Legio Ventus & House Qattara - or - 'How to hide a Titan'

[Mendi Warrior]

Nice! 

[Bjorn Firewalker]

The dazzler camouflage is well done.

[schoon]

As already commented on FB, I do not envy the amount of work that went into masking all those stripes, but I certainly admire the results! Bravo.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

With this, my Legio is finished for now:

[Sherrypie]

And ain't it a beauty. Solid work!

[Spazmolytic]

F'n eh man!!! AWESOME!!!

[Mendi Warrior]

Beautiful, excellent work! 

[Fajita Fan]

God damn you people are friggin talented 

[splayedpaintbrush]

That is ace!

 

Excellent result, your hard work paid off there! I really like it.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

Thanks all!

 

I took him out yesterday for his first battle.

 

We played matched engagement. I had hold the line, he had to kill my Warlord. He had two Reavers and three Warhounds and I had two Warhounds, a reaver and the big guy.

 

I think we made a few mistakes, we rolled the deployment where you end up with the A, B and C deployment zones. We got confused about the meaning of 'unit' so my opponent having squadronned three Warhounds deployed them all in A. So I did the same with my two in a squadron. (Although, thinking about it, I completely forgot to do a single coordinated strike all game!)

Having re-read the FAQ since then, I'm pretty sure this was wrong. And it should have been a single Warhound each.

 

The only other mistake I made was with the Quake Cannon. Which the FAQ cleared up as well.

 

Otherwise it was a bloodbath. He moved his three Warhounds up to take down the Warlord, so I threw one of my own in the way to reduce their accuracy. I hammered the shields of the Squadron with everything I could and at the beginning of round 3, a strafing run popped the shields on every one. I then hit the middle one with a belicosa and it blew on a 10. Hitting the neighbours and mine. My Warhounds took out the most wounded one and it also blew, on a 10 again. (He didn't roll less than 7 for catastrophic all game!) Hitting nearly everything in both armies. Then my Reaver charged one of his with a chainfist, and it blew up on a 9(!) Taking out one of my Warhounds in the process, which wildfired.

By the end of the turn, he had only a Warhound and a reaver left. He charged the Warhound at the Warlord who polished it off, he was hoping to kill it with the explosion, but only rolled a 7, and did minimal damage. The final Reaver was then polished off by by Warhound and Reaver.

 

Absolutely brutal.

[Gore Crow]

That sounds brutal! You sure you're resolving damage right? 

 

Do you have any pics of the game? I'm jonesing for AT action. 

[Sword Brother Adelard]

Never sure. But moreso on that than anything else!

 

One min, did take a before and after shot.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I need a palette cleanser after painting too many Black Templars, and am looking at the AI Avenger fighters my sister bought me for a present to use as markers for strafing run.

 

So, the question is, which ridiculous camouflage pattern should I use?

 

I'm currently thinking something like the Luftwaffe desert camo, or the RAF one used on desert kittyhawks with the grinning shark faces.

 

Anyone else know of anything suitably mad?

[Sherrypie]

I mean, if you want to go mad...

 

[Sherrypie]

Or maybe the lozenge pattern in actual camo colours, since that's so easy to do on miniatures without them just blurring into coloured blobs :D ?

 

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I was thinking of using a similar hex pattern for the inevitable warbringer...

 

That's so regular in its pattern. How was that done...

[Lord_Borak]

Damn that warlord is fantastic. The base, the colour scheme. Everything...

 

As for the plane. After deciding to Diamond patterns and then massively regretting it. Don't go too mad!

[Gattopardo]

I've looked at the lozenge pattern for my Astorum (but not as camo - it'd be yellow/orange, as a variation on a flame design). Not done it yet though so can't offer any advice based on actual experience.

 

I actually think it might be a bit easier to pull off than a diamond or check pattern, as it doesn't have to look regular in the way those do. Colour choice would be important though to avoid it just look a bit of a blurry mess.

 

German WW1 aircraft colours are a good source for Titan designs generally, I think.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

I am 4 models off finishing Blackstone Fortress (I bought it last month and have speed painted the crap out of the kits, contrast, metallics and hardly anything beyond a base and a wash.) But now I return to Titanicus...

I recently discovered the British Berlin Brigade's camo scheme from the cold war, and think it will work brilliantly in my madcap bunch of camo schemes. I also used the same scheme on a 40k tank, as a palette cleanser. (here's perhaps a rather heretical Black Templars Laser Destroyer in camo:

This will work even better in my Titan colours, as there will be more, well, colour, in the pattern. I plan to start with two warhounds to see how mad sticking umpteen tiny rectangles of masking tape makes me.

