So a lot of things have been going on over the last few weeks, hence the slow rate of posts. I've been playing a lot of X-wing, there was the regional championship tournament for New England (I came in 46th) as well as at least 5 other tournaments I've attended in the last month, so that took up most of my hobby time. I also spent some time painting my Chaos Renegades, batch painting 200+ infantry is a chore but its progressing.
Work has picked up nicely of late as well, which helps relieve financial stresses, and I have my annual training exercise starting tomorrow for the Army National Guard that I've had to prepare for. On top of all of that yesterday I received my acceptance letter for Grad School, which is extremely exciting. I actually had a hard time sleeping last night as my mind was alight, so I decided to finish assembling the Castellax Battle-Automata kits I picked up a few months ago.
Here are the 5 normal Castellax I've built. There are a lot of minor touch ups to fix casting errors and to mark them out as Dark Mechanicum engines, but they are pretty much done otherwise. This is a very interesting kit to work with, and very challenging as well to pose well. You can do great dynamic poses, but it takes a lot of work to do.
Here is Maniple 1. These three are equipped to serve as an aggressive assault oriented unit. The Power Blades makes them good at killing infantry and vehicles with rending, and their weapons loadout with meltaguns and bolters is quite flexible. I tried to give them all very dynamic poses to convey that they are moving and fighting up close.
This fellow has the most agressive fighting pose of the group.
So Heroic!
I tried to make this one look like he is firing and advancing at speed.
Another fighting stance, though somewhat less movement involved.
Here is Battle Maniple 2. They are intended to be long range anti-armor support, and so are armed with the awesome Darkfire Cannons. The flamers are to dissuade would be assaulters.
This was a suprisingly challenging pose to get right, the arms weren't designed to achieve it exaclty so I had to reposition them somewhat. I need to fix the errors in the casting of the Darkfire Cannons for both of these two.
Apologies for the blurry shot.
Again sorry.
Bring it on!
I decided for the last standard robot to make a less active "robotic" pose. So the robot is simply engaging targets at long range, the rest of its battle frame at rest.
++++WARNING SCRAP CODE INFESTATION DETECTED++++
ATTEMPTING SYSTEM PURGE.........
PURGE ERRO#>!.........
While he doesn't have a name yet my last Castellax is substantially different from the rest. This is the first Automata in the group made by fusing warp entities into the Bio-synthetic cortex of the war frame. The result is a unit with incredible durability and independence of function, although a certain level of unpredictability has appeared in its functioning.
The base for this model was a terribly miscast Castellax torso, built out with Maulterfiend, Hellbrute, and Kastellan parts. Add in some tentacles and he's pretty much done.
He is armed the same as Battle Maniple 2 with flamers, crushing claws, and a Darkfire cannon.
In game this unit will either function as a third member of Maniple 2 or as a lone unit with the Paragon of Metal upgrade. This upgrade allows it to function fully on its own an grants it It Will Not Die, at the cost of guaranteeing that it will turn on you and try to kill friend and foe alike if you fail to control it with your techpriests. If that doesn't scream possessed daemon engine I don't know what does.
The tail is from a talos. I intend to add chains over the reactor binding the warp entity to the machine.
I plan to defile the crux mechanicus.
All told he is a small amount larger than the rest of the Castellax.
I'm very proud of how these guys are turning out so far, I'll finish them when I get back in two weeks from AT.
I'm very curious to learn what you think of them.
Nice! I love the warp-tainted one - looking forward to seeing him finished!
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