The Reaver Titan was, when I was young, the largest of the titans Forgeworld made. And as a young child with limited means, it was forever out of reach. I am now an adult with a good job and for the last couple of years, I have had both the means and desire to purchase one. Last year, my plans were foiled by buying a house, but this year I had no such excuse and so on Sunday the 6th of April, I made the leap and purchased as my friends keep calling it “a large resin child”.

I was blessed with Reaver #3579, which was cast mostly free of defects except for the chest plate which was insufficiently curved, but some brief back and forth got a replacement part shipped out. And of course, I couldn’t just leave well alone and build it as-provided, I needed to go above and beyond so I committed to both a large scenic base and a converted Vulcan Megabolter for its carapace weapon.

This post shall document the three month, two hundred hour project to build and paint Vocat Cataegis, Reaver Titan of the Legio Tempestus. Be forewarned, this is a 4000+ word article with fifty images. If you just want to see the titan in all its glory, scroll down to the showcase section.

Core Construction

I bought the titan in April before I was ready to start work on it, at least in part afraid of a price increase. I did start work pretty quickly on the carapace weapon but I wouldn’t start work on the body of the titan until late June. I started work on the body, which had a few gaps that I filled with plasticard, but otherwise went together quite smoothly (bad armour panel aside).

This was also the time I started work on the dead knight on the base, kindly donated by my friend Jelly (of Soulmuppet fame). The side of the knight was removed and I rebuilt some mechanical detail to make it look like the esoteric innards had been exposed using random mechanicum bits from my collection.

Next up came the legs. Given the extreme pose I wanted, this involved a lot of trial and error, with the legs held together using museum wax during the many fittings. Despite what people say, this wasn’t difficult just fiddly and honestly would have been fine had I chosen to keep the feet flat.

The toe pistons are just a case of repeatedly testing the fit and only commiting to glue when you are 100% sure it will fit. It is very important at this stage to have the leg armour to hand to make sure it will fit BEFORE you glue the pistons in place.

This was also the point where I sculpted the first version of the base using the MDF round you can see above and Krautcover foamed clay, which they advertise as no-shrink. So I sculpted the crater walls for both the big crater in which the knight has fallen, and a second smaller crater. The plan had been to skin the outside of the base with thin plasticard to give it a uniform, even surface.

They should really advertise it as very low shrinkage, because it turns out if you use 1.5kg of it on a base, even a tiny amount of shrinkage turns it into a banana. But CJ doesn’t know this yet and so forged on with finishing the leg assembly. It was very important to get the hip level at this stage, and I took a number of silly photos as I tested and proved this until I glued the waist in place.

At this point, a brief digression about glue. If you look online, you will see no end of discussion about the need to pin every joint on a titan and use epoxy or your titan will collapse under its own weight. Coswollop. Everbuild Industrial CA Glue is all you need, along with some 40 grit sandpaper and a sharp scalpel to key the joints. Four drops of CA glue will hold a car in the air, a few KG of resin is nothing.

Before I could go any further with the body assembly, it was time to paint the interior! The interior comes in several parts, and the first bits I painted were the two interior side panels. These have some vents, many cables, a body horror servitor to control the arm weapon and a computer terminal. I could have put something sensible on the terminal, but it was time for easter eggs. The first terminal is displaying Windows Media Player, using one of my favourite skins from the early XP era, which is suitably round for a round computer.

The whole interior was painted in this cream colour, which is the colour I think of when I think “armoured vehicle interior” alongside chromate green. The second display got some slightly more complex painting, because DOOM runs on everything, including Reaver titans apparently.

In real world time, I now took a break to paint a Chaos Space Marine boarding patrol, which will be a subject for a non-YotB post, and picked up again about a month later in mid-August having discovered the base was now a banana. So I did the sensible thing and 3D printed a rough base shape to build on top of.

This I then covered in only about 200g of Krautcover clay (which I really, really rate as a product, by the way, it’s just not designed to be used over such big areas and in such thicknesses) to build up both the crater walls, rims and provide a little texture. The 3D print originally contained a third smaller crater in the rim of the big crater, but given the position of the feet I had to fill this in in the end.

Base rebuilt, back to the interior. The body is built of three parts: the front, the core and the rear. The front contains the door to the head, some pillars and a viewscreen. I had a lot of fun chipping the various exposed details, as I imagine that during combat things can get thrown around quite violently. This screen is playing a documentary about Mars, with the subtitles on, obviously, as the interior would be quite loud.

