Chaos Warhound Titan - Auctorem Fidei

It's done... Almost two years since I got it, and close to a year in the making. There's a few more smaller things I might do, but isn't there always?

This is where I usually go on a bit about the whys and the hows, but I believe I've covered most of those in earlier posts. The 'glow'effects on the weapons are obviously airbrushed, but I was so focused on the task at hand when I painted them that I totally forgot to take any WIP pictures. Let's just finish this of with a few pics instead...

Actually... Perhaps I should write a few words about the name I've chosen. As far as I can ascertain, Auctorem Fidei translates to Faith's Pathfinder. Rather fitting for a Scout Titan attached to the Word Bearers Legion, no?

I do wonder what its partner would be called...


JørnN

Chaos Warhound Titan - WIP "All is Rust"

After finishing off the interior of the Chaos Warhound, back in October, I restarted my research on paint schemes for Traitor Titan Legions. It quickly became apparent that there's really not that much detailed information to be had on the subject. None of the colour schemes I did find appealed to me. Forge World's red Chaos Titan Legion scheme is just too similar to my Word Bearers, and a several of the other were just too... I don't know... Not what I was looking for.

In the end I went back to Forge World, and their other Chaos Titan scheme. The old faded look seemed appropriate for a war machine several thousand years old, but I also saw an opportunity there to be able to play around with oil washes (again) and pigments and weathering powders. To that end Ørn and I went on a field trip to Small Size Hobbyland in Strømmen (north-east of Oslo) one Saturday morning. They have a pretty large range of both MIG, Vallejo and AK Interactive products, we both came away with healthy amounts of loot.

After assembling the body and head I pulled out the airbrush and gave the model a couple of light coats of Vallejo matt varnish. I then masked off the interior and applied another coat of Chaos Black primer. Satisfied that I now had a base coat that would stand up to handling, I used a large soft brush to drybrush the entire model. First a pretty heavy coating of Citadel's Warplock Bronze and then a lighter coat of Leadbelcher, focussing on surface details like battle damage, Chaos symbols and the edges of the armour plates.

The observant reader will note that these are the same first steps that I use on my Word Bearers. I did toy around with just inking the Warhound, perhaps just using a different colour, but I decided against it because it would be a shame to just take 'more of the same' approach with a model that'll be the centrepiece of my collection for quite some time.

I gathered the AK Interactive washes and weathering powders I had bought in anticipation of my (still) upcoming Traitor Guard project as well as my oil paints and turpentine. Since then I've been playing around and experimenting a lot with mixtures and effects... I've gotten to a point where I think I'm happy with how it looks now. Unfortunately, it's gotten a bit too cold outside to be able to take the titan outside and give it a couple of coatings of varnish. (It's a few degrees below 0°C.) I'll either have to find somewhere relatively close, or... find some other solution I'd better not write about here, in case She-who-comes-first happens to read the blog in secret. (Yeah, right!)

So, there it is. I still hope to have the Warhound finished in time for my birthday party in January, but I'm not comfortable with using masking tape on the model without protecting the paint-job as it stands now.

In the mean time, it turns out I still have lots of unbuilt plastic miniatures lying around...

Chaos Warhound Titan - Interior

Last time I wrote about my Chaos Warhound Titan was back in February this year, after my last birthday party, a year after the birthday party when rest of TSB had got it for me. The project stalled after that update, partly because of the close to one hundred separate resin pieces that went into the construction of the legs.

A couple of weeks ago though, as I was preparing for a planned 40K-hobby-marathon session at my place, I dug the titan back out of it's box and started priming it. When Ørn arrived on Saturday morning I was ready to start painting the interior details.

Quite a lot was accomplished over the next twelve hours, and I've gotten even more done over the two weeks since.

It quickly became apparent that I would have to paint first and assemble later for there to be a point in even attempting to do the interior details justice. The narrative that can be found in these parts of the Warhound are amazing. I started with a base coat of Army Painter's Skeleton Bone spray primer, and followed that with lots of thinned down coats of the various base colours. A few coats of black, ochre and green oil washes went into the crisp details as well.

Final assembly went pretty smoothly too. I've read a few accounts of people struggling with large gaps and warped parts, so I made sure to test and retest assembly from the first time I washed the components and throughout the entire process. Still... I managed to break off a bit of resin in a moment of inattention, but I don't think anyone will be able to spot it now that it's finished.

And there we are! Only the exterior left to do.
I still haven't quite decided on which Titan Legion to represent, though, so I need to do a little more research into that...

