Game 2: 1.3K Blood Angels 2v2 Tau
W00T! My second game!
It was a team game… my ally was Joe, playing Dark Angels. My opponents were Ryan and Jim, both fielding what ended up to be very mean and shooty Tau.
While me and my fellow space marine lost in actual ‘victory points’ I learned a LOT and had great fun.
A quick synopsis and lessons learned from the battle…
- The 3 man squad of Tau XV-88 broadsides with with shield drones and rail guns HURT. Between the other shooty units doing some damage and the 6 railgun hits (AP1/2) my assault squad wasn’t able to close into assault after deep striking in. I’m not sure how to counter this and need to think this through.
- I need to bring a regular tape measure…the fabric one I have isn’t great for 40k.
- I need to write my name on all my stuff…when theres 12 players all with rulebooks and gear out, it can get a bit confusing.
- Dreadnoughts are slow and while tough, haven’t been relevant until late game when the tide is already not in my favor. I need to either drop-pod them in and hope they survive an enemy round of shooting… and/or order the lucius pattern drop pod from Forgeworld.
- The contemptor patter dreadnoughts 5+ shooty invulnerable saved ended up being worth it!
- When I WAS able to charge into assault with my assault marines…the Tau dropped like flies.
- I purchased a $12 brand new combination blast/spray template, put it in my back pocket, then sat down. I now have 1 template in two pieces. :/
- I still need to study assault rules & vehicle rules. I have movement and shooting phases more or less down (although I still have to ask for opponents toughness and think for 5-10 seconds on to wound roles in the shooting phase.
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Game 1: 2k Blood Angels vs. Space Marines Battle Report
My first game of war hammer 40K! I went on down to At Ease Games in Poway. I entered the league for $10 (although not sure what being in the league means?) and was matched against Chris, who was running a mech heavy space marines list. (Thank you Chris for your patience and teaching me the basics of 40K!)
As this was my first game, I lost BADLY. I was tabled at the top of turn 5. Here are some of my lessons learned:
- Holding 70% of my army in reserve for deep strike, even with descent of angels, was a bad idea. (I kept on failing on my reserve roles)
- Remember to roll for ‘red thirst’
- When deep striking, you have to do it well away from cover and the table edge… and your squad arrives in a nicely packed group that fits nicely under the large blast template (not good). Sanguinary priests are more of a must here.
- My ‘shooty’ terminators weren’t so great against assault terminators.
- To hit is easy to remember.
- I’m starting to understand/remember the ‘to wound’ chart in my head but not the toughness of all the models.
- I need to study the assault rules at length.
- The ‘Master of the Forge’ and ‘Vulcan’ (need to look up in more detail) hurt me badly.
- Remember to pop smoke on the predator and vindicator when appropriate.
- I forgot to take my contempt or pattern dreadnought, even though he was in my list!
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Reaver Titan Complete!
I can resist no-longer… 81 days after I received Forgeworld Reaver Titan 1108 in the post from the UK, I present… Saevus Verum!
In the next few weeks I’ll add build pictures with detailed explanations, but for now, 29 pictures of the finished Reaver! (click on image to enlarge)
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Painting the ForgeWorld Reaver Titan Legs
- Start with a partially assembled and primed set of legs. I left off the leg piston guard assemblies, all pistons, leg armor, front & rear pelvis armor, leg cabling, toes, and knee plates)
- Using 3M 1/4″ Vinyl Tape, mask off the top and bottom of the upper leg main pistons.
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Building the Forgeworld Reaver Titan Legs
- Test fit everything so you know what is what. Take your time here.
- Decide on your pinning strategy. Expand the below image to see where I decided to put pins.
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Forgeworld Reaver Titan Servitors
Overall I’m happy with the color scheme of the ‘interior’ of the titan. Instead of going with a very dirty, washed gunmetal or chainmail, I went for a ‘worn grey paint’ look. My inspiration was the inside of a Sea Knight helicopter sitting on the USS Midway aircraft carrier here in San Diego (see below for picture)
- Primed with Duplicolor grey sandable primer
- Airbrushed base coat of Reaper Master Series 9089 Cloudy Grey
- Airbrushed highlight of Reaper Master Series 9090 Misty Grey
- Skin tone is Reaper Fair Skin Tone triad, with a wash of Vallejo 73.204 flesh wash after the reaper ‘Fair Skin Shadow’ but before the two highlight layers were applied.
