The earth rumbles as Warlord Titans of Legio Ignatum arrive

When news of the return of Adeptus Titanicus hit, I was overjoyed. I played a lot of Epic way back when the original Adeptus Titanicus and Space Marine boxes were new. And even though the rules were a bit hokey, it was a lot of fun. Then the box actually came out and I took a step back as it was about twice the price I had figured on. Also GW told me at Warhammer Fest no infantry was planned for the next five years. This helped me make my will power save versus buying the box for the next two years. I finally failed last month. And I have to say I've never been so happy to fail a saving throw in my life. Here's a shot of my first titan.

Stomp, stomp, stomp, said the Warlord Titan's feet.

I got to this stage of paint on the model at the end of February, but I waited with posting about Adeptus Titanicus as I planned to make a bit more scenery, add decals and make for some nicer shots. As the Adeptus Titanicus bug has hit me rather hard (I'm almost at the stage where I'll actually read the rules) I have to start posting. If I don't I'll have to ditch pictures and words because of sheer overkill. In other words: strap in as this first Adeptus Titanicus post will be rather long...Let's start with some more pictures of my first Warlord titan.

I was briefly annoyed at the 8mm upscale, but then I took in the extra detail and understood why GW upped the scale. 

This is not actually the fully finished model. I've added some transfers and a few subtle washes to metal parts later on (and weathered the guns). In deference to the original Adeptus Titanicus, specifically the amazing rulebook cover artwork by John Blanche, I picked the Legio Ignatum (Fire Wasps) as my Legio.

One of the difficult things with titans is conveying their relative size to the world around them. I did my best basing this one to give a sense of scale.

To add a sense of scale I made a rather simple base with a stretch of road and some trees.

This is not a finished titan. By now I've added decals, a bit of weathering and some nice extra subtle colors to the metals.

I really should post a few more pictures of this titan as the missiles have been painted later on and I've also added some heat effects to the weapons and the top. What I do want to add here is what a joy these models are to paint. This has a lot to do with the GW/Forge World team designing the build stage with painting in mind. You can keep almost all the armour panels detached making it a lot easier to airbrush color on them while also blocking in the majority metallics on the rest of the model. Speaking of the model, lets talk about building it.

How to assemble an old school titan (when the world was young, death still a dream and Adeptus Titanicus had six Warlords in the box).

Here's a shot from the original 1988 Adeptus Titanicus rulebook with the assembly instructions. Stick body to feet, stick head and carapace to body and finish up by adding arm and shoulder weapons. These classic titans where at the 6mm scale. The new titans have been upgraded to 8mm. Adding 25 percent to the size (and almost 30 years of extra practice at making models) shows in the massive amount of detail the new models have. Here's a build shot of a new 8mm warlord.

A modern titan takes a lot more assembly to put it mildly.

One neat feature on the new titans are pre-designed slots to put 5mm diameter (1mm thick) magnets in. This maken magnetizing the weapon options easy. All it takes is the magnets (oddly enough GW doesn't offer magnet packs yet (give it time)).

It takes a skilled princeps and real eighties electric boogaloo to do a headspin with a titan. 

The legs articulate and are fully poseable. That is assuming you are not a full on half-wit like me and glue them at odd angles in the first attempt, allow the glue to dry and then spend a lot of time cursing yourself as you desperately try to get the pose right again. (I actually spent another evening cursing as I almost messed up my second warlord too). You could theoretically make a karate-kick titan if you where so inclined. It would look rather silly, but still improve on the rather static pose GW chooses for most of the titans on its website.

My second titan, primed and ready to be painted.

Here's a shot of my second warlord. I've tried to get its pose near to the JB artwork referenced earlier in this winding post. As you can see, the weapons are separate for painting (and magnetized). Almost all the armour plates can be left off at this stage. I also can't decide between two head options, so I'll just paint both. Back to titan number one (the one that's actually finished and painted). To prepare for painting I read up on old White Dwarf 'Eavy Metal articles and the old rulebook. The colors for hte Fire Wasps are red and yellow with black stripes. In the original Adeptus Titanicus Warlord Titans had a huge back shell that was supposed to be painted in camouflage colours (I suspect the intergalactic union of opticians would hand out free glasses to anyone failing to spot a titan). As the new models have 'more subtle' top armour I decided to ignore that bit of advice and go for red and yellow. With a preference for red on the first one.

Working on the armour plates for titan number one, did I mention my slight dislike of armour trim?

After priming I airbrushed the entire model, including the back of all the armour plates with Vallejo Dark Aluminum. I then airbrushed the front armour plates with Vallejo Armour Brown (to get a red-brown basecoat) following this up by a number of carefully build up layers of Vallejo Bloody Red. Then I took out a fresh brush and got started on hand painting the trim. I hate painting trim (although I got some nice tips from pro-painter Scar to help me with this chore). The tip: use (a paint from the amazing range of) Scale75 Dwarven Gold for the trim on all the plates, ignore the sides while painting trim (they'll be covered by a wash later). It saved me a lot of misses, splotches and curses.

For some small parts you just have to airbrush on metal and paint away the overbrush. As an aside don't eat crisps while painting as the fat on your fingers will destroy your paint job. Eat crisps while gaming between painting sessions. As a second aside, I really should get a move on and finish that Vermin Lord in te background. It has a small spiders web between its horns.

I hand painted Armour Brown on the top part of the torso and carefully airbrushed a bit of Bloody Red on here, using a brush to restore the Dark Aluminum where overspray hit the trim.

