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Sorry guys, it's been a busy month! Got married among other things!

Thanks Stormwall! Yeah, I royally messed up that central tube on my first try, glad I don't have to put a second one together!

Thanks as always Gitsplitta!

Much thanks evildrcheese, it was quite the experience! I spent two years psyching myself up to build it, hehe!

During this time I haven't been completely idle. I finished a hefty model kit I bought a couple of months back from Sci-Fi-Guy Modelworks LLC, who did their own take on the Codex Titanicus Epic scale Reaver Titan. Here is a pic of the feet assemblies and then a pic of the completed legs.





I have since finished building this guy, but have yet taken a picture. I'll post one up eventually!

Looks good, a lot better than the old armorcast one.

Thanks Kid_Kyoto! Yeah, there's so much more surface detail and it's closer in size to FW's Reaver, although I still have a warm spot in my heart for Armorcast's Reaver!

I wonder if it would be easier to convert this one to a lucius reaver than the others...

Congrats on the marriage dude!

The titan is looking awesome. That sure is a lot of surface detail, did you add the rivets on the feet or just fill some bubbles in?

Looking forward to seeing the rest!

@Zuul: Hmmm...if you mean something along the lines of The_Blackadder's conversion from a FW Reaver (http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/542441.page) then I'm not sure easier is the best word, hehe! I'd say using the one from Sci-Fi-Guy Modelworks would certainly be the cheaper starting point.

Thanks Commander Cain, it was a pretty great day! Yeah, the detail is pretty impressive. Nope, I didn't add anything, everything is built into the actual model! It does kind of look like I green stuffed some of it only because with so much detail on a large garage kit you are definitely going to get a lot of air bubbles and whatnot. While tedious to fix and clean, I wouldn't say it was difficult in any real way.

Well, here it is fully built, not the best photo due to the lighting in my room, but you should be able to make out the marine at the titan's foot.



This shot should show more detail on the torso and weapons!

Beautiful... and very scary.

Wow. That's one beautiful titan.

Thanks again guys!

Whew, my life just got crazy busy, so I'll be out of action for awhile. Till then here is one last pic of my titan next to to an Armorcast Warhound for scale!



And finally, to add another specimen to my extensive 40k bunker collection, hehe, is an old Epicast bunker, which was released under their GW licence. I'm not sure if one was ever released with an imperial eagle instead of the winged skull, I recall reading somewhere that they did, but I've never seen any physical proof.The top is magnetized to I can open it up! Front and back have some fun details for such an old model.





Till next time!

oooOOO NICE BUNKER! That looks cool! Certainly plenty of scope for adding details!

I have that bunker! Also have the two story one to go along with it and an armored open platform.

Thanks MagosBiff90, who knows what I'll do with it when I get around to painting!

Hehe, cool Gitsplitta, it's fun having these old models on the table top! Yeah, that two story bunker, is it made from hard foam? I have one of these:
http://www.coolminiornot.com/183039
The person who posted the above pic and the seller I bought one from said it was made by Epicast, but I've never seen one in its original box and the material is hard foam and not resin.The aesthetic is pretty much spot on so I'd believe it. Yeah, the armored readout is a nice piece a well, don't see them for sale very often!

Hey! I hope everyone had a nice winter break/ happy holidays and a restful New Years! I've been crazy busy/ occupied with publishing my thesis and the usual holiday cheer. I have been able to do some hobby stuff, but just basic kit building, like a FW knight for my brother and a falchion for myself, and other odds and ends. I have been enjoying the Betrayal at Calth minis as well, but nothing much on the scratch-build side of things. However, I do have some pics of an especially rare and obscure piece of 40k history that I have been fortunate enough to add to my collection thanks to my brother who snagged this piece off of ebay and gave it to me for Christmas!
As some of you may know, Armorcast had in development several 40k resin kits that never saw the light of day due to GW pulling or not renewing their licence to make and sell 40k resin vehicles and titans. From what I've been told, and from what I've seen on the collector's wiki, many prototypes of said kits are still in existence to differing degrees of rarity. One such kit, the kit I got a hold of, is the Stormblade! Of course, it's the original Stormblade as seen in the early iterations of Epic, so the kit utilizes Armorcast's Shadowsword chassis and adds a honking plasma blastgun barrel, a rack of missiles, and a turret weapon of some sort on the right hand side sponson. I've seen this kit on ebay quite a few times, but always for exuberant amounts of money. The one my brother bought was actually a reasonable price, but only because it was missing the mount for the missile rack that sits on top of the left hand side sponson. As you can see in my pics I fabricated the new mount out of plasticard and a thick plastic washer, I also fixed some of the broken missile fins with plasticard. Not to mention the whole kit was assembled and caked in paint, so I had to do a complete scrub down and refurbishment.

