Finished Images

Like the Warhound before it, the Reaver was painted in the livery of the Legio Ignatum Fire Wasps. I follow the same colour scheme with the red armour panelling and yellow chevrons over black on the engines and one leg panel and will do the same on my other Titan that will soon walk amongst these behemoths.

Now that I’ve finished I have to say the Reaver project was large, but the Thunderhawk was more fiddly and time-consuming. Here’s a photo of the two titans next to each other.

Apoc game day saw me bring the retribution force out see the pics below

Construction & Painting

To keep everything protected I hit the whole titan with a coat of Testors Dullcoat. This stuff worked beautifully over the Minitaire Ghost tints and is my new favourite go to varnish.

The control centre with the Princeps and his Moderatii were painted, and the cover was magnetised for use although it is the hardest thing to get in and out gently.

The Turbo laser has since been painted, and heat effects on the barrels were added using Minitaire Ghost Tint Blue, Purple, Brown then black. Last parts are to paint the armour edging brass and varnish

I bought the turbo laser Redoubt off eBay for the carapace weapon system it fits and rotates beautifully as it has the same 20mm stem that the apocalypse missile launcher has but I think it’s just a little bit too big. Here’s a shot of it next to a laser blaster. If you scroll down to the construction phase of this build before the painting stage, you will see the new Turbo Laser design I have created from the Warhound Mars Pattern variant.

I’ve finished the bulk of the painting the yellow hazard striping/chevrons pattern, the eagle and Titan badges and the scrolls. I was considering whether or not to do only the hazard striping on the external armour panelling rather than change it to a chevron pattern. I opted for the latter but only on one leg the other will remain solid black.
  

 

The eagle is two shades of gold followed up with a sepia/agrax earthshade mix wash. The shield started as a black undercoat and was dry brushed with Lead Belcher then highlighted with Mithrel Silver. The shield will have a fire wasp on it when my custom decals arrive from Fallout Hobbies.

 

I used Vallejo game colour, Brass, to do the edging on the armour plates. I’ve done the weathering on the feet too using about six different colours, and they will be dirtied up and weathered one day in the future.

The second Titan Laser Blaster weapon and was very soon constructed, magnetised and painted to match the others.

 

I added some more layers of Badger Minitaire Blood Red Ghost tint, and the colour has become that deep vibrant red, exactly what I was after. To get the desired colour, I laid down a coat of Magenta which turns each plate to a vibrant bright pink and once dry I applied several coats of the blood red tint then let that dry and add a few more light layers to get the results seen in the images below.

 

I was playing around with the different yellows included in the pack of badger minitaire ghost tints; the golden yellow is what I used here, and it was an unusual shade, however, opted to change it to red so all my titans maintain the same paint scheme. It will look mint when all three are painted up and on the table together (yes there is another).

I shaded each of the armour panels, so there’s a light coat of grey over the black undercoat and white over the top of the shade. Both colours were airbrushed over each plate and care as taken to ensure enough of the black was kept around the edges. At this stage, I was unsure of how to paint the leg armour the current design is to do yellow chevrons that meet in the front to form a V-pattern over the black.

 

I’ve used the black primer from AK Interactive; I’m finding the consistency and flow through the airbrush to be smooth, and the matte finish is just gorgeous.

Titan Construction

I drilled out a 10mm x 20mm hole in each gun and arm respectively; I’ve then loaded them full of N50 grade neodymium magnets now the guns stay attached very solidly. I did something pretty similar for the torso except that’s loaded with about 16 magnets in total. Some might say overkill. However, both halves stay together without having to be too cautious about how its handled. I then resin locked the larger 20mm magnets in place to give that little extra secure grab

  

Getting the legs in the right pose was a bit of a challenge I found fitting the pistons that attach to the feet to be fiddly. All the cylinders on the legs and hips are fiddly. The pistons that attached to the hips just hide slightly beneath the cowling without any guides so it’s a random best guess as to how you would like to see them connected.

There’s a bloke called Chuffy building a warlord titan on YouTube; I drew inspiration from his work with how he magnetised the void shields as counters. I copied the idea on this and took the time to magnetise each one.
 

This Reaver is a D weapon monster! It is outfitted with 2 Laser Blasters and a Mars Pattern Turbo Laser.

For the carapace mounted Turbo Laser, I thought having an interchangeable base between the missile launcher and any other carapace weapon would be great. To achieve this, I drilled out the holes and loaded them with pretty strong magnets that could support each weapon without effort.

There are two 20mm x 10mm magnets and 1 10mm x 10mm in the Titan carapace.

Turbo laser =======> Apoc Base <======= Titan carapace

The Mars Pattern Turbo Laser did take some sculpting to build. I used Millput yellow/grey putty to sculpt this in 3 parts first was then sanded back to a nice even finish then I built up the edges. It’s a little rough in parts but for my first sculpt I’m pleased with the results.

The rear of the weapon needed lengthening to offset such a massive front end, but it still required enough space to rotate 360 degrees freely. This added around 8mm to the rear when done. I was going to build a cooling fin section. However, the available space was not enough for my design this forced me to scrap it for the shrine to the machine god.

The shrine came from the inside of the main body as I did not any of the internal detail sections instead opting to expansion foam fill the void. Be careful if you are planning to follow suit as this isn’t sealed tight with the top carapace in place and can make a horrific mess.