#DreadTober Adeptus Titanicus - Warlord Titan 2 - Basecoat armour plates

Afternoon #Warhammer Community it's the ninth of #DreadTober2025 and having met my Legio Gryphonicus Adeptus Titanicus Warlord Titan pledge I had lots to do to get my stretch goal Warlord titan up to speed. But the base itself needed doing so I got the old Red Planet BASE! 🔴 process going.

I know it's now more orange than red but I do love the colours. Still some scorch marks to enhance and bits of debris to differentiate but that'll do for now.

And that gets me the Great Big Chrome 'BASE' Stamp of Approval.

And starting to get the colours blocked in.

Once again that blue is really throwing things off. Luckily I looked back at some old Titan posts and it was a key concern back then and they look great now. 

I mean the orange doesn't do any favours but it'll be barely visible under the yellow.

It's still quite overwhelming at this stage. Despite how well the first Warlord went all the doubts come flooding back. Not to mention there are still questions about the silver and gold approaches I'll take.

But, with the first Warlord done I think I have more capacity to solve the problems. I don't think it'll be done befor ethe end of DreadTober, but it'll be pretty close. I think if the decals are done I'll be satisfied. Afterall, there 3 sets of weapon options for carapace and arms so this is a bit more effort than Warlord 1.

#DreadTober Adeptus Titanicus - Warlord Titan - TO DONE! 🔴

Afternoon #Warhammer Community it's the eighth of #DreadTober2025 and when last we met the crisis over my Legio Gryphonicus Adeptus Titanicus Warlord Titan pledge had been averted. All it took was a slight detour to my potential stretch goal of a second Warlord Titan and I was able to come back refreshed.

There wasn't a huge amount to do after the last post.

Just a few of the FX elements, like lenses and glows.

These things I considered the most interesting things to do as they often add so much to the finished model.

However, despite my experience and tolerance of what is acceptable I still worry that the effect won't work.

And yet I've done green glows, red glass and lenses, blue void shield glows and some orange lenses.

That's 4 different colours, some with overlapping techniques and they all seemed to have worked out as expected. Nothing looks odd or out of place.

I had 2 of my Reavers for comparison and again, nothing out of place.  

Despite the 15 month gap and the 'speed run' progress on the Warlord the consistency is right up there.  

Of course you can always argue different Forgeworlds can justify subtle differences. But I don't think I need to do that at all. I think the only variety comes from the heraldry and pattern choices. 

Although the yellow, grey and blue are consistent it's how they are distributed on the models that makes them more eclectic than I may have originally imagined.

Throw in my potential stretch goal and things can be consistent but also very different. But I never imagined I would be getting this Warlord TO DONE so quickly.

I doubted I'd get it done in DreadTober at all. But to have it done and starting the next is amazing and it's only down to this community event that gave me the motivation to get it on the painting table and out the door so soon!

And my Great Big Chrome Stamp of Approval. This is another 10 hobby points for the season. 

#DreadTober Adeptus Titanicus - Warlord Titan - Battle damage

Afternoon #Warhammer Community it's the seventh of #DreadTober2025 and when last we met my Legio Gryphonicus Adeptus Titanicus Warlord Titan pledge was in crisis. But I should have trusted the process. The only reason the decals looked garish and clean was because I hadn't done any battle damage or weathering.

Unsurprisingly this went some way to breaking up the decals, to such an extent they barely register in some places. It's only when you look closer that you see what they're meant to be.

As per usual this was a mix of sponging and freehanding the scratches. The sponging creates the random damage, with the freehand joining some together for greater damage and interest.

Throw in multiple scratches and gouges and we get quite the beaten G.O.D. engine.

Add some sepia washes for additional rust streak to embed the damage. I also freehanded some text next to the blue Knight badge. Helping to make it consistent with the other quarters.

Damage on the thigh plates helped to draw them into the background a bit. Some thinned Basilicanum Grey helped tone down the white too. Damage on the white chevrons create a diffusion pattern so it's much harder to notice the inconsistencies in their size and distribution.

I still think a black cog would have been better but this is far less imposing. I also think the blue cog was unnecessary. It really needs a small red badge in the front half of the armour panel to balance it, but I can't bring myself to do it now.

So, Blessed Verdigris 🗽next, some more lense details, glow FX on the void shields, eyes, sort the base and varnish and then it's done! 🥳

#DreadTober Adeptus Titanicus - Warlord Titan 2 - Switch target!

Afternoon #Warhammer Community it's the sixth of #DreadTober2025 and last we met my Legio Gryphonicus Adeptus Titanicus Warlord Titan was in crisis. Progress has been good but I was doubting my decisions over just how many decals I had applied. So, rather than face the problem I switched targets. The second Warlord was never really in scope for DreadTober but given the progress so far on the first and desire to avoid it why not get it built at least. I'd smashed it apart and rebuilt most of it, I just wanted a more dynamic pose, but did I do it leg further back.

leg coming forward [almost imperceptible I know...]

Or leg in the air, cool but unstable. I'd looked at tilting the body forward more as well. But it made all the guns point at the ground. Furthermore, the resin base adds about 8mm in height, plus the straighter legs means the extra height this model could achieve would be sacrificed for a dynamic unstable pose.

So I chose option two.

