Knight Titan Base Coat

I own an airbrush.

I really do!

Of course, if you saw my armies, you wouldn’t exactly have reason to believe me.  The thing is, that I like how airbrushed models look, I even went to town using it on my Imperial buildings and other terrain.  I even like how it looks on models–particularly how great it looks on power weapons.

But it doesn’t match what I’ve done on my existing armies.

It always looks so obvious when I see some models painted with an airbrush next to those that aren’t.  Since armies are all about cohesiveness–and I have zero interest in going back and repainting everything I’ve already done–it just doesn’t make sense for me to use the airbrush to paint my Tyranids or Ultramarines.  Sure, I use my airbrush for some basecoating, but that’s because I’ll wind up hand-painting over that.

But my Imperial knights?  Well, that’s a completely different story.  Sure, they’re allied with my marines, but my goal is to paint them up as House Terryn–which have a similar–but not exactly the same–color scheme as my Ultramarines.  To add to it, they consist of large armor plates and other sections that would be perfect for airbrushing.  But when it came down to it, I just didn’t bother.

Drybrushing them silver was going to give me the desired effect that I wasn’t sure I could pull off with a compressor, and I lack the skill/patience to properly do detail work.  If I had to guess why, I’d think it was something to do with me being loathe to change.  Yes, I love the effect that the airbrush adds (not to mention the amount of time it saves), but some part of me held firm on hand-painting them.

Maybe I’ll go back and hit these with a layer of shading from the airbush.  Now that’s something I could see myself doing.

The color scheme on these guys is a little varied.  The first Knight was sitting on my shelf for years with a drybrush of boltgun metal on him, whereas the second two got a treatment of Vallejo’s Gunmetal (which is a fair bit darker–I’m not sure if that’s because the first became sun-bleached, or it’s just how the color is).  I wound up hitting them all with a fainter drybrush of Mithril Silver to hide the differences, and that turned out ok.  Then, so they weren’t all exactly just big silver necrons, I picked out some areas in Tinny Tin or various golds I had laying around.  Much of this will be obscured by the armor plates when they go on, but it gave them a little extra depth.

But not at the moment–right now, I have to go back and talk myself out of painting the carapace by hand.  I’m not so sure I’m going to be successful…

 

 

 

 

Knight Titan Ankle Joints

My last post concerned repositioning of the Knight titan’s knees and uncovered an issue with his ankles as well.    The issue was that the knees on the model are static, and so are the ankles, so when you reposition one, you naturally need to reposition the other (and, to some degree, that’s also true with the hips).  I had no idea that this would be turning into a major conversion project, but I’d already started down the road and figured I might as well keep following it.

I won’t lie though–I did consider just putting the legs back together the way they were originally, but then I was out the $18 on the jeweler’s saw for nothing.

After sulking for a bit, I was back to scouring the internet for answers, which lead me to Adam B’s article at The Dice Abide.  His solution was quite simple: replace the ankle joints with beads of the right size (12mm apparently).  So, I was off to the local superstore and picked up some beads in the craft section for $.98, trying my best to eyeball their size (they didn’t have any measurements on the bag, but they looked about right when I lined them up on the ruler in the fabric section).

When I got home though, I quickly learned that the beads sold at Walmart are made out of unobtanium–or some other insanely dense material.  I took my 10k Dremel to them and managed to cut a faint line in the bead.

Well, cutting is not technically accurate.  It would be more appropriate to say that I melted a line into the bead.  Both the blade and the bead were glowing red, and the air started to fill with noxious gas.  Given some of my hobby experiences like this, I’m fairly certain that I’ve shaved a few years off of my life.  Between toxic smells and resin dust, I’m likely going to die well before I finish painting my armies.

I should mention that I do try to wear proper protective gear whenever I can: eye protection, masks, etc.  I just didn’t bother to wear a mask when cutting a bead because, c’mon, is it really necessary?

The answer is probably “yes.”

Anywho, with the bead not working, I had to come up with another solution.  The answer was to simply make a press mold of the bead and use that to shape green stuff to replace it.  I have a few sticks of the blue re-usable molding compound and it really works like a charm.  After heating it up and setting two beads in it to harden, I broke out the green stuff and filled it up.

Once that dried, I cut that down and sanded it off to act as the ankles.  It took a little bit of trial and error, but I think they look relatively accurate enough.  When doing it, I wasn’t following any specific guide, so the feet don’t sit perfectly level for either knight, but I’m planning on fixing that by giving him some unlevel basing materials to walk on.  That won’t be until after the Apoc game though, because I don’t think I have enough time to do it before…

EDIT: Jeff from Tibbs Forge was goodly enough to stop by and remind me of his blog as well.  During my research for this conversion, I did glean insights from him as well, but I just forgot to bookmark the link.  His blog contains perhaps the most detailed walkthrough available on how to convert and paint a Knight Titan–spread out over 37 posts.  If you’re looking for real insight on how to complete this conversion, you’re on the wrong blog.  You’ll want to go check out Jeff’s write-up: you’ll be glad you did.

Do those Knight Titan Legs Go All of the Way Up?

With an impending Apocalypse game as my inspiration, I needed to find something to work on for the game.  As I said in my previous post, I’m not exactly sure what army I want to play–but I am certain that I need to make some hobby progress, so I grabbed the nearest thing to me, an Imperial Knight, and started working on it.

My first issue was that I wanted to reposition the legs, so I delved into the depths of the internet for just how to accomplish that.  With a little digging, I found a blog series by Quindia Studios on how he used a jeweler’s saw to reposition his legs, so straight to Amazon I flew.  About $20 later and two weeks later, I wound up with a saw in hand and got to hacking.

Note: I say “about $20,” but if you know my blog, you can always go check up on my Frugal Gaming page to keep me honest.  In this case, it was $18.08.