The back section I didn’t want to spend too much time on as it’s very difficult to see, but it does have two small computer panels. One is just mostly some buttons, which I painted in a selection of bright colours in the truest scifi tradition, with some assorted computery nonsense for the small screens around them.

And the screen on the other side got a blue screen of death. Even in the 32nd millenium, driver issues are still a major problem.

You will have noticed an abundance of hazard stripes. I love hazard stipes. Sadly I didn’t get many good photos of the core before I installed the side panels, but that was painted in the same chipped cream, with hazard stripes on step hazards as seen here during a fit check:

I then moved onto the head, which contains the two moderati stations, the command throne for the princeps and the viewscreen. And this gave me options for more easter eggs. The primary view screen I did seriously, showing the titan engaging an ork stompa as Legio Tempestus did engage the orks during the Great Crusade. The moderati however is playing X-Wing.

The princeps and moderati were painted next, in uniforms that match the colour scheme I had planned for the titan itself. These were a fun break from the titan itself. A lot of people seem to go with bronze for the armour, but I feel like a stark silver helps offset them against the rest of the cockpit.

The final part of the interior was the tech priest. The Reaver kit comes with an exclusive tech priest, and I gave him a little servo-automata from the Horus Heresy tech priest kit as a friend. These were both painted independently, trying to be cognizant of what’s actually going to be visible.

They were installed and I could finally glue the body together. You’ll see them in-situ in the final photographs.

The weapons were built next, and they went together fine. I’d initially purchased a melta cannon and fist, but later purchased a gattling blaster to give me a better loadout for actually playing the game with. The melta cannon cowling I was quite disappointed with though, it had significant obvious 3D print artifacting and was reasonably badly warped, but rather than fight again with GW customer service I just aggressively reshaped it with a heat gun and pliers.

For swapping weapons and for transport, I magnestised the arms. Some people magnetise both the arm and the weapon, but I only did the arm for ease of construction. I sawed through the top portion of the arm and then used a forstener bit to carve out the recess for the magnet. The arms are not going anywhere.

The final step before painting could begin was to finish texturing the base. Fine cork granules did the job here, using a mixture of sizes to give me both ground texture and debris. It was primarily fixed down with mod podge, but some of the larger debris piles were stablisied with super glue.

The Rites of Colouring

Step one was priming. Between my regime of two trips through the ultrasonic cleaner with swarfega and a third trip through with clean water and the power of fully cured proacryl primer, I had very little issues with paint lifting throughout the entire process. The model was primed black, and this took a few sessions to do.

Several periods during painting I referred to as “masking hell”. The first instance was around the already painted interior parts. If I’d been cleverer, I would have primed the entire body before starting the interior, but honestly I’d then had to have masked it anyway to protect the paint job whilst painting, and regardless, it worked.

It was during this point I remembered that I hadn’t actually finished building the Vulcan Megabolter, and in order to tell that story proeprly we must start all the way back in April.

The VMB comes from the Warhound, and is designed to be mounted under its arm and so comes with a socket for the arm ball joint. It is also not ambidextrous and has an obvious side to it. I had to remove both these details and resculpt new armour panelling and trim to cover this up. Removing the old detail wasn’t too hard with a razor saw and modelling chisels.

And I could then begin the initial process of covering over the old detail and raising it up to the level of the armour panels. The AT scale Reaver VMB is shown here as I was using it as inspiration, although the AT Reaver VMB has a different ammo hopper design I had no desire to replicate.

(Brief aside, I did have some conversations at the time as to if converting the Warhound VMB was the right option or if I should acquire the VMB from the Baneblade kit and scratchbuild the entire back of the weapon to be closer to the resin At scale one. I mostly dismissed this on the basis that I didn’t want to buy an entire baneblade to steal one gun from it, but in my next project I ended up buying the sprue that has the Stormlord VMB on it, and so I do have one spare.)

Fast foward back to August and it was left in this state. I 3D printed a mount to hold it on the carapace mounting point, and finished the armour and trim. One detail I am particularly proud of is that the left side has an arrow-and-skull detail that I was originally planning on entirely removing, on the basis that I could not replicate the skull on the other side easily. However, the Reaver comes with a series of small details to embelish the armour panels of your titan, and one of these is an almost identical skull! And so I was able to replicate it fairly authentically.

That out of the way, I could finish priming and I could begin the actual painting process. Step one was to paint the superstructure. This is pretty simple, and I laid down a coat of a custom colour mixed from a combination of VMC Burnt Iron and VMC Exhaust Manifold. I love the Vallejo Metal range.

