The temperatures have started to soar here in sunny Colorado and my painting loft has started heating up significantly - I've been getting a little bit of painting done in the mornings before heading off to work while it's nice and cool however!


The rather excellent Prometheus from Blight Wheel Miniatures is now (more or less) complete! All of the painting is done at this point, and I gave it a hit of sealant prior to the waterslide transfer stage. Once those are on I'm scheming on how I want to weather it, I definitely want to add some chipping around the lower leg guards, and perhaps on the knuckles of the power fist.


I pulled out the older Knight Errant and snapped a scale shot, the Prometheus is just a tad bigger but essentially identically scaled, which I like. I thoroughly enjoyed building and painting this kit, and will be adding another one or two more once they replenish their stock!


I also figured what the heck - may as well drag out the Leviathan Crusader from Dreamforge for another scale shot! Still just applying the base red to it, but I'm well pleased with how it's turning out so far!


With the advent of the recent Eldar Wraithknight, I'm really interested to see whether we'll see some equivalent scaled Imperial Knights coming our way from GW. Seems as though Forge World is starting to release more and more kits for the Ad-Mech recently (to my wallet's chagrin) so it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility I figure...

Ave Omnissiah!

On the up side, I didn't get laid off this week. On the down side, I am getting laid off in a few months. Not a bad thing overall, I've been with the company for going on 8 years so I'm looking at it as an opportunity to do something new and interesting. Gotta stay positive!

However, that has caused me to do some serious pondering about the future of the hobby for me over the next year. It's put the kibosh on my plans to attend Adepticon this year which I'm pretty bummed out about, and to be honest until such time as I find a new job, I cannot afford to pour any more money into the hobby (every extraneous penny needs to go into savings, just in case). There will be no new purchases for me for a while - In point of fact I'm resigning myself to selling off a great deal of my collection to help build up a bit of a buffer just in case the job search takes longer than I'm hoping it will. Expect to see some blatant self advertising over the next couple months as I get things organized!



Does this mean I'm going to quit hobbying altogether? Heck no. There's boxes upon boxes of stuff in the Closet of Doom, enough to keep me occupied for the next several years, and the painting shelves are still chock full of half completed projects that are crying out for attention - such as Leviathan Crusader which has gotten the first lick of paint recently. I am also awaiting a few Kickstarter rewards to arrive over the next few months, with OGRE and the Bug Hunt Corridors scheduled to arrive in the July timeframe (which means I can still feel like I'm getting some 'new' stuff from time to time). I've been turning my attention back to the Ad-Mech as well, with a couple kits getting the initial reds laid down on them as shown below. There's always more guard to work on too, as well as a half dozen other half-baked projects. It's not like I'm going to run out of hobby stuff any time soon!



A buddy of mine and I have also been discussing trying out some new game systems with an eye for gaming on a budget. Even as fully fledged working adults, GW's price schemes have really gone beyond tenable. We're planning on giving Mercs a try (assuming the stuff that we ordered a month or so ago ever arrives), where the cost for entry into the system is less than a hundred bucks, rulebook and all the minis you need inclusive. It seems like a fun system and I like the idea of doing some squad level/necromunda style gaming for a while.

So, over the next few months I'm hoping to actually get some old projects finished up, and you can expect to see some further (gasp) non-40k content on here in the future. Heresy!

Had some time yesterday evening to finish building the exceedingly excellent Dreamforge Games Leviathan Crusader - I have to say that I was completely blown away by this kit. The instructions were very good (with Mark from DFG doing a few updates, they're now spot on), and the pieces all went together like a dream!


There was some odd plastic vents and attachments to the sprues, but 90% of the time they were on nice flat, underside areas that were super easy to trim away clean. I spent a while getting the pose sorted out the way I wanted, then glued everything in place. The arms remain removable by design, and I left full articulation on the shoulder and elbows to allow for future weapon swaps.


I think it ended up with a decent sense of ponderous motion - my only nitpick with the kit at all is that the head has no option to rotate side to side - they must look straight ahead, which it a little limiting as far as really dynamic posing is concerned. The more static pose does give it a greater feeling of weight, I suppose...


The final side-by-side shot with my Knight Errant, and a presumably smug tech priest for scale. It's definitely too big to be a Knight in my opinion, I plan on arming it with a second Vulcan and running it using the Warhound.rules. It is roughly the volume of the old Armorcast Warhound after all!

Definitely an awesome kit, I enjoyed building it from start to finish. Now to primer and paint the monster!

