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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)

 

Forgeworld Reaver Titan Servitors - Painted

  • 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):
    Sea Knight Helicopter Interior

Posted by  |  January 24, 2012 | Categories: Legio Titanicus, Modeling & Painting, Warhammer 40K | Leave a comment

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

Saevus Verum will bring the savage truth of the emperor to all of mankind’s enemies!
(in miniature scale, in various tabletop war-games, d6 rolls willing).

Posted by  |  January 19, 2012 | Categories: Legio Titanicus, Warhammer 40K | 1 Comment

Building the Reaver Titan PowerFist

Goal: A fully magnetized and positionable reaver titan powerfist.

  1. 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.
  2. 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!
    Reaver titan magnetized power fist

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Posted by  |  January 19, 2012 | Categories: Legio Titanicus, Modeling & Painting, Warhammer 40K | Tags: , | 1 Comment

Pinning the shoulders of a Reaver Titan

Here are the steps I took to pin the shoulders of a reaver titan…

  1. 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.
    Reaver Titan shoulders being glued

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Posted by  |  January 17, 2012 | Categories: Legio Titanicus, Modeling & Painting, Warhammer 40K | Tags: | Leave a comment

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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Posted by  |  January 13, 2012 | Categories: Legio Titanicus, Modeling & Painting, Warhammer 40K | 11 Comments

Chroming the Reaver Titan pistons

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
    Priming the reaver with Duplicolor sandable auto primer

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Posted by  |  January 9, 2012 | Categories: Legio Titanicus, Modeling & Painting, Warhammer 40K | 1 Comment

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.

  1. 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.
  2. I then let the parts soak in hot soapy water for 5 minutes (not scalding, as I don’t want to deform the resin).
  3. 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.
    Scrubbing mold release off reaver titan parts

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Posted by  |  January 9, 2012 | Categories: Legio Titanicus, Modeling & Painting, Warhammer 40K | 1 Comment

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:

Reaver titan parts

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!
Miscast reaver titan tech priest

Next we see a warped piston attached to a partially completed knee sub-assembly.
Warped reaver titan knee piston

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.
Slight miscast, hard to clearly remove mold leak on the reaver titan head/cockpit

Overall, 308 of the 311 sub-assemblies were blessed by the Logis for a 99.03537% purity rate. Well done ForgeWorld Mars/Nottingham,UK!

Posted by  |  January 5, 2012 | Categories: Legio Titanicus, Warhammer 40K | Leave a comment

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.

The Sanquinor by miniature painters.com

Librarian in terminator armor by miniaturepainters.com

Chaplain in terminator armor by miniaturepainters.com

Posted by  |  January 5, 2012 | Categories: Blood Angels, Elites, HQ, Warhammer 40K | Leave a comment

Blood Angels Tactical Squad 2

Tactical squad 2

Posted by  |  January 5, 2012 | Categories: Blood Angels, Troops, Warhammer 40K | Leave a comment