Imperial Knight...

Battletech veterans will recognize this pose. 

I really need to revamp my blogger layout, because tiny photos really don't do this kit justice. Of their products in the past year or so, I have to say the knight is my favorite, even considering its obvious flaws (how about some posable hips and knees, eh?) when compared to, say, a master grade mobile suit kit from Bandai. Maybe it's because it's a huge mecha, maybe it's because he's that much more posable than a dreadnaught, or maybe because it has that much more potential than other offerings to come from GW, I don't know. I do know I bought another one to convert into a Knight Lancer. 

Rulebook adherents will notice the he looks remarkably similar to a House Raven armour, but I've eschewed the iconography (though you can't see it here, the other half of that shoulder plate is a half-aquila on red) simply because I like none of the houses they've created. Their writing really has fallen by the wayside a bit and lacks something of the char the older stuff used to have. Oh well. Anyway, I suppose that makes him a Freeblade, but in terms of theme and palette he belongs alongside my Warden and Warhound, so I'm sure I'll generate some fluff eventually. I wish I'd had the decal sheet ages ago for my IG forces, but, oh well. 

His cannon arm isn't magnetized, sadly. At the time it seemed far to fiddly a thing to do to, and when I sat down to do it to the Lancer's weapon arm, it was. If  didn't have three different sizes of magnets sitting around, I never would've been able to do it. 

A lot of what I learned from this kit I applied to the Lancer, and still more from that build... well, I don't know if it's worth getting a third one, but cutting and repositioning the leg hydraulics is much easier than one thinks, given some plastruct piping and rod. At the time I built this, I was already thinking of what I'd do, and when I finish and post the Lancer, you'll see what I mean. One of the major things people have to get their minds around is cutting away those super-wide hips. Most other hobbyists I read haven't been doing so, and they end up with too-wide, off-balance stances that end up looking nearly like the original despite all the effort they put into it.  

I do regret not putting more into the base other than the parched volcanic landscape I've been using on my other AdMech stuff, but I've also been running low on ruined bits to tack on there. I thought about putting the old Epic Knight Paladin on the base as a fallen statue, but that strikes me as being a bit obvious and trite. Plus, I was too lazy to strip the old mini's paint. 

Until next time, folks. 

Crypteks....

Before we move on to the Knight stuff, photos of a gaggle of themed Crypteks have been fermenting on my hard drive since... well, since that Tomb Stalker post. Then there's the Roboute model, some more Mechanicus stuff, and so on. No, I'm not going to do any ork stuff, ever. I despise the damn orks. Overpowered, undercosted, showing up in hordes and punching my perfectly good Leman Russes with their Deathrollers... ugh. Anyway, let's do some Space Egyptians. 

The Storm-teks were my prototypes for the rest of the range. I worked out the color-coding for the different staves early, and figured I wanted different Crypteks to also have subtle differences according to their specialties. These and the Destruction-Teks are all in aggressive stances, and have different cowling than their brethren. I don't know if you noticed, but the staff bits are awfully brittle. As a result, half of these have metal pins in them, and the rest will probably get them after they've been used a bit. 

I thought these and the Storm-teks would see more use, so I made three of each and fewer of the others, reasoning I'd use them as rank fillers or one-offs, depending on the type of Cryptek. I wanted to cover all of them for the sake of doing so. 

I had fun making the ascetic-looking Chrono-Teks. I was tempted to work-in some other kind of clock imagery, but they're aliens, and so any imagery we equate with time wouldn't fit the branding. So, I made them less aggressive and more scholarly than the others. 

Who knows what a Harp of Dissonance looks like? I reasoned it glows green and looks like a staff. Probably should have made one or two more of these than the others, but I was running out of bits, so...

No, the Veil of Darkness isn't literally a veil, I just wanted to give him a dark cloak to play up the whole despair theme. The purple staff didn't work out as well as I'd liked, sadly, but I still think he looks sufficiently gloomy to carry it off. I though about giving him a white skull mask, but that would've been shifitng too far into Nightbringer territory, wouldn't it? 

Next time, something big and stompy. 

Happy Wednesday, people.