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timd wrote:

Thanks guys. These were posted so people could get an idea what the figs look like painted in different colors and to help me decide what color to paint the troopers (and Black Widows). The Krylon fig definitely has the best light to dark range, although I was going for a slightly darker gray (essentially panzer gray) as shown in the box illustrations. Will try another coat of wash and see what that does. Given what I have read in this thread about the storms, seems like panzer gray would be a good color for the troops.

Here is the Krylon guy with a second coat of Badab Black. Seems to have lost a lot of the highlighting, although the camera flash brings some of it back.



Original pic for comparison:

 Conrad Turner wrote:
Mathieu, have you finished your wave 1 stuff already?

(Pics or it never happened )

I've only just got started on mine and will be glad if I don't see wave 2 until July as that will give me time to finish my wave 1 stuff and a couple of other projects I have ongoing at the moment.

I just got to go buy magnets for the head today. I had glued the hood... but it had to come off as it wouldn't allow the head to slide in and out at all.

I took a page from someone's book and have been fitting a tealight LED into the head. It's all good, except for the magnets and the darn battery keeps losing a contact.

But aside from that, "Jellybeans" is done and based.

Remember, although I had ordered a bunch of stuff, only a small part of this delivery was for myself. Funny story. I slammed two Adas in front of the two guys who ordered the Mortis instead of the Crusader. I look at them and say: "that'll be 17$ of custom fees, guys." Turns out I can be really deadpan, because one of them was going for his wallet.

I have 2 of my three support weapons assembled, half my stormtroopers done (only had 20), Ada and Jellybeans.

Of course, pics in due time. I've been at the store this week to provide my fiancee with a bit of a breather. Tomorrow, I'll see if I can't take a group shot.

Now that's a really nice idea. I haven't even looked at the head on mine - been concentrating so far on that twin linked Vulkan cannon shineyness - so will definately have to look into that during next week. Also going to look at magnetising my coolers. Shouldn't be that hard and I have magnets the right size to do that on hand. Might even look at magnetising the arms so that they will all be removable no matter what pose I choose, I hear some people have been having difficulties removing arms once they set the pose if the arms are not far enough out/at the right angle.

Is there any chance you can get me a link to something explaining that tealight idea today? I'll be going home tomorrow for a week off and won't have much internet access until I get back and I have a couple of ideas on placing the battery compartment at the back, under the cooler plate and therefore removing the worry of having the head and hood removable.

Gary.

 Conrad Turner wrote:
Now that's a really nice idea. I haven't even looked at the head on mine - been concentrating so far on that twin linked Vulkan cannon shineyness - so will definately have to look into that during next week. Also going to look at magnetising my coolers. Shouldn't be that hard and I have magnets the right size to do that on hand. Might even look at magnetising the arms so that they will all be removable no matter what pose I choose, I hear some people have been having difficulties removing arms once they set the pose if the arms are not far enough out/at the right angle.

Is there any chance you can get me a link to something explaining that tealight idea today? I'll be going home tomorrow for a week off and won't have much internet access until I get back and I have a couple of ideas on placing the battery compartment at the back, under the cooler plate and therefore removing the worry of having the head and hood removable.

Gary.

If you glue the shoulders into place you will have a problem removing the arms. All you need to do is lift the arm up horizontal and twist is you have not glued them.

Thanks for that Mark.

I was not planning on gluing the shoulders, but seem to remember some remarks from other people about having trouble with the arms and didn't want to take the chance when a simple fix and adding magnets to the joins would not add much work to where I am at the moment. still, I really like the LED in the head idea and will try something like that myself, but will look at the feasibility of having a removable back plate and housing the battery in there.

Thinking along these lines, does anyone think there is enough space in the Vulkans to install a flasher? I think there might just be, and mine are not glued into a single piece yet. I can see a trip to "Maplins" in my future.

Damn. This means I also need to start thinking about a Modelling Blog too, doesn't it. And a name for my Leviathan.

Definitely should be room inside the Vulcan, and the ammo hopper would be a good place to hide an operation switch and a battery change hatch. You might lose the ability to rotate the barrels, though, but even that could probably be circumvented, the parts are big enough for there to be room to run the cabling elsewhere.

I agree about the ammo hopper being big enough. Plus you have modelled hinges on the top part, so those can be put to use. With small enough holes for cabling, you could keep it rotating, although you might bypass all of it and install your flasher in the tip of the barrel proper. The structure at the bottom of the gun is hollow, after all. a simple drill job and voilà.

The trick with the tealights is making sure the solder on the unit is good enough, and isolating all exposed wires completely, because it can get quite cramped.

