1/10/2008

Gathering Materials

More on building the Warlord Titan: Unfortunately, in the late 80's I never picked up "Battle Titans" from Games Workshop. If I remember right, it came with sprues to make at least 6 Warlord Titans! The reference would come in handy now. Research online has had very limited results, and old catalogs and codexes I have only give a glimpse at the original form of the Warlord.

I'm not very fond of the most recent titan models for Epic, and even the majority of the illustrations. Their lines are too clean. There's something less 40K about them and more BattleTech-esque in my opinion. But the illustration in the the Apocalypse rules seems to be a happy compromise bridging the old and the new so I've been using that as a rough guide. My circumstances prevent me from doing actual workbench/workshop level crafting of this Titan, so out of necessity, my Titan's final form will no doubt lean more towards the older models.

So looking around the bits boxes, the garbage, the hidden corners of smashed and broken things at work what do you use to build a Warlord Titan? Things like this:


Legs: The legs I lucked out on as far as a decent set of parts. I had a Star Wars game from '99 that replicated Darth Maul's probe droid on a stand. The legs of that stand have an industrial, landing gear look to them, so I married the four of them into two and made them the basis for my Titan legs. For the lower greeves, yup, Folgers Coffee cans. It'll make sense later if you can't see it. For the beginning of the hips, again Star Wars TPM came through for me and I used these old candy containers that were available at the time. I just had to pop off the sculpted images of Palpatine and Jar Jar.

WEAPONS: The Volcano cannon and the laser blaster made the most sense to me for the "arms" Again, hurray for Darth Maul. I happened to have a broken Maul light saber that I couldn't bear to throw away and lucky thing. After attaching it to an archaic dashboard cell phone holder and with minor detailing, it's now the basis for my volcano cannon! The cell holder has an awesome articulate arm on it that will make fixing the weapon to the body a breeze.

The Laser blaster was deliberately made to resemble all the other lascannons in the game using various sizes of pvc pipe and mounting in a used motor oil container. The one pictured here has been modified already with a much shorter barrel; in this form, I was on my way to making a Catachan Las-carbine.


The Hips: Wooden slats I found on a pile at work which glued, screwed and stacked fit well into the candy holders. The Blue crotch? That's an old mushroom container from the produce section. And they call me mad...


Not pictured, the head: The head gave me real problems and was my first stumblng block. I looked at cyborgtrucker's blog a hundred times, and looked at illustrations and pics and art, new and old models... I just don't have the time, and mostly the skill to to do some of the things I've seen out there. But digging through one of my bits boxes, I figured it out. When I started collecting Orks my buddy gave me an old Humvee model he wasn't going to use. The curves on this thing are very reminiscent of the illustration of the Warlord head's many variants. So I carved the hummer in half and folded it on itself, kit-bashing like crazy to hide the holes and gaps.

Can I bring this pile of garbage together and make something table worthy out of it?

1/03/2008

Building a Warlord Titan Intro

The first thing I did when the Warhammer 40K Apocalypse Gamer Edition back-pack showed up at the house was to naturally sling it over both shoulders and run around making lasgun noises, like I was actually in the Cadian 8th defending the "Gate". In my neighborhood, that's not hard to imagine. You'd think at my age I would forgo that step, but alas... nicotine can only hold back so much.

More to the point, on page 124 of the Apocalypse rules stands the Warlord Titan -- well, the illustration of one anyway -- towering over the Warhound Titan and necessitating a magnifying glass to the see the guardsman silhouette. With a datasheet and an array of weapons that would make the most battle hardened Imperial Commander blow his load for the sheer joy of having one; "fething" awesome!

There was an instantaneous ambition to build one.

A friend and I discussed it at length, but while he leaned more towards purchasing this and shopping for that, I instantly turned my attention to ridiculously full "bits" boxes in my basement and ofcourse garbage, both at home and at work (and maybe in the alley too). While our attention was misguidedly focused on theory and practicality and feasibility and all the asinine crap a 30something year old brain goes through to hinder creativity, another friend had gone ahead and built his first warlord titan. I say "friend" because I am unoffically credited in the opening of his blog and I'm ignoring a 17+ year gap in our active contact.

His blog moniker is "cyborgtrucker". Creative and innovative well beyond me, cyborgtrucker set the pace in this GW area/market for building a 40K Warlord to go with the 28mm scale of the miniatures. The chronicle of this from beginning, with a few pieces of Masonite, to selling the finished product on ebay can be found in the link below:

http://cyborgtrucker.blogspot.com/search/label/Titans

Now, I like Cyborg's Titan. It may be a bit lean, espcially for a Nurgle blessed mech, but to be fair it was his first, and in our area, it was the only Warlord Titan to be found. And, it was never defeated in battle -- considering that everyone and their brother probably shoots at the thing as soon as it hits the gaming table, that's pretty decent.

A little slower getting my project past the planning stages, I'm afraid my Titan will never be across the table from the "BileDriver". I anticipated finishing it before Christmas '07; now I just want to have it ready before the end of January '08.

Details of construction begin in part two.