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Lords of War – Building the Chaos Reaver Titan

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“Kharg’azgul, great reaper of souls and favoured servant of Lord Khorne, walks upon your petty world clad in a form of towering steel.

He is death incarnate, the ultimate fusion of immortal Daemon and god-machine, your cities will be ground to dust beneath his feet and the blood of your warriors will grease his servos.”

-Moroth Glave, Herald of the Traitor Legio Vulcanum

Showcase:

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Background:

Reaver Class Battle Titan

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The Reaver class Titan is a flexible, multi-role humanoid combat walker known as a Battle Titan that is commonly used by the Imperial Titan Legions at the forefront of the fighting. Amongst the honoured ranks of the Collegia Titanica the Reaver, like its larger counterparts, is regarded as a holy engine of destruction, an incarnation of the power of the Machine God, thrice-blessed by the Tech-priests of the Adeptus Mechanicus before striding into battle. Reavers are of an ancient design, predating even the Age of the Imperium and having seen action on Mars during the battles of the Age of Strife when the Mechanicus first seized control of the sacred soil of the Red Planet. Reaver Titans are not as heavily armed as the Warlord-class Titans which form the mainstay of the Titan Legions’ Battle Titans, or as fast and agile as the Warhound class Scout Titans, though the Reaver is still a potent war machine in its own right. The Reaver was designed at approximately the same time as the Warhound-class.

Fallen Reaver Battle Titan

Within the Forces of Chaos, the Reaver-class Titans are ancient and irreplaceable relics left over from the days of the Horus Heresy. They are the remnants of those Traitor Titan Legions who sided with the renegade Warmaster Horus during those dark times and whose blasphemous names still echo with dread thousands of Terran years later. The majority of these monstrous war engines have seen millennia of service with the Chaos forces and have long since become utterly corrupted by the touch of the Ruinous Powers and the Warp. Others are salvaged Imperial war engines taken from the battlefield as spoils of war, much to the eternal shame of their former masters. These captured Battle Titans have been subjected to bloody rituals in order to consecrate them to the service of the Chaos Gods. Over time, Chaos Reaver Battle Titans become an amalgam of daemon and machine, their once living crews fused to the controls and their souls subsumed into the Titan’s tainted Machine Spirit, the war machine itself now a single being dedicated to destruction and butchery, reborn to spend an eternity of battle in servitude to Chaos. Revered and tended to by the Warp-tainted Hereteks of the Dark Mechanicus, lesser servants of the damned view these towering engines of destruction as incarnate gods of fire and death. Many of the lesser beings who serve Chaos make obeisance to them, offering sacrifices of captives and even their own lives to slake these towering monsters’ thirst for blood.

How to build:

With large and detailed models like this that have lots “layers” of armor and parts I recommend painting as much as you can before assembly, and be sure to put blue tack or small pieces of painters tape on areas that will be used to glue the pieces together, but also make sure not to make them so large that you will be able to see unpainted areas after assembled.

I know a lot of people say to start at the very bottom and work up, but I recommend starting with the upper and lower main pieces of the legs. Once I had played with them and decided on a pose I pinned them using 3mm brass rod and affixed them with JB weld Quickweld. After attaching the legs I attached the feet, again using brass rod and JB weld and than attached the hips to the lower torso in the same method before going back to attach the shin pieces with all their various pistons and finally the toes to make sure I got the pose I wanted and also that it would stand flat surfaces without being unstable.

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Once the toes were on I attached the armor plates to the legs using regular plastic/superglue as they are not load bearing and it is much easier to work with than 2 part epoxy.

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After the legs were finished I moved on to the upper and lower torso. I wanted the Reaver to be able to turn at it’s waist and still stay very stable so I used 2 1×1/2″ neodymium  magnets in the center and several smaller magnets around the rim on the top and bottom so that it would “click” into place and add extra stability.

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After the upper and lower torsos were done I moved on to the upper body and carapace. I attached the main 3 back pieces with a 3mm brass rod/jbweld and used 2 brass rods per shoulder and jbweld to attach shoulders to the main body as they have to be able to take a good amount of force from the weight of the weapons and from attaching an removing them constantly.

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One thing that is nice about the Chaos Reaver compared to the imperial version is that the servitors and consoles in the main body are separate pieces and can be painted and put in after the body is build making it much easier to deal with painting all the detail. After the main body I magnetized the arms and the head. The head is straight forward, for the arms I magnetized both the “shoulder” and “elbow” joints using 1/2×1/2″ magnets.

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Finally once you get your titan all built and painted you may want to have a way to get him to games safely, I chose, and would recommend the Pelican 1560 as it has plenty of room for the main body and extra weapons as you pick them up.

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Thanks for reading and as always if any of you are undertaking one of these monsters and have any questions feel free to send me a message.

About the Author: Jonathan Morrow