Happy New Year 2024!

 

Welcome back to our first post of the new year.  I hope you and yours have had a safe, healthy, and happy holiday season!  Here at 262krieg the holidays have been busy, but I haven't been idle. Some paint got slopped on the Repulsor, but then Legions Imperialis dropped and I've had SO much fun building tiny stuff. I may even paint it one day! 😱

I have added some to the initial lot from the workbench in December - namely another Baneblade and a second set of Astartes + a couple additional Astartes units.  eBay is great, but I need to back off now. :)  I have four more Leman Russ battle tanks coming, then at some point I need to add another set of troops to the Solar Auxilia.  First legion Dark Angels are my main army choice, but I would like to bulk out the Auxilia to a decent size as well. This will be another game I can't count on my gaming crew to invest in, so it helps me to have two forces, in order to con various friends into a game or two at some point.

I even got the two Warhounds built and all the weapons magnetized. I have a planned Adeptus Titanicus game day coming up in March so I was inspired to get these two going.  Not sure I will put time into completing them though - Squaduary and Monster March loom large and I have other thoughts for those challenges.  I think the rest of the month of January will be spent painting terrain for the March AT game - and dare I say some future Legions Imperials gaming??

Oh! I also got another Aeronautica Imperialis game in over the holiday break.  Great fun!  It's too bad to see that game get dropped and shrunk to Legions Imperialis play.  So many cool tiny planes and potential there. I'm glad I shelled out for all the models and rules as they came available so I can keep on playing it from time to time.   

Well, welcome to 2024.  Time to get (keep?) cracking on the hobby projects. There's no rest in the Grim Dark. Maybe some Repulsor progress next - maybe some tiny terrain - the world be mine oyster!

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

Adeptus Titanicus Warhound Titans - TO DONE

 

Greetings and welcome back to my Warhoud Titan project for Legio Ignatum in Adeptus Titanicus.  What started as a Warmaster Titan project was quickly redirected by these two puppies as I started out batch paint the lot.  It quickly became clear that I needed to do either the Warmaster, or the Warhounds, but not all three at once.  So, as promised in my last post, I managed to complete the Warhounds.

I'm already on to the the Warmaster now, so in my next post I'll have some progress to show on that beast.  It's great having all the panels painted up (from the initial batch painting exercise), so as I transition from the Warhounds, I'm right into the trim work.  The masking and airbrushing is complete.

Scroll on down if you want a look at the finished Warhounds in more detail.  Click through to get to the larger photos.  As always, thanks very much for stopping by my little corner of the internet.  The paint recipe tab above for Legio Ignatum details all the colors I use (base, shade, and highlights).  I may deviate a little here and there, but if you follow the recipe, you should come very close to these results.  I use weathering powders on the base, which I apply with fixer AFTER I seal everything with matte varnish.  I've had issues with the varnish clouding when sprayed over the dried fixer.  By applying the powder on top, I avoid that with just the risk now that the powders may wear off over time.

Check back later in the week to see progress on the Warmaster Titan.

Stay safe out there.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

Adeptus Titanicus Warhound Titans WIP - Back to bases

 

Greetings and welcome back.  The Legio Ignatum Warhound titans for Adeptus Titanicus are nearly complete now. Weapons are painted and I've started (barely) on the highlights.  The main thing this week was completing the weapons (particularly the plasma blastgun) and the bases.

Nothing new here, just more of my standard plasma recipe. Also in these pics, you can see the eye lenses have been painted in.

Prior to mounting, the titans were given a coat of matte varnish to remove the shiny gloss from the shading stage.  The bases were also varnished after the painting and shading was done.

With the varnish dry, both titans were glued down to their bases with 5-minute 2-part epoxy.  Next up, the highlights will be completed and then the weathering powders applied to the bases for that final Mars desert look.

Super psyched to have these two almost completed.  I'm really looking forward to moving on to the Warmaster Titan while the Legio Ignatum mojo is high. It also feels good to complete the remaining Warhounds to match my Legio Tempestus force.  These two bring me to 18 mini-titans complete across the two Legios.  I have two Reavers waiting for paint (one for each Legio) and of course the Legio Ignatum Warmaster and then a Warmaster Iconoclast for Legio Tempestus still in the box...oh, and two of the new Forge World Heavy Scout Titans on pre-order.  So still a few Titans to paint! Heh.  

