Jump to content

Free Company Army with some Titans


demented

Recommended Posts

First things first thank you for looking and I hope you all enjoy this thread!

 

Background

I am a returning hobbyist that hasn't done much in the hobby over the last five years. The last project I had was a Relictors army that went unfinished before life took me in another direction.

 

This army isn't for playing the game, in fact I've only played 40k three times and I have been in the hobby on and off since fourth edition. I just don't have the time to dedicate to playing. I do however, love painting, modelling and creating history and background for my projects. So some of the choices I make in this thread won't be legal in game or may be suboptimal/bad choices. Those are all intentional.

 

This thread will contain models, conversions, army history, and background for each unit within the army. Please be warned that my writing skills leave a lot to be desired!

 

I'd like to get a few things out of this thread

  1. Get ideas for mercenary units, history/background hooks and conversions
  2. Get some feedback on painting/writing faults and improvements (I'm thick skinned so don’t be afraid to be harsh I won't take it as an insult).
  3. Show off my models (doesn't everyone?)

 

Army Concept

In the time since my last Army project I have been reading. I have taken a particular liking to books based on Mercenary companies and when the Imperial knights came out I just had to do a free blade one. So I put my Necron army project to one side and started working out what I would do for a free blade knight. After throwing some ideas at a friend who also collects, the free blade knight project quickly grew into a full blown mercenary themed imperial army.

 

So this is my basic starting point of the mercenary army, As the thread continues, the background, history etc will grow organically and become more substantial.

  1. Originally started as a unit of 3 Custodes sent out on a mission/quest. To complete the mission/quest they 'utilised' other forces that slowly accumulated/changed over time
  2. That mission/quest was never completed and even though the Custodes are long dead, the force they built around them has continued the mission/quest
  3. They are not supported directly by the Imperium so rely on contracts and spoils of war to continue the mission/quest
  4. The army will have a customised structure.
  5. The regular infantry and vehicle units will loosely conform to a standard  (as of yet undecided) colour scheme.
  6. There will be models that have 'knight' like status, they will be able to display their own colours and heraldry. These will be veterans of the company, units considered elite, or units that are only contracted on a temporary basis and allowed to keep their colours.

Sorry but I don't have a name yet for the Army :ermm:

 

Edited by demented
Link to comment
Share on other sites

My first WIP update is for the first model of the army, an Armiger Halverin painted in its own heraldry colours. It isn't quite finished yet as I want to weather it and make it look like its been on campaign a while. This set the tone for the rest of the army to come. I'm adding these images from my gallery so hopefully everyone can see them.
 

Halverin 01

Halverin 02

Halverin 03

Halverin 05

Halverin 04

Edited by demented
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The armiger looks great and I look forward to seeing it weathered. The paint job is ace but I love how you did the metal. That picture you took of the rear really shows that off. Would you mind sharing how you accomplished that?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Hushrong happy to give you the steps.

  1. Prime, then undercoat black
  2. Base coat all of the metal surfaces in GW Leadbelcher
  3. Where you want rust to show apply some Vallejo weathering effects rust texture. It gives the rust a texture and an old, dirty rust effect. Give it some time to dry as the colour fades and it dries quite brown so if your using it for the first time try a little and see what it dries like and apply more until you get the effect you are after.
  4. For newer patches of rust, water down some orange paint so its a washlike consistency, and then apply to where you want the new rust. I think I used troll slayer orange and Fire Dragon bright. I layered it on top of the older rust to provide some contrast and texture to the newer rust, around rivets and where water would pool. Again leave it to dry, the colours will mute down a little once dry.
  5. Once dry I did a heavy wash of equal parts black (Nuln Oil), brown (Agrax Earthshade) and green (Athonian Camoshade). I have a load mixed in a spare pot and applied it all over the metal areas including the rust, surface and recesses. You can then go back over sparingly with a little orange wash if you want some brighter spot of rust.
  6. I then did a very very light dry brush on the raised metallic areas to bring them out a little. Use a metallic of your liking, I think I used some Necron compound myself. 

It was a bit of an experiment for me as I hadn't used the Vallejo weathering effects rust texture before but I was quite happy with the results.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I may be giving this a go when my tanks and walkers are ready for paint. I think that looks perfect on the armiger's legs so I want to try it on my dreads and I think it will look awesome on tank treads.

