Priscus Interfector Trium

I present the Warmaster heavy Titan 'Priscus Interfector Trium' of legio Metallica (cognomen Silver Skulls). I felt this engine needed a venerable name, not just because it's a Warmaster class, and frankly that should be reason enough! But also because it was painted to honour a legend of the game; "old three skulls".

Wait, you've never heard of it? I don't blame you. Until quite recently, when I was thinking how best to paint the Warmaster, I had entirely forgotten the studio Warlord that inspired the palette actually had a name.

You see, back when I was really into Epic during second edition Space Marine, there was an iconic battle report between Jervis Johnson and Andy Chambers. Legends of the game. The battle was a fight between Craftworld Eldar (Alaitoc) and the Imperium (Blood Angels). Featured in White Dwarf, it was re-printed in 1993 as part of the compilation book 'Space Marine Battles'. It was one of my favourite articles. The studio armies were inspirational, beyond anything I could ever dream of painting back then and had a massive influence on my hobby direction for years to come.

Included in the Blood Angels list was a Warlord Titan that featured in the games box art. This was one of the plastic Warlords from first edition Adeptus Titanicus and was painted by the eavy metal team to promote the game. It also happened to meet a tragic end during the battle from a catastrophic reactor meltdown. The photo taken for White Dwarf was a classic, the Titan slightly out of focus in the background of the shot against a suitably apocalyptic backdrop, surrounded by cotton wool explosions. That photo in particular cemented my love for all things epic scale.

Fast forward a decade or two and I was privileged to become the current custodian of that very miniature. 

So, it feels fitting it should be the spiritual predecessor to my Warmaster. It's also the twentieth war engine in my collection to date for the current iteration of epic. 

The palette

Ended up trickier than I expected. I wanted to match the Metallica colours shown in the current Heresy colour palettes featured in the books, but also wanted the link with the original studio paint scheme from the 90's to be immediately obvious. The newer artwork has a much warmer, hot red/orange for the base which was tricky. It had to read as red alongside the original Warlord, but also when taken in isolation match that warm orange of the book art.

Yeah, tricksy!

My solution in the end was to go with my usual greyscale armour preshade, pushed to full value white for the highlights. Over this I airbrushed Tamiya clear red, the same colour I used on Mortis over the metallics. However, in this instance applied over a flat white it creates a nice high value red. Once I got to a good saturation, I think it was five to six passes, I then switched to a Tamiya clear yellow and focussed this only on the top highlights. Being another clear paint it creates a filter over the red to suggest the hint of orange I was looking for in the scheme.

Varnishing

One thing to watch out for if you are following this scheme for the first time. If you gloss varnish after the base colours are done (which you probably should be) to protect the work and prepare surface for decal adhesion. The armour colour will look really orange. And I mean bright orange! Do not panic, this is normal and an effect from the way the light reflects off the pigment. When the final matt varnish is applied at the end, the colour graduations will return and it will look less intense. 

I won't lie, even I had a moment of doubt at this stage. But I've been here before and trusted (hoped!) it would produce the final result I was looking for once the final top coat was done. I'm happy to report it did.

Plasma coils

No glowy effects this time. I felt doing a plasma glow would be a distraction. There was no plasma glow effect done back in the 90's, this is a much more recent trend with OSL (object source lighting) and high contrast paint schemes. I want the heritage between the old Warlord and the new Warmaster to be the visual story here. Next engine I'll do a plasma glow for will probably be the next Mortis Warlord I think. Something to take me to an 'Extermigus maniple'. Anyway, back to the present.

Muted, cooled down plasma coils don't have to be boring though. I used Scale 75 series metals to give the plasma coils some life. The base is 'Old Copper' and the top of the coils 'Pure Copper'. For the sides I added 'Garnet Alchemy' to create contrast and for highlights 'Tourmaline Alchemy'. The latter I only applied just above the garnet shadow to create the little reflective glint of purest copper. 

Finally, to boost the effect I washed some GW Druchii Violet into the gaps between the coils.

Banners and base

The base is a resin Unreal Wargaming Terrain 'Titan Wars' one. The bad news is these are no longer available, however the good news is they have recently launched a new and even better series designed for both Adeptus Titanicus and Legions Imperialis. I'll give my thoughts on those at a later date when I start using them in builds. 

But let's be honest, the focus of this build was always going to be about the banners, especially the weapon one. I'm really not a freehand painter at all, but I had to at least try to capture the same feel as the original. The weapon banner was the simplest given it's just three skulls on a yellow base with red trim. Even I could manage that. I tried to capture the same appearance of the skulls to create just the slightest suggestion that 'Priscus Interfector Trium' was, in fact the machine spirit salvaged and resurrected from the husk of 'Tricranium the Great' ("Old three skulls"). The banner represents the three engine kills that gave the Warlord its name and as I can't use the old name, I came up with 'Priscus Interfector Trium' instead. Which translates as "ancient (of former times) slayer of three". 

Given my lack of free hand skills, I couldn't replicate the original banner, so I did my own interpretation which was a blend of the classic 'silver skulls' iconography, mixed with the weathered style I like doing. It's not perfect, but I hope it at least honours its predecessor.

The banner is hand painted on medium weight cartridge paper and includes decals which I weather in and distress to make appear part of the design. The skull and parchment I did by hand, the large icons and text are waterslide transfers (decals).

For the weathering I like to use artist pencils, pigments and thinned contrast paint for the stains.  I also set fire to the edges. No, literally. With a lighter or cadle to get that proper scorched feel. This is my favourite part and more than one banner has quite literally gone up in smoke! Joking aside, with acrylics it's controllable. I'm not sure I would recommend doing it where oils or on anything that's used mineral spirits is concerned. That feels like a recipe for disappointment, not to mention a fire risk. Don't do that.

Final thoughts

The Warmaster is a big project to take on, but is really rewarding to build and paint. It's a similar size to a Questoris Knight kit for Heresy/40K, but the density of detail is dramatically higher as a result of game scale. It won't be the only Warmaster I will be adding to the collection, there are more to come in the future, including at least one 'Iconoclast'. But for now I want to get two other smaller engines finished up as both are 90% done, so it would be good to close them out.

I think I'm happy with the end finish and the palette on the Warmaster, the red is not a perfect match with the art but pretty darn close, to my eye at least. The head is not necessarily the final version, I do have the more recognised 'skull' variant primed and ready to go, So I may paint that this weekend. The reason I went with the 'knightly' looking head was it better fitted the old school theme of the source material. It also let me sneak a little more blue and yellow into the heraldry as a nod to 90's edition Space Marine.

I'll leave you with a few family photos!