Here’s some more details on the final stages of base finishing. I wanted to have an infantry model on the base to give a sense of scale for when the titan isn’t being used in a game (because, let’s be honest, I’m probably going to get to use this only a very few times, so it’s mostly going to be for display). One of my friends suggested I should have someone getting stepped on, like a Tau Crisis Suit or something, but there were a couple of problems with that in my mind. Firstly, I don’t like super gory models and bases. Personal opinion, but I just don’t think they look good, and I don’t particularly want something like that in my house where my 1 year-old is going to ask questions about what all that blood spilling out of the squashed guy is. Secondly, I kind of like the Tau and am considering them as a second army (My main is Space Marines), so I don’t necessarily want to run into a situation where I’m fielding this thing alongside a potential future Tau army and there’s squashed Tau guys under the Titan. Awkward… I thought about doing a Fire Warrior standing by the ruins looking scared, but that can be hard to convey with a model sometimes (my green stuff skills are not amazing). But then I thought, maybe I could have the Fire Warrior watching somebody get stepped on– that would convey the general feeling.
Anyway, I got to thinking that if I wanted anybody to be stepped on, it’d be Chaos. I don’t think I’m ever going to field a Chaos army, and they’ve kind of been my arch-nemesis ever since I started playing 40k (both my brother and my high school friends played Chaos armies). So, I decided I could do a squashed Chaos marine and wouldn’t need to make him all gory to get the point across that “this guy just got stepped on by something enormous.”
In this first picture you can see that I had remarked the toe positions in a darker marker; this makes it possible for me to slather gluey sand all over the base without getting it all over the toes of the titan. In the below picture, the ruins behind the titan’s left foot and the tile pieces behind that have all been epoxied in place. I’ve also glued down the Chaos posessed marine that’s been smashed into the ground. I bent his arms and backpack up a bit, then smashed his shoulder pads with a clamp I had used earlier in the titan-building process.
Next up, I put down some sand. For this, I basically just dumped some sand into a plastic cup and added water until the sand looked wet and was easily stir-able without being too much like slime. Then I added a bunch of PVA glue and spread it onto the base with a plastic spoon and a knife to give me a bit more precision. After it had dried, it was pretty solid, so I spray-primed the whole thing black, then dry-brushed brown over the dirt with a large brush. After that, I did some drybrushed P3 Greatcoat Grey and Citadel Administratum Grey onto the ruins and stones. I think I followed it up with a very light drybrushing of Dheneb Stone, but I don’t quite remember. I also did a lighter brown on the dirt in some places for highlights. I didn’t bother doing a wash; I tried it a bit on a small area and it was almost completely invisible, so I didn’t bother with doing any more. I did the Chaos marine in red so he’d stand out from the blue on the titan and brown on the base. I also washed him liberally with Agrax Earthshade to give him more of a beat-up and dirty look.
Here you can see it with the titan’s legs placed over the body while I was checking what it would look like when finished.
Next up, completed titan!
