Pictures from Games Workshop Alamo's last event before closing

Games Workshop's location in Alamo closed up a few days ago.  I was able to play in their last ever gaming event, Tanksgiving, on Saturday, November 24, 2012.  It was a really fun game, we played 4 on 4, with about 14k a side, with quite a few super heavies.  It was a sad day, as we are all going to miss this shop, though it was nice to go out on a bang.  I played in Tanksgiving last year, and this year was just as much fun.

On with some pictures!!

Painting my Chaos Warhound Titan

 

 After priming my Titan up I pulled out the airbrush to get started on painting this amazing model.  I am doing a custom color, using two parts death world forest, one part karak stone, and two parts screaming skull.  I bout exactly that many pots, as I knew I would need a lot of it for base coating. 

 

I started with doing some undercoating around areas I wanted to be noticeably darker.  I used death world forest in these places.  This would help with the highlighting of large areas.   

After that I gave the whole model a coat of the basecoat.  This took a long time, including a few hour soak to declog the airbrush.  I seem to have the worst luck with airbrushes, they always clog on me.   After a basecoat I began to paint the gold parts, using balthasar gold.  It came out a bit "shiny", even as a muted color, so it will need some coats of wash to bring it down. 

How to assemble a Chaos Warhound Titan - A one stop content guide

I wish my titan looked like the one on the left.  Before this weekend it was in pieces.  I want to share how I got mine looking a lot closer to the this one. That is a Chaos Warhound owned by Carl of The Independent Characters, who used it in Big Jim's game at Celisticon this year, which inspired me to pull the trigger on my titan.  

I had seen it in person earlier but it wasn't painted or assembled, so it didn't have the same "effect" on me.  These models look great in pictures, but in person they are amazing models.  When I spoke to Carl he told me that he didn't have the time to assemble the model and was a bit concerned at the complexity of the model.  He had a local game store/commissioning outfit Frontline Gaming, assemble it for him.

I was on the fence about to take this path or not.  It is a very complicated model, though it's not as many pieces at I thought.  I have heard the feet/legs are difficult, and while they ended up being a challenge, they were not as bad as some make it out to be. I did learn a lot about resin models and I wanted to share with others what I learned. 

I thought about doing a general guide on how to do it, but I don't think that's needed.  This model isn't that hard to put together, what is knowing what to use to put it together.  What I mean, is what tools, products, and steps you need to assemble. I am going to share the resources I found that spelled it out better than I ever could.

The first step, is cleaning the titan.   The best thing I found, and already shared, was a video by a painter from the website Ichiban Painting.

I used the above guide and it worked like a charm.  Well worth the investment in time to wash and tools to make the job easier.

I found a few places with good information about assembling the titan.

Forum post with original instructions, in case you got one second hand, like mine. 

Blog about assembly, one of the better and more detailed guides out there.

Dakka Dakka Project Blog on a WIP Warhound, great details on the feet (I didn't do as much as this poster, but this is how complicated the feet can be if you go that far.)

As far as tools, I can't recommend the below two products enough.

J-B Weld, the Quickweld variety.  I am not a fan of pinning, so I wanted an alternative.  I found this product through recommendations and several articles and I am very happy with it.  It takes a few minutes to set, but when it does is almost like concrete.  I can't recommend this stuff enough.  Use it for any large resin model that has load bearing joints. 

Clamps, specifically I used Irwin clamps.  I bought a set of 6 that had some various sizes.  These were a huge help for holding large pieces together firmly, while the J-B Weld was drying.  There were several pieces that were slightly warped, but using a clamp with the J-B Weld held the piece where it was supposed to be and didn't move.  Take a look at the below pics to see how I used them.

This project has been a lot of fun so far.  I am really glad I decided to do it myself.  It has been a lot of work, I've got about 10 hours into it so far for cleaning and assembly.  I don't have much left to do and I'm about ready to go full swing into painting. 

I was able to get some painting done.  The vent/machinery below the carapace top piece.

Magnetizing a Chaos Warhoud - Step 1 - Planning

I spent some time last night measuring parts of the Chaos Warhound Titan so I could start to form a plan for what size and how many magnets I would need.  A pair of rarely used calipers that I had in my tool chest were worth their weight in gold as a simple tape measure/ruler would not have worked well.  The Calipers allowed me to measure not only parts, but negative spaces (the joints) to an accuracy level of hundredths of an inch. 

This means the magnets I order will fit in their spaces at accurately as possible.  I want to remove as little material as possible while still using strong magnets. I really want to avoid the "wobble" I've seen in some large models that use magnets but I do want to maximize the parts I magnetize so that not only can I change weapons, it will break down into smaller pieces to ease in transport.  I plan on using this Titan, it's not going to be just a show piece.

My "Magnet Manifesto" came out looking a bit mad "scientisty" so I thought I'd post it for laughs.  I swear it makes sense for me.

Cleaning up and trimming Chaos Warhound Titan

I spent some time this weekend trimming and cleaning up the Chaos Warhound Titan I picked up on eBay a few weeks ago.   The auction didn't include any instructions, though I have seen a set from someone else who had picked one up, earlier this year, and I remember seeing it wasn't a ton of help.   After some searching I found several article posts and videos on youtube on how to clean up and trim up the parts on a warhound. 

After about two hours of cleaning up the Titan with my dremel and a hand hacksaw, I spent another hour scrubbing it down.  I used a dremel (with an extendable shaft) and a cutting head to trim off the excess flash from the pour points. This took a while, as it is a bit of a pain to set up all the items you need to do it right.  I followed a guide by Ichiban, a fantastic painter and modeler out of Japan.  His YouTube channel is way worth subscribing too.

I can't say enough about this guide, it is well worth taking a look at if you are assembling a Titan, or other large resin model. 

After I was all done I was left with this.