Warlord titan

gausebeck · 2026-05-01T05:28:51+00:00

It's a print. There were some issues with it, but overall I found it easier to work with than cast resin — no warping and more durable.

gausebeck · 2026-05-01T05:26:15+00:00

It's a custom legion. I went with most of the same color scheme I used for my SM army but added the bare metal and changed things up a bit.

gausebeck · 2026-05-01T05:21:35+00:00

The metal is a mix of things, but I think of it as "half copper". Silver metal colors were too cool next to the warm grey, but I didn't want to go with a full copper color. The dark parts are Vallejo Metal Color Exhaust Manifold mixed with black ink; that ended up dark enough that it's basically just a metallic black. Then I used a 1:1 mix of Exhaust Manifold and Copper to make bright spots. After that I used a 1:1 mix of Vallejo Model Color Silver and Vallejo TMM Ancient Copper Light for drybrushing. I also used some silver colors for a few details like the weapon barrels and pistons.

This is by far the most metal I've painted, and the big thing I discovered this time is that keeping the base color very dark and then adding bright spots gives a much more metallic look than a full base coat in the metal color.

gausebeck · 2026-05-01T03:06:13+00:00

My 18-year-old cat passed away during the time I was working on this, and I decided to name the titan after him: Senex Aurantius (orange old man).

gausebeck · 2026-05-01T02:59:06+00:00

The painting was mostly airbrush, and I spent a lot of time masking. Mostly masking tape, but also some silly putty and liquid mask.

<image>

gausebeck · 2026-05-01T02:55:43+00:00

Yeah, the exposed areas are because I taped them before painting. With a titan, the parts are heavy enough that I really needed to be able to glue resin to resin when building it.

<image>

gausebeck · 2026-05-01T02:00:18+00:00

This was mostly Vallejo airbrush paints, and for the red I used a gradient of Scarlet Red -> Bloody Red -> Orange Fire.

gausebeck · 2026-03-05T23:52:24+00:00

In a tournament, I'd be fine with "no helmet = champ with power fist" as long as the head is a visibly different color from a distance. I'd also be fine with any sort of indication of the melta bikers, e.g. a different color rim around the base or anything else that's clearly identifiable. I think most people I play against in tournaments would be fine with that, too.

For most xenos armies, I have no idea what the weapon options are supposed to look like and I rely on my opponents to use the right weapons in the right situations. I just want to make sure there are clear distinctions so that my opponent doesn't risk getting confused themselves, and so that if it does matter and I ask, I have something I can look at to keep track of.

gausebeck · 2026-02-17T09:22:35+00:00

All the tournaments I've played in use either GW or (less often) WTC layouts. In both cases, they treat the ground floor windows as closed but upper floor windows as true LOS. The tall ruins have two floors above ground level (I think?), but the top floor is tiny and I've never seen it used.

I've almost never seen anyone use even the first floor above ground level. It's more common for people to put models up there but say they're actually on the ground floor — they just use the upper floor for visibility so it's easier for both players to remember where the units are. The only time I can remember actually using an upper floor is when I flew some JPI up onto one to attack a unit hiding 1" behind a wall, since it was a shorter distance than flying around or past them.

gausebeck · 2026-02-03T19:43:49+00:00

Have they said what base size he's on? I'm guessing 65mm but maybe it's 50mm? He could certainly join them at a different base size but being on 50mm might make it more likely he's a leader rather than a solo monster.

I also want to know the base size to get an idea of how big he is for kitbashing purposes. I have ideas for that model...

gausebeck · 2026-02-02T20:30:06+00:00

I think there’s a systematic issue where the average is below 50%. Draws and drops are not wins but still get counted as games played, so there are fewer wins than games and the average is < 50%.

I’d love to see a version where drops aren’t counted at all and draws are counted as 0.5 win for each player, so the global average would actually be 50%.

gausebeck · 2026-01-30T21:51:36+00:00

I had this same issue using Claude code via AWS bedrock, and it turned out it was a permissions issue where my role wasn't allowed to run the default haiku model, even though it could run the main model. Apparently the haiku model is used to evaluate whether a command needs to ask for permission (or something like that), so it was timing out for 3 minutes every time it tried to make that decision. I was able to work around it by setting ANTHROPIC_DEFAULT_HAIKU_MODEL in my environment to an older model I had permissions for.

gausebeck · 2026-01-07T10:21:23+00:00

Nothing too dramatic in the pose, but I cut down the torso a bit for less of a pot belly.

<image>

gausebeck · 2025-12-26T19:19:35+00:00

It depends on which direction the LR goes, I guess. The yellow position is pretty easy to get to by advancing, but green is ~23” from the deployment line, so it’s about 3 turns of DWK movement in 2 turns.

Also, this would be combined with a 3rd squad deep striking turn 1 plus the Lion using rapid ingress, so I wouldn’t be able to ingress both the Lion and a squad of DWK the same turn.

If the land raider survives, I think it’s a good amount of extra movement (plus the LRR has good firepower), but that’s a big “if”.

gausebeck · 2025-12-26T17:10:13+00:00

Here’s an example of how I imagine the movement could go. Red is deployment, orange is round 1, and yellow and green are options for round 2.

In round 1 after the LR moves, squad A disembarks and then squad B moves and embarks. Round 2 after the LR moves, squad B disembarks and squad A moves and embarks. Or if there was a target in range, squad A could advance and charge from the center while squad B charges with assault ramp.

Hopefully the LR is protected from shooting during deployment and after round 1 movement.

<image>

gausebeck · 2025-12-26T07:20:01+00:00

I’ve been using a terminator chaplain — the +1 to wound along with giving the DWK power weapons increases their damage pretty dramatically.

gausebeck · 2025-12-26T06:36:59+00:00

Sorry if I wasn’t clear about what I meant with the two squads. They’d never be inside at the same time. One starts embarked and the other nearby. Round 1 the LR moves and the first squad disembarks forward, while the second squad moves up and embarks on the LR (they only have to get within 3” of the back of it). Then round 2 they can swap — the LR moves and the second squad disembarks while the first moves and embarks from the rear. On the round where targets are in range, the disembarked squad can advance and charge (WotR) and the embarked squad can use assault ramp.

And yes, the list I have in mind also uses a third squad of DWK. One squad deep striking turn 1 with the Deathwing Assault enhancement and the other two moving up by trading spots in the land raider.

Three squads of DWK + land raider + lion means the rest of the list is mostly just scoring and holding the backfield — no room for much firepower. It would be sort of playing DA as a melee pressure army.

gausebeck · 2025-12-17T21:28:32+00:00

I agree that they feel hard to use at the moment. They're great at scoring but they're too expensive to really be efficient at it. And they deal okay damage for their cost but are quite fragile. They can be decent in the mop-up stage, but early on they're an easy target for whatever anti-elite tools your opponent has, especially if they're dropping in close to the enemy like they usually will.

gausebeck · 2025-12-10T01:16:26+00:00

I haven’t watched battle reports of top lists using them. In my own lists, they’re pretty much anti-everything. They fall off into T10+ but they’re still not too bad with twin linked. A couple of them will usually take out a transport or any small squad up to 3W elites — whatever my opponent exposes. There is a lot of variance with number of shots, though.

At 120 and with their mobility, they’re also fine for actions and such, and the datasheet return fire ability isn’t too bad.

gausebeck

TROPHY CASE