Next week I hope to post up the TO DONE post for these two and then on to the Warmaster.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

Adeptus Titanicus Warhound Titans WIP - Transfered

 

Greetings, and welcome back.  As promised, I poured on some gas and got these puppies moving.  I even managed to bring the weapons up to a point where I could gloss and then shade all the armor at the same time.

With the armor glossed, it was the perfect time to apply the transfers. Click through the pics if you'd like to get a closer look. On the left side, we have Warhound and Collegia Titanicus icons.

On the right side we have Legio Ignatum icons, including the inside of the left shin guard if you look carefully. I made a small slip by not applying the transfers before shading, but that's a small thing that will be hardly noticeable in the final result.I may even lay down a second shade coat over the transfers.

Another Legio Ignatum icon was put on the black carapace shield of Pura Bellum.  Before glossing the armor, I managed to paint the shield and scrolls.  I was pleased to get the gun armor trimmed and all the red armor cleaned up in one pass for the glossing and shading process.  Now I can carry on with the weapons and finally highlights for these two. Then it'll be down to the bases and final attachment - at the moment the puppies are free standing and not glued to their bases.

Good progress for the week and I'm pleased with the results so far.  All the gloss hurts my eyes, so I look forward to a good solid flat coat to dull everything back to my typical painting style. But I have to say it was worth it.  with the gloss coat, I had a much better time with the shading - the main point being less staining/dulling of the main armor color. Without the gloss coat, I would often have to go back and repaint the center of the armor panels to brighten things back up a bit.  That is not necessary here.

So next week, we may have completed titans here and then it'll be on to the Warmaster.  I'm trying desperately to get these titans done before Horus Heresy fever sets in with the upcoming launch and I go back to painting the First legion.  Hobby Butterfly Syndrome at its best!  Still, no end to the fun projects ahead, no matter the game system.  I'd love to get some paint on more Aeronautica planes too, after getting a game in last month.  So fun!

Stay safe out there.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

Adeptus Titanicus Warhound Titans WIP - Marching on

Greetings and welcome back.  The Warhound titans are coming together, and can stand in their full regalia now.  The Warmaster is idling as I get these two done.  It deserves some 1-on-1 attention and it's been a challenge to batch paint all three.  

I quickly sorted out the botched leg armor and got everything repainted.  Then I finished the gold trim and attached all the leg armor to both titans.  That left me with almost fully assembled titans! Next came the bodies, carapace armor and heads.

The body "skeleton" was dry brushed to match the legs.  Then I finished the rest of the gold edging on the carapace and body armor panels. Next, I spent some time on the heads. Nothing too fancy on these two. With all the basic colors blocked in, I attached the heads to the bodies and glued down the carapace armor.  with that dry, I glued the bodies to the legs and voila! The two engines walk!  The arms of these two Warhounds are magnetized so it's easy to pull them off and paint them.  That's coming at some pointsoon, I promise.

Now we can walk around these two and get a look at the various panels. These two Warhounds will sport just the minimum stripes on the leg armor. There are plenty of other stripes across the battle group!

Never let the enemy get behind your titans...there's just not much here to see! 😂

And there we are.  I'm going to clean up the red armor and add the transfers.  Once all that is done, I'll gloss coat and shade the titans, then get on with the highlights.  At some point I'll paint the weapons - likely while waiting for various stages of painting the bodies to dry. Also, bases.  I have the bases with name plates attached.  I need to add some ground work, then prime and paint those before the titans can be attached for the final Mars weathering process.  The final matte sealer coat will remove the gloss.  I haven't done a gloss coat prior, but I think I'll have an easier time with the shading so I'm giving it a try.

Hopefully I'll have these moved along nicely for another post by end of week.  It's been a bit slow around here lately, I know!

Stay safe out there.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!

Adeptus Titanicus Titan WIP - red toenail polish edition

 

Progress continues on the tiny titans!  I couldn't resist the title.  At this point in the process things DO look a little like these guys just put on the toenail polish.  An in truth, things have progressed a bit farther than can be revealed above.  I started batch painting these titans by shading and then dry brushing the legs.

So, shiny but with a bit more definition perhaps?  Then I started in with the red panels on the legs, which led to the inevitable toenail polish look.  On the war hounds, this got more fancy with the edition of gold trim.

