Mandragola’s Legio Astorum (and Mortis and stuff)

[noigrim]

Something retired doesn't actually cease to exist

[depthcharge12]

Something retired doesn't actually cease to exist

“What’s dead may never die!!!”

[schoon]

Something retired doesn't actually cease to exist

 

True.

 

However, GW has shown that they don't shy away from retcons...

[Mandragola]

I don't really know if the Lucius stuff is supposed to still exist or not. But we have a lot of pictures now of Mars class Astorum titans, built on Lucius. And I'm pretty sure I've heard FW saying they're not fans of the Lucius designs. The Lucius aesthetic doesn't fit anything like as closely to that of the knights and other Admech stuff as the Mars class titans do.

 

That said, I'm sure they'll leave it ambiguous. GW like to allow us to write our own fluff and they make a point of not removing things completely. So by all means use Lucius designs. I won't, but because I prefer the Mars class, not because I'm sure they're "gone".

 

Anyway, I did a bit of painting tonight. The blue bits on this guy are coming along, apart from the bits I forgot to do. Need to do the flamey bits with a smaller brush, and paint a bunch of white lines over bits of it. And the guns, and the basing...

 

[Fajita Fan]

Lucius stuff looks like Battletech to me. 

 

That's a cool fade and a neat idea to paint without being glued to the base.  I'm a compulsive basegluer so I have a harder time. 

[Mandragola]

That wasn't planned. It was actually stuck on the base, but it came off by accident. After that it made sense to leave it off for painting. It does make it easier to get at the toes and stuff.

[Mandragola]

Some work to report.

 

I've done a bit more painting on the Warbringer. Set out the circles but still need to tidy them up again with the blue.

 

 

However, that will have to wait a bit. I've pledged to complete my Psi-Titan for the forum challenge. That was silly, because  the Indomitus set came out and I've been thinking about - and painting - 40k stuff more than AT lately. Now back to AT.

 

I decided it needed some missile launchers. I then foolishly decided to make my own set. For this I used the cradles I'd made for some carapace gatlings before the official ones came out, three sets of missiles from Custodes jetbikes and some vents cut out of a bit of Civitas roof.

 

 

Here's how they look on the titan. It's kind of a weird shape but I quite like it.

 

 

The armour plates are going to feature a lot of wing designs. I've been trying out this alternative to green stuff called "brown stuff". Seems a bit better for getting sharp details.

 

 

The shoulder armour is getting there now. There are some repairs to make where I trimmed too much away when tidying things up. Overall shapes seem ok though.

 

 

I need to get quite a smooth finish on these bits before putting metalic paint on. Not too sure how this will come out to be honest, but hopefully I'll get away with it.

 

I've started with the eagle designs on the missiles now. The hope is to get this all done tomorrow and slap paint on Wednesday. It won't be fully done but hopefully I can get it to some sort of tabletop readiness by Wednesday. There's a long way to go still.

 

[Fajita Fan]

HAHAHA see I haven’t touched my psi-titan because I’m waiting for you all to finish yours so mine doesn’t look too bad by comparison. That looks awesome and much fancier than what I was planning. :( My greenstuff skills aren’t anywhere close to yours.

[schoon]

Love your missile launchers - inspired.

 

I have not touched my Psi-Titan because I don't have the time to do so right now, but the longer I delay, the more ideas I get from you and the other excellent craftsmen on the forums!

[Sherrypie]

Nicely different launchers, now I'm just wondering if their very boxy appearence clashes with the otherwise rounded shape of the rest

[Mandragola]

Nicely different launchers, now I'm just wondering if their very boxy appearence clashes with the otherwise rounded shape of the rest

That could be an issue. I hope that they'll look a bit more rounded once I've done the eagles on them. I possibly should have used something curved for the tops of them.

[Interrogator Stobz]

Great work brother :tu:

[Doctor Perils]

Lovely sculpting on the ordo sinister titan @Mandragola, and that Warbringer's painting is gorgeous :D

[Bjorn Firewalker]

The Warbringer is well-painted.

[Sandlemad]

The Warbringer looks great, that's a lovely blue and the use of that particular reaver head is a good call.

[Mandragola]

I've rethought the shape for the apocalypse missile launchers. They've now got rounded, slightly pointed tops, a bit like a gothic arch in section. I wanted them to look a bit like the Custodes tanks.

 

 

Modelling the trim on these is a pain. I might go a different route, such as sculpting more eagle wings on them. We'll see.

 

The armour plates are all done now and ready for priming. I've been and added bigger canines to the lion heads and got the eagle feathers more or less even. I decided I'd made these a bit bigger than I wanted so I trimmed them back a bit with a scalpel. That seems to have gone ok.

 

 

I've made a third lion's head to go on the right knee (the left knee keeps the eagle design from the Custodian pad it's made out of). I'm satisfied with the result I think.

 

 

So it's getting there. Once I'm happy with the launchers I think this will be ready to prime. I've got some Vallejo liquid gold to use on the detail, so I'm looking forward to seeing how that works.

 

C+C welcome as always.

[Doctor Perils]

The lion heads are looking great :D the design for the missile launchers is looking better - I wonder if the front section of the cowling may be "rounded out" a bit, to look a bit more like a Chainsword tooth? I think it could balance the bottom section out a bit and hide the side sections of the missile launcher bitz

[Fajita Fan]

The launchers have a 3rd edition style Raptor engine cowling look, that's great stuff.

