Warbringer Nemesis #2 - All the Pieces!

So this is Part 2 of the Warbringer Nemesis project series.  Part 1 was when I actually received it (and the prequel was my fight with FedEx).  I did not flag Part 1 as such though, so this is a post titled Part 2 with no title companion in my archive.  I think we will all get over it.

During the Holiday week I set about for the first part of any Forgeworld project, namely inventory and inspection.  Forgeworld kits, especially the more recent ones, are remarkable for their level of detail and attention to construction (that part is just the recent ones, old Forgeworld kits have a more... complex relationship with construction in their design).  However, there are two caveats with that.

First, a Games Workshop plastic kit, indeed any plastic kit, comes on sprues.  So generally speaking, if you have the proper number of sprues (which in this hobby is usually an amount you can count on your fingers) then you have the correct parts.  Not so for a resin kit.  Pieces come on gates, which typically only hold a single piece, or a collection of small pieces.  On a fairly small kit, say, a space marine praetor, this does not materially change the build process.  On a big, complex kit like a Titan it means that before you dig into building you have to make sure all the parts are there.

Second, resin kits, even the best resin kits, are prone to miscasts and mold slippage.  At some level, repairing that is the responsibility of the hobbyist.  Anyone who gets into building resin kits has to accept that and be prepared to file down mold lines, fill in small bubbles on flat surfaces and even engage in some light rebuilding with "moderate" green stuff skills.  But some pieces will just be beyond the ability of any reasonable hobbyist to repair.  Sometimes the resin does not cure right, in a way that has a major effect on a part's structural integrity or its ability to take and hold paint and primer.  That kind of part needs to be replaced.  The same goes for parts that have serious mold slippage that causes highly detailed pieces to be marred in a way that only a very highly skilled epoxy sculptor could hope to fix.

Fortunately, most companies that make resin models will replace missing and miscast or broken pieces.  I mean, they had really better replace the missing ones, but I have always been pleased with the replacement of poorly cast pieces.  To my knowledge this does not apply to recasters, but I do not buy from them, so I do not really know.  Forgeworld has always been great about this for me.

With that all said, here are the pictures of my inventory:

There you can see the contents of the first box for the Warbringer's main body.  It is primarily composed of large pieces, and contains much the Titan's armor plating and the central pieces of the Titan's torso.  I took pictures of it in my Amazon light box, which works a lot better for something less spread out than all of this.  Here, it gets the job done.

The second box of the Warbringer Titan's main body.  This includes most of the lower body, the anti-aircraft guns, void shield generators and much of the smaller detail pieces of the Titan.  This box took a tremendous amount of time to lay out and inventory.  While inspecting this titan I took nearly 1500 pictures of its components.  I will, uh, not be displaying all of that here.

Two pieces were missing here, the hoses that connect parts of the back generator assembly.  I notified Forgeworld and they are dispatching replacements.  Supposedly this was a problem on all of the first run Warbringers.

The leg plates were also a problem here.  The right leg plates were totally fine, but the left plates were the wrong length and had the wrong kind of connectors on them.  They also had different part numbers on their gates, so I wonder if this too was a problem across the line.  Hopefully Forgeworld has the right parts to replace these with. 
 

 The Warbringer Titan's head.  A lot more manageable.  I think I had some curing issues on a few pieces here, so I dropped a note to Forgeworld.

 
The Nemesis Quake Cannon.  Man, this is a big gun.  Lots of solid resin in here.  I honestly think the whole thing was a good cast.  I do not recall having any parts issues.  Some minor mold slippage, especially on the ammo cylinder, but nothing that my line remover and some light green stuff will not fix.

Ye Olde (newly redesigned) Battle Titan Melta Cannon.  This boyo works for both the Warbringer and the Reaver Titan.  I only have a Warbringer of course, but I like the modular nature of the arm weapons.

Oh, for those wondering how this is different from the old Reaver Melta Cannon:  the back has been redesigned to take different hose attachments.  I originally thought that the heat dissipation cowling had been redesigned with molded in grommets for attaching a banner, but that is not the case.

The Battle Titan Gatling Blaster.  Similar to the Melta Cannon.  Also updates here are to the hose connections.  

And that, friends, is my whole inventory.  It is a lot of resin to put together and paint, but it is going to be a blast!

P.S. - Originally I was linking to these images from another location.  That worked very poorly.  Hopefully this works better and you actually see what is here.

Adeptus Titanicus: Legio Fureans Warlord and Reaver - Superstructure Basecoat

So I took a hiatus on displaying my Legio Fureans Titans during my wonderful (sarc) FedEx adventures with my Warbringer Titan.  But now - let us continue!

After priming my Titans, I split painting into two sections, as is customary.

