Finished - Gawain, The Green Knight (AKA Green Man)

The Green Knight is complete. I snagged the name from an old story about a foolish knight, Gawain, that challenged a magical knight and lost his head. After reading that article, I realized that I could have named him Green Man. I like that name better anyway. I would love for him to charge up and land a Destroyer Strength hit right in the nards of a Stompa.

Forgive me. I've been drinking and binge-watching Always Sunny.

I made one big conversion by taking off the weird square sword and replacing it with a Dreadknight sword. The place where it joined is a little janky but overall it is a decent conversion. I had bought a Chainsword arm for a more convincing Knight Titan proxy. Thanks to how easy it is to swap out arms, that is not a concern right now.

On The Table Now - Leviathan Crusader

Long time between updates but I have been hard at work. These Dreamforge minis are insanely complicated to assemble and paint. I have not assembled my GW Knight Titan yet but the Dreamforge Leviathans are more difficult to to assemble than anything I have ever experienced. They also take a lot of work on the front end when you paint before you assemble but really come together quickly at the end. 

At this point, all I have to finish on the body are the shoulder pads. The arms are in progress and should rap up soon. Because I skipped adding the armor on the arms, They should be able to be swapped for any other arms. The exception will be the gatling cannon. It has an awesome belt feed that it too cool to skip. It will only be able to be mounted on the right arm because of this. 

On The Table Now - Leviathan Crusader

These big green feet are the herald of yet another ?Knight Titan from Dreamforge. Serendipitously, Dreamforge posted an upgrade to this mini (and a 50% discount) that I have been waiting for just as I reached the step where I would need to install it. 

I placed my order and started on the other parts of the mini that I could paint while waiting for the new bits. 

For the most part, I a satisfied with these mini. They make for good proxies, are very poseable and reasonably priced. 

Finished - Leviathan Mortis "Valar Morghulis"

This mini deserves an epic write up and better pictures. For now, I am pleased to say that it is finished. I am very very happy with how it came out. 

On The Table - Leviathan Mortis

I took a sick day today for a mental health and spent that time really plugged into this mini. I made a lot of progress and it is almost finished. 

I had a devil of a time getting the legs right. It was a lot of trial and error of fitting them in place and adjusting my work. I ended up gluing the legs in place so there is no motion. I should have pinned the legs to the base from the start. They do not rest flat on the ground or on the vehicle. I could not use my trick of applying super glue to a corner and letting it wick into the crack. I tried this and it just dried on the foot and base still not connecting. You can imagine my frustration. 

I was going to have the mini rotate at the waist, but the hydraulics that attach at the front of the pelvis to the torso are too fiddly to allow that kind of movement. I glued the hips to the spine and the spine to the torso. Then I had to fit the little hydraulic bits into the hips and torso. It was like rocketsurgery.

The only part not glued in are the hips because I am not sure how the posture of the mini is going to shake out. Initially, I thought that the mini would be standing upright more, but now it appears that it is more hunched than I anticipated.

I also left the shoulders and elbows free to move to position the arms. Unfortunately as I already said, there is wash in the cracks and that makes them more difficult to move.

Next time you see this bad baby, it will be tagged with "finished!"

On The Table - Leviathan Mortis

I made great strides on this mini this weekend. Most of that work went into the base. I debated on what army to make it and in the end settled on generic Chaos. I painted it like a rusty wreck with lot of Dark Flesh washed with Agrax Earthshade and Nuln Oil. I did a lot of drybrushing silver colors over it as well. I feel like I like how it turned out but it is very homogeneous. That would bug me more if it was not a piece of scenery on the base.

The Rhino turned out over very dark but that was intentional. I knew that the mini was going to turn out very dark. I didn't want the base to outshine the mini. I used the technique of dampening the colors on the Genestealers to good effect and I tried to put it to use here too. It is a thin line to tread by trying to make the base interesting but not too detailed and well painted that it looks better than the thing standing on it. 

Still on The Table - Leviathan Mortis

Holy cow, this mini is taking forever. I have probably spent over 20 hours on the assembly of the legs only. It would be difficult to make the assembly of this mini more complicated or the mini more poseable. That is not a criticism in any way as it is totally worth it. 

I made a custom base for the mini by sawing the front off of a hideously-painted Rhino that I got in a trade. I had bought Rhino parts off of eBay to avoid destroying a perfectly good Rhino, but after inspection and further thought, the Rhino was not in perfect condition and I lacked appropriate bits to make a convincing Rhino front. 

It was a delicate ballet of assembly of the base and assembly of the legs to get everything in accordance. I had to re-position the toes a little to make it look like the feet were resting on the hull or ground but other than that, the flexibility of the mini worked well. I wanted to position the mini on a giant piece of terrain and deciding on that was the longest part of this process. 

As it stand now. I have decided on and assembled the base, assembled the legs to the point of solidifying a position and screwed in the screws. The legs are set as far as I am concerned. I may as well glue them but can't at this point as I have assembled them too much. I even added some sand to the base around where the foot is to make it look like it is sunk into the ground. 

On The Table - Leviathan Mortis

After finishing my last big project of the Tau Barracuda, I decided to start on my next big project and that is my Knight Titan army. Currently, I have a legit GW Knight Titan from the first release (so it is missing the sexy extras like the fist and carapace-mounted weapons), a Leviathan Mortis and Leviathan Crusader from Dreamforge Games. 

Dreamforge makes Titans in two sizes. Basically they are Knight-sized and Warhound-size. I have one of each (Mortis and Crusader) in the Knight-titan size and one Crusader in the Warhound-size.I decided to start with the smaller Mortis for my first effort and HOLY COW this is a detailed mini. It is insanely poseable and complicated to assemble. I spent over an hour staring at the sprues unsure how to start. Each piece has a piece that needs to be assembled before it.