This led me to focus a bit more on the Warhounds since they are smaller and thus easier to complete - oh and much more likely to get used in my games at this point. I may run them to completion before focusing back on the Warmaster.

By now I'm feeling in the groove, ready to assemble the leg armor and move the leg assemblies to a battle ready state so I could move on to the bodies...I'm really moving! So I clip of the lower leg armor, lay it out so I know what goes where and realize this...

The problem (if it isn't obvious) lies with my intended for the Legio Ignatum heraldry for my collection of tiny titans.  The hazard stripes are supposed to be on the *outside* of the armor, not on the inside.  So, only one armor panel above is correct.  Three need to be repainted.  This revelation led to a period of wild gesticulation and much profanity followed by a little sulking, then a mad search through the bits box for extra leg armor parts.  But I had none, except for the unused traitor parts from all my old kits.

Not one to waste an opportunity, I then recognized this was the perfect opportunity to test out a can of Testors Easy Lift Off (ELO) paint remover that I picked up a while back.  As you can see above, the product is quite effective.  Better than effective, though, it is FAST.  I went from disaster to ready to prime in 5 minutes, no kidding.  No over night soaking, no scrubbing and scrubbing, no extra soaking and going at it all again.  Just applied the liquid, let it sit a minute or two as recommended, and brushed the paint off with an old drybrush I had easy to hand (an old tooth brush would have been even better).

The resulting product can be seen above, full of the removed paint.  THIS is something that shall remain in the hobby bunker for years to come.  I can imagine how useful it would be for eBay rescues and the like.  It's both effective and a real time saver.  Now, I will prime the armor again and repaint the heraldry - correctly this time.  I'm pretty sure I even made hay in a prior post about the importance of careful planning to avoid just this kind of issue.  Never let it be said I don't lead by example...even if it's a bad example.

So that was my adventure this week.  I will pick up the posting pace as the project progresses and I have more to show.  The time required to plug through this phase of drybrush and trim doesn't leave a lot of room for sexy progress pics. I'm sorta glad for the little mishap so I had something more interesting (hobby-wise) to post at all!

Best of luck with your own projects.  Go and get some of this Testors ELO product.  If you ever strip hobby paint, you won't regret it for a minute. I should add there is very little odor and my skin appears no worse for the wear.  I'm not particularly cautious with, nor kind to, my hands when hobbying.

Cheers and Happy gaming!

WIP - Warmaster Titan for Adeptus Titanicus (and other stuff)

Greetings, and welcome back.  I have some progress on the Legio Ignatum Warmaster Titan to share this week.  These AT titan projects all go through a stage where there isn't much to show and so my posting gets sporadic as I work through them.  I like to post twice per week, but on Tuesday I had a bunch of sprues with various stages of paint on them...not much to share.  Now, on Friday, I can at least walk through my process to paint the Legio Ignatum colors on the armor. 

After priming everything black, the masking process began.  The first stage is to plan out the paint scheme and identify which colors will go on which panels, same as I did with the Legio Tempestus engines for MonsterMarch.  This can be tricky with the left and right side bits being different in some cases, so I work carefully here.  Above, I masked out anything that was going to stay black, or be black and yellow stripped, so I could lay down the Legio Ignatum red.  For the exact colors used, please refer to the paint recipe tab above.

After a couple coats of paint from the airbrush, things look like this.  I typically finish up for the night here and come back the next day to pull the tape off.

Here's where things end up with the tape pulled off.  Now it's time to mask the red parts and work on the yellow stripes.

I'm masking just enough to keep from accidentally getting over-spray on the red.  If you are careless, just plain messy, or want to be super careful, go ahead and mask everything.  Once the parts getting yellow stripes are isolated, it's time to mask off the stripes.

My approach is to use fine line masking tape of a desired width to lay down the stripes.  I bought a variety pack at some point with various sizes so I choose a width that works for the scale of model I'm working on.  I couldn't tell you what size I'm using here...thin 😁... I usually lay the first piece across the middle of the part to establish the angle - looking for some recognizable points on the part (like corners, rivets, etc) to orient the tape so I can reproduce it on any mirrored parts, like the lower leg armor, or the upper carapace armor.  This helps insure the stripes are at a uniform angle and balanced across the parts.  The tape is laid down to cover the entire part, stripe-by-stripe.  The I go back an peel off every other stripe, revealing the paint underneath - these will be the yellow stripes. Above you can see the results, after the tape is removed.  You can use the tape you peel off one part to mask part of the next so you won't wast too much tape in the process. By laying the tape in this manner, you avoid any measuring, and the possibility that your stripes will be uneven in width across all the parts.