Jørn's february hobby challenge - Chaos Warhound Titan

Hi everyone. I just finished my secondary objective for this month's hobby challenge, and thought I'd post a few pictures of the legs as they... err.. stand.

From the ground to the waist, its 96 pieces of resin... Ninety-six!!! The big leg shield plates stays off until everything is painted, since there's no way I'll be able to reach anything behind them once they're glued on.

I'm not sure how many pieces remains, but I reckon I'm way past the halfway mark in that regard. It'll be interesting to see how the bigger pieces that make up the torso comes together... First though, I've got to get cracking on this mont's primary objective!


Cheers

JørnN

Revenant Titan - the beginning

Revenant Titan with 2 pulsars.

After a very nice trip and visit to Games Workshop Nottingham, I came home with a lot of resin parts. In particular, an Eldar Revenant Titan. Beeing a bit concerned with the project, I decided that I just had to go a head with it. I decided that I would pin as much as possible, and abandon the thought of magnetizing the model. Luckily the Revenant is a lot less complicated to assemble than the Warhound titan.

 Step 1: The head is only fixed temporarily as it is to be painted white along with all of the shoulder plates, shields etc.  Standing only on it`s knees it`s twice the size of a wraithlord

Step 2: I cut the base from MDF and decided for a dynamic pose for my Revenant. I was a bit surprised that when it was standing on its feet, it was a lot taller than I expected, and the detail of the model is really nice. I was very satisfied with the way the model came to life after I got it on the base.

Step 3: Primer, Angel green from army painter, not quite the color that I would like, but after a wash and some shading it turned out very nice. The head, weapons and shoulder plates has been painted white and to give you guys a sneak peak of how it`s gonna look like I fixed the head, a pulsar and some shoulder plates. The green and white color scheme works really well on a large scale. I also added some battlefield debris on the base.

Step 4: Washing, shading and highlighting. I used the armypainter Greenskin spray, spraying downwards from a distance. A bit cleaning up and detailing, I am quite pleased with the effect. So time to put down the brush and cans, and not overdo it.

So please guys and girl, let me know what you think and if you have any good ideas, please share!

Prelude to Apocalypse

This world was tasting wrong...

It had not been like this when Grendel had first started to consume it. It had tasted much like many of the worlds that had gone before. A little dry perhaps, but nothing too different from what was to be expected.

Lately there had been a sort of... Spoiled? ...aftertaste to the prey it had consumed. Their base structure was somehow corrupted and unusable. To assimilate it seemed to lead to loss of Communion with the organisms that tried. Grendel had to spend precious resources on breaking nutrients down to base elements before they could safely be consumed.

When once more it came across prey that resisted, the prey reeked of the wrongness. Grendel awakened the barbed limbs that was lying dormant nearby and reached for the new precence. Whatever it was, it would have to be cleansed so that the world could be consumed and Grendel could return to the void.

Six thousand points from Ørnulv's Hive Fleet Grendel arrive for a day (and a night?) of bloodshed
this saturday, and I get to use (almost) all of my Word Bearers again.

The table is ready - but are we?

Apocalyptic Battle!

Jørn vs Trond, Word Bearers vs Biel Tan Strikeforce
5500 pts a side!

The weekend is over, the tables have been emptied and and the armies are laid to rest in their respectable storage compartments. So what happend?

Well we did broadcast almost the entire evening on friday at Ustream.com
and after a very intersting meeting with mr Tullamore, we stopped playing after my turn 3, and decided to kick it of agian on sunday afternoon.

That said. Jørn did get the upper hand early in the game, though I managed to take out almost all of the long range firepower of the Word Bearer army by turn 3. As always the two army commanders know one anothers strenghts and weaknesses, and again it turned out just as close as it can be. The mission being played was objectives. The bigges surprise at least for me was range. Well range is range always, but now with 6x8 feet table, range 36 was kinda short.... I even had to check range with my fire prisms with range 60!

When we stopped playing I had all my reserves committed, all but one unit of warpspiders which where delayed in the previous turn be a deepstrike mishap.
Jørn still had about 40 lesser demons and 1 greater demon tucked away in his sleeve, so Sunday was gonna be pretty interesting.

