A titanic project

I think I haven't fooled anyone with the title and nobody's thinking of ships or icebergs.

OK, I'll be sincere. At first I was a little bit reluctant to the idea of jumping into the new Adeptus Titanicus game. I have tons of (both painted and unpainted) minis, vehicles and titans from the old Epic days. If I'm not going to play anyway, I can do it with the minis I already have!

In the meantime, a friend of mine got fully into the new fever and amassed a number of Titans and stuff. But, after acouple of years or so, he sadly reached a similar conclusion, as time had passed and hadn't even unsealed most of the boxes. Long story short, I got all his stuff (shudders). It was quite a sum of money, but significantly less than if I had got all on the shop, and in the end my friend was happy and I... well, now I have a lot of Titans to assemble!!

I have enough stuff to build a couple of forces, which (I fool myself) will hopefully make it easier to run some games at home, not forcing anyone to make such an investment. Though I still don't have clear plans, my idea is to have a lighter Legio, in which I can favour more Warhounds, mobility and so, and a heavier one, more focused on artillery and stuff of the like. I still have to work on the details, but I wouldn't like to have two identical, twin enemies.

But that's a long term plan. For now I have to discover the kits and explore their possibilities. The first stage will consist in building a Titan of each class (Warhound/Reaver/Warlord) for both Legios, and we'll see from that point.

Today I'll start with the Warhounds. It's a quite complete kit and allows essentially infinte poses. As it's my first time, I'll play it easy:

No conversions. Not yet

You can see I primed the kits first. I feared I couldn't reach all the places when assembled, and I thought it would be reasonable to paint as I glue pieces. The first challenge was to decide the poses and make them work, but in the end it wasn't as terrible as I feared.

Twins. Yet note the differences

Each kit provides a couple of choices for armour plates and so. This way, you can make your Titans look different enough. Those tiny details are awesome and make the difference, I'm really happy with the sprues.

Time to splash some colour. For the loyal Legio my first choice was to keep the same scheme I used for my Epic Titans, blue and bone.

WIP pic, before I forgot taking more

I used Vallejo Royal Blue, which is slighty lighter than the deeper tone I used for the other Titans, and I think it works better. But when I thought I had finished it (and even with the decals placed!) I changed my mind. I realised that a colder white suited it best:

See the difference between the bone white on the leg and the neutral white

Then I repainted those parts. Not a big deal, but I think it's better to see these things at the beginning of the project, not when you have already painted six Titans!

The traitor Legio was a little bit more difficult for me. I first tried a scheme, but I wasn't really pleased with it. It consisted of a very dark blue combined with yellow, but I really didn't see it. So I changed my mind too and repainted it again. The new scheme wasn't in my plans at all, as I thought that red and brass would bee too classic and kind of a cliche, but in the end I have to admit that it works and I like it more than anticipated.

I only left the yellow leg pad, which looked nice to me

Well, then these are the first two Titans of the new project!

Here you have the Lancearium from Legio Artemis.

This is Sharpblade [Imperial designation Acutus] from Legio Faucibus (Death Jaws).

Oh, just a thought. I haven't really opened the rulebook, so I don't know what these weapons truly are, if they are good or whatever. I simply applied the Rule of Cool. I believe I'll have to look it up in the future. But for now this is it, I just wanted to check the kits. No conversions, no complications.

It has started

On another note, look at the size difference between the old and new Titans:

Come on, kid, let's go to Titan School

BONUS!

 I also took the chance to paint the tokens in the core box. As my pal got the ruleset box and the Grand Master Edition, I had two sets to paint!

I hope I painted them all!

This new road to insanity has just begun. Stay with me to see where it goes!

Realscale Dreadnought

I'm partially cheating with the title, but we'll get into that soon.

First post of the year, I hope everyone's doing good! I've been recently working on my Realscale Space Sharks force again, on a very particular piece. I guess that the title gave me away, ahem.

I wanted a Dreadnought, and for me there's only one acceptable model, the glorious 2nd Ed style one (I believe it's now called "Castraferrum Pattern"). Whatever.

THIS and only THIS is a proper Dreadnought

 The iconic image of the walking brick summarises WH40K in so many ways. I never liked all the other models, and sorry, I simply cannot stand the tiny head popping up in the front of the Dreadnought. This is the armoured beast I had since the old days and wasn't really giving up about the idea of reproducing it for my Carcharodons army.

I could have looked up for a .stl online and then asked to have it 3Dprinted and upscaled, just the way I got the Rhino, but I really didn't find any suitable options, I feared some level of detail would be lost when upscaling it, and didn't fancy the risk. I think I could do better than that.