But, and this is the real reason I type. I want to go a little further with hiding things, and am intrigued by the idea of cameleoline shrouds, but am trying to work out how to do them. The description in Haley's Titandeath (Which I will try to dig out, unless anyone happens to have the ebook and can search it out easier than me re-reading the last chapter or two!) refers to the shrouds as being something which needed to be set up in advance of use, perhaps like a camo net over a vehicle or artillery position in conventional warfare. I wad wondering if a cameleoline shroud could perhaps work draped from a panel to break up the titan's shape more. perhaps almost like a cape? Other references to Cameleoline refer to it being supplied in square panels whcih can be attached to other panels to make modular coverings, I'd perhaps like to replicate that, with a semi-solid isometric pattern perhaps? But I'm not sure what sort of material, either fabric or plastic to use as a base. I almost considered folding up some isometic pattern paper and trying to harden it somehow, like papier mache, but I don't think that would work.

[Sword Brother Adelard]

After all my grumbling about trim, my Warhounds are complete! I'm really pleased with how these came out, my favourites of the pack by a nose I think, just pipping the digicam Warhound to the post. (I'm also reaching that sad stage where my first two Warhounds, which were a test for the scheme, don't entirely match the quality or style of what followed. This is because the lower halves of those two had a different camo scheme, which never made it to the rest of the Legio:

Both Titans are identically patterned, this is a concept borrowed from the British Army unit which invented the scheme, they painted every tank identically to make it difficult for the Russians to know exactly how many they had, because it wasn't possible to know if you'd seen two, or the same one twice.

The terrain was also really fun to build and paint, with my wife offering colour tips on the building interiors. Not something I'd do with separate terrain pieces, but quite a fun touch on a base. It's Trouble Maker Games stuff, which I think Vanguard sell, but I was able to buy it slightly cheaper direct on eBay.

I also converted the lances so that the heads can be swapped with the Claws. That was done by drilling out the resin shafts, and replacing them with brass rod (well, nails with the head clipped off.) I then drilled out the weapon bodies a bit more, and now the shafts swap in without needing any glue.

[schoon]

Those are beautiful! I really like your Digi-cammo, both in the colors you chose and the pattern.

 

I really need to get off my duff and start painting more!

[Sword Brother Adelard]

Thanks, it's been nice to paint titans again. Much more enjoyable than painting Templars has been recently. I reached a stage where I had a box of unpainted Space Marines which I just found I had little interest in painting. Units I was going to paint just because I had them, not because I wanted to. Then, a few weeks back a cheap job lot of Titanicus came up locally, and I bought it, sold all the stuff I didn't want to paint, and haven't looked back.

[General Zodd]

They’re great, Adelard! Really effective, believable camo and it still looks like a form of titanic heraldry, fantastic stuff! You’ve done a really nice job with the weathering and bases too. Your best work yet, I think!

[Mendi Warrior]

They are simply stunning, very well done 

[Sword Brother Adelard]

It's taken me a little bit longer than I would have liked, but my Warmaster is complete.

I knew, as soon as I saw the model, that I had little choice but to paint this guy in a battleship dazzle scheme, as with my Warlord. I also wanted to take the opportunity to improve on aspects of the scheme which I feel didn't turn out as well as I would have liked on the Warlord, now I'm coming back to it.

With that in mind, I planned this Titan's scheme much more than I have any of the others. I spent time drawing schemes out in a notebook to get an idea how to recreate them, I planned which panels would have which scheme. (There are more variations in the pattern on this guy than it appears at first glance.) I then sat down with my masking tape and airbrush and spent a whole day working on the panels. Only, it didn't work. First, I messed up the last coats on the shoulder and shin armour, and the grey had bled everywhere, but the scheme just didn't work the way I envisaged. I took the next morning off, went for a drive and then it hit me why it wasn't working. I re-did the panels I'd messed up, and a few more besides and it worked.

You see, I'd wanted the complicated schemes on the shoulders and shins to fully integrate all three of the Legio colours, the Warlord didn't have enough of the darker blue, because I found that there wasn't enough contrast between the turquoise and the grey for the scheme to work. On this Titan I actually took a shade lighter turquoise to try and improve the contrast, but it still didn't work. What I realised is that the grey and light blue contrast well, and the blues contrast well, but the grey and turquoise don't work as well as either of the other combinations. By removing that pairing from the complicated scheme, and making the light blue the contrast to the other two colours, as opposed to the grey, the contrast works well for the scheme.

Anywho, enough of my ramblings, here he is: