2023.09.14 More hobby progress: House Malinax & Legio Gryphonicus

It's been a busy couple of weeks, so I'll pick up where I left off on the last post with the Knights I painted for Adeptus Titanicus & Legions Imperialis over the past month, and then resume my recap of my 2022 hobby work :)

I painted up three more Questoris chassis for myself, as well as some paired battlecannon arms for them, and a quartet of Acastus Atropos chassis.  These guys will get a hit of weathering powder & seal coated a little later, but otherwise they're ready for table!  (hopefully tonight...)


Here's a shot of the questoris pre-decals with the battle cannon; Danny van Dijk did a good job of designing his own hardware that still visually reads close enough to the stock plastics; I was quite impressed with how they turned out from BattleBling.


Definitely getting a few more of those to use for House Cadmus when I finally get around to painting Knight support for my Loyalist titans; Gryphonicus can really benefit from non-Titan high volume support fire ;)

Finally, this has been a huge project over the past couple of months, but I managed to cut down, fit, re-fill with putty, and otherwise mount a Warlord conversion beamer onto a Warbringer carapace gun carriage.  Currently sculpting the trim back on through a combination of styrene & greenstuff.  Once the putty cures I'll be giving this a light sand & a hit with liquid greenstuff, and then it's time for N-scale rivet decals.  Hoping I'll get a chance to prime this over the weekend and start painting it up.


I have 8 more Knights for AT that I've been working on... but they might temporarily get back-burnered until I've had a chance to knock out a few more guns for AT.


Ok, got the update out of the way, what about the hobby backlog from 2022 (which I still haven't finished posting about?  Since I'm on Adeptus Titanicus, here's everything I painted for Legio Gryphonicus last March/April & September:


My current War Griffons battlegroup in all their glory.  This all started off with me wanting to change things up a little, and diving into a pair of Warhounds last March.

Nobilis and Venator Lux were a chance to paint something new, attempt a sponge dappling effect to reproduce the OLD old Adeptus Titanicus War Griffons scheme, and a chance to really test out painting weathering & battle damage, which you can see on the close-ups below:

After a short vacation, I let my enthusiasm for the new scheme carry me forward and started working on a Reaver for the force as well.  I decided to use the less streamlined Reaver head design, coupled with BattleBling's retro Reaver shoulder pad design, to represent the up-armored Reaver option available to the War Griffons.  Aeterno Rex was the first of five planned Reavers to walk out of the Titan factory for Gryphonicus.



I went with relatively minimal battle damage on my first serious Reaver outing... which changed when I got to the second engine.

Also, I got a wonderful idea I'm shamelessly stealing from AnyReasonToRollDice over on Instagram - using Warmaster titan toe armor to up-armor the Reaver's thighs.  I'll be doing this once I can source some spares, retrofitting this engine and integrating them into future up-armored Reaver builds ;)



Unlike Aeterno Rex, Fidelis Natus is equipped with motive sub-reactors to make him run faster.  I didn't bother tweaking the design for that; it'll be easy enough to tell the difference between the up-armored engines (converted) and the faster ones (everyone else), at a glance, especially if I build them all in action poses.  Fidelis Natus got heavier battle damage as a close combat Reaver - narratively I figured he's wading oncoming fire, voids burnt out but still charging forward.

Finally, I worked on a trio of battlefield asset markers for Titan Hunter Infantry & Forward Observers for my Loyalists, using Imperial Fists as a generic Loyalist Legion.  Ironically enough, GW basically leaned into the same pairing with Horus Heresy 2.0 as I did with my support units.


I wrapped this one up around September of 2022... and with four engines and ~1000 points painted, that was kind of it for Gryphonicus for a few months, until all the new titan weapons dropped.  After knocking out my Tempestus weapons, I transitioned over to painting up grav cannon and conversion beamers for my War Gryphons to keep them in parity.


And to wrap this up, here's everyone showing off their new zap guns :)




So that's that.  Next blog post will probably show my progress on the conversion beamer...conversion..., as well as anything else I work on over the next few days, and then I'll update this blog with everything I painted for Shieldbash in late 2022!

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