Five Nights, One Knight - Another GW Imperial Knight (Titan) Painted

This Knight knows the False Emperor must be stopped...

Here is my painted Imperial Knight - "El Booze" - a Knight Titan in service of the Sons of Horus Legion. This project is inspired by Dallas in many ways - from the purchase, to getting it painted in five days - I have to credit him for really spurring this on.

Sunday afternoon - basic "skeleton" assembled

Monday evening - first coats of paint

Dallas and I ordered our models from the US as soon as they were released by GW (and saved big time doing so - while I have a lot of love for Canadian retailers, GW tries to use our third-world devalued Canadian dollar to rip us off). Dallas got started on his right away, while I dithered, engrossed with my Legion Project.

Late Monday evening - two washes of GW Nuln Oil wash over the basic metal colours

The eyes are painted…man do they look spooky

But there was a clock of sorts running - the local GW store was having a little competition for painted Knight models today.  Dallas worked carefully and religiously to get his done in time.  And it looked awesome! Shamed and inspired, last Sunday I realized I had less than a week left, so I dove into it.

This is Tuesday night…basic colours applied to the plates, and the lower level plates are glued on

Thursday night - now the plates are on, decals starting to come together

 I built the model on Sunday afternoon, and painted over Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. The short instructional videos GW put on YouTube about assembling and painting the Knight were excellent guides and really helped out.  I painted the "skeleton" first, leaving the armour plates off.  The skeleton was painted with GW Leadbelcher paint, highlighted with GW Gahenas Gold, and washed with two coats of Nuln Oil.

The finished product from Friday night 

Love that scary chain sword arm

The back story behind the Imperial Knights is, as far as I'm concerned, a bit barmy.  The Imperium's armed forces are replete with a vast array of scary weapons systems, including entire pseudo-fraternal orders of 20-story-tall walking killing machines.  But somehow these Imperial Knights are run as a borderline farmer co-op on some agri-worlds?  Right…

A view of the "skeleton" behind the plates…and hey, the banner is backwards! I'm such a dunce with models sometimes

Battle cannon ready to hunt loyalists on Istvaan III and elsewhere...

So I just ignored the whole Imperial Knight back story all together, and painted this to be part of Horus's 16th Legion.  The Space Marine legions are travelling carnival hordes of weapons and troops - why wouldn't they have a few Knights in the armoury? This way it can be part of the ongoing Horus Heresy action when we start playing some games later in the spring.

I used a combination of washes and sponging to add some weathering to the plates on the armour 

I added some additional weathering to the exhausts at the back

The armour plates were painted a mix of black and sea foam green that the Sons of Horus seem to like, with a few white spots (knee plate, face plate). I used a mix of decals from the Imperial Knight box and a Forge World Sons of Horus decal sheet.

Dallas pointed out these withered eagles on the Knight decal sheet - I'm glad he did!

The "withered eagle" makes a nice commentary for a piece of machinery in Horus' arsenal…

This model is one of the nicest GW has put out in a long, long time.  It was fun to assemble, looks really cool and was a lot of fun to paint. If you look closely at the pictures you will see I put the leg banner on backwards (duh) but other than that I didn't screw anything up too bad. The array of options for design and enhancement in the box is impressive.  I opted for the rapid fire battle cannon, but am kind of regretting it after seeing how cool that melta cannon looks…oh well.

Dallas and I brought our respective Knight models out to the local GW shop for the show today - hopefully Dallas will do a post on the blog recapping that, but suffice to say there are a number of really talented painters in Winnipeg!

And now, back to the Legion project...

Games Workshop's 40K Imperial Knight (Titan) Painted!

File this one under "Latest/Greatest/Shiniest"... the new Imperial Knight (don't call it a Titan) for 40K. Conscript Greg and I each picked up one of these from a mail-order discounter and I went down to Pembina ND to pick them up two weekends ago. I finished this one in record time - there's a "show-off" event at the local GW this weekend and I wanted to have it done in time.

Building this model, like most modern GW kits, was straightforward and mostly satisfying. The worst I could say about it was that some of the parts that were designed for articulation have tolerances that were too close to accommodate dry fitting without glue (head and stubber mount, I'm looking at you). However, these I just glued in place.

As the label says, I built this one as a Knight Errant of House Krast. This noble house has a history dating back to the Codex Titanicus of 1994 - unlike its modern iteration, the historic House Krast colours were blue and yellow, and its emblem a Maltese or Amalfi cross. So this is what I went with.

For blues, I basecoated with GW Regal Blue and highlighted this with Ultramarines Blue. Pinwashes around the rivets were done with Nuln Oil/Badab Black. The yellow is Calthan Brown highlighted with Averland Yellow and washed with Gryphonne Sepia, brushed back up with Averland.

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I did some extensive paint chipping with a sponge technique. The colours used were a mix of craft black and GW Scorched Brown. I might have overdone it a bit but I kept other weathering to a minimum and in any event, I like my war machines to look battle-used.

 Greasy bits were painted Leadbelcher (Boltgun Metal), washed twice with Nuln Oil, and drybrushed with with Mithril Silver. Some gold and copper metallic craft paints were used too.

Business end of the melta was drybrushed back with craft black. Note chipping around the gunshield.

I really went to town with the weathering on the heraldic shield. Decals are from Griffon Games (the crosses) and GW. I especially like the decal sheet supplied with the kit - those eagles are a thing of beauty. The decals are thick and durable but settle down nicely with some Microsol setting agent. Mechanicus cog indicates fealty of Krast to the Adeptus Mechanicus, but I liked the Imperial eagle aesthetic better for carapace decals.

Funky little loincloth with coded message! The decals came in real handy for this. Were I to build the kit again, I'd leave this part off and paint it separately. As it was I attached it to the model before painting and that made things harder. I'd built the rest in sub-assemblies per the excellent guide in White Dwarf Weekly and I'm glad I did.

I also did pretty elaborate (for me) groundwork as this will be primarily a display model. Stone piles, two different static grasses, and a variety of tufts. I like the look. But no skulls!

I have to say that I think GW hit it out of the park with this one. So true to the original Jes Goodwin aesthetic from 20 years ago, yet thoroughly modern in execution. Worth the money (at ~40% off anyway) and a satisfying build.