As you can see a lot of work has been done on this Warlord, but not by me. It came with painted weapons. I'm actually going to keep the heat bloom on the Gatling Blaster and blue plasma glow. I may favour orange, but the airbrush effect is much better than my own glow effect, although I may add some additional highlights and tweaks.

The head is the only thing I've applied paint to so far - adding the yellow contrast paint to start bringing it into the Legio Gryphonicus. The gun casings will be a mix of blue and grey, it cam with most of the other weapon options too!

It's right leg has been pinned at the toe. I drilled into it and inserted a paper clip. I'm not gluing it until I've painted the base separately. All the trim will be redone as well. I'm going to go gold, as Retributor Armour has such good coverage I think it will look really good. Just keep it simple and use the Leadbelcher undercoat with a shade and highlights.

Whereas Iron Regent has a yellow carapace front and back, with grey in the middle this will be grey front and back with yellow in the middle. As the middle panel does not have the cog symbol there is plenty of space for the largest and most ornate House Coldshroud decals, which will stand out on the yellow background. I'll do the arm plate on the gun yellow too. To have that line of colour running down.

And I'm going to try yellow shins again. It worked on the Reaver, so I hope it works here too. Despite the fact this is so very far from a 'blank page', my clear plan and the surprising progress on Iron Regent I'm already sabotaging my vision of progress on this one. Maybe when the first one is done I can be more confident but right now, as pleased as I am to have this ready to paint, it feels just a little bit overwhelming. I've gone from having it in the bag to doubling my workload, which has switched off the serotonin somewhat. Maybe I just needed to bask in the glow of achievement before starting something else, or is hobby momentum more important...?

#DreadTober Adeptus Titanicus - Warlord Titan - Highlights and decals

Afternoon #Warhammer Community it's the fifth of #DreadTober2025 and I've continued to paint my Legio Gryphonicus Adeptus Titanicus Warlord Titan. Progress has been good. Originally the highlights were going to be part of the last post but these were the only pictures I got.

Here you can see how I added yellow and grey blobs to the armour panels to create the mottled effect. 

With that texture in place I was to add a fair bit of glazing layers toward the top of each panel. This would help merge the individual blobs in this area. It creates a highlighted look at the top with more definition in the pattern the darker it goes.

Then gloss varnish.

And decals next. Now this was a weird one as I have loads of cool decals now. The Warlord sheet itself comes with this quartered cog, meant to fit on the gun plates [just]. Now, I'd have preferred black on the yellow, but they didn't think to do that option instead giving us two white cogs! I mean when it's a two colour black and white sheet why would you just put two white cogs. It's not like the Mechanicum doesn't have half white half black anyway. It just makes no sense

Here is Iron Regent from the Adeptus Titanicus rulebook.

The axes on the left knee where nearly perfect - just black instead of blue. I considered painting over them but didn't see the benefit. You can also see the freehand chevron stripes. I was a fiend, refusing to pencil in the lines. I was sure I'd got them positioned right based on the illustration but seem to have done them at a steeper angle and thicker, so the bottom stripe is much lower.

The right knee. There were no head and wings in a size for the top left, so I chose a full griffon. There was no blue dagger symbol in that size, so I chose a blue Knight. A King or Queen might have been more appropriate for the Titan but wouldn't fit. No griffon head symbol with lightning for bottom right, so I just chose a Y symbol, that broke as the decal was applied. So, quite short. And the eagle was almost correct, except black with laurels. I also got creative, adding a large white griffon on the left and using the Armiger decal sheet to add the shoulder cog to the right thigh plate.

Anyway, the Cerastus kits come with Horus Heresy decals. Forgeworld decals are full colour prints and conveniently one knightly house - House Coldshroud, has exactly the same heraldry as Legio Gryphonicus. So the bottom right is one of the fancy decals that matched the Y on the knee plate. Where I could I tried to copy what was on the knee plate, with some added warning decals with text.

The left tilting plate has a Forgeworld decal that is the blue dagger, Titanicus symbol and griffon head. I added a couple of kill markings and House Raven lightning bolt for more heraldry. I'm not overly keen on the result but it'll do. A house Hawkshroud eagle is close enough to the Griffon symbol which only comes in white, but I wanted in black. The eagle on the head plate was supposed to be black on both sides but the left side shredded on application so I use the only alternative - a white one. Echoing the half white, half black cog. The full colour Coldshroud badge and the second tilting plate is a crossed axe and dagger

The back has it's number 69Δ from the Armiger decals and a titan eagle on the right.

So here we are - highlights and decals. I'm overjoyed at the progress but suddenly convinced it's too much bling. What have I done? Doubts start gnawing at my confidence

That all these extra details had overegged the pudding. Like the two blue cog/lightning badges on the back of the arm guards for the Volcano cannons. I knew I wanted to use them, I just never thought if I should - but that's making decisions right?

The white cog on the gun shield looked too bright, as did the cog on the thigh plate. At this stage I was properly considering if I needed to paint them over completely, or if I could tone them down with glazes.

And just to make matters worse, although not really evident in these pictures, a thinned coat of matt varnish over the decals looked like it had yellowed. All the whites and greys seemed to have been tinted. Suspiciously the same colour as my water pot, however I only used clean water thinning the varnish.

So, after all that progress and hard work applying the decals - I mean it was hours, they so fiddly and fussy! I'm having a crisis of confidence, what could I do bring it back on track...?