I removed the top canopy and made a big hole on the front torso plate to allow the battery and switch to be inserted in the cavity of the torso. It can hold more than enough circuitry and batteries for all your fun ideas. You could access your lights through the head, instead of from the back, if you want to keep it simple. I put down a thin metal plate inside the "chest bulge" and two magnets under the head. Even though they are sloped, you get enough pull that it doesn't move. Just make sure you ALSO magnetize the hood. The head is never going in or coming out otherwise. I'll post detailed pictures later today, methinks.

If you have enough wiring, you could also make a hole for the switch to be accessible from outside on the back, under the cooling stacks' assembly.

Speaking of the stacks, is it possible to set them up to be swapped out w the capacitor coolers on the fly? I havent got to that point in my build yet but i dont want to lwave any potential option unavailabld pending the rules.

Also, I have no problems switching my arms around. As long as you leave both axis free of glue, you're fine to move them around and they are tight enough to hold a pose.

Just make sure you hold the levi by the torso and not the shoulder plates. :(


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'll be honest, I just built mine with the capacitor coolers, I didn't like the overly gothic feel of the stacks. I think you can manage it, but it means you'll have many magnetized pieces. The plugs especially.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Speaking of the stacks, is it possible to set them up to be swapped out w the capacitor coolers on the fly? I havent got to that point in my build yet but i dont want to lwave any potential option unavailabld pending the rules.

When I get the chance to work on mine I'll let you know. I have magnets galore, so I'll be trying to make them swappable. I think the back plate may need to be modified, or made swappable also.

 Agamemnon2 wrote:
Definitely should be room inside the Vulcan, and the ammo hopper would be a good place to hide an operation switch and a battery change hatch. You might lose the ability to rotate the barrels, though, but even that could probably be circumvented, the parts are big enough for there to be room to run the cabling elsewhere.

Run the wires through the lower stabilizer arm of the gun, and put the led in the barrel's end. Add a motor in the ammo hopper that turns the barrels in their central axis. Put magnets in the barrel ends that make the led's connection only when the barrel is spun the the proper position to fire.

The above is work I will never do, but I hope someone else does.

Well here you go, my photos are all up. Enjoy. Be gentle, I received my package of English books so I was in a bit of a hurry to finish this off and not have it gathering dust on my workbench for 4 months.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/503887.page#5368786

 NoseGoblin wrote:

 Conrad Turner wrote:
Now that's a really nice idea. I haven't even looked at the head on mine - been concentrating so far on that twin linked Vulkan cannon shineyness - so will definately have to look into that during next week. Also going to look at magnetising my coolers. Shouldn't be that hard and I have magnets the right size to do that on hand. Might even look at magnetising the arms so that they will all be removable no matter what pose I choose, I hear some people have been having difficulties removing arms once they set the pose if the arms are not far enough out/at the right angle.

Is there any chance you can get me a link to something explaining that tealight idea today? I'll be going home tomorrow for a week off and won't have much internet access until I get back and I have a couple of ideas on placing the battery compartment at the back, under the cooler plate and therefore removing the worry of having the head and hood removable.

Gary.

If you glue the shoulders into place you will have a problem removing the arms. All you need to do is lift the arm up horizontal and twist is you have not glued them.

My gut feeling is that, eventually, the shoulder joint will wear to the point it'll be loose, and I'm worried that the arms will not stay held out from the body, but will just drop to straight vertical with the weight of the guns on them. To that end, I'm fiddling with mine to see how feasible and hidden I can make pins that will limit the downward movement of the shoulder join to where I want them to rest, yet allow me to raise them to swap weapons. Pics if I work out the exact mechanism.

After examining the joint for a while, what I'm going to do is build the shoulder with full motion, and if it ever gets too loose to hold pose, I'll make some wedges that I can put in when I need them, to hold them in place. The joint really is pretty tight, though, right as built, so it will likely be a long time before any such measure is needed.

First Leviathan complete! I think I love this kit! Took me a minute here and there to figure out what went where how, and getting the hydraulics to fit right, especially on the waist drove me up the wall briefly but otherwise this kit's superb. I'm looking forward to starting on the second


*completely built that is... as busy as this next month is for me between a surgery next thursday and a research paper due early april, I'll be lucky to be able to get them spray painted before late May.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
Well here you go, my photos are all up. Enjoy. Be gentle, I received my package of English books so I was in a bit of a hurry to finish this off and not have it gathering dust on my workbench for 4 months.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/503887.page#5368786

Thanks a lot of that, Mathieu. Having looked at a lot of ideas, I don't think the use of a magnet in each barrel and using that to complete the circuit to get an LED to flash is going to work on mine as I have already glued the barrel sections together and started to paint them. However, I do believe that you can get LEDs with a flashing system already included in the LED, so that is the way I will go. I planned to run the wires through the top and bottom frames to get to the ammo box for the switch and battery. I will also use some tracing paper between the eye holes and the LED to diffuse the light a little and probably get an 'ultra-bright' LED to give a good light there - was thinking of getting a green one to simulate the glow from the instruments.

