Titan Knight (2)

After some frustrating hours of building, I was able to put all the pieces together into some sub-assemblies. I ended up with legs, torso, arms, main body and turret. The one major flaw with the instructions is that there is no indication of what should and what shouldn't be glued. This presents quite a problem as there are a ton of joints and articulations that need to be left free from adhesive.

Next I assembled the lower-body and the upper-body. Again, all the articulation makes the final model VERY wobbly and unstable. I needed to go back and glue up some of the major points just to facilitate some posing and standing. All in all, it looks very cool.

As seen in this picture, I have left the weapons unattached as they don't represent the 40K weaponry I intend to use. I'm still deciding on the weapon load out, but things are well on their way to completion. As shown from the figure by the left foot, the scale seems to be great. It's much beefier and more imposing than a sentinel but not so huge that it looms like a Warhound.

After some consideration, I have decided to try and model either a Leman Russ or Predator turret to replace the one that was included with the model. The Predator offers the placement of a twin linked weapon on the front so I might go with that. Both turrets seem to look too large but I'll learn that soon enough.


The war goes on,
Hessler

Titan Knight (1)

So, today I finally received this in the mail...

It's the Gunther model from Dust Models. It's 1/35 scale plastic with some rubber pieces for the movable joints. It is from the Dust universe, which is a futuristic WW2 alternate history game. At least that is what I can make of it. They recently revamped their website...check it out HERE. Since I ordered this little beauty, they have added a bunch of new resin kits for some different walkers. They are twice as expensive as the Gunther ($100-120) but that's the way it goes with a resin model (can anyone say Forge World?) If you are interested in building one, I suggest trying the Gunther for $50(includes shipping) and see if you want to get any others. If this build goes well, I may end up building a squadron...God help me.

I plan to "40K" this one up a little with some Imperial iconography and treat it as a titan knight. The rules I will use can be found within the Lords of Battle Apocolypse Datasheets created by the wonderful people at Bell of Lost Souls(BoLS).

So this is how all the components are packaged. Everything is very organized and all the molds look clean with very little to no flash.

The instructions are quite elaborate compared to most model kits I have worked with and it also incorporates some full color pics of other Dust products as well as some cool looking conversions people have done.

I will post some more progress reports as I construct this be-u-tiful machine of destruction over the weekend. Wow, this will be awesome to paint...

The war goes on,
Hessler

Hardened Vets (1)

With the release of the latest codex, my interest has once again been drawn to the Imperial Guard. From a gaming perspective, the new codex offers some interesting units and tons of Independent Characters. From a hobby perspective, it offers a brand new set of tools to customize and create cool and unique units and minis.

The Concept...
One of my favorite units from the previous codex was the Hardened Veterans. I love the fluff...grizzled, battle-tested veteran troops with access to special training & weapons. The new codex eliminates the one thing I disliked...limited squads. Now I can field an entire army of veterans as troop choices. Very cool!

For my first veteran unit, I went with the Grenadiers option and decided to add some short range punch with 2 meltas, a flamer and a missile-launcher. I also modeled an alternate HW with a heavy bolter. Some possible deployments would be dropping them from a transport or by exploring some Scout/Outflank options.

So anyways here they are, in all their glory...

The Recipe...

• Torso: SM Scouts
• Legs: SM Scouts
• Arms: SM Scouts
• Heads: IG Catachan
• Weapons: SM Scout shotguns, missile launcher, heavy bolter
• Additional Weapons: IG flamer, GW melta(mail order),various bits

The Process...
The basic body assembly should be pretty straight forward, the scout bodies don't allow for a ton of posing options but one can still get a little creative. The bulkier SM Scout bodies are perfect for the carapace armor that Grenadiers wear. The Catachan heads are a little big compared to Cadians but they fit in we with the scout bodies. The tubing around the neck also gives a re-breather feel to the figure, to represent an "airborne" quality. I shaved off the top rail of the shotguns to make them seem a little less "huge".


The sergeant is a pose I saw in a forum somewhere and I finally had the opportunity to recreate it. The plasma pistol was a simple hand swap. I took the chain sword, arm and all, from a SM model. It did require some cutting and filling but it came out pretty decent. Since this build I have found some better head choices for this guy, but oh well.

I also attacked a Cadian vox-caster and used some parts to represent integrated comms on one of my veterans.


I guess that's it for now. Next time I will go over the paint scheme that I used for these guys and how I approached the overall look of this unit.



The war goes on,
Hessler

Orders Received

So this begins my humble contribution to the massive sea of 40K blogs out there. It will cover my approaches to painting and modeling in the 40K universe. It will also cover the creation and expansion of my Imperial Guard army that I recently started, due to the release of the new IG Codex. I will share my thoughts on mini prep, converting, and painting. Fluff will also be developed for my new command...Battlegroup Sadoukad.

The war goes on,
Hessler