The first bit, I do not have many pictures of, but it is the Titan superstructure, as follows:

I did not prime the superstructure with any Stynylrez Grey, only the black.  Following that, I airbrushed the superstructures of both Titans, and some of their weapons, with Vallejo Mecha Color Gunmetal.  Then, to help my wash flow into recesses better, I sprayed all of the aforementioned pieces with Vallejo Mecha Color Gloss Varnish.

A quick word on Mecha Color Gloss Varnish: I love it.  I just cannot get enough of it.  I have struggled and struggled to find varnishes that work well.  I do not like brush on varnishes because I feel like they lay unevenly.  I do not like spray can varnishes because, as I explained in my earlier Adeptus Titanicus post, the region where I live rarely has weather that facilitates spraying anything outside.  Period.  It is always too humid or too cold.  Other airbrush varnishes are either weak or clog my airbrush so much that spraying is an exercise in frustration.

Oh, and I need a varnish because I have the ability to rub paint off of anything.  Seriously.  Varnish is my best friend.

I follow that with a wash of Nuln Oil.  I apply it all over with a big shade brush, trying to keep it from pooling, occasionally using a paper towel or cotton swab to aid me.  Then, after that is quite dry, I drybrush a layer of Necron Compound over the whole deal.

The superstructure is fairly easy.  The technique brings out details and adds some character to the "metal" parts of the model, but it is not a high level technique, and it lacks a certain amount of finesse.  If I was really trying to compete in a masterclass painting competition, I would not do it.  Fortunately for me, I am not.  It looks pretty good and saves a lot of time.

Well, that about does it for this blog entry.

I feel like every post should have a picture, and seeing as I did not log my superstructure painting, I will, once again, post a picture of my current progress on my Warlord Titan.

P.S. - I am sure you noticed that I link to Competition Minis a lot when I talk about paints.  I am not affiliated with Competition Minis, nor do I receive any sort of compensation for mentioning them here on this blog.  I simply tend to do all of my paint shopping there because they have a great selection and they are sort of local to me.  Use them, do not use them, up to you.  But I just recall from reading blogs myself that I often wonder what paints painters are using and on occasion even saying the paint name leaves ambiguity.  This way, there is none.

Warbringer #000168

Good news!  My Warbringer Titan, after much tribulation, has arrived!

The Titan is number 168.  It will be part of my homebrew Legio Hashmallim, and its name will be רומח של רעם - Romach Shel Raam [pronounced ro'Makh shel ra'Am] (Spear of Thunder).  I have submitted it to the Titan Owners Club, and I hope that it will soon be accepted.

By the way, a BIG thank you to Morgan and David with the Games Workshop Customer Service team in the U.S.  There is no way I would have this without their diligence.  They stayed on top of FedEx and made sure that I got my Titan.  Absolutely top marks.

Here is a picture of all the boxes this came in:

For the record, the two red Titan boxes are the body and the white boxes (four of them) contain the head, two selections of arm weapons (in this case the Melta Cannon and Gatling Blaster), and the Quake Cannon (which comes in a box as big as the box for the Ta'Unar's whole body!).

A note on my weapon choices:  I selected the Melta Cannon and Gatling Blaster because I felt that their muzzle profiles looked the most substantial on the Warbringer's frame.  The best option for 8th edition Warhammer 40,000 is indisputably the Volcano Cannon, but I felt that its muzzle exacerbated the Warbringer's "T-Rex arm" silhouette.  See the right arm (so, your left) in the picture below:

 I may choose to grab some Volcanoes down the road, but I felt that I wanted the best display weapons for this "miniature," and that my opportunities to game with it will be so rare that having the best guns rules-wise was not very valuable if I liked the look of other choices better. 

That about wraps about the opening of my Warbringer saga.  Next up - Washing!  Wherein I copiously wash a tremendous amount of resin pieces.

Note:  The picture of the completed Legio Fureans Warbringer above is from Warhammer Community and is used without permission.  No challenge to Games Workshop's intellectual property is intended.

Warbringer Nemesis - FedEx is my Nemesis

I still have to finish describing how I painted my Legio Fureans Titans.  However, tonight my mind is occupied by other things.

I ordered a Warbringer Nemesis Titan on pre-order day, the first full 28mm Titan that I will build and paint.  I am very excited about it, and I cannot wait to put it up on the Titan Owners Club.

I received the shipping information for it last week, and I was hoping that it would arrive early this week.  Everything seemed to be on track for that to happen, until yesterday.

At 4:38p.m. FedEx marked the package as delivered and signed for.  However, when I got home, there was no package to be found (no, it was not likely pilfered at the doorstep because of how my place of residence is set up - there would have been a person to take it, and really no way for it to be delivered otherwise).

