Titans of Minerva

Will be distracted from Titans this weekend by Xiphons and Storm Eagles. Only had them for a couple of minutes now, but these are amazing kits. Worth the wait.

Getting into 3D printing was not in my plan as I have no interest in the hobby that it is in itself. Nor did I want the fuss of maintaining a resin print set up. But rather spontaneous last weekend got a Mars Pro partly because the price was more than reasonable and also because I final looked through the catalog of limitless possibilities that is Grim Dark Terrain. Amazing tool box of stuff there.

First print.

Okay blue see through tiny objects won’t come out well like this on an iPhone so you’ll have to take my word for these first impressions.

GrimDark Terrain sample – even though part of the bottom did not print properly, this is an amazing test piece. Properly designed 3D printable objects are just impressive close up. If the whole system works then I am sorted.

Epic scale Rhino – half printed perfectly half slightly distorted. But let’s be realistic this is still as good as if not better to metal ones. Being readily available it makes playing Epic or Epic Apocalypse now a possibility.

15mm – Spartan – rifle breaking was my fault. A bonus of sorts as it means I can now fill out the gaps in Halo Ground Command.

6mm Mk 3 Space Marines – doesn’t show, but these are pretty good. With a little practice these than be churred out easily.

First print with little fuss worked well and I was happy. Second print failed so we shall see 😉

Adeptus Titanicus needs its terrain, both from a game play and immersion perspective. GW brought out its Civitas terrain with and in the Grand Master launch box and added to it since. If I were to start out again with AT I would almost certainly use 8-10mm MDF terrain of which there is a lot out there now and at the scale its pretty easy to work with. 

On the plus side the GW terrain looks great, is pretty modular and in terms of sizing is very much tailored to the needs of AT. Building up levels in buildings works out in knight and then titan-sized increments. On the downside its expensive and if you do want to build some of the spectacular looking larger structures its going to cost more than a 40k Knight in parts. 

As I had a Grand Master box and terrain was one of the first things I assembled way back I am going to stick with it now and slowly overtime build up a table’s worth. As the paint scheme will be identical to my 30/40K terrain in my mind its all part of my Warzone Minerva in my mind. 

Cost isn’t though my main issue. This modularity has come about from GW’s embracing of CAD design which has worked really well at the 30/40K level to give this endless toolbox. At the AT level it still works, but the design doesn’t take into consideration that the tolerances at this far smaller scale are much less. Being even 1mm out cascades into significant gaps halfway down larger buildings. 

Not even the terrain on the GW box itself is properly assembled and fitted!

Is it important? Well everyone will have their own milage on terrain, but for me if I am going to spend that much on it I want it to look good.

Having frustratingly got through the terrain of the Grand Master and an extra Civitas box – to the point I really did not want to continue –  I decided to change my approach. In order to get the precise fits needed I have gone over to reinforcing all the connections and glueing in extra supports. The downside is it takes 4-5x longer to do it this way as each panel needs to be glued in separately and set before the next. 

The upside of sorts is that doing this I can recycle all of the original sprue material as it takes all the longish bits from a Civitas frame to support a structure made from the wall panels. 

And the end result is with all that patience a near perfect fit is possible. I think there was only a tiny mistake on the building below. It doesn’t thrill me to have to take this approach and time, but its the only way to get the end equality I am happy with.

Getting into Adeptus Titanicus during the summer was not the plan. I was intending to focus on Aeronautica Imperialis with the Space Marine and Eldar being teased back in May. And potentially the new Kill Team. Weeks passed and with no releases in sight I thought I should use the time productively and had another look at AT.

When AT came out in 2018 I was interested collected releases and picked up the yearly battle forces with a view to playing it sometime in the future and, as many, hope that GW brings in some Epic system eventually. So I have amassed quite a lot of stuff in boxes which I am fine with. Somehow I talked myself into thinking that the rules were difficult and not for the casual gamer that my long suffering wife is. Sitting down and reading them properly showed that actually its pretty straight forward and its one of the tightest and clearest rulesets GW has produced. 

The other reason I delayed getting AT to the table was because of the models. They are fantastic, but it’s intimidating to do them justice. Magnetising, and who wouldn’t, isn’t difficult, but requires time and experimentation to get right. The fear of messing up and the desire for perfection is a real barrier – for me at least.

Ultimately though time has a value too and if you don’t do something you can’t have fun. Realistically getting 2 fully painted forces to the table would take until the end of the year at the earliest. The new AT starter set is a good deal and I’d get more value out of having to buy a couple of extra boxes to field some interim grey plastic forces than waiting around for the day when everything is complete.

So I stopped worrying, got half build forces to the table asap and we’ve had fun playing small scale games these past few months. 

Family photo. In retrospect I could have left off the main armour panels on the other Reavers and Warhounds to make painting them easier later. I did only glue the torsos to the legs with a tiny bit of superglue so when it comes to painting they can go into the freezer, come apart into two pieces also making it easier to paint. Need to finish magnetising the various weapons left still and then this first phase is done.