5 million

Afternoon #WarhammerCommunity another 7 months since I hit the 4 million mark and now I have 5 million on the clock... But as I mentioned the other day they're mostly bots and crawlers. I may have had 1.4 million views in the last year. But google analytics tells me I've had 16,000 'active' users and an 'event count' of 84,000. Not, 1.4 million but if I was so inclined 16,000 is still impressive for a hobby blog.

Anyway, as misrepresentative as that 5 million may be, blogger has been keeping track of it since day one. So, I'm not about to ignore it, whatever the milestone actually means. Just out of curiosity I nipped over to Faeit 212. This used to be the number one blog for news and rumours, and he used to have huge traffic. However, there hasn't been a new post since May 2023, but he's on 280 million 'blogger' hits! And you can see from the graph there's been a lot recently. Maybe I should just stop posting? Ha, ha.

#DreadTober Adeptus Titanicus - Warlord Titan 2 - Highlights

Afternoon #Warhammer Community it's the twelfth of #DreadTober2025 and my stretch goal Warlord titan is a bridge too far. I'm not upset about this, I didn't imagine it was achievable afterall. In fact I'm really pleased the momentum for the first one got me this far. And yet, I'm also slightly sad that that momentum evaporated all too quickly. I started with the dappled effect and it just felt tedious. Probably because I was much less concerned about it when I did the first Warlord. It was very messy and casual. Here I was more careful, which gave me a thrill while I was doing it, because I felt how much effort I was putting into it. But at the end I was just disappointed at my lack of progress and how much I still had to do! This painting malarkey is just riddled with emotional and mental challenges. It's a wonder I see it as fun at all! 🤪 

Anyway, there's an abundance of blue on this, as I painted all the weapon armour blue [except the left arm mount, which is for the personal heraldry]. So I wanted to minimise this a bit and put a diagonal line through the armour. This will be white eventually. The Apocalypse Missile Launcher has one too, but leaning backwards. While the Turbo Laser carapace weapons have checks on the front half. 

This goes some way to mitigate the excess of blue and gives me an opportunity to play around with freehand. You can see the left arm has the personal heraldry pattern. This will echo the knee plate from one of my Reavers, they're from the same maniple. They both have yellow lower legs too.

I think I added some more Basilicanum Grey to the grey panels too. I wasn't 100% happy with the heatbloom on the gatling barrels. It looked OK in pictures but not up close. So, I toned it down a little with Leadbelcher over the sepia and purple bits. Then subtly added a purple wash and I don't think it needs the sepia. But the blue is what was already there. I may have to tweak the Plasma glow too. Some other bits on the gun need some blue glows so I need add some of my blue to the airbrushed bits so it matches.  

Here's a close-up or the dappled grey. So much of that underpainting is rough, it's almost pink in places where the grey basecoat over the red oxide primer wasn't opaque enough.

This is after a glaze over the first set of dappled highlights. Again I was super pleased with my efforts. This felt awesome and exactly as I wanted it to be. Then I looked at the first one and the Reavers and realised I'd been less detailed about the blobs, so this felt like something of an anomaly. It shouldn't matter at all. I've already acknowledged there can be differences due to changes in the Forgeworld manufacture, hence the silver skeleton. 

So, whatever reservations I had were mostly put aside and I was left with the rather mundane task of repeating this on all the panels, grey, blue and yellow. Then I have to highlight the gold trim, two sets of highlights. Which might look unnecessary, but Warlord 1's brassy bronze isn't a million miles away from this gold. I'd rather it was clearly different and identifiable as gold, so it needs to be done.

I'll have one more 'official' DreadTober post this week. It'll show the current WiP as the month comes to an end - 'this is as far as I got'. I'll still be tagging it DreadTober afterwards but I've some other delayed posts to share too, not to mention my #ArmiesOnParade2025 post!

15 year blogiversary

Afternoon #Warhammer Community  I've been blogging for 15 years now!

That's right, 15 years! I've said many times over that I do the blog purely as a record of what I've achieved. A year ago I was commenting about numbers at 3.6 million views and now we approach 5 million. I said then I didn't hold any store by them, and I distrust them even more now. September was my best month ever but I've researched [Googled] how accurate Blogger's own counts are and it literally said they're bot and webcrawlers. So, no I have not had 1.4 million view in the last year. google analytics tells me I have had 16,000 'active' users and an 'event count' of 84,000. Not, 1.4 million but if I was so inclined 16,000 is still impressive.

If I'm not that fussed about numbers why do I go on about it? Well after 15 years you ask yourself how is this contributing to the community, particularly when blogging has far less appeal than YouTube or Instagram? Knowing blogger's 1.4 million views are unrepresentative of the real people who are actually  making the effort to follow your progress is grounding. But I think it does mean that more and more bots and crawlers are coming to the site. Which from what I can tell has made the site more popular for search engines. Whether this translates into the new world of AI search results who knows?

But the blog will continue and I think this is going to be a good year. The battle records manage to keep track of the games I've played. I regret they don't always capture some of the hilarious things that happen, or cool tactics. But, if I didn't do it this way I wouldn't be recording them at all and that would be an even greater travesty. So I'm already up on last year's post count and DreadTober has resulted in a wealth of hobby content. I'm just really glad I am still motivated to share what I'm doing and folk are still interested enough to drop in, read it and comment. Thanks for all your support.

#DreadTober Adeptus Titanicus - Warlord Titan 2 - Yellow and shading

Afternoon #Warhammer Community it's the eleventh of #DreadTober2025 and having met my Legio Gryphonicus Adeptus Titanicus Warlord Titan pledge I'm cracking on with my stretch goal Warlord titan.

And that's starting to look much better. The yellow and grey of Gryphonicus.

The coverage is insanely ugly, I just really hope that it works to my advantage when I try to create the mottled effect.

With some variation in tone already hopefully the shading and stippled highlights will create exactly what I'm after. It's amazing how little I recall of just doing this the other week!

And here we are with some Basilicanum Grey Contrast shading on the grey panels.

And Contrast Iyanden Yellow stippled on the yellow panels.

It's not the first time I've looked at that rich yellow and wished this was as dark as my yellow got. But I'll be adding a whole lot more brighter yellow highlights to it. It'll look great but I am going to miss this richness.

The guns and all the armour trim got shaded too. All the leg armour is glued on at this stage just so it's easier to paint. The carapace armour is separate as is attaching it to the base.

Only two days left and I doubt it will be finished by the end of DreadTober. Although these pics were from last Thursday and progress has been decent, my son is home this week and we're seeing Skindred tomorrow night. So hobby time has been tight. This one has been a little more challenging than the first one. So I don't want to push it. And lets not forget I have an additional 4 pair of weapons to complete. Although, it will be worth 18 points, 10 for the 'dread' sized model and 1 each for the additional weapons, as if they were 25mm based figures. 

#DreadTober Adeptus Titanicus - Warlord Titan - WHITE BACKGROUND PICS ⚪

Afternoon #Warhammer Community it's the tenth of #DreadTober2025 and just going to share my white background picture of my completed Legio Gryphonicus Adeptus Titanicus Warlord Titan. 

Not going to say a huge amount, I'll let the pics speak for themselves mostly.

As you can see I added a bit of blue [fer't Dad's] on the axes, to bring it back toward the official Iron Regent heraldry. I'm not entirely sure it's any better.

But the legs are my favourite element I think.

The void shield glow worked out really well too. Just some thinned Bahama Blue, then Nihilakh Oxide and then white.

Here we go, lets get the second wone done.

#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.