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Warlord Titan Assembly – Hips, Legs & Pinning

This is potentially the most tricky part of the entire build. Unfortunately this step requires both hands so I wasn’t able to take any pictures during the operation but I did take a few pictures after the fact to demonstrate the bubble level and the final leg/feet positions.

To position the legs on the hips and the feet on the legs I:

  1. Used JBQuick instead of JBWeld
  2. Did one leg at a time, and manually held the leg in the ball joint of the hip for ~10 minutes.
  3. Did the leg/hip join before gluing the feet on, but positioned the leg in the ‘cup’ of the foot while the hip/leg joint was setting to get an accurate idea of angle and height.
  4. While doing this, I used a small bubble level on top of the legs as I’m going for a level/stable hip surface.
  5. After each leg join set up after ~10 minutes, I did the same for the leg -> foot joint… I manually held the whole enchilada for ~10 minutes until the joint cured, then I repeated on the other leg/foot.

Warlord Titan bubble level

After letting the leg/feet joints fully cure (~12 hours) I drilled 1/8″ holes for the 1/8″ brass rods, to pin the leg/hip joints and reinforce everything so it’s nice and strong.

I’m a little concerned my legs have too wide of a stance, as the distance between the two connection points for the upper most piston is very tight, and even at max compression the pistons might be too long. I’ll update this outcome in a future post.

Overall, this is the hairiest / messiest part of the build as everything is at odd angles and it’s very difficult to clamp anything in. If/when you do this step, good luck! :) Hit me up with any questions / concerns and I’ll try and help.

Here you can see the legs clamped in the vice

warlord titan legs in vice

Then, drilling as straight ‘up’ the leg as possible even though the foot itself is at an angle.

warlord titan drilling holes in feet to pin leg

I repeated the same drilling step for the hips. Below you can see the final/glued pins for the feet and hips.

warlord titan hip pins

warlord titan feet & leg pins

At this point I have pins all over the place… through each hip, through each foot, through/accross the knee, and between the lower leg and knee joint. A total of 8 pins (4 in each leg). This is probably massive overkill, as the resin is nice and sturdy/thick, but I don’t want to take any chances with this expensive/heavy beast!

Warlord Titan Assembly – Legs and Knees

Step one of leg assembly is to epoxy the two pieces of the lower leg assemble together. I roughed up the joint surfaces and applied a liberal amount of JBWeld and let cure overnight(not pictured).

After the two lower leg pieces had cured, I put a 1/8″ brass rod pin through the join for good measure (probably unnecessary as JBWeld is strong and permanent, but I’m paranoid about leg strength on such a big, top heavy model. Below you can see where I pinned the lower leg pieces together. I drilled at an angle starting from the top of the armor support piece and down through the joint.

Warlord Titan Leg Pin

Below you can see the ejected JBWeld after I sunk the 1/8″ brass rod/pin. Not beautiful, but this part will be hidden by the lower leg armor plating.

JBWeld Leg Pin 2

Once everything dries overnight, drill a 1/8″ hole through the outer/upper knee joint.

If you try and drill all the way through both sides from just the side facing you there is a good chance that you aren’t drilling perfectly straight, or that the knee joint isn’t perfectly flat on the table, so your hole will be off center on the bottom joint. To avoid this I drilled in from both sides of each outer/upper knee joint to make sure that the hole is ‘centered’ on each side.

Warlord Titan Knee Joint Pin

With the holes drilled on both of the outer/upper knee joint pieces, center the inner/lower knee joint as much as possible and mark the ‘center.’

Warlord Titan Knee Joint Pin 2

If the center hole mark looks reasonable on the inner knee joint (it did) go ahead and drill through the entire inner knee joint through the outer piece facing you. Once you punch through the entire inner/lower joint, stop drilling as you already have a hole in the other side of the outer/upper knee joint.

Warlord Titan Knee Pin 3

There is enough play in the inner/outer knee joints… you should be able to test fit (no glue yet!) the 1/8″ brass rod through the entire knee joint.

