The Warlord titan “Iram Montis Deos” is the largest engine I have built for the loyalist ‘Morning Stars’. Armed with a Volkite Destructor, paired Vulkan Mega-Bolters and a Gatling Blaster the engine is loaded for ordinance. I’m actually quite curious what it will do in Legions Imperialis against massed infantry and armour, as well as other engines.

Of the engines I have built to date for the Morning Stars, this is the one I am most pleased with in terms of how it came out, especially the base. All weapons are of course magnetised so can be swapped for an alternative loadout should I fancy it. The norm of course for the Warlord kit which comes pre-configured to accept magnets as standard in the arms and carapace mounts.

Legio Astraman Warlord for Legions Imperialis
Legions Imperialis Warlord Titan
Warlord Titan back banner

Building and painting approach

As these kits can be used in games of both Adeptus Titanicus and Legio Imperialis, I get plenty of utility out of them and generally want to get them assembled, painted and onto the tabletop as quickly as possible. That being said, being such an eye-catching model in the game, I do invest time in the details as the reward really pay off visually.

Legion Astraman Warlord
Warlord Titan detailing
Warlord Titan base for Legion Imperialis

Sub assemblies and metallics

The Warlord and indeed all of the Titan kits have been designed with sub-assemblies in mind. That’s why the armour and weapons are generally on separate frames. I highly recommend building the Warlord as a skeleton assembly (armour off) to make like much easier to paint. It’s true this does attaching all the final armour sections a bit trickier, but it’s worth it from my experience.

This lets me focus on the messy metallics stage without worrying about getting paint onto the armour panels. With so much surface area and scale to work with, I build up the look of the Titans sub-frame and skeleton in stages, starting with a bright emerald metallic. This might seem an odd choice for the base, but it given me an interesting mid-tone to work from. I shade this with burnt iron and darken the recesses even further with acrylic blue and black inks. Finally a bright steel is used to create highlights and bright sections on hip joints and upper weapon surfaces.

Finally I add noise and interest to the clean metals with a sponge to add chipping and paint on scratches where parts would rub. This needs to be kept in scale with the model, so I try to keep everything small and refined. Once this is done I pull the finish together with thinned oil paints to really make it pop.

The vivid green found in the books for the Morning Stars is a white pre-shade over which I airbrush several very thin coats Tamiya clear green. It takes time to build up the saturation, so don’t be tempted to rush this stage! Once I have a good strong green, I mix in Tamiya clear yellow and repeat, but only where I want the highlights. This boosts the intensity of the final green and creates subtle contrast. To boost the shadows I airbrushed Magos purple contrast before a final glaze of the clear green to tie it all together.

Varnish at this stage to create a save point and protect the underlying work before moving to decals or weathering.

The gatling blaster is super simple to add weapon effects to. Games Workshop contrast Guilliman Flesh and Wyldwood are my go to colours to create sooty deposits on the end of the barrels from projectile muzzle flash. I apply exactly the same effects to tank and artillery barrels in Legions Imperialis.

For non-projectile weapons, like the Volkite Destructor I started with yellow contrast, then painted increasingly narrower bands of red, purple and finally blue inks over the muzzle working from back to the front. The final blue band should be very narrow and if the inks are applied over a bright steel base they will look even more impactful. I also use the same effect in a slightly different way on the Legions Imperialis Thunderhawks for the engines and las-cannons because I enjoy making life difficult for myself sometimes! Worth it though.

Morning Stars Warlord Titan

And that’s all the really is to it, except for the base and banner.

The banners I’ve talked about before on both the Reaver “Tempestus Ferri” and Warbringer “Ferrum Vulcanos”, but worth repeating again here. All are hand made from white printer paper and are a combination of brush painted and waterslide decals. The final finish is a combination of weathering with contrast paints, pigments and I even set fire to them to create the scorched edges. Literally. I don’t recommend this stage however unless you really want burned fingers and a hobby room that smells of battle. The same effect can be reproduced by tearing the edges rough and dry-brushing with a matt black. I’m just too set in my ways to change.

The base is from ‘Unreal Wargaming Studios’, but they appear to have stopped making them which is a shame as I loved them. Back to making them by hand again like I did with Solaria then.