Allow me to begin with a little trip down memory lane. Let me take you back to April 1995 and White Dwarf #184. That was my first GW hobby purchase! I’d looked at WD magazines belonging to friends, I’d seen all sorts of models and played Blood Bowl at friends’ houses. I’d been introduced to the GW hobby (I’d been building aeroplane kits for years) however that White Dwarf #184, that was mine. I remember it well*, an axe wielding barbarian on the front cover, inside were Ultramarine terminators, an Epic battle report, designs to build a cardboard 40k bunker**, and the game that shared the cover art – Warhammer Quest.
Well I finished my Warlord, only 22 months after starting putting it together – geez I’m slow.
Warlord Sagitta Verum, the Arrow of Truth
Princeps Cayttei Lueze
During the opening months of the Horus Heresy the Warlord Titan Sagitta Verum saw service on Aedlingon 5, during the Sibarton Offensive where she sustained heavy damage to her left leg and motivators. After refit the next major action was on Clarendon 3 against traitorous forces of Legio Xestobiax under the command of Princeps Tonbo. The ensuing titan conflict wrought heavy loses on both sides. The loss of a number of titans from Lueze’s maniple has ensured if their paths cross again that vengeance shall be served against Princeps Tonbo.
Working from home during the Covid lockdown is proving challenging on the hobby time. Usually I find myself working late into the night to cover the hours I’m not working when I’m looking after my lad. Fortunately this last week I’ve been off work – stay at home holidaying. So I’ve made some progress on my Solaria Warlord titan.
As per tradition, its the time of year when I post up the cake I made for my son’s birthday. Josh likes his Lego, he had a Lego cake last year too. However, the twist for this year’s cake was to have it themed for Lego Worlds. During the Covid lockdown we’ve played it as a family loads on PS4. To be honest, way too much for one so young.
Katie sourced the police swamp helicopter, from ebay I think. Its out of print now but is one of Josh’s favourite vehicles in the game. I did the rest. Tastes good too 😉
Looking back at my other cakes, the BB-8 cake for Josh’s 4th birthday is still the best in my opinion.
The UK has been in lock down for 3 weeks now, and on top of that I’ve also had a week of isolation so I’ve had 4 weeks of glorious hobby filled painting, right!?!?! Ahh well, as idyllic as it sounds spending all that time at home with family, reality is that I’ve had just as little time to myself as if none of this had happened. Yes, I can hear your snorts of laughter and groans of disbelief. I hold my hands up, I’m as staggered as you all at my apparent lack of progress.
The good news is, I have painted my garden fence panels…well until I ran out of fence paint (the wife says they need another coat).
“So what have I been doing worth writing about then?” I hear you ask…
I started building my Ordo Sinister Psi Titan, from my last post. Started almost as soon as I’d finished that last post; there’s just been a delay getting this post written. The kit goes together really well, most of it being the plastic warlord obviously. The Forgeworld resin was nicely cast with minimal clean up work required for my kit. I really like the instructions that come with the Forgeworld kit, in some ways I think they are better than the plastic Warlord instructions.
I’m a sucker for Adeptus Titanicus, I haven’t had a game in ages, and yet here I am buying the new toys – so much for ‘paint what you have before buying more’, a January resolution. Although I do have some things on ebay at the moment, so that counts right? 😉
The Ordo Sinister Warlord Psi Titan is available direct from Forgeworld, it consists of a Warlord Titan with Sunfury Plasma Annihiliator and Power Claw plastic kit (this one) and a resin upgrade kit. The resin upgrade kit consists of head, weapon arm, and carapace gubbins. The Titan also comes with its own terminal (made of thin card) and weapon cards (also thin card).
At first I was a little disappointed that the terminal and weapon cards were of thin card stock. However after a bit of thought, maybe this isn’t a bad thing. The terminal being made of thin card means i could easily stick some metallic sheet to the back (I think this is what I have bought in the past) and the magnetised tokens should still be able to stick to the terminal, without the chore of putting magnets in the thicker terminal’s holes – the biggest advantage being the lack of polarity issues! My weapon cards go in sleeves glued to the front of the terminals, so I guess them being ever so slightly thinner doesn’t matter at all.
I have to say I really like the instruction pamphlet. It is really clear and easy to understand.
Base
I pre-orderd the Titan and before it even arrived I started building the base. I want the Psi Titan to be stalking through a ruined city-scape. I got out one of the Titanicus Civitas Building sprues and my old Epic Armageddon buildings to see if i could create some ruins on my Titan’s base. I also got various other building materials, plasticard sheet/strip, cork, sandpaper, etc.