 

Thanks again bud!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Some background on the structure of the army

 

Command staff

Company Commander

  • Leader of the company.
  • When the commander dies or is no longer fit to rule, a new Commander is elected.
  • The Commander can display their own heraldry

 

Company Captains

  • Each cohort in the company is led by a Captain.
  • A Captain can display their own heraldry

 

Company Annalist

  • The Company annalist is responsible for maintaining and updating the Company Annals and rules.
  • There is a annalist and several apprentices.
  • The annals are a collection of all the battles, tactics, major events and loses of the company
  • The annalist is responsible for learning from the annals to assist with tactical planning
  • The annalist recites sections of the annals to members of the company during special occasions, eve of battle etc.
  • The exact number of apprentices fluctuates. They are responsible for recording details for the annals and can often be found on the front lines of battle and so most perish
  • The company annalist is responsible for carrying the company standard into battle

Company support staff

Company tech priests

  • Maintains armoury
  • Looting of vehicles
  • Research

Company Master of coin

  • Responsible for the treasury
  • Creation of company contracts
  • Securing, contracting and paying the services of mercenaries
  • Records of unpaid debts
  • Includes support staff

 

Company Physicians

  • Tending to the wounded
  • Preparing the dead

 

Company combat units

Cohorts

  • The main fighting force of the company are arranged into separate Cohorts.
  • Cohorts can be made up of various fighting units
  • Cohorts are further broken down into squads
  • Each cohort has a Captain and Lieutenant, and each squad has a sergeant
  • Squads are usually made up of odd numbers due to death and recruitment fluctuations.

 

Company Knights

  • The company host a variable number of free blade Knights (Imperial knights).
  • There are also infantry Knights
  • The knights are the elite fighters of the company.
  • They are allowed to display their own heraldry.
  • Infantry are usually made a knight at the point of joining the company instead of being allocated to a cohort.
  • It is very rare for an Infantry Knight to come from the normal company cohorts

 

Company  Vehicles

  • Arranged into Squadrons where possible and attached to Cohorts as required
  • Each Squadron has a Squad leader
  • Some Vehicles are considered elite and can display heraldry
Link to comment
Share on other sites

You will be modeling some of these minis like the annalist or the master of the coin, right? Something about this makes me think of Glen Cook's Black Company (and how I need to pick that series back up).

 

I am really digging the background of your company and excited to see it take physical form.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You got the Black Company reference straight away! The annalist is taken straight out of that series.

That was one of the series of books I read that has influenced this army. In my opinion the series starts to lose its way towards the end but it is worth finishing if you can. 

 

The plan is for all the company command structure to eventually be modelled in some form.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That's awesome! I forgot who turned me onto those books years ago but from what I can remember they were great. An awesome combo of grittiness and fantasy. Reading that your company had an annalist just made me think of that series out of the blue.

 

I'm going to go off and read the one book I have for them now to refresh.

 

And it is good to hear you plan on modeling the command element. That will make for some very unique and cool looking minis.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 4 weeks later...

Hi all,

 

Been a while since the last update but plenty of stuff going on with the army.

 

I haven't been able to find a way to weather the green that I like so if anyone has any ideas throw them my way!

 

I have put the green Armiger to one side and made a start on two others. One will be dark red and will be kitted out for close combat, the other is still in the build phase. I have a 3-D printer at home so I have scaled down a Titan head to give the red one a bit of variation from standard Armigers. 

 

I have also made a start on a Mars class Warhound Titan. I'm 3-D printing most of it then going to finish it off with Greenstuff, pipes, brass etching etc.

At the moment it has taken 12.5 hours of printing time and I have a foot that can be posed (still needs some pistons), and the lower leg, all held together at the moment with blu-tac. This project is going to take a while I think :biggrin.:.

 

I have also made a start on some scouts that will double up as my first kill team, so hopefully i'll get some paint on them and the next update wont be too long!

 

uMul47T.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Glad to see an update! And its a goodie!

 

The Mars class warhound head looks great on the armiger. I think that turned out great. Also double the awesome points for using a 3d printer. Then double that for using it to construct a Warhound! I'm definitely going to follow that god machine with glee.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Cheers both, this is definitely going to be a labour of love. I'm concentrating all of my hobby time on the titan at the moment. So far I have got one foot glued and sanded smooth, I have printed nearly all the pieces for one leg, and have moved onto printing the torso (pictured below). The head is next on the list.

