Legio Astraman pt3

So it’s been a while since the second post, and I haven’t been idle. I’ve been systematically building and painting as I’ve gone and both titans are now nearly at the same stage.

I decided to go with a twin volcano cannon and turbo laser build on one and three missile launchers on the second. The three missile launchers have required some basic conversion work to make them into arm mounted weapons but they place the builds firmly back in the nostalgia of the old epic game (Forgeworld still sells an epic Lucius pattern Reaver with three missile launchers) – I am fully aware that the three missile pod build isn’t legal in terms of the rules published for Reavers at the minute but to be honest in an apocalypse battle where you are fielding two warhounds and two reavers a few odd extra missiles really won’t make that much difference.

I started the painting by undercoating in black spray, this is the Matt black car spray available from Halfords, since the days when Games Workshop started doing spray cans I have always used Halfords paint, the cans are great and the finish is always really good.

              

Once undercaoted I used an airbrush to paint on the underpainting for the metals. This is a 1:1:1 mix recipe provided by Whitehorn which in todays GW paints are Leadbelcher/Rhinox hide/Warplock bronze. This give a nice old weathered apearance and is great for working up with Leadbelcher and then upto Runefang Steel.

Once all the parts were basecoated I then liberally washed all the sections with Nuln oil. I could have employed the airbrush again here but I do prefer washing models with a brush as you have a bit more control over the pooling of certain areas.

Once washed I had a go at dry fitting some of the parts together to see how they looked.

Next it was a case of focussing my attention on the lower legs and the legs hardware, this is essential in order to start putting the titan together, allowing me to paint inbetween sections without keyhole surgery later on in the build. I am using a stockpile of old GW paints that I secured on Ebay, Knarloc Green foundation paint and Goblin Green. These give a nice shade to the edge of the plates and a good vibrant green on the top coat. Firstly I paint the whole panel Knarloc Green, then once dried I paint over with Goblin Green leaving an edge border around the metal edging and any studs. The gold is simply Gehenna’s Gold over the base washed metal colour.

Next job is to wash and paint the leg armour plates and wash and base paint the heads. Once these are done I can start assembling the legs. This will be tricky as it will require me putting the whole model together (including magnets) in order to make sure it will stand under it’s own weight. I will be using my Tiger Eyes Reaver as a pattern to make sure all the magnets poles are the correct way around.