Heresy & Heroes

Ok, so I’ve stalled a little in my Titan project. That is not what I was hoping to be able to tell you in my first update about my Warhound Titan, but there you go. The stall should now be over but I wanted the first lines of my first update to be something like ‘Wow, what progress I have made! What wonderful things I have done! So many things accomplished!’ Well, the best laid plans of Techmarines and Servo Skulls are often twisted by Kairos Fateweaver (or something like that). However, I do have many learnings from my initial week of work that I can share with you here.

Titans Cost More Than You Think

The initial outlay for a Warhound Titan with a pair of weapon arms is £341 (at least it was when I ordered mine). However, if you’re starting on a big project like this, you have to remember that really, depending on what tools and materials you already have, it ends up costing you more like £400. In addition to the actual model, I’ve had to purchase all of the following: face masks, drill bits, clamps, pinning wires, more drill bits (when you find out the ones you have are the wrong size because stupidly you didn’t check when you bought the first lot), magnets, epoxy, coping saw, spray primer, a base and pliers. I’m actually kind of annoyed about the pliers – I always owned a pair but I think I loaned them to someone who never gave them back. Grrrr…

And buying all of this stuff has actually been one of the things holding me back from making real progress in this first week. But my main point here is to remember, if you’re buying one of these things, that the cost doesn’t stop with the Forge World receipt. You’ll need to plan out your budget because costs can spiral upwards. But now it’s all bought, nothing should be stopping me now.

Forge World Has The Best Customer Service Ever

On Saturday morning, I called up Forge World to ask if I could exchange the Lucius Pattern Mega Bolter that I’d received for a Mars Pattern one as I’d ordered. The guy on the other end of the line was genuinely surprised by this and asked if I wouldn’t mind sending a photo to check. I sent over a snap while still on the phone and when he saw it, he apologised for the mistake and there and then set up a new order for the Mars Pattern version. Not only that, he asked me if there was anything else I wanted to add to the order as I’d be getting free shipping, which is ace. Not only that, he said I could keep the Lucius Pattern Mega Bolter as well! In fact, given that they believed all the Lucius Pattern stuff to have already gone or been melted down, I apparently got the last one that will ever leave Nottingham!

It doesn’t take much to accomplish good CS and these guys have got the process down perfectly. Quick, courteous, helpful and generous. If all customer service was like Forge World customer service, the world would be a much happier place. Happily, my new Mega Bolter has already arrived and I’m looking forward to getting it painted, but that might not be for quite some time, which brings me on to…

Plans – Make Them First

All the blogs and vids that I shared in my last post will help, but really you need your own set of plans for a project like this. I’ve started writing mine out, but I haven’t got past the waist yet, but that’s fine. Doing the legs is job #1 so I’ve got that planned and this will happen in order (you can hold me to that). I haven’t even started thinking about the body and arms yet because it’s already really complicated in my head – what do I glue/magnetise and in what order do I do each piece and when do I paint what… I’ll get there, but first, the legs.

So What Have I Actually Done?

Short answer; not much. Slightly wordier answer; I’ve made a decent start but I’ve had a busy week. Hopefully this weekend I’ll find a bit of time to really work on it. But the first thing I did was give the whole thing a bath! Each bag went into the sink with a little fairy liquid and some warmish water and got a soak and a scrub. Each piece was lovingly dried and rebagged before another bag went into the sink. It was long, boring, and my hands were pruney and wrecked after that.

The Titan’s afoot! Well, it’s a foot. Although this doesn’t look like much, there are more bits that go into the foot than any other part of the Titan. You can see in this snapshot the lower legs at the back, but all the other bits will go into making the other foot. As I want a more dynamic pose, this will be stressful. A great way for me to spend my Saturday morning. Also, because I want to do some painting, I’ve undercoated and primed one of the leg armour pieces and begun to plan my freehand work. I’m treating this more as a test, but we’ll see how it turns out.

Hopefully I’ll be able to show you something that looks a darn sight more Titanic in my next update, but I hope this gave you a bit of insight and an idea of how much work has to go into these sorts of projects. As ever, onwards!