Miraculously I had a (relatively) work-free evening last night and after snapping some pics of the unboxing of the beast I couldn't help but get started with the build process. I don't plan on rushing through the build, and after I got started it became very apparent that this kit needs care and attention paid during the assembly process - that's not to say that the instructions aren't clear and concise, but there are a LOT of fiddly bits, and some of them need to be put in place in very specific order. Suffice it to say I did a lot of dry-fitting and re-fitting before I ever brought any glue to the party.


The lower legs are about a zillion pieces, with ball and socket articulation at the ankle, as well as pivots at the heel, knee and rotation at the hip (along with a further ball and socket). In addition there are a number of pistons that attach, stretch and articulate along with the multiple axes of rotation. I was astounded at how well it was designed. Unlike the FW leg pistons, these were designed to fit in any position the builder could imagine, with no cutting or trimming required.


One thing that I noted was that up to a certain point, the two leg structures are built identically. HOWEVER, at a certain point in the process the left and right legs become defined, and after that point you need to be very sure that you know which is which! I didn't add any of the leg armor plates as yet, as I wanted to be sure I was happy with the leg posing and positioning on the base, and be sure they would fit in the pose I have in mind. It looks like that won't be a problem, but on something of this size and complexity, it's definitely worth taking the time to be extra sure everything fits the way I intend.


Before I could be sure the leg poses would work, I needed to get the pelvis and hips put together. More ball and socket articulation on the spine and hips means that it seems one can really get some dynamic poses out of the model!


At the moment it's just standing on the base, and not glued down, but I was rather pleased at how well it balances as-is! I'm still considering what I want to do to the base so nothing is permanently attached as yet. In fact, the legs are held in place primarily by screws and friction, so there's still plenty of opportunity to change up the stance before anything gets permanently glued in place.


I realized that I hadn't included any models for scale in the shots thus far, so I grabbed a handy Tech Priest. He barely comes up to the ankle - it's gonna be big!


Speaking of - the initial intent was to use the model as a Warden Knight Titan, but it's becoming apparent that it's going to be significantly larger than the Knight Errant I've built.Not only is it going to be half again taller, but it's far more bulky. The armor plates that go on the legs will add a lot of apparent mass to the final model, that's for sure!

In game, I have a feeling it will be used as a proxy Warhound, though if memory serves Warhounds aren't allowed close combat weapons. No fear though, as the shipment that arrived also included a left-handed Vulcan cannon, for twin mega-dakka goodness! So far so good - I'm hoping to get some more build time in over the upcoming weekend (presuming I don't end up working. Again.)...

Well... Real Life(tm) has been kicking my butt recently - it's been 60+ hours a week at work and that hasn't left much time for the hobby. However, I did get a huge package in the mail - the first batch of stuff from the Dreamforge Games kickstarter arrived, and I snapped a few pics of the unboxing!


I ended up ordering a pair of the Leviathan Crusaders, a Leviathan Mortis and a mess of weapon upgrades and whatnot. In the first shipment were the Crusaders, the left arm Vulcan cannons, the capacitor upgrades and the Excalibur alternate swords. Plenty to keep me busy until the Mortis and the other weapon arms show up a few months from now! I was impressed with the boxes, plenty of pretty pics and suggested build ideas!


Opening the big box revealed that it's all protected with foam, and I really appreciated the fact that they included a base for the monster as well - definitely a nice touch!


The instruction manual is thorough and appears to be pretty comprehensive, it definitely set my mind at ease for when it comes time to build the beast!


The sprues were all banded and stacked together and all the bits seemed free from warping (if only I could have said the same for the Sedition Wars models) and are all very crisp and well detailed. They use the same plastic sprue layout that the other Wargames Factory models utilize, but really seem better cast and more refined than the Shock Troop models I've been using for my Ad-Mech army. Definitely a step up in quality it seems!


At the bottom of the box was a plastic tray that includes a number of bits and pieces that I assume are what separates the Crusader from the Mortis kit, and to my surprise the kit also utilizes metal screws in the construction and includes a little screwdriver as well. According to the instructions, it's possible to build the kit such that it remains thoroughly articulated and posable, though my intention is to build it in a dynamic pose and glue it together for stability (which the instructions also suggests).

As I mentioned, I ended up ordering a pair of Crusaders and a Mortis, but I think one of the Crusaders will be going up on the auction block at some point soon. In retrospect I think I should have ordered up the 15mm versions for use as Knight Titans - this full-sized kit appears to be more in line with the Warhound Titan scale-wise. Not that there's anything wrong with that!

Really looking forward to getting stuck in building this kit, though it's unfortunately not looking like I'm going to have a lot of free time to do so in the near future. Boo!