Warlord Titan Knee Position

Next, we need to decide what angle to glue the leg joints at. I decided to not get fancy… My goals for the Warlord Titan are not a dynamic running pose, but an imposing ‘standing my ground’ stance that is, most importantly, stable and strong.

As far as stability is concerned, I wanted to load to be ‘linear’ from the hip joint down through the legs to the feet. I used a straight edge from the center of the hip joint down through the center of the lower leg position, and noted the position of the knee joint (lug at 3rd line)

Warlord Titan Knee Position 3

The next thing I was curious about was how much height I would gain/loose as I compressed the knee joint. As you can see below (inch measurements on the green mat) ‘lug at 3rd line’ was about 1/2″ taller than ‘lug at 4th line.’

I chose ‘lug at line 3’ knee positions for both knees for three reasons:

  1. I like the extra 1/2″ height. Stand tall titan! We’re not some crouching/stalking WarHound, we are a mighty warLORD!
  2. I like that the load from the hip joint will be ‘straight’ down through the lower leg
  3. I want a more static/stable pose as opposed to a walking running pose… mostly for stability but also story wise. This Warlord is right where it needs to be and has the enemies of the imperium in its sights.
  4. Static/Stable is less risk overall as there will be less risk of pistons being too long/short and less risk of the center of gravity being off and the warlord tipping over.

Warlord Titan Lug at Line 3Warlord Titan Lug at Line 4   Version 3

Now that I decided on my knee joint angle, I once again used JBWeld to glue those joints in. I applied a liberal amount to the inside of the upper leg, and then a thin-ish layer to the ‘cog’ coming up from the lower leg assembly. Once inserted, I sunk the 1/8″ brass rod pin through the knee joint, positioned the lug at ‘line 3’, cleaned up any of the JBWeld being pushed out of the knee joint with q-tips, and them clamped the joints down (light pressure from the clamps) to dry overnight.

 

Warlord Titan Knee Joint Glue Warlord Titan Knee Pin Coating Warlord Titan Knee Joints Clamped

Warlord Titan: It’s the journey, not the destination.

 

 

 

 

Warlord Titan construction commences!

Warlord Titan Hips

‘Step 1’ in the instruction manual… attaching the ‘ball’ to the hip joint (kind of an inverse femoral head for those willing to google hip anatomy). I scored the heck out of all the smooth flat surfaces of the join with an x-acto knife then liberally applied JB-Weld. I purchased the larger 5oz tubes of JB-Weld as I plan on using lots and lots of JB-Weld on this warlord. JB-Weld just feels a lot less brittle and a heck of a lot tougher than Cyanoacrylate (CA). It takes ~12 hours to cure, which also helps me SLOOOOW down on the build, enjoy it more and not make stupid mistakes because I’m trying to rush assembly.

 

Warlord Titan Pistons

These are ALL of the pistons on a warlord titan. For anyone that’s assembled a Reaver or Warhound, the small number is a HUGE RELIEF. I probably spent 20% of the entire build time of the warhound/reavers on the pistons.

Warlord Titan Parts

Here are the completely trimmed pieces. All gate/vent resin has been cleanly removed. Any flash lines and mold misalignments removed with the GW mold line remover.

Warlord Titan Wash

Probably the least fun part of prep is ‘THE CLEANING.’ To get clean casts, a mold release must be used. The whole point of mold release is to prevent other materials (the mold) from bonding to the part. The problem is that it also prevents PAINT from bonding to the resin, which is of course a huge problem on a Titan. So… a toothbrush, lots of dish soap and rinse water, lots of scrubbing, and 2-3 hours of time, and CLEAN! This step definitely gets old after 171 pieces (ugh). However, early on with ForgeWorld resin I skipped this step, and there’s nothing worse then removing a piece of very gently adhesive masking tape from a base coat and having the entire paint film pull up, ruining an almost complete model. I often skip this step with the games workshop injection molded plastics…but NEVER with resin. Trust me, it’s worth the time! I will also do one final soap/scrub/rinse once the entire model is put together right before priming.

A little advice/perspective on Titan building: It’s the journey, not the destination.