So I embarked upon a new insanity. Judging by pics, I believed that a Leviathan Pattern Dreadnought would provide a suitable starting point, as it looked adequate for my purposes in terms of size. There are some obvious differences from the 2nd Ed Castraferrum Pattern, but I thought I could live with them.

A mere starting point

I feared that the legs would look too different, but I admit they are the only option to provide some additional height, and didn't look that bad.

Even considering that they have knees!

The plastic kit is excellent and it allows some flexibility, so you can reposition the legs at will. A little fiddly to assemble, but incredible model. I wanted a slight sense of movement, so I assembled them into a walking position. Slow, heavy walking, but a little dynamic.

Now it's time to have some fun. As I told above, I really (really) dislike those Dreadnoughts with a tiny helmet on the front. It doesn't make much sense to me, I like the concept of the crippled Marine inside the sarcophagus. But the Leviathan Pattern Dreadnought has one of those annoying heads!

Fortunately I had some spare bits, including an old sarcophagus. I had to cut and trim here and there, but I finally got this result:

The walking brick!

It was a little bit tricky, but easier than I expected. At that point I felt confident that the project would be feasible. But that wasn't the only conversion required!

Another thing I've never liked is the way the assault cannon is depicted in Dreadnoughts. Go get a look at the first pic above. It's just a chunky single piece where the six barrels are just a huge bulk. It looked great back then, of course, but I believe GW has evolved since then and can certainly provide a more accurate way to represent a Gatling-style weapon.

Anyway, the Leviathan sprues don't have any assault cannon (and a classic Dreadnought needs one, of course). Let's take a deep breath and see what can be done...

I had to cut the weapon on the arm...

...and make it a little bit wider

But why, oh, why? I hear you ask. What's in your deranged mind this time?

A proper, realistic (1:6?) Gatling mini gun!!

I made a search on the internet looking for a smaller weapon, but I didn't find anything suitable. Judging only by the online pics it was a little risky, but given that it was like a 3 euro purchase, I was keen to take such a risk.

The lenght of the barrels was excessive, even for such a crazy project

But I managed to reduce it a little

Still too much, but manageable. It's ridiculous, humongous and/or many other adjectives... but this is Warhammer 40,000, where the concept of "too much" means nothing!

Too much. It works

Close enough to my idea of a realscale Dreadnought

I didn't look for a power claw, as those drills look dreadful as hell. They suit the Space Sharks brutal background and they looked cool to me.

Well! It's of course not a perfect replica of a classical Dreadnought, but that was never my aim, I was just looking for a proxy, and I believe the general shapes of this monster and the sheer bulk will serve my purpose.

Let's add some paint to the equation!

Yes, I painted grey over the grey sprues

I took some additional risk with this symbol on the kneepad, and I have to admit I had to use glasses. I've been avoiding this moment for years, as long as I could, but I'm afraid the time for painting with glasses has finally arrived.

This a representation of my own face while painting it

The final touch was adding details that would take the viewer's attention. Colour focal points and that kind of stuff.

Again, there's no such thing as "too much" in WH40K

I got some decals from Fallout Hobbies and I have to say they are great. They look fantastic and helped me quite a lot. Have a look at the beast:

Too much? That's like your opinion

Go ahead, make my day

All in all, I think this is the least disturbing perspective of the Dread, where it looks better proportionate

OK, final (really) touch: A banner. I could have made a paper one, sure, but this time I thought this model deserved another thing. I took this banner from the Grey Knights box (yes, I once wanted to do that army, but never did):

But... there are no sharks there!

Will this work...?

Good enough for me!

I wasn't sure if the decal would fit the banner, but luckily it did! I wrote Tui atu i te mate, which is Maori for "Beyond death". Then I fixed it to the Dreadnought with magnets, for storage convenience:

TUI ATU I TE MATE

The shark jaw on the banner comes from the Dead Animal Bits box by Wargames Atlantic. I'm quite happy with the purchase and now I have tons of all kind of scary bits!

Here you have a few more pics of the finished thing:

And a couple of mandatory scale comparison pics with realscale Space Marines:

Now this is the size of a Dreadnought

Pics will get better when I get a background

It's been a risky project, but a rewarding one. I still believe the assault cannon is too big, but until I find a smaller option I much prefer a true Gatling-style gun to any other weapon.

My Space Sharks force keeps on growing. It's dangerously close to a functional 2nd Edition army list, hmmm ;)