 

When the piece's come off the printer you can tell they have been printed, but the sanding seems to be smoothing it out nicely so if I get the sanding right its going to look great! In the picture below you can see the print lines after a first pass with sandpaper.

 

Total print time is now at 41 hours and 40 minutes with lots more bits to go!

 

PfxouJa.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is awesome! I am already drooling over the idea of you making reavers. Any idea the remaining time to build the head, arms, and other leg? Also, are these solid or is it hollow inside?

 

Also curious if you scale this down to the new adeptus titanicus size? Is that how you did the smaller warhound head for the Armiger?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Hushrong

 

Any idea the remaining time to build the head, arms, and other leg?

 

The head I have down as a 5 hour print. At the quality level I'm printing at, most of the larger pieces each take 3-5 hours to print. To go for one of the higher quality settings my printer can achieve the head would take over a day which I cannot accommodate at the moment.

 

The leg comes in 3 sections, each made up of 2 parts. Its about 4 hours a section so 12 hours.then the Armour on top. I print that at a higher quality so another 15 hours.Then I have the hip section, the neck, rest of the foot and then finally the weapons.its easily going to hit over 100 hours.

 

Also, are these solid or is it hollow inside?

 

you can set the infill level for each piece individually at 0-100%. 0% is hollow and 100% is solid. I default to 20% infill,so it fills the inside with a honeycomb structure. the pieces are strong and lightweight. if you go for 100% it takes longer and you use more material.

Also curious if you scale this down to the new adeptus titanicus size? Is that how you did the smaller warhound head for the Armiger?

 

Yes you can scale parts up or down in size really easy. You just select the piece and set a value for scale in % before it is converted for printing. The hard part is getting the scale accurate so you need a point of reference to get it right, either a measurement of something already existing or in relation to something else. Otherwise it is just a best guess. The head for the Armiger was scaled up from an epic scale version of the titan for example.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

100 hours to make your own titan sounds awesome! In regards to quality does a higher quality print just have a more fine, smoother finish and edges when complete? Or does that mean you could pack on quite a bit more detail? Also, being able to scale it down for the new AT would be interesting. You could make your own engines, terrain pieces like a wrecked titan (which you could use for a titan that was felled in game like a wreck marker), and things like terrain too.

 

It is also cool to know you can make it hollow and have that honeycomb within for support. Aside from cutting down on material costs I bet it is nice to have a more lightweight god engine for transport and gaming.

 

Sorry to derail with all these questions. I just find this to be awesome!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No problem happy to answer questions! I have only had the printer a couple of months so I'm far from an expert in these matter.

 

For Quality you can change the layer height and the speed of printing to give a smother result. A smaller layer height also helps to maintain the resolution and detail printed, mainly for curved surfaces. You can also change other settings and there are profiles out there for my printer specially tuned for model printing.

 

The downside is that when you go for these smoother finishes, it increases the time to print by quite a lot. I'm not yet at a stage where I can print unattended so I have to be at home for the duration of the print, anything over 5 hours is jut not for me. The titan however, is great because a lot of the surfaces are straight, and the details are big and chunky so a lower resolution print doesn't matter if you are willing to sand it back and use a little green stuff.

 

Terrain is another excellent application of a 3D printer.  There are already a lot of modular terrain available to print, such as walls, floors, turbines, generators etc but again its all down to printing and finishing time. If you are good at 3D modelling its a big help but if not you have to rely on other's to make models and share them. I'm a big fan of the GW terrain and think some of it is quite reasonably priced but a 3D printer can enhance that by adding modular walls, bunkers etc to make for a really entertaining game.

 

For kill team we have plans for a setup with corridors, doors rooms etc (like space hulk) and my ultimate project is going to be a ship boarding terrain piece with a part of a ship with playable internals on one side full with defenders, and boarding parties coming in from the outside to try and take the ship. That is going to be a mix of printed parts and more traditional methods of terrain making. Just got to get some titans out of the way first!