That is an AMAZING piece. So wonderful to see you refurbish it and bring it back to life Heliodore! As a guy who was around when these kits were being produced (or not)... my hat's off to you.

Nice to see you sir.

That is a heck of a kit. I remember having it in Epic form.

Now that is a BIG gun.

Cheers guys, glad you both like it, much appreciative of your continual support!

Heliodore you are a legend.

Please paint that beauty in retro theme.

Very cool. Even if that plasma weapon has a particularly unfortunate shape...

EDC

Heliodore have you found or done up this gem yet?

@evildrcheese: Hehe, that it does...

@Stormwall: Like all my stuff, I'll probably paint it Iron Hands, but I get the feeling no matter what I paint it it's going to look pretty retro no matter what!

Cool, I've seen that before, and I actually have a small Arbites force. My Arbites army was actually my first foray into building a 40k army, although I didn't get very far, dropped it and then got everything back from my brother years later. That's a cool proto-Repressor, I may very well do one if I ever feel like expanding my Arbite army! Thanks!

*pokepoke*

While necro is very bad, your blog is too good to let slide. However, I have some questions for you, I think that allows me to post right?

Where do you find all these gems? Ebay or just locally? Also, how hard was the cardstock for to assemble? I'd imagine the cardstock to be fragile now, especially in gameplay. Is that true or am I just plain wrong?

Also, unrelated to you but, to my plog actually, is your username based of the gemstone or something else?

Lastly, (I apologize for the haste, it is late,) have you tackled anything new recently?

Furthermore, I forgot to congratulate you. Congratulations.

Stormwall!!!!

Hehe, no prob, always happy to see my thread poked!

That's a good question. First, I've been around the block so to speak. I got into 40k at the tail end of 2nd edition, and even then, thanks to my collector tendencies, I wanted to know more about everything that came before. I didn't really take things "seriously" until maybe a decade later when my brother pushed me back into 40k after a long break (thanks college and grad school!). Finally, after a trip to India, as I mention at the very beginning of this thread, I got down to just researching the crap out of everything Space Marine, from Rogue Trader, obscure art work, odd White Dwarf articles, Citadel Journal, Epic and other old GW games. It pretty much started as an ongoing project to scratch-build anything GW never made a 40k kit for! Even now I'm still finding new things!
Ah, it seems I misread your question, hehe! Anyways, yeah, I find a lot of rare gems on eBay primarily. I'd like to think I've gotten pretty good at eBay searching at this point! Most of the time it is just luck, but you help yourself by being persistent.

On the matter of cardstock, yeah, it can be fragile, and you don't want to be caught in the rain holding your scratch-build! In terms of game-play, I generally use cardstock for terrain. After it has been primed and painted it's probably going to last pretty well, seeing as terrain doesn't usually get picked up and moved around constantly. Of course, like anything on the tabletop, it can succumb to wear and tear more quickly than resin or plastic terrain the rougher you are with it. So while a plastic bastion can probably survive getting stepped or leaned on, a cardstock building may not be so lucky. Simply, if it's being used in a place where everyone is mindful and respectful there should be nothing to worry about. Now, if your building cardstock tanks and then using said tanks in games, you will probably need to do some repair work from time to time. You can get some pretty thick cardstock, which will make your model sturdier, but at that point I'd just use plasticard! This is just based on my experiences.

Yup, it sure is, I believe it's a type of golden beryl. Heliodor(e), plus the "e" in case someone else is using it, was originally my eBay name. When I first created my account I was using a friend's laptop in his dorm room. I was sitting there trying to figure out a user name, so I picked up my friend's book of gem stones and flipped through it until I found something I liked!

Yes, I should be making a small SM related update soon. You may find it hard to believe, but I've been putting together LotR miniatures for the past month.

Thanks, I appreciate it!