By turn 3 I had gotten rid of 1 defiler, 1 vindicator, 2 landraiders, 1 dreadnought, 10 Berzerkers, 4 Oblitirators, and reduced a noise marine sqd down to 4, a chaos spacemarine sqd down to 2.
My casulaties where limited, but my fragile warwalkers where engaged with both chaos terminators incl a lord, and 1 defiler. (Kept that flank busy for a while :)) I had lost all but one of my firedragons, one sqd of warp spiders, all my striking scorpiones to the assaulting noise marines, half my shining spears sqd and on or two warlocks. All of my 4 wraithlords where down to their last wound. My Avatar also had lost two wounds.

Jørn now controlled 2 obectvies - kinda, and I controlled 1.

Sunday: Nobody gains the upper hand! Jørn summones 40 lesser demons and one greater demon. Suddenly he controlls a lot more... His terminators and defiler finaly finishes of my walkers and turn their attention elsewhere. The terminators are too far away to be of any significant threath to me. The defiler on the other hand worried me a bit. Jørn finished of my Shinig spear exarch and the last member of the sqd with his Slaanesh lord and was set on fighting the Avatar of Khain. On the other side of the table the noise marines and one chaos dreadnought assaulted my vypers and in frustration of the elusive Eldar vehicles the dreadnought rolled 2 sixes to hit - auto pentration S 10 vs armour 10, and completed the cc with rolling another 2 sixes for damage exploding the two remaining vypers.
In addition, all but the swooping hawk exarch was killed, and he decided to leave the battle by launching himself high in to the air and out of cc.
So what to do. Well I had to take out A LOT of lesser demons, and it wouldn`t hurt to take out a greater on either. So my snipers picked of two wounds from the greater demon, my other sqd of warp spiders landed - on target, and in one volley killed 7 demons lurking in some ruins. My farseer on jetbike casted doom on another demon sqd, and combined twin linked shuriken fire took their numbers down to 4. Still a lot of demons to go! My harlequins who finally had rallied used fleet and assaulted the remaning two chaos marines in no mans land. 9 dancing clowns against 2 kinda lonesome marines - We didn`t waste time to roll it.
Now it was time to move. My Storm guardians and Dire avengers where both on board their wave serpents and in the moving and shooting fase used their star engines to gain 4 + cover save and contest 2 of Jørns objectives. The last firedragon looked to the ruines and saw the blood crazed figure of Kharn - not lurking but screaming in frustration of no more victims to slaughter. He moved within range and calmly leveled his melta gun, whispering a prayer to the long dead eldar gods, and fired. Kharn was no more.
The avatar and the Slaanesh lord duelled and the avatar scored 2 wounds on the chaos lord on bike, but 1 was saved by his demon aura. The Avatar look with rage and the ancient enemy that so long ago scattered him across the universe.
The farseer and remaning warlocks assalted and viped the lesser demons. And it came to us that we now each had a pretty impressive force fighting one another over...Well none of us could claim the objective... hq, elite and heavy was the only thing present, and my troops where either too far away, or busy guarding my own obejctive. In hindsight I should have loaded up my empty falcon with 5 pathfinders and at leaste tried to claim the objective. The Autarch had left the safety of fortune and strenght in numbers and was killed outright by 2 assaulting oblitirators.
In the following cc. the greater demon was killed by the farseer and warlocks, who after passing an amazing 11, 3+ armour saves use their whichblades to make short work of the raging demon. The Slaanesh lord was agian wounded by the avatar, but his posessed Blissgiver, Demon weapon of Slaanesh, finaly found a way through the demon aura of the Avatar and vanquished him back to his craftworlds restingplace.

After this we looked at the battle field. We had played 4 turns. At this point Jørn had the upper hand 2-1. But we had not set a turn limit or time limit that we at least could remember from friday night so we decided "simulate" turn 5 and the most likely outcome.

I held on objective deep in my own deployment. As did Jørn. Jørn had more or less controll over on objective in no mans land, and I figured that 10 dire avengers with bladestorm should be able to take out 8 lesser demons. 9 warp spiders incl. exarch with 2 death spinners and powerblades should be able to take out 10 chaos marines with shooting av cc. or keep them out of 3 inches of the obective. The other 2 obectives where contested or not claimed by the other.
So the conlusion was again - Draw.
Pictures?? Well we kinda forgott that part ;)
Was it fun? It was great!

Slaget om Kjerringvik

Team Stormbolter var i Kjerringvik og satte ufortrødent og kanskje litt hodeløst i gang 24000-poengskamp på 8x6 fot. Båttur og opplevelser for ganen ble det også! Må gjentas. Her er noen bilder for minneboka!