Warbringer Nemesis #11 - Titans In This Blog Post May Be More Complete Than They Appear

So, when I did my last real post back in the beginning of April I said that the torso was pretty simple but I would talk the parts that were tricky.

Honestly, that magnets thing really nailed it.  Like, that was largely what was tricky.  The torso is kind of... boring.  But in a good way.  I have heard horror stories of people building Warhound titans having to use plasticard and green stuff just to get the stock-standard torso to fit together.

Sometimes those difficulties actually inspiring more modding and kit bashing because, hey, if you have to go through all this trouble anyway then why not doe something exciting?  Which can have cool results, but is kind of frustrating when you are talking about a kit that runs north of $500.

I actually used to appreciate that kind of "problem" in the old Tau Crisis Suits (circa 2001 - 2015).  They were decent models.  The concept of something was there.  But in their unaltered configuration they just lacked something.  They were static.  They were flat.  If you were building a commander you needed some way of distinguishing that model, and it was not going to come from the box.

There was a time during 4th and 5th edition when the Tau were just terrible on the tabletop, and one of the jokes within the Tau community was that you played Tau specifically to kitbash battlesuits.  And the community came up with some great things!

A confluence of factors changed that starting in 2013.  The release of the Riptide and the 6th edition codex upped the competitive game of the Tau, so new players were not necessarily daunted by the prospect of losing many/most games.  The release of the new crisis suits in 2015 was final nail in the coffin for the high percentage of modded crisis suits.  Mostly because the new crisis suits look good.

Sure, this decade has brought a revolution in 3D printing to the avid crisis suit modder, but that portion of the community seems to be much smaller.  There is a price and skill gate that exceeds the old "cut stuff up and see what works" methods of the last decade.  And now that the kit looks so good, it is hard to use cutting and green stuff to achieve effects that look as-good-or-better than the suits out of the box.

Anyway, that is a really roundabout way of me saying that the Warbringer is more like the new Tau suits in that respect:  it is a well designed kit that that mostly just works.  I say mostly because there are a few design choices that I think probably seemed better in concept than they work out in execution (like the dreaded handrails), but they are really the exception here.

So the last time I was talking about the build in general, and not magnets specifically, I was talking about putting together the upper part of the torso. And I was really close to finishing that honestly, so here it is:

 

Placing the shoulder sockets on the upper torso.  The slots for them are well defined and they go on pretty much without a hitch.  I glued them on one by one.  I mean, there are only two of them.  But I did not glue them on together.

As you can see above I used three clamps.  One to hold the socket cup, and the other two to pin down the structural supports that hold it to the torso.  It was a little tricky to get the clamps on those in place because they curve and taper.  Like so:

 

See how the bottom (well, top in that picture, but the piece is being held upside down) of those beams curves and angles in?  Sort of tough to get the clamps on.  But just fiddle around with it and it will work.  Oh, and I used standard JB Weld for this.  You want strength here because these pieces will hold the weight of the weapons.

You can also see two small holes in the structural supports above.  I drilled those for pinning.  I believe those are 1/8" holes.  Something in that ballpark anyway.  After I inserted brass rod I greenstuff them over.  That was a bit tricky here because the fact that the holes sit in those little gulleys made them hard to sand down afterwards.  Fortunately they are small and fairly well hidden once the Titan is fully constructed.  

I also drilled that hole through the top with a 1/4" bit.  The combination of pins angled against each other is really going to keep these sockets on the body for good.  

From there you will start building out the arms.  Take the upper arm pieces and socket them into the shoulder:

You should dry fit the joint with the arm weapon facing and angled the way you want before you commit to this.  It is just about the hardest dry fit in the world because you are talking about dry fitting a weapon that weighs more than most models into two joints that move in different ways.  SO.. sort of try it and eyeball where the elbow plate is in your desired configuration before you glue.  Than try to match that when you glue.  Err towards the weapon pointing out from the body and down.  If you get a titan that looks a little rested it will still look better than one where the gun is pointed up and toward the center of its body like it is waving or wiping sweat off its brow.

Also, you can see that I used four clamps there.  I did these pieces one at a time.  The clamps on the left side (your right) are only for balance.  I wanted to do this while the torso was on the legs so I could approximate pose.  If I only clamped the one side it would have fallen apart.

This is what the operative clamps looked like:

Tension between the clamps keeps the piece from angling too far in one direction or the other.

Also, it looks like I glued the pistons into that piece already.  I think you can figure out how to do that.  It is really very easy.

 

 Drilled a hole in the attachment point for the shoulder armor for pinning.  I did not even need to green-stuff this over because it will be covered by the plates when finished.  Rod is 1/4".

Next up the elbows:

Easy!  Watch the angles though, they look bad angled too far in either direction.  

And that completes the arms.  Although obviously not their attendant weapons.