Reaver Legs

Some construction work on the legs of the Reaver Titan from Forge World today. The basic assembly for the thighs and calves is done - the fiddly bits remain to be achieved. In short, I do not want this titan to be looking static. I favour a more dynamic pose, but need to play this off against the necessary practicalities of transportation dimensions and ensuring that the titan balances. Hence, I want to have both feet on the ground realistically, despite my inner urge to try something one-footed and mid-run or mid-stride. 

To ensure that the titan is solidly and robustly constructed, I am going to pin a number of the major components together. The first image shows the holes that I made for a brass rod to be inserted in one of the chunkier leg pieces. 

Also notice here the scoring that I have done around the drill hole. This scoring is to ensure that the glue bonds better to the parts and is a technique that I have used for decades to rough parts up to make them come together better. 

Below is the basic thighs and lower leg components all assembled and awaiting connection to the hips and feet (plus toes). I need to do some dry fitting before proceeding too much more to ensure that I can get the post that I want. 

However, one issue has already reared its ugly head for me. The next image shows an excessively thin bit of resin that was removed along with the gate when I was chopping it from the sprue. As can be seen, the resin has not been cast solidly enough, but instead contains a large bubble inside the hemisphere (the other leg has no such issue and is solid throughout). 

I am a bit disappointed by the quality here. However, I think this might not be too much of a big issue since this hemisphere will ultimately connect with the foot. I plan on filling out the large bubble with some milliput or greenstuff, and adding a long brass rod to ensure a high quality connection to the foot (I was going to insert a brass rod regardless for stability purposes). All that said, it is still annoying to find these kinds of hidden problems (defects?). 

Reaver Unboxing

This is the first in a series of posts about the building of a Reaver Titan from Forge World.

As with all such projects, the starting point is unpacking the box and checking everything out. If you have never seen a Reaver titan before it is constructed, and ever wondered what it looks like straight out of the box, then this is it. Below, I have scattered all the components on to my table to inspect. Large and small, delicate and robust, these are the entire contents of the Reaver box freshly delivered; no trimming or anything else has been done at this stage. I'm merely inspecting the parts to make sure that they are all present and correct.

Speaking of the box, I guess not many people get to see what that looks like either, so here it is below.

More on this project soon!

Reaver

The Fabricator General has decreed that your army may deploy the might of a

Reaver Titan.

Tremble foes of man for the might of the Omnissiah is upon you.

Thought for the day.

A moment of laxity spawns a lifetime of heresy.

Constructed Termite

With the main tube glued and dried, completing the build on the Termite was very straight forward in the end. The top of the tube is a series of three concentric circles of drill bits that was very easy to put together. The rear was just one major blob of resin with a few decorative items to add on to it.

The doors to the interior of the vehicle can be modelled opened or closed. I decided to have one of the doors opened and the rest closed. They sit nicely on runners which means that the doors can be posed anywhere from fully opened to partial, to sealed shut.

On top of this, there is a choice of weapons for the upper part of the termite. Here, I've chosen to have the bolters since in-game I wanted a base line points cost for this transport.

Overall, a very nice and easy build in the end. I think it will be fine to paint, even though it has large featureless surfaces. I'm thinking some spray paint in Alpha legion colours, followed by some detailing and some decals on the surface. But that's a job for another day.

Termite Tube

Putting my Termite Assault Drill together has proved to be tough work in part. Or: at least it was until I realised that the best way to do this was not to wait until one segment was completely dry, but to do it using clamps. The only little snag here was that I didn't own enough clamps to do this the "right way", so I improvised.

In the image below, the nature of this improvisation is clear: hair bobbles. These are the stretchy bands used to keep longer hair in pony tails or tied back. They also double up very effectively for working on miniatures as it turns out!

The main tube of the Termite is not actually hard to put together. The main issue is actually getting everything to sit right all at the same time so that everything went together neatly (as I wanted to avoid gaps between the parts as much as possible for obvious reasons). This was ultimately why I decided to glue the main body of it together all at the same time rather than just two of the sides and then wait for it to dry out completely before attaching the next side to it. The hair bobbles worked very nicely for keeping everything in place (and the tread of the termite, in turn, kept the bobble in the right location). Finding ones with the right tension was straight forward enough, and I now keep a set of them for my hobby work. 

It is all nicely dry now and ready for the next few steps.

Games Workshop Southampton

Strictly, this is not a Games Workshop "branded" store: it is a Warhammer store now. That aside, my travels took me to the South Coast of England recently and afforded me a few hours to myself to explore the city of Southampton. As I sometimes do, I decided to do my "mystery shopper" thing and go and locate the Games Workshop store in the city and have a look around. 

Physically, the store is located on East Street, which is just South East of York Gate in the city. East Street is touted as "speciality stores" on the street signage. I found this slightly at odds with the occupants of the buildings. There were plenty of gambling shops, and several charity type shops on the street. Regardless, it seems that GW is a speciality (along with several other genuine specialist shops) on the small street, so that at least is correct. I'm not so sure about the location itself. It feels a little isolated in its position with arguably little footfall from the main high streets north of its location. Indeed, the main railway and bus stops are close enough, but one does have to strike out in the direction of this store to get there, rather than chance upon it. 

The store itself is of a moderate to smaller size. The front window pictured above gives a reasonable impression of the scale and size of the place (and the image below shows in the background the depth of the store, along with a miniature in the window that really took my eye!). 

I found the staff pleasant, easy to talk to and knowledgable about the hobby - which is always good. Indeed, the staff here were very accommodating and didn't apply too much pressure on me. Hence I bought a little something. The stock is reasonable, albeit standard for Games Workshops these days, and the gaming tables / space in the middle adequate for most purposes. 

Overall, this is a nice store, but I do question its physical location - a bit north of York Gate might be a superior location, although I do acknowledge that the rents would correspondingly go up. 

Wargames Gallery: Infestation

Deep within the rotting heart of the lower levels of the Hive spire lurks something altogether more sinister than brutish gangs in need of expedited Imperial discipline...

Termite Unboxing

It has been a little while - and sorry for the delay to my regular readers. To avoid burn-out on the hobby, I am not going to be posting ~daily any longer, but will be posting at a more leisurely rate from herein. 

For today's post, I wanted to share what an Imperial Termite (also known as the Terror Pattern Termite Assault Drill, but I'm old school) looks like fresh out of the box. In the image below, I have made no cuts, no adjustments, and not even washed the parts. They are literally raw out of the box and laid out on a table for inspection. 

As can be seen, there is plenty of little issues here. They range from the large amounts of flash (thin films of resin) seen in the upper left part of the image wherein a large portion of the (open) door is covered by the flash, through to little minor warps, and a couple of air bubbles here an there. I would say that the amount of air bubbles that I encounter in Forge World's resin is much reduced these days compared to when I started collecting their products. And that is to be commended. There is still a fair amount of work in this particular kit to be carried out though. I will start it off with a thorough and good wash in warm soapy water with an old toothbrush to get rid of the releasing agent that I spotted on a couple of surfaces. 

Other than that, this build looks - in principle - like it will be a straight forward one. I hope that I will be proved right.

Army wise, this termite will serve as a flexible extension to my Alpha Legion forces. I very much like the idea of death from below AND above used in conjunction with one another. It seems rather fitting for an Alpha Legion force to be honest.