Progress on the Acastus Knight Porphyrion

A slightly belated Happy New Year!  In this post I go over progress on my Acastus Knight Porphyrion, putting together my AoS Death army and the plans I’ve got for 2017 – needless to say, I’m planning far too much!

I spent quite a bit of time not at home over Christmas, so though I made hobby progress, I didn’t make quite as much as I’d have liked

Progress on the Forge World Acastus Knight Porphyrion

In my last post I went through unboxing the amazing Forge World Acastus Knight Porphyrion and I’m happy to say that the Christmas break has seen me make really good progress on the big daddy of Imperial Knights.  The handful of miscast parts has been sent in and are currently being re-cast by Forge World, who are pretty snowed under (no surprise with the Horus Heresy Weekender in a few weeks time).  I’ve magnetised a few bits and bobs across the Knight, both arms and the chin guard have been done which hopefully should allow me to add new arms and heads when/if Forge World produce them.

With the exception of the arms (waiting for a gun barrel), everything else has been glued together into the relevant sub-assemblies and I’ve got the base silver colour almost finished on both the legs and torso.  The legs are done apart from the toes and toe pistons, which I’ve kept separate because I’m waiting for one replacement and it’s easier to paint with them not in place.

Everything has had pins put in place and I’ve used Gorilla Epoxy Glue for the majority of joints which has made a really rock solid join.  I plan to write a post with pictures of all of the pins I’ve used – each foot has 11 pins to keep it secure.

One slight annoyance is that the base of the torso had a pipe broken in transit which I didn’t spot when I went through inspection (along with a second toe piston being a bit dodgy).  Thankfully I managed to bend a piece of copper rod into shape to replace the pipe, which actually means that piece is nowhere near as fragile as it would have been in resin 😀

I’m hoping to have a bit of a run this weekend; my aim is to get the model up to the point where I can work on the armour panels.  There’s actually less detail in comparison to the plastic Knight kit – less inlaid pipes and similar and a lot of it is hidden by armour anyway so it should take a lot less time.  The armour panels I plan to paint largely in one hit to make sure the red comes out the same consistency.  I’ve also picked up some AK Interactive washes to shade the cream and black armour…  No idea if it’ll mesh with the red though!

Death…

I’m making pretty reasonable progress on assembling my Age of Sigmar Death army, which I’m actually doing at my Mums when I go to visit.  I now have the legs and torsos glued onto bases for all fifty of my Skeleton Warriors and have started tidying up the heads.  I’m going to get all of the Skeleton Warrior units completed before I start working on any other bits but this is very much a “slow burn” project which has the added bonus that I’ve not got bored and am really keen to crack into it each time.

I’ve picked up some essential paints too, in the form of Citadel Air Ushbati Bone and a few others.  This means that once everything is together I can crack into the painting without any hold ups.  Putting the base colours down with the airbrush will speed the painting process up – and give a much better finish than doing it with a regular brush.

The Next Six Months

I always think it’s a good idea to have a rough idea of what you’re trying to achieve and then break it down into manageable blocks of painting & hobby.  By doing this, I’ve managed to keep momentum running for the past year – which is a first for me!

2017 was looking really relaxed, get up a Warhammer 40k Kill Team (Adeptus Mechanicus), finish off my Imperial Knights, with a few 30k Mechanicum units and then sort out my Vanguard sized death army was what I’d originally planned.

That has changed a little bit…  Firstly I managed to pick up one of the Battle Force box sets with an Adeptus Mechanicus force in, giving me a really solid core for that army.  Games Workshop have also released a new Magos and formation as part of their Fall of Cadia story arc, which looks amazing, and makes me keen to crack into the larger army.

Just before Christmas I received a Kickstarter with enough bits for a 3ft x 3ft Zone Mortalis board (all laser cut MDF).  This was on top of Dropfleet Commander and the imminent Arcadia Quest Kickstarters.

The Horus Heresy Weekender is the first weekend of February and I’m up in Nottingham for a few days, so it would be rude not to try and get a game in.  Because I don’t want to bother with lugging boxes of models, I’m going to do a Kill Team with my Space Wolves – however I really need to paint up a leader model (which I kit bashed together whilst I was waiting for washes to dry).

Finally I have also agreed to attend the Bristol Smash tournament in June – which requires a 2000 point army – oops…

So, time for a deep breath and (try) to be slightly objective!  I’ve a couple of weekends between now and the Horus Heresy Weekender, where I also have a bit of time off afterwards.  I’m intending on using this time to make a concerted effort on my Acastus Knight Porphyrion as it would be fantastic to get him finished.  Depending on how I get on, I may even try and sort out the rest of the armour colours on my other Knights too.

After then I’ll do a bit more work on my Chaos army, although I’d love to have a competitive list, I could rummage up another 900+ points by simply finishing my two Slaughterpriests, Bloodthirster, Skullcrushers and another 5 Blood Warriors.  Although that’s not a two minute job, it’s a total of 7 normal sized models, 6 mounted models and a monster – significantly less than my original 35 models.  Although I’m away for ten days in May, there is about four months between when I get back from the Weekender and the event in June, plus with the exception of the Blood Warriors, everything else is pretty much assembled.  I will also need to try and sort out my new Kill Team with the intention of using it in June.