So, in my current life situation, I do not have as much time as I would like for modeling so I usually try to do things the most efficient way as possible so when I do have time to actually play, I have everything, at least, built. I gave myself this challenge to start and attempt to finish this model in one night because I knew I wouldn't be able to work on it again for at least a week or more. Starting around 8:45 on a work night I opened the box and dove in.
Another 18 min later, what seemed like a very long while later for most gw models, all of the pieces were clipped neatly out of the sprue. Now I try to clip the gates as close as possible to the actual piece so I have less to deflash and can just sort of file (and by file, I mean scrape with the flat part of an xacto blade...) the pieces to clean them up later. Some pieces you have to watch out for however as there are little raised edges sometimes for weapon mounts or slotted connectors, etc.
Then the actual deflashing began...this part took much longer than I anticipated for this model due to the larg amount of pieces in this kit. Plus it seemed that gw is adding much more gates and mold points to some of these pieces as their geometry gets more complicated. Fine and all, except when your trying to finish quickly and have like four or five spots to deflash per piece. Almost two hours later at 10:45 all of the pieces were cleaned. Luckily, I was able to talk on speaker phone to TGJ while this was occurring which made the time go by much faster. Nothing better than talking about gaming while modeling if you ask me.
The Spiritseer had his work cut out for himself this evening. No slacking off tonight. Time to sing.
At this point I took a break to actually look at the directions and open a coke. It is good to actually look at these to familiarize yourself with the pieces you will need to find and what they actually look like. You can also then sort the pieces into general groups such as torso, legs, weapons, etc. after you've just dumped them into a big pile. Sometimes there are some strange pieces that might not be intuitive on these larger models as to where they are used. Plus as this was my first one of these, I did need to look at the directions...at least once :)
Assembly was pretty straight forward and by 12:30 or so I had assembled the sections that I wanted to be left alone to later be magnetized. No pins were required as this model is fairly light. I assembled the legs to the base, the main torso, left the head separate, left the gun arms separate, and left the small shoulder guns separate. Now the shoulder mounts are optional, but I usually leave these on even if I am not using the shoulder weapons. Some might try to magnetize the small plugs that go up here but I personally didn't think that was necessary.
Luckily for this model, many of the guns have square pegs that actually can be friction fit for interchangeability and do not need to be magnetized. I usually try to use pins for the shoulder guns as magnets would be a bit too large for the main housing to connect down into the shoulder area. Sometimes a small hole and a long pin that is only glued to one piece will work very well in lieu of magnets where small joints are present. I've used this approach on wraithlord weapons pretty successfully and didn't think I ended to do anything too different here.
All of the sections laid out.
At this point it was time to get a little putty and strike a pose before bedtime. I actually was out of the larger magnets I would need to use to hold the long arms on so I would call it a night at 12:45.
Dramatic pose...and non-legal weapon fit out...the Spiritseer's work was done for this evening.
A few weeks later my magnets came in and I actually had the time to wrap this thing up.
I used a 1/4" magnet for the head, 5/16" magnets for the arms, and a 3/8" magnet for the torso. All of these are the 1/16" thick kind. One thing to watch out for when using these thinner magnets is their ability to actually break themselves if you drop one near the rest of their stack. Two of these slipped out of my hand when I was removing them from the main stack of magnets, and, in mid air, shot back to the stack, shattered, and then the pieces nicely proceeded to stick again to the stack for easy cleanup. Cool, but not cool. I also have a large tool chest near my desk that tends to attract some of these too if I'm not careful. Watch out for pliers, etc.
But yea, worked as expected after that. As most of these arm joints are ball jointed however, you will need to flatten out portions if the joint to adhere the magnets too. Normally I drill into and recess the magnets, but to prevent the rotation of these long arms, the larger magnets would need to be used and they are pretty much the same size as the arms socket/joint. I used a dremel for these and would recommend everyone get one as it's possibly the greatest invention and can be used for a variety of modeling items. Also inside the socket joints on the arm itself, to get the large magnets inside, I needed to carve away some of the material to create some flat areas to sit the magnets. Enter dremel. To avoid having all of your arms point perfectly forward, you can carve a little slope or angle into the sockets for the flat magnet surface. This can give the arms a slightly outward facing angle when it is attached to the body. You know, always looking for the more dynamic poses for these figures, even when you are trying to leave all of your weapon options open.
Attachment of choice for this work. Watch out for your hands...some practice required.
Flat area carved out.
Angled area carved and magnet glued in another arm socket.
Once all of the magnets were dry, the next day I got to see all of the legal options. I left the star cannons in the shoulders for this demo, but you can choose a single instead of double weapons for the shoulders and they could also be scatter lasers or shuriken cannons.
Sun cannon and scatter shield.
Ghost glaive and scatter shield.
Two heavy wraith cannons.
I'll leave you all with this...when I first saw this in the pages in the white dwarf issue, I was like woah...I wonder how close this will be to some of the titans...I was like, great, gw making something as big as some of the forgeworld models...so after this was built it was time to do my own size comparison. Enter Revenant titan. Definitely tall, but the Revenant still, respectably, owns up to its titan status.
Until next time,
ZS
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