Skip to main content

Gorram Reavers



In October of 2013, I was contacted by a fellow Freeboota to custom build one or two Reaver Titans. My memory of the original request was for one, but I shortly realized it was for two. In return, I received some Sisters models, 4 and a half Immolators, 2 Exorcists, and some of infantry. Even though the base models, which were a couple of old Terminator toys, arrived in November, I though I could do it in a few short months.

I really didn't have any idea what I was getting myself into. I'd done Ork stuff before, sure, but that's nothing compared to building Imperial models. The lines have to be at least somewhat straight and the entire model needs to be gap-filled and sanded from top to bottom.

I'd like to say that I succeeded. Even though I didn't get it done in the time I was shooting for, I think the customer knew I was crazy for setting such a short goal anyways. He does his own custom Titans as well.

Since December of 2013, I've spent over 192 hours (a conservative estimate) on this project. Along with that, I've spent over $210 in materials, not including tools purchased. This means I could have bought BOTH of us THREE actual Forge World Reaver Titans when you work out the time and materials cost. Let there be no doubt that the completion of this project was solely to preserve my personal reputation and had nothing to do with actual compensation. Having said that, I learned a lot of lessons from this project both from a hobby standpoint and from a personal standpoint.

A huge thanks goes out to my wife, Wendy, who put up with a lot of nonsense while I worked on this project and motivated me all the time to finish.

Thanks to Gene and Pat for giving me tons of crap while these things lurked about.

Thanks to those who joined me in my hobby time to help make the pain less harsh: Skip, Conor, Brandon, Shoshie, and many others. Thanks to the rest of you for commenting and giving me motivation to continue.

The design of these Reavers is based on the old Epic models, but blown up to the size of modern models. I can say that they are very unique in comparison to anything else out there.
Still a bit posable. Arms are magnetized, as are the top launchers.
At first, this guy was going to be Legio Metallica, but the customer changed his mind to the Aquilla. The Aquilla is too small, so I did the Mechanicum half and I think that works out great.
  




Some in-progress pics....
























Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How Did it Come to This? 10,000 Points of Painted Orks

One can only make so many milestone posts before people eventually get soul-crushingly bored of them.  However, I'm going to make an exception here because with my Vengeance Batteries, I've reached a total of 10,000 points painted with my Orks.  These points include reasonable upgrades, but not ridiculous add-ons like Kill Kannons for the Battlewagons.  Let's not be silly . Here's a video of the army.  Unlike the one I did for 7,000, this does not include a running commentary of each unit.  I simply cannot find the time to do that.  However, at the end of the post, please find a complete army list. Please try to view in YouTube instead of this embed because I uploaded it at full resolution and it took me forever.  You won't be disappointed! I started playing this game in 2010 when some friends and I suddenly realized that we finally had grown-up jobs and could actually afford it.  I'd always danced around the idea of collecting Orks either for F
4 comments
Read more

Joke Armies - an Editorial

Ponies and Smurfs and Gundams! Oh my! Sometimes someone posts a joke army they've built and painted on the internet and the internet lashes out against it, sometimes quite vociferously. I have a problem with the strong objections to these armies, with caveats. Please note that, throughout this article, I will refer to armies which break the 4th wall and are incongruous to the 40k fluff as "joke armies".  Of course, I do realize many hobbyists who choose to build their armies in this way do not mean them as a joke and take it very seriously, but I need some kind of general term for the article. Shannon's Smurf Drop Pod Army Hobbyist Reasoning The hobbyists who choose this kind of path for their army express four-ish common reasons for doing so, sometimes citing two or three of them simultaneously. Cost:  Cost can be a big driver towards building this kind of army. A lot of the time, it's quite a bit cheaper to use toys to stand in for 40k models.  An
3 comments
Read more

Loopy Paints Unto Others - Space Marines (Brown)

I've completed another commission for Frontline Gaming.  For this one, the customer chose a brown scheme using the Ravenwing iconography for a generic chapter or chapter of his own devising.  This was a LEVEL 1 commission which means just one highlight. This was the first time I'd ever done Edge Highlighting which is the preferred method for doing this level of commission.  I know it may seem strange that someone doing commission work hasn't done edge highlighting, but it's just not my preferred method.  I prefer to wet blend everything or just do blocked highlights over darker colors and washes. The first go-around they looked terrible.  I tried really hard to keep the edge highlights thin and vague, but instead they came out kind of sloppy.  Because of that, I had to spend an additional 4 hours on making the highlight heavier and more pronounced.  The good thing is, I know what I'm doing now and won't make the same mistake again; therefore an army lik
2 comments
Read more