Spotted - Eldar Phantom Titan

2 posts in one day? What's going on? Well, I just checked over at GW's website and What's New Today it's all about Forgeworld. More specifically it's about the Badab Wars - Imperial Armour books 9 and 10. There's all sorts of pics about Carcharadons, Minotaurs, Astral Claws and more. What's more interesting is what's in the background of this picture

That's an Eldar Phantom Titan baby! Now this is kind of old news, back in March BoLS led on this story, from pictures from Warseer. However that titan was in the rather unglamorous yellow resin which may be a prototype but as we can see above there is a yellow one and a grey, which kind of looks like the typical resin used in the final production models available from Forgeworld. You can at least see there are separate parts to the feet on the grey than on the yellow, so it may be that the Phantom's are production ready and nearly available...

Eldar advice

As I've said so far my son has a sweat on for Eldar. This is to be his project, his painting, his decisions. I'm not supposed to be helping him but ideally I'd like for him to be able to achieve something half decent despite his inexperience, hence my advice for base colours and washes for instant results.

He did suggest he wanted his Craftworld to be black, but I was under the impression that it's notoriously difficult to paint, line highlighting isn't going to be his strong point until he gets better 'fine motor skills' with a paint brush. So I dissuaded him on this course but am I wrong [to interfere, of course] but I mean about how easy it is to paint?

Looking at the GW Craftworld gallery there are two that he may consider, Iyanden and Nacretineï. If he goes Iyanden I may even get an Army Painter Daemonic Yellow Primer to help him along. I'm also going to pop into the Manchester GW next week, they have an awesome Eldar army with a Pastel/Metallic paint-scheme similar to the Nacretineï. I'm hoping to get some pics [which I'll post here]. I think they're just basecoated, washed and a few highlights

Anyway, I'm looking for advice from anyone about how to paint the Guardians, any cool links to simple techniques. I found this tutorial on Painting Clinic it's really cool, but too advanced for my son. I stumbled on some cool Tyranid websites when we started on the 'nid army but Eldar seem to be evading me, trapped in the Webways no doubt.

Cheers for any help, have a Happy New Year!

Epic Adeptus Titanicus part 4. - War Griffons Reaver

This Reaver titan was painted in my early style with either stippling or sponging to gettlt the mottled carapce colour. The reds used Humbrol Acrylics Red Gloss colour which is really opaque and glossy but I wet highlighted with orange and yellow to get the results you see below.

Below you can see I used some of the transfers on his close combat fist. I had loads of these and the ones specifically for Imperial Guard weere also nice on titans, where appropriate.

Another intersting load-out. I though long and hard about these, well you have to when you're ordering specific weapons instead of going with what came in the blister pack. Here, he's armed with a harpoon missile, power fist and Plasma Blast Gun.

I've still to take photographs of the rest of my mostly unfinished Warlords [around 5] an unfinished Reaver and the incompete Warhound, but I'll drop in some of my Ultramarines next - watch the skies, death from above!

Epic Adeptus Titanicus part 3. - War Griffons Warhound

I love Warhound Titans. I don't really like them in 40k, especially not the Lucius Pattern but I loved them in Epic. The idea of two loping titans scouting ahead and coming in from the flanks always appealed to me. Quick and dirty, here's one of my War Griffons, I'll photograph his sibling at some other point, he's less finished.

As you can see he's armed with a Plasma Blast gun [am I right?] and a combat saw, just right for darting in to slice up some other titan. I also managed a little Griffon logo and you can just make out a kill mark on the top of the carapace I ca.

Obviously the colour scheme fits the War Griffons but there are accent colours, like the green and blue. His brother is red and yellow accents and had an equally interesting lead out.

Here's a shot where you can see a little more of his urban camouflage Griffon scheme.

'nids part 8. The Tervigon Tutorial part 4.

Here we are at part 4 of the Tervigon Tutorial. As you can see a bit of colour goes a long way to understanding the nature of this beast. You can see that the PlastiKote Ice Cream undercoat is very pale indeed [under natural light]. Ultramarine Blue was used on all the 'hard' bits, although I usually do super hard bits black, like claws, hooves and talons [though I did blue feet on this for some reason].

All the fleshy flexible bits, like claw joints, embryo sac, mouth etc. was done in a 'liver' colour. The first Termagants I did were very pale indeed, it was more like a wash, you can see the difference on the Strangleweb Gant. Here, the mix of brown, black, red, blue, and bonewhite got a bit 'chocolatey' shall we say. A bit too thick but it's a nice contrast.

Here, you can see the miracle of life what it's like when a Tervigon sneezes a Termagant out of it's abdominal nasal cavity ;) As you can see the extra height of the slate just made it possible for the gant's feet to rest in the sac aperture. Any lower and it wouldn't have fit in.

Next up, washes...



Epic Adeptus Titanicus part 2. - War Griffons Warlords

My first War Griffon Warlord Titan. I have no recollection of why I chose this load out, I must have favoured it for some reason. Anyway I either stippled or used a sponge to get the mottled grey effect on the titan. I also got to play around with yellow [my favorite colour ] and add some battle damage and a small amount of weathering.

The next titan was painted in a similar fashion, only when I had completed the stippling I then used a fine brush and lined out some urban camouflage. Darker sections and white sections were then added to complete the effect. Although no amount of camouflage will hide a 100m tall G.O.D.machine I really liked the effect and aimed to employ it on future titans. Of course there was an upgrade of Cameleoline paint in Adeptus Titanicus [gone in later version of Epic] so it could work.

What you can't see in these pictures is the two rocket thrusters on the titans 'big end' you can just make out the nozzle of one in the picture below. This titan was going to be fitted with a titan jump pack, again an upgrade only available in the original Adeptus Titanicus. Scorched earth base effect was nice too...

Oh, have a nice Christmas tomorrow, hope Father Christmas brings all the plastic little men you dream of.

40k future container scatter terrain - UPDATE

You may recall while back I made some 40k future container scatter terrain out of Mentos Cube boxes. I promised I'd do an update on the painting so here we go.

As you can see a bit of judicious brown and orange, some silver here and there and these little beauties really come into their own. I'd agonised for ages over these, the washes really took a while to work but using a really big brush to do the dry brushing helped. When I say really big I mean the sort you use when decorating, cutting in on the walls etc.

But I didn't stop there. I wanted to put some markings on the containers so I made some little masks and you can just make out the NUMA markings I added below [I'm a big Clive Cussler fan and the colour was perfect]. Close up they look even more grimy!

Since then I've added another seven containers [what can I say I like gum] I've got some Bioazard waste ones, some OOCL [they'll still be doing containerisation in the 41st millenium] one of the mesh wrapped liquid containers and a reinforced Dark Angels container, which makes a nice objective marker, who knows what or whom is locked up inside, I'll never tell... I'll get some pics up eventually when I grime them up. I really enjoyed playing around with the different colours because I feel most container ports are all different but part of me thinks I should have stuck to the turquoise and pale blue of the first three, hmm