 

I do need some suggestions for a colour scheme for the titan though if anyone has some ideas.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's cool to learn all of this, get an understanding of how this works, and see it being put to use. I do not have plans to get a 3D printer but several of my friends do. Right now they are planning on terrain which I won't complain about it. The more we have the better. It's just really cool to know I can whisper some sweet ideas into their ears. :)

 

I've also got to say you are doing awesome with your 3D printer for only having it for a couple of months. You also have me on the edge of my seat when you mentioned that you have to get some titans out of the way first. Titans, as in plural sounds very promising! The terrain project you have in mind also sounds great. I used to use and still have two sets of space hulk floor tiles that I would set up for old zone mortalis. I've been wondering about busting it out for some harrowing close quarters operations. It would be very cool to see a three dimensional project of something similar happen in the future.

 

As for color on the warhound, its a free company, so anything goes right? If so I wonder if something brighter with lots of heraldry would be fitting for a mercenary who likes some attention. On the other hand it would be cool to see it with portions of it actually painted and some bare metal where repairs where recently done. Similar to LionofJudah who painted up a leman russ tank as if it just came out of a factory with measurement markings still chalked onto the chassis.

 

Or do you think you will give it a titan legio beackground?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It's cool to learn all of this, get an understanding of how this works, and see it being put to use. I do not have plans to get a 3D printer but several of my friends do. Right now they are planning on terrain which I won't complain about it. The more we have the better. It's just really cool to know I can whisper some sweet ideas into their ears. :smile.:

 

I've also got to say you are doing awesome with your 3D printer for only having it for a couple of months. You also have me on the edge of my seat when you mentioned that you have to get some titans out of the way first. Titans, as in plural sounds very promising! The terrain project you have in mind also sounds great. I used to use and still have two sets of space hulk floor tiles that I would set up for old zone mortalis. I've been wondering about busting it out for some harrowing close quarters operations. It would be very cool to see a three dimensional project of something similar happen in the future.

 

As for color on the warhound, its a free company, so anything goes right? If so I wonder if something brighter with lots of heraldry would be fitting for a mercenary who likes some attention. On the other hand it would be cool to see it with portions of it actually painted and some bare metal where repairs where recently done. Similar to LionofJudah who painted up a leman russ tank as if it just came out of a factory with measurement markings still chalked onto the chassis.

 

Or do you think you will give it a titan legio beackground?

 

I think I'm going to give a reaver a try but there are no decent 3D models I can find for printing one off so I'm going to have to make my own. I'll see how this one turns out first before I fully commit I think. I used to do 3D modelling about 8 years ago as a hobby so i'll have to relearn some old skills.

 

As for the colour scheme - yep anything goes for this one. I like the idea of the patched up armour plates and will take a look at the Leman russ you mentioned, thanks.

 

 

Cool thread, demented. Where'd you get the blueprints for the warhound?

 

The blueprints I got from thingiverse, and there are several different sources that I'm using for this model as it has be remixed loads of times. I will probabley remix some of my own stuff in when I get a chance, add some more details etc.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes! A reaver would be awesome! Once the warhound is finished up I hope you can find some material to use to make this happen. 

 

And yeah. I think bare, fresh out the factorum for refit parts would look good. That and maybe even patches where hasty repairs were made. I would assume this free company has money thanks to their services. I can imagine them having a large enough ship to transport their god-machines but no idea what ties they would have to a forge world to rearm, refit, and repair. I could imagine a merc rolling into a manufactorum with a bag of coin and his own techpriests paying for some materials and a lift to fix up damage to their engines.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So its really starting to take shape now. Worked on some detailing on the rear of the body, and got the head and neck printed as well.

 

The head is such an iconic design, it looks real mean and adding it to the body is definitely a wow moment. Most bits are Blu tac'd on too get a feel for how it looks. I think I'll make a start on the hip section next and then back to the sanding. I'm really starting to hate sand paper something rotten.

 

I'll get some decent pictures in a few days time, the lighting isn't great indoors during the night :whistling:

 

j6m4TvJ.jpg

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I notice the Warhound has two nostrils- or gun muzzles. Do Warhound class Titans have head-mounted weapons? I keep dreaming of mounting two heavy bolters under a Warhound's head, to defend it from enemies that are "danger close" (it can't use Titan class weapons without putting itself in its own arm-mounted weapons' blast radii).
Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is quite a good point as traditionally vehicles have secondary weapons mounted. Looks like the point defence is under the chin in that picture?

 

I might make some modifications to my head to add some weapons underneath. I suppose anything the point defence would shoot at would get stepped on anyway :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.