Then the yellow is sprayed on.  The paint I use for yellow here is thin, so several light coats are sprayed on until I get a vibrant yellow with little or no black showing through.  Also, and for those with keen eyes, a couple puppies ran through the spray booth while I was working on the project and got paint on themselves too...can you spot them above?

After another night of drying, the tape is removed to reveal the final patterns.  At this point, no matter how carefully I mask, there is always some paint that sneaks under the tape.  I guess this is better than tape that is more sticky, but then peels off the paint when it is removed.  I'll go back and touch up the black before sealing it all with a gloss coat.  The gloss coat is for later shading, and to fill in and smooth out a bit of the texture since the yellow stripes will be a bit raised on the black paint due to their multiple layers of paint. 

As I worked on the Warmaster titan, I decided it would be efficient to also put some paint on a couple Warhound titans I had built last year.  With paint in the air brush, its just easier to make progress like this. And once the base colors are down....I might at least carry on and complete them right? Incentive! So now I have three titans in progress for May painting fun. These are my only magnetized Warhounds. I did that here because I wanted the option of trying out the new weapons options from Forge World, but didn't want to build whole new Warhounds for them.  Sorry Legio Tempestus - perhaps I'll add a couple more magnetized engines for that Legio at some point...but probably not.

These hounds will have stripes only on their leg armor.  I will have four Warhounds in total for Legio Ignatum, once these are painted, and I like to vary the heraldry.  These proud engines demand some individuality afterall.

So that's what I've been up to this week.  next week I'll have more paint work to share as I carry these projects forward.  Not sure if I will continue to batch paint the three engines or separate them into individual projects at this point.  Check back next week to find out.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!
 

On the Workbench [MAY]

 

Greetings, and welcome to another post from the Workbench.  This month, I've been working on a couple new Warhound titans for my Legio Ignatum collection.  This time around, I wanted to try out the new close combat weapons offered by Forge World.  It is not clear to me that these will be weapons I use often in my games. So I decided it was a good time to bring in magnets to allow me to swap around weapons on these new Warhounds.  Normally, I have found Warhounds inexpensive enough that it didn't seem worth magnetizing the weapons.

To increase pull in such a small area, I decided to try out 2mm x 5mm rare-earth rod magnets.  As shown above, I used a pin vise to drill holes in the Warhound arms deep enough to receive the rods. Here there is some care to be taken to make sure the weapons hang in a pleasing manner once completed.  An early attempt had a terrible angle and I had to use green stuff to fill the original hole, before drilling again at a slightly different angle. A little super glue insures they won't come out, but honestly they fit tight enough on their own.

With less depth to play with in the weapons themselves, I chose 2mm x 3mmm rod magnets to go into the weapons themselves.  A pin vise was again used to drill the holes to a depth that would receive the magnets and allow everything to sit flush when attached to the arms of the model. Here again, you have some flexibility with where you seat the magnets, depending on how you expect the weapons to hang once attached.

Above, the two Forge World weapon options are shown assembled, magnetized and ready for painting.  The Ursa Claw looks especially wicked, doesn't it?  I'll take this method forward now and magnetize the other standard Warhound weapon options to match.  This approach will provide a full suite of weapons to use in games of Adeptus Titanicus. 

It was a simple project and a fun way to try out these new weapons without locking me into keeping them if they work out for gaming.

Soon, I'll move on to  Blackstone Fortress Heroes.  I took a break to paint this AD&D figure for a 5th edition virtual campaign.  I've been playing in the campaign virtually using a combination of Zoom and Roll20 since the Covid times. This is Meryn Yes'gell'a, a Moon Elf Sorcerer. He's still a work in progress, but I hope to complete the model this week so I can get back to my usual projects. I've been sitting on the model for too long, and needed to complete him before the campaign wraps up and the project becomes moot.

Best wishes for your own projects.  Stay safe out there.

Cheers and Happy Gaming!