 

[schoon]

Your green stuff skills are impressive! The project is really coming along.

 

What's your technique for feathering out your wings?

[Mandragola]

What's your technique for feathering out your wings?

These took a few steps:

 

- Squidge on a crescent of green/brown stuff for the inner set of feathers.

- Mark on the radiating lines for the feathers. I counted the number of feathers the first one had and matched that for all the others.

- Shape the ends of the feathers, either rounded or angled as you prefer.

- Once this is dry, repeat for outer row.

- Use a knife to sharpen up the edges, or to trim the feathers if they're too long. 

- Fill any places you've cut off too much in the previous stage.

- Peel the whole thing off and start again if unhappy.

[Mandragola]

Took a break from the Psi-Titan to glue together my 4th Astorum Warlord. This guy will allow me to run a 4-Warlord list at 2k, using the new Extermigus maniple, which I'm pretty excited about. My justification for this is that I can spray both of them together, but really I just fancied a change.

 

The weapons are just some random ones that I had around, magnetised on to help figure out the pose. This guy will tend to function as a midfield brawler and I wanted him to look like he was steadily advancing, not charging around the place like some of my other engines.

 

 

The list I'm looking at running is:

 

Extermigus Maniple

2x Warlord with Sunfury, Macro Gatling and apocalypse missiles

Warlord with double quake cannon and apocalypse missiles

Warlord with Macro gatling, Fist and VMBs

 

3 Questoris knights with avenger gatlings and ccws.

 

That comes to 2k exactly.

 

At 1750 I'll run 3 Warlords and a Reaver. That's a set up I've used before as a myrmidon maniple and I've enjoyed it. It's no real loss that the Reaver won't be part of the maniple as it never used to really benefit from being in a myrmidon anyway. This is probably a better list than the 2k version because it's more capable at achieving missions. However, there's nothing quite as cool as running four Warlords... except for running five Warlords obviously. They've consistently failed to give me rules for that though, so here's what we have. At 2500 I'll put in a Warbringer and more knights, or possibly a couple of Reavers so I could operate as two maniples.

[depthcharge12]

Lookin good, the pose is a good change of pace (no pun intended).

 

Ironically I was spitballing an Extermigus Lance as well but I’m sure Astorum can handle the heat better. Fureans could astronomically hot using the maniples rules and their strategem. Funny thing is the wording on the Fureans to shoot a weapon twice means you could potential RAW fire a +2 S weapon twice (with all the heat associated).

 

I built a 1750 list similar to yours but did:

Warlord Sunfury, macro Gatling, Gatling carapace

Warlord volcano, quake, AML

Warlord double Sunfury, VMB

3x Cerastus lancers

[Mandragola]

Hmm, yeah. You could do Extermigus as Fureans but you'd obviously need to be careful with your reactors. The important thing would be to not go crazy with pushing for extra strength. It's always optional, after all, so you shouldn't ever blow up your own titan. 

 

Warlords are relatively good at command checks so if all goes wrong you can probably succeed at emergency repairs the turn after. And if their reactors do overheat you won't usually die right away if you're in the orange.

 

It seems like a great option for my Astorum guys though. I really like Warlords and they're pretty good at keeping their reactors cool. One particularly nice thing is that it doesn't penalise me for using War March to move quickly. If it was a reactor roll to boost weapons then I'd need to roll two dice and pick the worst, but instead you just advance the reactor a step.

 

It's always a question of whether you should pick a maniple that amplifies the strengths and weaknesses, or one that compensates for them. So Astorum are tough and Fureans are aggressive. Here I am building an aggressive maniple for my tough engines, essentially trading my engines' ability to cool down for an ability to do more damage. I have often taken the opposite approach, runing a Regia maniple, which is about leaning into my inherent durability by taking a maniple where my titans can share shields.

[Mandragola]

A little bit of progress to report here. I've done a bit of painting on my occasional side project of knights. I've got a couple of lancers, a banner of wardens and a hated Acastus knight a bit nearer to completion.

 

 

For the trim on these I've used Vallejo liquid silver. It's a fancy alchohol-based paint and it's a little bit harder to work with than acrylics. I like how shiny it is though.

 

For the first of these I tried out using masking fluid. It worked fairly well but overall I found it easier to just paint the trim with the brush. The fluid did cover a couple of bits that I wanted to be metal, and took off a bit of paint when removed. Not worth the hassle.

 

I need to add a wash of some kind to the trim now because it needs shadows. I'll use something gloss to hopefully not lose the shine.

 

These guys are quite fun to do. Unsure if they'll ever see a battlefield, but it's a nice side project -which is something I definitely do not require.

 

These guys still need the black and white areas to be painted properly, the less shiny metal details done, and then transfers applied. I'm using the birds from AI, which match the hawkshroud symbol pretty nicely. At some point I plan to make a standard bearer (or several) with banners using the full size transfer off the 28mm kit.

Edited October 9, 2020 by Mandragola

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I think the trim on my Acasti was probably one of the fiddliest trim projects of the whole range. Compared to Questoris or Cerasti, who have very little, the Acasti were a nightmare!