Legio Krytos Reaver Titan #2

Well, Titan escalation continues to... escalate, building towards the just-announced New Year's Day game. The exact lineup hasn't yet been determined, but is expected to pitch Greg's Legio Gryphonicus and Legio Mortis (on opposite sides of course) against Mike F's Legio Ignatum and my Legio Krytos. So of course it was important to get another Titan painted!

The Reaver is definitely my favourite Titan design. I just love the beetle-backed look of these monstrous war machines. This one was built straight from the kit, mainly because I have a ton of extra weapon arms and carapace weapons from the other Reaver I built. This one also is equipped with copious amounts of magnets to take advantage.

One thing I did screw up on this build (which was discovered too late) was the legs - I assembled them backwards!! Ugh.

The paint scheme is standard Krytos of course - Vallejo German Uniform and GW Pallid Wych Flesh.

What a cool looking machine eh!!

Sorry for the blurry pic - wanted to get one of the alternate head, from the Reaver weapon sprue. I couldn't decide which one to use, so I magnetized them so I can use both. 

Slightly better pic of the head here. I weathered this model "to the extreme" including leaving a couple of panels (crotch and right leg) in "primer"... simulating emergency repairs made on campaign.

Once again the excellent Legio Krytos decal sheet was utilized. Unfortunately, there's a distinct lack of Imperial eagles on the AT18 sheets, so I pilfered a half-eagle for the left pauldron from a 40K decal sheet.

So with the completion of this Reaver, we've got a full Axion Battleline Maniple - Warlord, two Reavers, two Warhounds. I do have another Warlord kit to build, but first I'm going to paint the Civitas Imperialis buildings that came with the Grand Master edition of the ruleset. I've got 'em assembled now and it looks like they'll be a relative snap to paint.

Legio Krytos Warlord Titan for Adeptus Titanicus

Reinforcements for Legio Krytos have arrived in the form of a Warlord Titan... just got this one finished over the weekend. It's an awesome model and actually wasn't as much of a headache to assemble as I imagined it might be. The Warlord is set up for the initial photos with Laser Blasters up top and Volcano Cannons. Let's look at it in detail...

As I said, assembly was pretty straightforward. It's always a bit of a crapshoot putting the legs and hips together. It can be tough to ensure that things line up and that when you attach the torso, it's not cocked in a different and unexpected direction. Fortunately with this build I just set up one of the legs "in stride" and everything else lined up OK.

There's lots of room for heraldry on the Volcano Cannon shielding. I used some decals from the Legio Krytos sheet to fill it up.

Rear view of the Titan.

I really weathered the Hell out of this one with the sponge chipping. Had to buy a new bottle of Vallejo German Uniform to do the green. I was worried because the colour of the bottle was quite different to that of my old bottle - but I needn't have been concerned, the match was great.

It's certainly fiddly painting those "eyes" inside the "helmet". Probably would be a good idea to do those before assembly.

A quick switch of weapons configuration to Plasma Annihilators and Apocalypse Missile Launchers. The standard kit comes with Apocs and Volcano Cannons of course - the alternate weapons (as well as alternate head shown here, and the Arioch Power Claw) come on a sprue available from GW separately.

Good view of the Plasma Annihilator. I should add that the kit is super-easy to magnetize - all of the weapon mounts are set up for 5x1mm magnets.

Apoc launchers up top - the traditional choice.

Top view of the Titan.

Here's a good view of the alternate head. I magnetized both so it's easy to swap back and forth. Honestly I'm not sure which I prefer.

The last weapon choice is one I'll not likely often use - the Arioch Power Claw. Yikes!

Here's the gang so far. Hoping to get either another Reaver or a second Warlord done before the New Year. Might have to start on the Warlord as the Reaver's missing its base, which hasn't yet arrived from the eBay vendor. I'll certainly paint more of the armour panels separately on my next Warlord - the ones around the "shoulders" made things kind of awkward to get to. I'll also magnetize the torso somewhat differently. On this build I attached a steel washer to the "hip" and disc magnets to the "torso". I'll do the same on the next one, just a bit more neatly.

Adeptus Titanicus Legio Krytos Reaver Titan

Titan escalation continues! The latest model to be finished is the amazing Reaver battle titan. I just love the look of this model and it's a great addition to the Warhounds and Knights I'd finished previously.

One of the cool things about the Reaver is the variety of weapon loadouts that are now available, and I've taken full advantage of these by magnetizing pretty much everything on the Titan. Shown above are the Apocalypse Missile Launcher, Laser Blaster (right arm) and Melta Cannon (left arm).

I also used the cool Legio Krytos decals on the titan. I think that I maybe use fewer decals than others in finishing my titans, I dunno.

Rear view of the Reaver. I have to say I found some of the assembly a bit tricky, particularly the feet and lower armour plates. Certainly you have to be really careful in ensuring the legs and hips end up at the right angle (level or very slightly inclined forwards) or the torso assembly can look a bit wonky. I screwed it up a bit on this build but corrected it mostly with a very slightly angled magnet on the hip-torso joint.

