Hello fellow Sports fans – Garfield her again to talk you through my latest 40k caper, Imperial Knight Armigers.
As you can probably tell if you have read any of my posts, I am a huge Magpie when it comes to tabletop gaming. Anything new and shiny that gets released I want to buy and drag back to my fluffy nest. Well, when the Knight codex dropped a few weeks ago I wanted every knight in the codex, immediately. However, life gets in the way of such frivolous expenditure, my children do need to eat after all, but they can certainly got to school barefoot just as long as Daddy gets his new toys.
So my first purchase was the Armiger box set. They really are great models and are crying out for kitbashing. I have plenty of bitz left over from my rather large Imperial Guard army so I decided to try and tie them in. My fluff plan is that they are an Imperial Knight House that has been fighting for dozens of years at the forefront of the Maledictum. As a result of this they have suffered heavy losses and need to field repair as they go. Further, some of the Knight pilots have been slain in the fighting and it has fallen to ordinary guardsman to man the giant fighting machines. Due the such casualties, the original Household no longer exists per se, so the remaining Knights, instead of giving up their arms or becoming Freeblades, have sworn fealty to House Hawkshroud. Each Knight will be piloted by a decorated soldier from each of the remaining regiments of the Imperial Guard army, so each Knight will have slightly different heraldry representing which regiment the pilot comes from.
So – time to make my first knight. I had a seated Guardsman from the Taurox Prime kit so I decided to make my first Knight open topped. At first I struggled to work out how to go about cutting open the hatch. Due to my lack of patience, I decided to crack open the 18v power drill and 12mm wood drill bit and do you know what?! It actually worked. I drilled a large 12mm hole straight through the top of the knight.
To trim, I drilled dozens of extra, smaller holes using a 2mm drill bit. That way it made it much easier to trim the plastic back. I then slightly trimmed the arms of the Guardsman and he fitted like a finger up a nose.
I have had some trouble in the past fixing decals so I went to my local hobby shop and picked up some Humbrol Decal Fix and Humbrol Matte Varnish. I couldn’t recommend these products enough. The varnish is especially good and as I am using weathering powders, sealing the model after applying is an absolute must if you plan on using them in game. For display purposed you could probably leave them as is.
I think weathering powders are worth their weight in gold. They really add so much “Grimdark” to a model without too much effort. One tip though, if you do varnish your model after applying the powders, you do need to apply a little extra powder as the varnish can drown out the colours slightly.
I am really pleased how my first knight turned out and tried to replicate some of the weathering on my second Armiger.
After the success of using the drill on the first knight I set about adding some more battle damage to my second Armiger. In hindsight I got a bit cocky and careless and the 12mm drill bit dug into the knight canopy and tore a pretty big hole in it. I was gutted. Well, I thought “in for a penny, in for a pound” so I drilled another large hole haha (what am I doing?!?!?) to show how to original pilot died. After weathering the knight, a bit too much in my opinion, I don’t think it has come out too badly. I am still tempted to try and remove the canopy and patch from the inside to resemble so pretty heavy field repair. I’m just not convinced, so watch this space.
Again, I applied the decals, weathered it with powders and sealed it. It is still not 100% finished but certainly not far off. I will post up another image on my Instagram once it is complete (Garfield_RFW).
My overall plan is to eventually add another 2 of these, whether they be the Armigers or Helverins I am undecided. Rule of Cool probably demands some sort of blood crazed Helverins but who know as of yet.
I then need to decide on which “centre piece” to have. Whether it be one of the new Dominus boppers or a Forgeworld Cerastus. Only time and finances will tell. Do children need to eat?
Au revoir, Garfield out.