Super-mini post! As you know, I search far and wide for strange and obscure SM vehicles, but even I have my limits. Most notably, some of the strange concoctions found within the pages of the old White Dwarf insert Troll magazine. There are some gems found within its pages, but not for SMs. I have a good chunk of them in my collection, so there could easily be something I have yet to discover! Beyond that, I've even searched through several old 40k fanzines, such as Inquisitor magazine, The Dark Library, and Louis Porter's Fallout. From issue 2 of Louis Porter's Fallout (1992) I present the strangely named Widow and Widow-maker SM tanks. Both are essentially MkI Rhino variants. Both with plasma cannon side sponsons, and the Widow-maker sporting a cyclone missile launcher in addition to the plasma cannons.





As you can see I made them using refurbished parts. Wanting to keep somewhat true to the time period (1992), I used LRuss side sponsons and Rogue Trader Ork plasma cannons. I could have used the old Predator side sponsons, but getting two pairs was not worth the expense. Same for the plasma cannons, where I could have tried hunting down 4 metal Rogue Trader SM plasma cannons, but those things are crazy rare. As there wasn't any solid design for a vehicle mounted cyclone missile launcher in that time, I opted to use the missile launcher from a contemporary model range, an old Kryomek Nexus tank. It looks oddly at home on the old Rhino.

I've honestly enjoyed hunting down old fanzines from the 90s, but there are still several issues that are hard to track down. I only have issues 2 and 5 of Louis Porter's Fallout, and I know that the magazine ran for 6 issues. If anyone out there has any they are willing to sell or photocopy for me I'd be might obliged!

Excellent work on those tanks. The crazy old days when you could stick nearly anything on a hull and call it good did have their charm. I think the old ork plasmas work well and help to impart the feel of the era.

Ah the good old days, I still model most of the time on those principles. Those two are looking good.

Wow, I've been quiet for some time! First post of the new year, hehe! I've certainly not quit 40k, I've just lost my usual time and space for doing project-related activities. While this post is not intended to be an epic return to form, it is a bump of sorts.

I've found some time to return to a mini-project I started awhile ago after acquiring another rogue trader predator off of eBay. I figured I'd like to customize at least one rogue trader predator to better emulate one of the early, if not earliest, Space Marine/ Epic Predators. These two:





As you can see, there are some subtle differences between these two preds and the Rogue Trader pred, mainly the location of the exhaust pipes, and the boxy style turret from the first pic. I'm only customizing one tank, but I am building both turrets for it. The tank body is done and actually took awhile to do, seeing as some of the little details were tedious to make (or I'm just getting lazy). The turrets still have a ways to go! I've kept the side sponsons simple. I re-positioned the original ones to better emulate the odd looking side sponsons from off the Epic preds. It's hard to tell what's going on with those side sponsons, maybe I'll scratch-build something that looks more exact, but honestly, I didn't want to waist the original ones.





I know, not too exciting. I did, however, get a FW Mastodon for Christmas, which I am in the process of building, should be a fun kit to show off in a later post!

Hey Heliodore, awesome thread! There's so much nostalgic stuff regarding the Reaver, is it a worthy investment? I recently picked up an armorcast Warhound and Reaver and want to add to my legion

Hello Kurnost,
Just saw your post in my thread, thanks for the bump! Sorry for the late reply, Dakka doesn't tell me when my thread gets bumped, so I only know on the off chance I take a look at it. I've been busy, so it has been awhile since I last updated, but I wouldn't call it dead yet!
So, I assume you are asking if I think the Sci-Fi-Guy Modelworks Reaper (Reaver) titan is worth it? You have an Armorcast Warhound and Reaver already? Overall, yes I do! It's a great kit with a lot of detail. It's incredibly sturdy, but also really heavy, which may be a negative to some. It will be more work to put together and clean than either of the Armorcast titans. Sci-Fi-Guy has actually updated the mold since I bought mine from him, so if you get a new one it will be a tad easier to build than the one in my thread. For instance, the feet and toes are now cast as a single piece. Another thing to not is that the Reaper is a bit larger than the Armorcast Reaver, but not horribly so. I think it goes well alongside the Armorcast titans, aesthetically speaking! Hope that helps.

Now that this thread has been awakened I'm afraid you need to show us some shiny pictures Oh Great Master Heliodore. Just a little something, I'll be happy with whatever you can whip up I'm sure!

Thanks very much I'm raising the bases on my armorcast titans a little anyway so that's cool. Planning at least a maniple for my admech.
And I agree with Commander Cain: more stuff please!