The Strange World of Axel Fendersson

You may remember that back in July I announced that I was starting work on an Adeptus Mechanicus Titan Legion army for Epic. I decided to make this my entry for the ‘Tale of Epic Gamers 2009‘ painting challenge on Tactical Command, painting a certain amount each month (originally 500-1000 points, but after the first month I decided to up my target to 1000-1500 points) from August to December (I also did an extra month in January, but that wasn’t part of the challenge).

Six months on, and the army is finished. I now have an AMTL army worth a total of 9,000 points. And here it is:

The largest Titan in the army is the Imperator. I’ve shown a picture of this one here before, but I might as well include it again for the sake of completeness:

Next largest are the Warlords, of which I have two. The first is armed with the standard load-out of two Turbolaser Destructors, a Volcano Cannon and a Gatling Blaster:

The other carries a slightly more expensive load-out of a Support Missile, Turbolaser Destructor, Gatling Blaster and Laser Blaster:

Both of these are the old plastic ‘beetleback’ Warlord model. I decided to stick with old-school ‘Mars pattern’ titans for this army rather than mixing older and newer models to give the army a more unified look. I had considered trying to make an army entirely of ‘Lucius pattern’ models, but with Forge World discontinuing their Lucius pattern Reavers and Warhounds, and Mars pattern models being easier to track down second-hand, I decided to go with the older figures instead.

The Beetleback warlord model had four sockets on the top of its carapace. Two are for mounting weapons on, while the other two are for banner poles. However, I didn’t have enough banner poles (and wasn’t that keen on them anyway), so instead I covered the holes with turrets from Battlefleet Gothic cruisers:

Next down in size are the Reaver Titans. In theory, these are supposed to be less numerous than the Warlords, but I have three times as many. There are a few reasons for this. One is that I love the model: it’s one of my all-time favourite Titan models. Another is that Mars pattern Reavers are easy to come by, since you can still get them new from Games Workshop. And thirdly, I found it much easier to come up with different weapons configurations for Reaver Titans that seemed to be worth the points than I did for the more-expensive Warlords. As before, the first of these titans is in the standard configuration of Missile Launcher and two Turbolaser Destructors:

The second uses the same weapons fit as Forge World’s Epic Reaver model; Missile Launcher, Gatling Blaster and Volcano Cannon:

A third is configured for a long-ranged heavy support role, carrying two Quake Cannons and equipped with a Carapace Landing Pad from which it can launch light skimmers to act as spotters for indirect fire:

The next titan is again carrying the same weapons fit as one of Forge World’s models, but this time it’s the same as their W40k model with a Missile Launcher, Gatling Blaster and Laser Blaster:

The last two are configured more for a close-range assault role. One has a Laser Burner, Plasma Cannon and Melta Cannon:

And the last has a Missile Launcher, Laser Blaster and Power Fist:

The smallest titans are the Warhounds. I have two packs of these, all equipped with the standard configuration of Plasma Blastgun and Vulcan Mega-bolter:

(For individual photos of the warhounds, see Warhound1, Warhound2, Warhound3, Warhound4.)

Three of the Warhound models I bought together and aside from being assembled into strange poses (easily rectified) were in good condition. The fourth, though, was in a bit of a state, with a dreadful, plastered-on paint job and visible blobs of glue around the joints (not to mention a fairly awful pose). So it was quite satisfying to strip, clean up and restore this model to a state where I was happy with it.

Finally, in addition to the titans themselves, I have two formations of Knights to support them. Note that one formation has spikes on the tops of the knights, while the other does not. That’s because on half of the models I had, at least one of the spikes had snapped off at some point, so I decided to remove all of the spikes from those for consistency.

As I mentioned before, this army comes to a total of 9,000 points, making it the largest Epic army I have. More exactly (using the Legio Gryphonicus army list, v.3.16):

At this point the army is essentially done. In principle, I’d quite like to add another two packs of Warhounds; one pair armed with with Plasma Blastguns and Turbolaser Destructors, and the other with Inferno guns and Vulcan Mega-bolters. This would bring the army up to a nice round 10,000 points. However, I’m in no hurry to do this, and I’m quite happy to call the army finished for the moment.

My next project for Epic will be some Imperial Navy forces. A fairly glaring omission from this army is any aircraft, and that’s because I’m currently planning to put together a wing of Imperial Navy aircraft that I can then use with any Imperial army I wish, in much the same way as I intend to share the standard configuration titans from this army with any Imperial Guard or Space Marine armies I assemble in the future.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts (and in other places, such as Farcebook), I have, of late, been painting several individual models simply as one-offs (or, at least, as part of only a loosely-connected group of models) rather than as part of any kind of army or gang for a particular game. So far, they’ve all been from Steve Buddle’s Spyglass miniatures (although generally they’ve been resin re-issues of old Spyglass sculpts from Spyglass’s successor Eolith rather than Spyglass originals), but I’ve got an order from Hasslefree Miniatures on the way as well. And I’ve really been enjoying it. Normally, when painting models for an army, you have to make compromises. Sure, that extra layer of highlights might seem like a good idea on this model, but if you do it for this one, you’ll have to do it for fifty other models, and then you’ll never finish the buggers. But with individuals, you can just keep going until you’re satisfied with the model, since the next figure you do will be different anyway.

