packed the gap with tinfoil to speed up the sculpting (and use less epoxy putty) then sculpted over this with a mix of Milliput and greenstuff. The majority of this was done with gloves so I could smooth the surface and not leave fingerprints. I used minimal tools here to avoid any deep marks in the surface.

The sheen on the surface is Vaseline which helps create a smooth finish

During this step, I also took off the circular cut-out at the corner of the plates. I could have done this at the start, but I wanted to see if I preferred it with a sharp corner. I didn't.

I deliberately finished the first plate before starting the second so that I could use the first as a guide for symmetry.

Once both plates had fully cured, I sanded them to a nice smooth finish. I then added more putty over any dents in the surface, using a ball stylus to gently blend it into the surface. I then repeated the sanding and when I was happy with the finish started the process of adding trim to the plates.

A good tip for making the trim corner cut-outs consistent is to use an empty ballpoint pen case as a punch - it's the perfect size! Once the trim had cured, I sanded them evenly and filled any imperfections with more putty. After the final cure, I added 1mm ball bearings for the rivets - this involves drilling a little guide hole then using a magnet attached to a knife blade to pick up a single bearing, dip it in superglue and apply to the tiny hole. Once all of the rivets have been added, I paint matt mod-podge over the whole plate to seal it and stop the bearings from coming away.

I added a few extra details to each plate including a central detail which was present on the AT scale version. Overall I was very happy with how the inserts turned out as they give an uninterrupted more dome-like profile to the carapace armour.

Stay tuned for part II where I'll go through the rest of the build, decorative chain links, arms and painting!