I created some different textures on the base by using sandpaer, plasticard, and cork sheet. You can create some interest on the base just by varying the textures, and the relative heights of the textured sheet.
I also chopped up some buildings/ruins to create ruins that fit the base better. I wanted the Titan to be stepping on one building, so I used the single story squat building from the Civitas building sprue as the basis for the building to be crushed under foot. The Epic ruins were cut up to make the ruin fit the available space on the other side of the base. Now at this point I had not received the Psi Titan, however I did have a Warlord Titan still on sprue, so I started building that one to make sure there was room on the base to attach the feet.
As I had started using the Warlord that I already owned, I could make sure my buildings would fit around the Warlord’s feet. I could also try to ensure that the crushed building did actually look like it was being stepped on by the Titan. I even gently bent the foremost toe of the Titan’s foot slightly to be in contact with the building. I did this by scoring the underside of the toe joint till I was able to bend the toe at the joint – I did the bending very carefully!
The buildings were glued into place after dry fitting all the pieces. Placing both buildings and the Titan feet on the base to ensure everything fitted OK. The buildings then had scrap cork, plasticard, and pieces of the chopped up building glued around them like fallen masonry. I also used some basing sand and some bicarbonate of soda glued down to represent smaller debris scattered around.
This is the current base and the Warlord’s Titan legs positioned (with Blu-Tac) to demonstrate the hopeful end result.
Hopefully the next post will have a fully assembled Titan… soon!
I’ve been putting off this post for, well, a month now. I just have this feeling I’m going to be disappointed with the progress against what I set out to do in January 2019. Hobby time gets more and more scarce and especially quality hobby time – by that I mean actually doing some painting rather than tidying the hobby area, staring at the ceiling for inspiration (or worse the internet – as this is a black hole all by itself).
So what did I actually complete hobby wise over the course of 2019. Well I did paint up two sets of Warcry terrain, one for the local store, and one for one of the regular gamers there. I almost completed a Warcry warband. I built some nice pre-painted MDF terrain from 4Ground for use with Adeptus Titanicus. That’s probably about it.
But what did I set out to do over 2019? Well I plucked up the courage to go and check (I also note that this was posted on the 1st January, not the 31st). Do you know I didn’t actually do too bad thanks to vague and imprecise goals. I did not get my Titanicus models finished, well I did finish a minimum banner of Cerastus Knights, just not the Titan maniple I was aiming for. I did build and paint a fair chunk of terrain. I have also played games more regularly thanks to the gaming store opening up in town.
The Warcry box terrain I painted up for Jack. My own is still sat spray coated in the box 😦
The 4Ground terrain I built for Titanicus use.
Definitely the best part of 2019 was these House Mamaragon Cerastus Knights.
Now after sitting down and actually looking to see what I achieved over the year I feel a bit better about my hobby. I achieved more than i had remembered, and am feeling more positive
Looking forward to 2020 (given we are already a month in to it), what are this year’s hobby goals?
1 – Perhaps to have more ‘quality hobby time’ I should work cleaner, and always tidy up after a hobby session (probably need to tidy up first though).
2 – My disposable income is going to be squeezed this year, so moderating the new purchases is also a high priority I think. To that end I should concentrate my painting time on the models that I own and have either an interest in, or an immediate interest in playing. Yes that age old, paint what you buy, and don’t keep buying more!
3 – I think I should aim for table top ready miniatures and churn through the models required rather than setting expectations at getting really good paint jobs I’m happy with. As there is a lot of satisfaction to fielding a fully painted force. Possibly more so than having a single really well painted mini out of number of minis on the table.
4 – I’ve taken part in a couple of small events over 2019 and I’ve enjoyed them all. So I plan to do the same this year, and for each event I want to go fully painted. It would also be nice to have more event/battle reports up on the blog. However I have burnt out doing the Bloodbowl newspaper style reporting for teh Rogue Games League. SO i need to be careful what i try to do with that.
5 – It’d be really nice to give the blog a make over. Update the galleries. Get a logo designed. That sort of thing.
Let’s see how 2020 goes. Handily I have wasted a month of it avoiding this blog post 😉
The Reikland Rogues start their run on the R.G.L. cup a little late, but are making up the time none the less. Some catch up games played recently in the league before moving on to league week three.
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Feedback is welcome on the newspaper pages, as well as ideas for advertising.