Aside from these one-off figures, I’ve mostly been painting 6mm figures for Epic. And I’ve been having far more success painting up my Epic armies than I’ve ever had at painting any kind of army or other large force for gaming before.

And these two factors got me thinking about miniature scales. The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether 28mm isn’t the wrong scale for miniatures in general.

For armies, it’s arguably too big. Painting a 28mm figure well takes a few hours. Scale that up to fifty miniatures, and there’s a lot of effort involved. A lot of those fifty models are going to be fairly similar rank-and-file infantry, and while the first two or three of them may be exciting to paint, by the last few, they’re really getting tedious. To have any hope of getting a decent number of models painted, you have to compromise with a simplified paint-scheme. And fifty soldiers is barely an army anyway. That’s, what, two platoons? By contrast, in 6 or even 10mm, it’s easy to paint a batch of forty soldiers in a few hours. In a couple of months you can build up a real army. For wargames, 28mm is just too big to put together a reasonable sized force.

“Ah, but 6mm models are tiny,” I hear you cry. “There’s no satisfaction in painting a tiny little infantryman: I want my models to be works of art!” But once again, 28mm isn’t ideal.

Sure, there are lots of nice models at this scale. But if you’re just looking for models to paint to look nice, why not go for something bigger still? At 40mm, or the more popular 54mm, there’s so much more room for detail, so much less need to over-enlarge features to make them show up. More scope to add freehand details. More room for sculptors to get features right. Sure, you can get some great sculpts at 28mm, and do some lovely paint-jobs. But in every way that 28mm models are better than 6mm, so 54mm models are better still.

28mm is ultimately something of a compromise. But I’m beginning to wonder whether they don’t represent the worst of both worlds. Are they a happy medium between the demands of painter and gamer? Or are they just too big for gaming, but too small for display?

In between Epic Titans, I have, for some variety, been occasionally painting up some more Spyglass/Eolith miniatures. They’re really nice models to paint, and that and the fact that they’re not part of an army so I can spend some extra time on each one individually has meant that they’re probably the best paint-jobs I’ve done. I’d painted up a couple, though, when I realised that with Shae, Kaylee and Barnaby, I’d painted up three quarters of a D&D group: a ranger, a sorceress and a cleric. All I needed was a ‘defender’ type character: a fighter, paladin or similar.

There were multiple candidates for this position. One possibility was the Spyglass Barbarian Warlord model, but he seemed too much like a ‘bad guy’ to fit. I also considered using ‘Tiriel’ from Hasslefree Miniatures, but decided I’d rather stick with Spyglass for this group. So I went with the Si’Rene model. She’s perhaps a little under-armoured for a fighter, but close enough.

Unfortunately, although I had used the same basing style for Kaylee and Barnaby (rough paving stones), I’d done Shae differently, so she didn’t quite fit. Fortunately, I had a spare version of the model that came as a pack with some others, so I came up with an alternative colour scheme and painted up another one.

So here they are as a group:

Here’s Kaylee, the sorceress. I decided to play up the heavy metal angle implied by the use of the corna gesture by using a lot of black in her clothing, although I didn’t want to over-do that so that she wouldn’t fit in a fantasy setting.

Next up is Barnaby, the monk. He’s more in the European monastic tradition than the oriental, so in D&D terms he’d be a cleric. Of all these models, this is the one I’m most pleased with, and I think he’s probably the best paint-job I’ve done.

Here’s Si’Rene, the fighter. As I mentioned before, she probably ought to be wearing a little more armour than this, but she’s close enough.

And here’s the new version of Shae. I think she’s actually come out better than the other one. I think this is possibly because her face is a slightly different shape (probably as a result of being a resin cast rather than metal), and looks slightly better. I went for a more ‘urban’ colour scheme this time around, with greys and browns to blend in with wood and stone, rather than the predominantly green I used before. I think the flashes of red also give a vaguely autumnal feel.

Of course, since I don’t much like D&D as a game, and I’m not keen on using miniatures in RPGs (although in D&D, especially 4th edition, you need to have some sort of map system to handle combat), these models will probably never be used for gaming. But until half of them were done I was only ever intending to paint them for the fun of it anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. And it’s nice to have a theme to tie them together.

Having mostly been painting Imperial Titans over the last few months, I decided recently that it would make an interesting change to paint up an Eldar Titan. So along with the last Reaver Titan, I ordered a Phantom as well. It is now painted.

Having done that, I decided that while I was revisiting my Eldar army I might as well do some infantry as well, so I painted up this Guardian warhost:

Having a third Guardian warhost means that I can now use all eight of my painted Wraithguard units rather than just the six. This conveniently brings the total number of points in this update to 1,000 exactly.

When added to my existing Eldar army, this brings the total points cost up to 7,125 points under the current (2.5) version of the Alaitoc list, making the Eldar my largest painted army. However, I need paint only one more Imperial Titan before that overtakes it.

Incidentally, one thing that struck me was how tall the Phantom model is. It towers over its Imperial counterparts (aside from the Imperator, of course). Here’s a picture for comparison:

As you can see, even without the extra height added by the wings, it’s significantly taller than the Warlord, albeit thinner and less bulky.