Once you realize this, Titan building is AMAZING. Every few nights for the next 3-4 months I will do ONE OR TWO STEPS of the assembly process, and each step will take 1-2 hours. I will get each step as perfect as possible… test fit it, re-test fit, sand, score, drill/pin, etc. Each morning I will wake up and have something small to look forward to. Like a little kid on christmas morning I’ll run down and ‘check my Titan.’ I’ll remove the clamps and confirm that the bond is strong and that everything is aligned correctly and looking great. It’s great! Stretching out the build over 3+ months help justify the cost and avoid a crappy outcome / build mistakes. If I spend 10-12 hours / week over 12-16 weeks = $1900  USD / 120 to 192 hours =  $9.90/hour to $15.85/hour. And that’s just the build, so every time I field it in battle (rare) and every minute I see it on display in my office (often) adds to the value. It’s still ridiculously expensive, but what an amazing creation these things are!

ForgeWorld Warlord Titan has arrived! Saevus Ultio!

For my 40th birthday gift to my self, I purchased a ForgeWorld Warlord Titan.

Titan #00065 has arrived! (or 1000001 in binary).

Saevus Ultio (Fierce Vengeance) will be joining Saevus VerumSaevus Rex, and Saevus Juris of Legio Invictus.

The Warlord body (everything except for the weapons) is made up of 171 parts. That compares to 214 parts on the Reaver. Between the lower part count, the clean casts, and the lack of any interior detail to paint, I expect the build portion to take significantly less time the the Reaver.

The casts are much cleaner, and I ran into zero (so far) parts that will need replacing or even moderate reshaping. I’m not sure if that’s due to the low cast number (65 instead of 1108) or if ForgeWorld switched to a CAD/3D printing design process (guessing), or both. The reason I strongly suspect CAD is the instructions, which have beautiful and obviously rendered 3D representations of each piece, as opposed to photographed pieces seen in earlier ForgeWorld kits.

Build pictures to come!

 

forgeworld warloard titan unboxing

2k Astra Militarum vs. Necrons

I played a 2k point game with Matt from At Ease Games here in San Diego.

Was a fun game and I learned a lot.

At the bottom of turn four I was getting decimated in close combat, but had earned enough objective points getting lucky with tactical objectives and actually won the game!

Astra Militarum vs. Necrons 1

Astra Militarum vs. Necrons 2

Astra Militarum vs. Necrons 3

Astra Militarum vs. Necrons 4

Ork Big Mekk with Shokk Attack

big_mek_shokk_attack_gun

I purchased these from Fabrice Tran (France) in late 2013. Whenever I need to learn a technique on my armies I stare at these and try and replicate. You can find additional pictures of these models on Fabrice’s website. His commissions are spendy, but beautiful, and he’s won 7 golden demons from 2002 – 2012!

Ork Deff Dread

deff_dread

I purchased these from Fabrice Tran (France) in late 2013. Whenever I need to learn a technique on my armies I stare at these and try and replicate. You can find additional pictures of these models on Fabrice’s website. His commissions are spendy, but beautiful, and he’s won 7 golden demons from 2002 – 2012!

Ork Nob with Bosspole

nobz_bosspole

I purchased these from Fabrice Tran (France) in late 2013. Whenever I need to learn a technique on my armies I stare at these and try and replicate. You can find additional pictures of these models on Fabrice’s website. His commissions are spendy, but beautiful, and he’s won 7 golden demons from 2002 – 2012!

Ork Warbikers

warbikers

custom_warbiker

I purchased these from Fabrice Tran (France) in late 2013. Whenever I need to learn a technique on my armies I stare at these and try and replicate. You can find additional pictures of these models on Fabrice’s website. His commissions are spendy, but beautiful, and he’s won 7 golden demons from 2002 – 2012!

Ork Warbosses

warboss_1

warboss_2

I purchased these from Fabrice Tran (France) in late 2013. Whenever I need to learn a technique on my armies I stare at these and try and replicate. You can find additional pictures of these models on Fabrice’s website. His commissions are spendy, but beautiful, and he’s won 7 golden demons from 2002 – 2012!