Finished armour plates. Patining the two side plates for the legs yellow (left and right side of the picture) turned out to be the most pointless color difference on the planet (they're hardly visible on a completed titan). 

After the Bloody Red dried I washed all gold with GW Agrax Earthshade. I also washed the panel lines of the plates with Agrax (as opposed to my usual 'glom it thick'-style of washing I was actually careful for a change). The yellow plates where based with Vallejo Bronze Fleshtone and then built up with layers of Vallejo Gold Yellow. I then used (quality) masking tape to mask out the stripes (from experience don't use cheap masking tape as it'll rip off delicate airbrush paints). I sprayed the black with Vallejo Nato Black building up a slight highlight by mixing some Vallejo Magic Blue into the black. I also painted some Wildrider Red highlights around the panel lines on the red plates. After the Agrax dried I touched up all the gold parts with a bit of fresh Dwarven Gold, followed by a highlight of Dwarven Gold mixed with Scale75 Speed Metal. The metal parts of the titan where washed with Nuln Oil and drybrushed with Scale75 Heavy Metal. At this point I could assemble the first titan to the one shown at the start of this article.

Painting glowing plasma is one of the easiest tricks with an airbrush, but man it looks good (at least I think it does). In the back more models I spend random painting moments on (mostly while waiting for a wash to dry).

Somewhere in this span of time I also picked up the upgrade sprue for Warlord titans so I could build and paint two Plasma Annihilators, Two Laser Blasters and a Power Claw. I mostly followed the same procedure here as with the rest of the titan. The Power Claw took a lot of patching up as I started with metal and wash, then airbrushed Bloody Red and then had to restore a lot of the metalwork again (with some added trim painting in between for good measure). The plasma coils were painted with a rather standard OSL technique for airbrushes. Starting with Magic Blue and just adding white to the cup, reducing the area sprayed and not worrying about overspray at all.

Making epic trees sounds way more epic then the end result. Still I found this neat and easy trick to doing it. 

As a final experiment I wanted to add some trees to the base of my first titan. On a whim I cut apart a cocktail stick and PVA-glued the bits to a piece of cardboard (cut from a GW package). After allowing the PVA to dry I airbrushed the entire thing brown (Vallejo Russian Brown I think).

These epic scale trees are tree-like enough for my taste.

I picked apart a small bit of Iceland Moss (Reindeer Lichen?) and glued it to the top of the sticks. Then I dripped on super glue at a few intervals to harden it all. I cut the cardboard bases to size (with rounded corners) and glued these onto my titan's base. I covered the cardboard with the Dark Earth Paste I also used to cover most of the rest of the base. It blends in easily. These trees area slightly more fragile then I would like (I'm very careless with my own models), but at the same time it does look rather nice (I think). I did have to go back at a later point to glue the hardened bits of moss together with PVA here and there (they fell apart while handling the titan). I will have to experiment further with this, especially as some woodland would look nice on a battlefield.

The building sets for Adeptus Titanicus look awesome, but (at the danger of whining) they cover too little of the table for the price you pay (in my opinion). 

To round off, as you could already see in the background here and there, I've also assembled and painted a few of the buildings I got with my Adeptus Titanics Grand Master Edition. They look rather nice, but I think the price point of these boxes clash with my ambitions for an overfilled table. That does not matter as I feel like going for some old school scratch building anyway (with the joys of some very new school 3D printing thrown in for good measure). Maybe I'll get more use out of the rest of my building bits by adding them to foamboard and styrofoam structures.

Wrecking bits to cover a base is a great stress reliever. 

As an aside, here's what you can do to an armour plate using just a pair of needle nose pliers and a scalpel. This has been stuck to the base of my second titan as a message to all traitorous followers of Horus.

The Knights where ready to take color. The Dungeon Quest Knight only needed a decal and the Barbarian was three quarters finished. Ah raising kids, its not all fun and games. 

As a second aside, I was well on my way to painting the Knights included in the box (and some very old school miniatures) when my four year old proved he could open both Vallejo and GW paints. He rather happily decided to help me finish some of the models I was working on. Ah the joys of raising kids (don't worry my scalpel and assorted deadly tools are stowed safely (and I lucked out as he didn't use my brand new set of Winsor&Newtons for this)).

Nothing a proper educational talk and some Biostrip-20 won't solve. 

Luckily Biostrip-20 came to the rescue. We had a good talk about dad's stuff versus his stuff. To make sure he had plenty to paint in the future I've added a few plastic Space Marines to his collection. Last I heard he was telling a playdate about not touching dad's stuff so perhaps the talk has taken root. He also asked for a paper towel to dry his brushes last time he was painting miniatures. I asked where he learned that and he told it was by watching me paint. Yes Dadhammering and proud of it. Next step: teaching him to thin his paints. Young Bloods get ready for a new member ;).

I think this is the beginning of a beautiful new bit of hobby.

Anyway it took me a while to finally pick up this box, but it is well worth it (okay not 100% sure as I still haven't played or read the rules, but that's neither here nor there). I'm currently working on my second Warlord Titan, my Knights should be back to their previous 'add color to the metal'-state soon and I've also got some flyers lined up to add to the collection. All that's left is to get another box of Titans, build some scenery, get a few games in and sacrifice a goat* to GW in hopes they'll release an 8mm version of Epic soon (and Warmaster next as I'm going around killing goats anyway**). Coming soon: more painted titans and (hopefully somewhere in between this activity) the final brushstrokes on my second Townscape set.

* Not really.
** Don't worry no real goats will be harmed by me.