Anywho, with the saw in hand, I got to work.  When I opened it, I noticed that it was very slimy, as if coated with fresh oil.  I found it unappealing and had to wipe the whole thing down before using it.  The saw blades that came with it were tiny and a little fiddly, but they worked like a charm.

I started by assembling the legs first, so that I would reduce the number of cuts by 50%–and that seems like the right thing to do, even in hindsight.  Cutting through the leg joints was amazingly easy, and I only had trouble with one of the knees (remember: I did two knights, so four knees total).

When I stayed focus, I could saw through a single leg in under a minute with relatively little issue.  The one time I wasn’t really paying attention though, the saw seemed to take an awful long time, and far more work than the other cuts.  Well, that was because I had inadvertently slipped the blade down the leg slightly and was cutting into the “gear” of the knee and not just the small crevasse.  Thankfully the blade is rather small and I’m not terribly picky, or this would’ve been a real problem.

Like in Quindia’s post, I used a spacer to cover the hole left in the leg and provide a little extra depth (not shown in the photo).  Sadly, I also ran into a problem with the ankle joints caused by repositioning the legs.  But more on that in another post…

 

 

 

 

Building a Knight Titan

So I recently came into the possession of an Imperial Knight, but it unfortunately didn’t come with any instructions or decals.  I had gotten some centurions in a similar predicament, but they weren’t as complex of models and I was able to fuddle through their assembly.

After trimming the bits and cleaning up the flash, I was left with a pile of indistinguishable parts (before you suggest it, I didn’t receive them on the sprue–just a bag of parts that were allegedly enough to complete a knight titan.

I did try to figure it out on my own, since I’d had success with assembling the Centurions without directions, and might have possibly had the gray matter to make a reasonable go at it, but I figured it was better to ask for directions before I got myself into trouble.  Surprisingly, I didn’t find them immediately, but I did eventually stumble onto a post from the Plastic & Paint blog that had almost all of the pictures–leaving me to figure out only the “melta” weapon (or whatever you call that thing).

I was pleasantly surprised that the model was designed so that the arms were interchangeable without needing the use of magnets, but found out quickly that the resin was frail enough that it broke while I was fiddling around with it.  Yes, I said resin.  Now you know why I needed assembly instructions, eh?

So, a couple of quick magnets later and I had the arms removable.  I did originally assembly it so he was fully adjustable, but remembered that generally only leads to models breaking or falling limp in battle, so I found a position that didn’t look too horrible and glued him in it.  The arms and head still swivel side to side at this point, but that may change in time.  I also opted not to glue all of the little hoses in place, as that’s just more stuff to break as well.

The armor plates will eventually go on, but I figured they were better to paint them while they were detached.  Likewise, I’m not gluing the top on–in case I need to get into the body again in the future (presumably to salvage magnets?).

Now I just have to figure out how to paint this guy up.  I’ve done some research which indicates that knights have no affiliation with Titan legions and there aren’t any preset required colors for them.  As such, I’m free to paint him in whatever scheme I want.  Of course, BLOO is an obvious choice, but despite the lack of affiliation, I still think I’m going to paint him up in the scheme of a titan legion.  Now I just have to find one that has an appealing scheme and some history of fighting along side the Ultramarines.  Any suggestions?

 

Batrep: Ultramarines vs. Word Bearers (1625pts) – Highlander

So it’s been entirely too long since I’ve played a normal game of 40k (July 14th was the last game for those who are wondering), so Brandon was able to escape the rigors of parenting for a Friday night and we threw down.

Brandon’s a huge fan of 40k podcasts (not that I’m not, mind you, but they’ve just fallen out of favor with me as of late).  Anywho, in a couple of the podcasts he listens to, they talked about a “highlander” format where you’re allowed no more than one of each unit in your codex (with some exceptions allowed for troops choices).  I’m always game to mix things up a bit, so we agreed to a 1625 point game (since Brandon knows I like to pick seemingly random point values).

Brandon’s Word Bearers:

Brandon showed up with two armies this week: Chaos & Tau.  He said that he suspected I’d be playing my marines with Tyranids being gimped even more in a highlander format, and he didn’t want to play paintball.  I’m not sure what was the deciding factor, but he did ultimately go with his Chaos…

• HQ:
  • Daemon Prince w/ Axe of Blind Fury, Gift of Mutation, Wings, Power Armor, & Daemon of Khorne
  • Chaos Sorcerer w/ Sigil of Corruption, Spell Familiar, Gift of Mutation
• Elites:
  • Hellbrute w/ Plasma & Powerfist
• Troops:
  • 15x CSM w/ Veterans of the Long war, Icon of Vengeance, & 2x Plasma inc.
  • 10x CSM w. Veterans of the Long War, & 2x Melta in Rhino w/ Dozer Blade & Dirge Caster
  • 16x Cultists w/ Autopistols inc. Champion
• Fast Attack:
  • 5x Warp Talons w/ Veterans of the Long war
• Heavy Support:
  • Defiler w/ Dirgecaster & Warpflame Gargoyles
  • Chaos Predator w/ Combi-bolter, Havoc Launcher, Warpflame Gargoyles & Sponson H. Bolters

When Brandon suggested a highlander list, I didn’t think about what it is he normally runs.  Realistically, I don’t see him run that much different than this in an average game.  I could’ve sworn he had a second rhino, but he assures me that he doesn’t.  In fact, the only things I think he has other than this are a Bloodthirster, another squad of cultists, and another hellbrute.  The only one of those he couldn’t run in this format would be the hellbrute.

Well, he does have some daemons he could throw in the list as well.  All in all, maybe I got bamboozled by the idea of highlander (not that I would mind, nor do I honestly think that was his intent).  It’s good to mix things up now and again…