Fearsome Engines

"The Legio Pythia - known colloquially as the Noctis Pythonis, the Night Witches - saw heavy fighting along the spinward front. The specialised in devastating hit and fade attacks previously thought impossible with Titans. Although many of their forces were lighter Reaver and Warhound pattern engines, the Traitor Legios quickly learned to fear the appearance of a Warlord in the Purple and Black livery of the Night Witches." 

From Fearsome Engines: A History of the Legios on the Spinward Marches, Ayjaypee T'Lar, Mars University Press, m40.231

As a youth in the late 80s I had many a fun afternoon playing Adeptus Titanticus. Epic never really got a handle on me, but the simple joy of tooling around a city with a giant stompy robot and smacking seven bells out of other giant stompy robots went straight to the Godzilla part of my brain.

Unfortunately the rereleased version of the game last year was massively too expensive for me to buy. But this last week they released a new starter set with four titans, two knights and all the gubbins you need. So obviously I was going to buy it. I also through through the project and bought some scenery - as the challenge with painting these is to sell the size of the titans (180' tall!) and some magnets.

To start with, I built the titans and all the weapon variations. I added 3x1mm magnets meaning that the weapons can be swapped out depending on how I choose to run my titans for any given game. It sound fiddly but compared to my previous experience wiht magnets it was a piece of cake. The difficult thing was as always checking the polarity of the magnets before superglueing and working out which parts of the ball joint to sever with the dremel.

As you can see they slip together very easy. 

I also added some of the scenery to the bases to help with the scale. It turns out that Vallejo diorama paste is pretty much the right scale. 

Painting wise is used the same workflow as for the Knights of varying sizes by keeping the armour plates seperate for airbrushing while the skeleton is painted with metallics and drybrushing.

The plates were done with purple and then shaded to black with Black Contrast. The Contrast paints are very interesting used in an airbrush. Being quite translucent anyway they can be sprayed at quite high psi without thinning and used as a filter.

Then a big old gloss varnish to give some depth. 

The various limbs were then painted with blacks and purples and given a massive dose of painted gloss varnish as well. 

Trim was painted with a very bright silver. 

The contrasts came out again to get an engine glow in the exhausts - they are very good for wet blending and so with one three colours you can get a very nice effect. 

There's an awful lot of bits for final assembly!

My other purchase was some N-Gauge model railway trees. I just added some different shades of green to make them less vibrant. 

And then the final touch was some weathering pigmets to finish off the bases...

...and to tie the Titans into the bases.

And so the final effect is, I think, quite effective. 

I am very happy with how these look. Next up will be some teenty tiny Knights and then some traitor Titans. 

Oh, and while I was on, I decided to jazz up the arc templates for the game... 

Wormtongue

"At [Théoden's] feet upon the steps sat a wizened figure of a man, with a pale wise face and heavy-lidded eyes....He laughed grimly, as he lifted his heavy lids for a moment and gazed at the strangers wirth dark eyes."

This is the second Grima I have painted and, like the new Saruman, it was a joy to work with. The old metal one was a lovely likeness but this is a work of art. 

Once again painted with Contrast paints but with a a couple of little details - a dark flesh wash around the eyes to give the haunted look and a highlight of bone to make his skin paler. 

I also wanted to add some texture to his tunic; the robe is black in the film but his tunic has a brocaded pattern. I changed the tone of the black by giving it a tint over the white basecoat...

...and then adding a small repeating pattern. I painted over this with the black contrast which leaves a very slight texture. 

I haven't as yet decided on a basing theme; as part of my evil army it would make sense to base him like the rest of the Isengard force; however the way the character actually plays is that he is fielded as part of the Good side to weaken them so should he be based as my Rohirrim?

Decisions, decisions....

Saurman the White

We've been here before. But the new plastic kit of Sir Christopher Lee was too good to resist. 

This kit was painted entirely - apart from the Eye of Sauron in the palantir - with Contrast paints. I used heavily thinned Skeleton Horde in the robes, with unthinned for the darkest recesses, and various whites, blacks and flesh tones.

Like all the recent Middle Earth Kits this was an absolute joy to put together and paint and looks incredibly dramatic on the table. 

The kit also came with a mounted Saruman

From a purely gaming point of view this was something I was sorely lacking as I quite like to run a pack of Warg Riders and having Saruman being able to ride along with them opens up a whole world of possibilities... 

Shepherd of the Forest

This is a rather special Ent. After building the plastic kit I had a head and a couple of right hands left. That's obviously the basis of another Ent but how to make the rest of it?

Basically, every time we went for a walk over the year, I collected some sticks. Always deadfalls - after all, Treebeard would not approve of me cutting  healthy trees down. 

Walks in Yorkshire, Wales, the highlands of Scotland - every part of  the countryside of mainland Britain contributed some elements. 

Then it was a matter of construction. Some drilling and pinning and a lot of Gorilla Gel.

I added a couple of branches from Dryads to break up the outline.

Almost by accident it appears that I made an Ent with attitude. Just looking at him you can hear the Beegees.

I then fastened him to the base and green stuffed the root structure round the feet.

I painted him using the one of the greatest strengths of contrast paints, I think - the ability to easily blend them to get natural colours. 

The leaves were painted in the traditional way and then I added some foliage from my stash.  

And so here is the current army of Fangorn Forest. 

Very happy with this one and obviously it has a lot of sentimental meaning to the family as it represents our travels in the countryside - something I think Professor Tolkien would have approved of. 

The Eye of the Beholder

First an apology - for some reason, my replies to comments on the blog (and every other blog I follow!) aren't showing up. For some reason my phone no longer seems to recognise my google account for comments which is bizarre. I am not ignoring comments and I am replying they're just not showing up!

This little beauty is my first experience of D&D ready primed miniatures. As the name suggests, just get it out of the packet and start painting.

The results are pretty impressive. I was also impressed at the interchangeable parts and the clear resin eye cover.

As you can see, he didn't take much work with a couple of different contrast shades to get something looking very nice indeed.

The teeth and tongue were painted the old fashioned way and I used tamiya clear red in the eyes.

Stalkers

I took advantage of the Games Workshop Made to Order offer a month or so ago to treat myself to some Morgul Stalkers for Battle Companies games.

These were painted entirely with the new Contrast paints except the metallics. This time I experimented with mixing some different colours together or layering them for different skin tones.

They are rapidly becoming a must have tool in my arsenal as they replicate my usual painting method but without having to zenithal Prime or mess about with different thinners.

My Precious

As part of a second hand deal a couple of weeks ago I got a painted Gollum from Lord of the Rings. He's one of the characters I've always fancied getting just to paint so I immediately set about stripping him.

He's been painted with the new Citadel Contrast paints - very thinned for the skin using the Contrast medium which really allowed the detail to come through. I then used unthinned paint for the darkest recesses. 

 The water was done with the water effects I've been using for the ship bases which I think finishes him off nicely.