The Solaria ‘Warhound’ train keeps on rolling with “Sola Bestia”, Princeps Majoris and hunt leader of the Imperial Hunters maniple. The third of my Solaria warhounds and where I began to switch up the armour scheme a little to give each its own character and ensure they weren’t all entirely uniform. “Sola Bestia” and her sister engine “Canis Hastam” featured a split carapace and leg armour scheme to make more use of the red in the palette and introduce some ivory and black stripes for interest and contrast. This was a theme I additionally carried over onto both the Reaver and Warlord to pull together the overall appearance of the battlegroup.

I know Forgeworld’s Volkite Eradicator weapon options for both the Warhound and Reaver chassis have been reviewed as a bit lack-lustre for the points and although I’m inclined to agree, I did find them fun to run with the ‘void breaker’ trait that forced my opponent to roll additional void saves against hits. Just added a bit of extra spice. I also think the weapon itself looks absolutely awesome especially with the burnishing effects on the shroud.

Weapon banners

I began working on the banners at this point and although I didn’t necessarily want to go overboard and fit them to every weapon option, I did want to make them look at least a little weathered. The banners themselves were created in Photoshop (yes, the text on them does actually relate to the legion itself and include the legio ‘motto’. It’s the little details that makes the hobby so much fun in my book). The text was printed onto clear decal paper and sealed with a gloss varnish. The banners themselves were hand-painted onto printer paper, varnished and then the custom water-slide transfers added to them. Even though they are on paper this is easily achievable without either tearing the transfers or soaking the paper too much. It just takes a little practice.

Once in place they are sealed with another coat of gloss varnish and mounted onto thin brass rod. Finally, after shaping them I finished with an ultra-matte varnish and weathered them using pigment washes and thinned contrast paints. This was my go to for all of the banners in the battlegroup, but I’ll talk about the process again in a little more detail when I get to the Warlord and Reaver back banners as these were a little more involved.

That’s it, three Warhounds down and only one to go … “Canis Hastam”, which I’ll cover in a future post.

Update

Guess who got a nice new shiny pair of ‘Swarm Missile’ pods?