Love your paint job, it's reasonably similar to what I had planned. If I go with a piece of cheesecake art, though, I would be sorely tempted to take a look at http://starshipmodeler.biz/shop/index.cfm/product/1224_186/hls-cheesecake-series-1---small.cfm and see if any of those would fit. Don't know if that would fit with my plans though. I'm looking to work it into something with a bit of history to it, and was thinking of making mine the personal Leviathan of "The Black Baron", Michael Whitmann, a German tank ace from WW2, so will include his rank insignia and some other symbols. Unfortunately I don't believe that the German army went in for Cheesecake as much as the US Air Force did.

Gary

I've had Naked Fanny in the store, so I was just too tempted to use her for a long time.

Now I just have to wait 5 months to use it in a game.

 Mathieu Raymond wrote:
I've had Naked Fanny in the store, so I was just too tempted to use her for a long time.

Sounds like fun...

Maybe I'm overlooking something obvious here, but how do I get my hands on some of the storm troopers? I don't see anywhere I can order them. Do i have to pledge through the kick starter or something?

 Carnage43 wrote:
Maybe I'm overlooking something obvious here, but how do I get my hands on some of the storm troopers? I don't see anywhere I can order them. Do i have to pledge through the kick starter or something?

I don't know about their shipping to Canada, but the Warstore definitely has them in stock now.

Edit: there is a page on the Dreamforge blog with places that had pre-orders, they presumably would have them in regular stock now (follow the link for individual links);

Some retailers that have offered pre-orders at significant discounts from MSRP.

USA
Cool Mini or Not
Bell of Lost Souls Market
Spiky Bits
The Warstore
Front Line Gaming
Paizo
The Combat Company
Michigan Toy Company

Germany
Fantasylanden
Radaddel
Tabletop online shop

Russia
Sky shop Лавочка Ская

UK
Caliver Books
North Star

Taiwan
Mini Shoppa

Spain
Goblintrader
Uimera
E-Minis

I know Gamer's Vault did order and had some in stock.

Ask Meeplemart, Carnage43. They can get most Wargames Factory stuff, their pricing is great and their service is very, very good.

 Carnage43 wrote:
Maybe I'm overlooking something obvious here, but how do I get my hands on some of the storm troopers? I don't see anywhere I can order them. Do i have to pledge through the kick starter or something?

Discount Games Store will be stocking them soon, Canadians like them almost as much as Aussies from what I've seen.

Does anyone know when the 28mm Leviathan Mortis for Kickstarter backers be shipped? I've searched the Dreamforge website and google and no one is discussing it.

That's because no one knows. It hasn't been updated lately.

Last we heard Mark was eyeballs deep in design work on Wave 3, and was waiting to hear back from WGF and their contractors about the Wave 2 stuff.
Hopefully something will be posted soon.

Man, I really wish I'd noticed component(s) K3 BEFORE I glued down the top armor carapace a couple hours ago.

Got most of the gaps filled up by trimming K3 and slipping them in, but I'm going to have to liquid greenstuff the remaining holes.

Still, at least I know before I build the second Crusader (and the two Mortises that are coming later...and any others I buy after the fact).

Also, I find myself wondering what changes are going to be made to the mini levis. There just about HAS to be some level of simplification of the design, what with all the tiny fiddly bits on the fullsize ones.

I find myself wishing that I had ordered a 15mm Leviathan Mortis at the KS, rather than waiting until retail.

Oh well. Guess it'll be a good summer project.

shade1313 wrote:
Man, I really wish I'd noticed component(s) K3 BEFORE I glued down the top armor carapace a couple hours ago.

I almost did the same myself. The holes aren't that noticeable even if you forget to put them in, really.

On a completely unrelated note, one of my local FLGS has a leviathan in stock for only a $120.

That can't be right can it? That seems insanely cheap for how big that box is.

You'd rather have to pay 400$?

After all, some of us did get them for 75$... 120$ isn't expensive considering the market, but it still is a bit stiff for a neophyte.

That's the going retail cost. Cheaper costs for large or more extensive units is supposed to be one of the benefits of using plastic injection molds.

Most people are not used to this, having dealt with GW for most of their miniature buying experiences

Lol, you MUST have been indoctrinated by GW's pricepoint!!! JK, MrMoustaffa! As a new company I think Mr. Mandragon (Sp?) has to offer competitive prices to get new customers drawn in. Personally, I think if GW was offering this model it would probably come in at around $150-180... Oh, and it would probably not be engineered nearly as well.
It is a beautiful model, and as a lover of assembly of models, I have to say is going to be a joy to put together! I say buy it up!