- I wanted the tubes to look ‘transparent’ with fluids (blood) going in/out of the servitor through the tube. I base coated white, slapped on a layer of Games Workshop gloss coat, then applied a very thin wash of clear blue and green (9096/9097) and matt medium and water. Overall I’m happy with the color, but not with the red lines… if I were to do it again I’d just go with the clear blue affect.
- The black is simply pure black, with edge highlighting from a woodless graphite pencil
- The metallic smudging/worn paint was applied by rubbing the woodless graphite pencil along the rivits, then smudging the graphite around randomly with my finger tip.
- Here’s the inspiration picture (click to enlarge):
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Reaver Titan 1108 has been named!
“Savage Truth”
For some unexplained reason…when I was sculpting the green stuff around the power fist I was compelled to sign my initials (JH) and year (2012)… but I also wrote the word ‘savage.’ I’m not sure why that word popped in my head, but it did!
On a whim tonight I used google translate to find the latin (aka high gothic in the w40k-o-sphere) word for savage… and realized that I had stumbled into the name for the titan!
Titan #1108 shall hence force be known as:
Saevus Verum
(in miniature scale, in various tabletop war-games, d6 rolls willing).
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Building the Reaver Titan PowerFist
Goal: A fully magnetized and positionable reaver titan powerfist.
- Understand where each piece fits. While it’s obvious now, before I started assembling the arm I thought that the ‘wrist end’ of the arm was actually the ‘shoulder end.’ This ended up being okay, as I realized it before magnetizing the hand itself, but could have been disastrous had that not been the case. Take a second to carefully read the instructions, ID the parts, and figure our which parts go where. Test fit. In particular, separate the thumb finger set of pieces, the two ‘long’ sets of finger pieces, and the two ‘short’ sets of finger pieces. The thumb pieces only very slightly, with some wider knuckle covers, joins, etc.
- Optionally, magnetize the arm. I magnetized the mount to the shoulder, the first joint below the shoulder, and the wrist. I didn’t magnetize the elbow as there wasn’t an obvious way to do that joint, and it’s already a bit ‘fiddly’ with the three other magnetized joints (although with the 1/2 x 1/4 neodymium magnets is suprisingly secure).One thing to watch out for…I got the first joint ‘backwards’ such that the ‘more armor side’ of the should joint (fart right piece in below picture) was ‘outside.’ (‘up’ in the below picture). In fact, it should be INSIDE (down) if you want to be able to pose the arm ‘up and out’ (as in lift your right elbow away from your body) For the reaver to do that, the ‘short armor side’ of the upper/shoulder joint needs to be facing ‘up/out.’ As a result, my upper arm is ‘backwards,’ the ‘tube’ is facing forward from the inner elbow instead of facing back, and I was unable to use a piston. With all that said, I still think it looks great! If I could do it over again, I’d build it as designed. Ooops! If you build a power fist arm don’t make the same mistake as me!
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Pinning the shoulders of a Reaver Titan
Here are the steps I took to pin the shoulders of a reaver titan…
- I used JB-Weld epoxy to first glue to shoulders to the main body of the reaver titan. Because the shoulders will be subject to leveraged weight of the weapon arms, I wanted this to be as strong of a bond as possible, so I roughed up the surface of the weld on both the body and the shoulder pieces with the hobby knife, and used the ‘full strength’ JB-Weld (instead of the JQ-Quick). When using full strength, you have to let it cure overnight… and to ensure that nothing shifted during curing I clamped the heck out of each shoulder.
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Magnetizing the weapon arms on a ForgeWorld Reaver Titan
After dropping the ridiculous amount of money for expertly cast resin parts from the UK… aka a VERY expensive pile of plastic… and spending weeks upon weeks of building and painting it, I don’t want to take it to my first game and regret my choice of hard mounted weapons!
Sooo… I bought all the available Imperial weapons, and decided to magnetize the shoulders of the reaver and each of the weapon arms. The challenge is that the Power Fist has a ‘flat’ interface to the shoulder socket where the other three arms have a ‘ball’ interface to the shoulder socket, so I had to essentially make the weapon/shoulder interface the same for all weapons.
To do this, I made the ‘ball’ weapon interface ‘flat’ and used the cut tops of the arms to hold the magnet in exactly the right place in the shoulder. Hopefully this diagram explains (the square rectangles within the named parts are where the magnets sit).