I called FedEx, who told me to call the "shipper" (in this case Forgeworld) and so I glumly waited for the morning so that I could place an international call to Nottingham.  The Forgeworld home office was helpful, but actually not the right place to call.  So they gave me the number for Games Workshop in the United States (which I could have found on my own, but I expected a Forgeworld purchase to be a Forgeworld issue... live and learn).

At this point, FedEx had duplicated my tracking number and now had two separate pages for the same number, one directed to the clearly false "delivered" status, and the other an all new page indicating that the package was "on the vehicle for delivery" with a scheduled delivery date today.

In the afternoon I called Games Workshop customer service, and they tried to help me work out what exactly FedEx was doing, which still is not really cleared up, because now FedEx does not even have a delivery date on the second page, it just says "pending."  At this point I do not know if this thing is really on the truck, if the truck is really going out, or if FedEx even has or knows where the package is anymore.

There are certainly bigger problems in the world.  I recognize that.  But for any hobbyist this is a real pain.  It would just be nice to know that this fairly expensive model is actually going to get to me.  I do not have any advice for making sure this does happen to you.  My guess is that it is so bad because FedEx is so busy with the holidays. But who really knows? 

The Past Few Months: Adeptus Titanicus

I am still waiting for the arrival of my Warbringer Nemsis Titan, but FedEx tells me that it is "on the truck for delivery."  Of course this only makes me wish there was Sunday delivery.

While I wait, I thought that it would be good to start off with a little insight into the Adeptus Titanicus (AT2018) projects which I have been working on for the past several months. 

I really have quite a few AT2018 kits that I have been piling up in order to play what I think is the best game that Games Workshop has produced, rule wise, in quite some time.  I am probably a little biased, though, because AT2018 contains only the units I want to use, namely Titans and Knights (both mechs).  When I am playing 40k I constantly find myself fielding armies heavy on mechs (such as Imperial Knights and T'au), and the other units are frequently just sort of chaff to me.  Not that everyone should feel that way, just that I really like mechs. 

Over the summer I picked up two Grand Master edition boxes, followed up by six Reaver Titans, eight Warhounds, two Sunfury Plasma Annihilator equipped Warlords, and two boxes of Cerastus Knights.  The idea is to be able to field two full Legios, one loyalist and one traitor, so that I can dragoon friends and family into playing with me when no one else is around, or when my schedule does not permit me finding time to play outside the home (which, to date, has been pretty much the reality for me).

My loyalist Legio is still very much a work in progress.  It is a Legio of my creation - the Legio Hashmallim (Electric Angels) named after an order of Angels in Judaism responsible for, through its Greek translation "elektron," the name of electricity.  I am trying to find a suitably cyberpunk paint scheme for them that really stands out.  What I have to do is just paint some test cards and be done with it.  That, however, means airbrushing a bunch of note cards and it is just hard to get excited about doing it.  I want to get Titans on the table!

So what I have been working on is my traitor Legio - the Legio Fureans!  The Legio Fureans (Tiger Eyes) is a well establish canon Legio with a striking paint scheme.  There are a lot of other folks playing Fureans, so the Internet has a wealth of pictures to use for inspiration and guidance painting this scheme.

In order to get started I assembled and primed a Warlord Titan and a Reaver Titan, and magnetized them in order to swap their weapons.  I used Badger Stynylrez black primer run through a Badger Patriot 105 airbrush.  I do this for two reasons: 1) I like the finish it gives; and 2) priming from a rattle can is next to impossible in the Mid-Atlantic.  Seriously.  There are maybe two weeks out of the year where you can reasonably expect a good rattle can prime job here.  It is either too humid and the primer gets terribly fuzzy, or it is too cold and the primer congeals too fast. 

After the black primer, depending on the color scheme, I typically hit the miniature with a layer of Stynylrez Gray.  Usually this is at least partially zenithal (I aim the airbrush at an angle from above the miniature to hit mostly raised areas and areas that would naturally receive more light) and I try to leave recesses darker where possible.  For my two Fureans Titans I absolutely did this.  The yellow color scheme required a primer that was, at minimum, lighter than black.

Well, this has been a pretty big wall of text, so in the interests of my dinner and any potential reader actually reading this, I am going to end this here and pick up later.

In the meantime, here is a picture of my Titans in their current state:

 

Welcome to Axiom Line.  This blog is intended to catalogue my progress building the greatest engines in the Warhammer 40,000 universe- Titans.

I will showcase lots of projects, upcoming and recently completed, from Adeptus Titanicus, as well as my first foray into building a full scale 28mm Warhammer 40,000 Titan - the recently released Nemesis Warbringer.

I will also, from time to time, display models and projects from my Imperial Knight House - House Chesapeake, as well as other armies I have for Warhammer 40,000, other Games Workshop properties, and other companies' gaming systems.