Alternate weapons - Void Missile, Gatling Blaster (right arm), Chainfist (left arm). The Fist comes from the alternate Reaver sprue and the Void Missile is from Forgeworld. The missile itself is also magnetised (with two teeny-tiny magnets) so you can remove the missile from the rack once fired. Cool!

And here we have the Turbo Laser, Volcano Cannon (right arm) and Power Fist (left arm).

Some detail on the magnetising process. I used 5x1mm magnets here, gluing the right arm into place as it would always have a weapon of some kind - I figured I'd never want to build a Reaver with two melee weapons! I magnetised both ends of the left arm, so I can use a ranged weapon there as well, if I want. Gotta thank Conscript Greg for coming to my rescue with an emergency magnet resupply as I'd run out in the middle of assembling the model... I think I used 17 magnets altogether.

Standard titan weathering techniques - sponge chipping with a Rhinox Hide/craft black mix, and streaking with Agrax and Reikland Fleshshade.

Some more detail of the weathering.

Sorry for the blurry pic - just wanted to show the decal on the left knee.

Here's the battlegroup so far - Reaver, two Warhounds, and three Knights. Next up will be the two Warlords I've not yet assembled, as I'm waiting for the box of 100 5x1mm magnets to arrive!

Adeptus Titanicus Knights and Legio Krytos Warhounds

It was really inevitable, wasn't it? One Conscript gets into something and seemingly no matter how strong the will to resist, I will get sucked in... but it's all to the good of course because that's our hobby isn't it!!

Anyway, the familiar story plays out again with the latest edition of Games Workshop's Adeptus Titanicus. Released in 2018, the game plays out the giant-robo mayhem of the Horus Heresy, in particular the epic combat between the god-machines of the Collegia Titanica. Conscript Greg was the early adopter in our group, as he is an arch-enthusiast of GW's Epic game and already maintained a Legion or two of "Epic-scale" Titans - have a look at the hashtags on the right-hand side of this page :-)  I'd sold on my own modest collection of Epic Chaos stuff some time ago so didn't really have any skin in the game... or so I thought...

Nevertheless, the thought of an AT project was always kind of percolating... on our trip to the UK earlier this year we visited Warhammer World (as you do) and the AT stuff was of course prominently displayed in the store. The best looking package was the "Battlegroup" consisting of a Warlord, Reaver, and two Warhounds - a snip at a mere hundred English pounds. At the current f/x that was only about $160CAD - a significant saving on the Canadian retail of $200. OK then...

So that stuff sat for a bit on the shelf, then an ad appeared on a local Facebook group for the "Grandmaster Edition" plus all of the books, at a ridiculous discount. So I was all in.

I started off the Titan-building with the two Warhounds. My chosen Legio is Krytos - I wanted to throw in my lot with the Warmaster this time, and Krytos was associated with the Iron Warriors space marine legion so that's a nice fit too.

I ended up magnetising several elements of the models, including all of the weapons and the torso-to-legs joint.

Painting was pretty straightforward. Leadbelcher for the metal bits; Brass Scorpion for the bronze bits; Rakarth Flesh highlighted with Pallid Wych Flesh for the off-white bits; and Vallejo German Uniform for the field-grey bits. The whole was washed with Agrax Earthshade.

Weathering was pretty simple too, just some dusting up the feet and legs with Rakarth Flesh and sponge chipping with a mix of black and Rhinox Hide. Some rust streaks were applied with neat Agrax. The base was painted with Rhinox Hide and drybrushed with Mournfang Brown, Steel Legion Drab, and lastly Rakarth Flesh.

Here's the spare bunch of weapons. Note the messed up cabling on the Gatling... ugh. It turned out that I assembled another weapon set with the Gatlings' cables and the ones left over didn't quite fit them. So I assembled the best I could and cut off the ends of the cables, as they just slide in under the Warhound cowling anyway :-)

I also painted some Knights!

These are Knights of House Caesarean. Again, this Knight house was associated with Legio Krytos and the Iron Warriors space marine legion during the Horus Heresy.

Assembly of the models was straightforward and I didn't bother magnetising them as the kits don't come with spare or alternate weapons - you get three chainfists and a thermal cannon, battlecannon, and Gatling thing - that's it.

I did use the decals included for House Caesarean from the Legio Krytos sheet. The chequered decals are particularly useful!

Painting was also simple. Leadbelcher, XV-88/Averland Sunset, Brass Scorpion, Mechanicus Standard Grey, Nuln Oil wash.

The "House Caesarean" decals as shown on the shoulder plate came in handy as well.

Top view shows the different shoulder armour treatments off to good effect.

So there we go, that's the start of my Adeptus Titanicus project! I still have the Reaver and Warlord from the Battlegroup, plus another Warlord and all the terrain from the Grandmaster box to do, so I'll be at this for awhile. But I really enjoyed painting the Warhounds and am looking forward to doing the Warlords and Reaver.