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Chroming the Reaver Titan pistons
- The very first step was to smooth the pistons surface as much as possible. The Alclad 2 highly metallic paints are SO shiny that every imperfection in the surface shows clearly. So… I used a Dremel and a fine grit abrasive buff.
- As a test, to ensure I have good paint adhesion and am okay with the texture of the Duplicolor sandable primer, I primed the 16 toe pistons of the reaver titan. Because I want ‘resin->resin’ bonds when I glue the pistons in, the first step was to use adhesive putty (aka poster putty or blu tack) to cover the portions of the pistons that will glue in.
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Cleaning the ForgeWorld Reaver Titan
Before construction can begin in earnest, each of thousands of individual components (311) must be meticulously cleaned… a laborious effort directed by tech priests and carried out by menials and servitors… who literally go over each part with a toothbrush.
- The first step is to pop off the gates, cutting away from the model to avoid damage. This allows good access by the brush while scrubbing. I’m keeping all the extra resin, as I’ll use it to test primer adhesion and paint colors, test drill holes for magnets, and eventually use it as rubble in terrain. 90% of the gates can/should be cut with sprue cutters, and few large gates (like on the main body) require a razor saw.
- I then let the parts soak in hot soapy water for 5 minutes (not scalding, as I don’t want to deform the resin).
- After a bit of a soak, for the larger parts I loaded up a relatively stiff brush with dish soap and water and scrub away. The goal is to get the mold release off the resin, and having dealt with paint adhesion on resin issues before, I don’t half ass this part. For the smaller pieces I use a toothbrush, and am VERY careful to not loose track of any small pieces. I typically take an inventory after the scrub down to make sure nothing is missing.
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Reaver Titan inventory and inquisition
The tech-priest logis of the San Diego Collegia Titanica Manufactorium took a full accounting of the latest project, Reaver Titan 1108 (to be named upon commission).
A detailed catalog of each of the 311 sub-assemblies (a.k.a. resin parts) was created.
- Body: 214 sub-assemblies
- Apocalypse Missile launcher: 23 sub-assemblies
- Laser Blaster: 11 sub-assemblies
- Gatling Blaster: 12 sub-assemblies
- Melta Cannon: 9 sub-assemblies
- Powerfist: 42 sub-assemblies
A vox-print of the major leg sub-assemblies:
As with any large scale project, several defects were found, and must be addressed before production starts.
The tech priest assigned to Tital 1108 was himself warped by the forces of chaos!
Next we see a warped piston attached to a partially completed knee sub-assembly.
And finally we see the beginnings of nurgle rot trying to corrupt the cockpit of the reaver itself! EXPUNGE!!!! Probably initiated by the corrupted tech priest in transit from the forges of Mars (a.k.a. Nottingham, UK) to the San Diego Manufactorium. Because the cockpit must be sanctified, and because of the central and delicate location of the nurgle rot, the entire cockpit must be EXPUNGED and a new cockpit ordered from Mars.
Overall, 308 of the 311 sub-assemblies were blessed by the Logis for a 99.03537% purity rate. Well done ForgeWorld Mars/Nottingham,UK!
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3 commissioned models by miniaturepainters.com
I commissioned 3 models by miniature painters.com (a painting studio in Poland). They took a while, but I’m very happy with the results. If I were to do it again I’d carefully watch the exchange rates as that can significantly alter the prices. I wanted a great example of black power armor (chaplain in terminator armor), nonmetallic-metalics (The Sanquinor) and blue power armor (Librarian in terminator armor). All three will be great teaching aids as I work on my painting skills. I’m still going to airbrush base coats for troops and leave it at that, but for my next HQ (which will be a while since I’m starting a reaver titan!) I’ll practice layering/painted blends, edge highlights, etc. based on these models as great examples.
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Reaver Titan Decree!
The fabricator General has decreed that my army may develop the might of a reaver titan. The Adeptus Mechanicus are cowering in inspired awe at the intersteller cargo container that arrived via UPS at my doorstep yesterday from Nottingham, UK.
So…much…resin. While intimidated, the will is strong and the project will commence!
Titan #1108 shall become infamous to the enemies of the empire and mankind!
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Blood Angels Baal Predator
Of course as soon as I take the picture I see everything I forgot… have to paint the bolter rounds in the twin link bolter on the turret. I’ll also apply some decals using micro-sol, and then finish with a 50/50 mix of matt/satin Liquitex Varnish. I don’t think I’m going to weather these models until I get better at weathering, so they’ll stay ‘clean’ for now.
30mm Madness! 