I spent the entire Saturday painting the blue portions of the armour, starting with a dark blue and stippling my way up to a pale blue to give it a wonderful stormy texture. This covered the left leg, right arm and right side of the carapace and head.

And then it was time to descend again into masking hell. The other quarters were painted in a bright off-white and then masked for their new patterns. The right leg was a simple chevron pattern, which was done with plain masking tape (although working to make sure the pattern lined up across armour panels was a significant chore) but the left side of the carapace and the melta gun casing were a diamond pattern. This involved cutting dozens of squares and laying them out one by one on the armour panels.

These could then all be sprayed in a very dark anthracite grey, and the bulk of the armour panels are done now, exlcuding trim. I also cheekily painted the cowling with a massive hazard stripe. My mechanicum have hazard striped weapons, and it was too much of an opportunity to not do so here. The curved surfaces of the back of the body did present some challenges and there is one prominent triangle in the diamond pattern, but such things are unavoidable.

The toes were their own special hell. I decided it was too much to mask off the entire leg assembly, and instead stippled the white on, and then masked the chevrons. They are the source of the one major heraldic error on the titan: the chevrons on the side pistons are the wrong way around. I know, I know, it ruins the whole model, you’ll have to forgive me. I did the same for the waist, which is stippled then masked where appropriate. That ends the painting of the armour panels themselves, and I could move on to the carapace detail.

The first step was to block in the metal for the large aquilla for which I chose bronze. Gold would have been more traditional, but there’s going to be a lot of silver on the trim and so bronze felt like a better choice. The scrollwork was painted with a heavily textured pale brown/off white colour, aiming for somewhere between ancient parchment and stone. Finally, in a fit of inspiration I painted the heraldic shield. It is:

Azure, three lightning bolts in fess palewise Or

And because I had to look up blazons to write that, the titan itself is:

Quarterly, Azure in 1 and 4, lozengly Argent and Sable in 2, chevronly Argent and Sable in 3

The meaning of the shield is that Vocat Cataegis is Princeps Senioris of the 3rd maniple of Legio Tempestus.

I had always planned to have writing on the scrollwork, but I was too scared to just have at it, so I did some planning. This started with tracing the outline of the scrollwork in Illustrator, printing that at as close to 100% scale and then drawing in the writing I wanted in pen. Whilst the carapace feels massive in the hand, the scrollwork about fits on an A6 sheet. The scrollwork reads Dulce et Decorum est a vi Machinae Divinae Interfici or “It is sweet and proper to die by the god machine’s might”, along side the name of the titan Vocat Cataegis or “Voice of the Tempest”.

And yes, I’m aware that if you actually put this on a ribbon what it actually says is “ET EST VOCAT CATAEGIS INTERFICI MACHINAE” and “A VI DIVINAE DECORUM DULCE” on the other side. The sacrifices we make for heraldry.

I then painstakingly freehanded this onto the actual carapace, adding my signature and the year (in roman numerals) the the little side scrolls.

The heraldic shin was much simpler. The scrollwork was done much the same, the titanicus T was done in bronze and the cog in silver. The scroll merely reads Tempestus for the titan’s legio here, and this was freehanded on with only some brief practice on a piece of scrap paper (and my cutting mat).

It was during this I turned my attention to the base. The downed knight was painted red, not because of any real association with a canon house or the households of any of my friends, but because red contrasts very well with blue. This was stippled up to a red-orange and the trim painted a bright brass. The superstructure was painted burned iron, and washed heavily with a mix of black and engine grease enamel washes, and a selective application of a rust wash where it was likely to have burned. The only regret here is that it is a fast and beautiful paint job for a knight and now I want to paint a banner of knights in these colours.

I also started on some detail work. The trim is painted in Stuart Semple’s Silver paint, a bizarre paint in my collection that has a very nice finish, and washed with Mig Black Enamel Wash reasonably heavily thinned. I also painted the void shield emitters, going for a bright purple glow based on the descriptions of void shields in Titandeath (which I was listening to for a large part of this portion of the painting).

Next, I paid some attention to the Vulcan Megabolter. The armour panels and trim were done, so it was just details. The skulls got a fairly traditional rendering using a pale brown base, several sections got hazard stripes and the front sensor got a deep red glow. One of the big challenges was ensuring a good combination of metal colours without being garish.

The other side had some more screens and details (some of which were rescued from areas cut away during conversion) and these got bright coloured buttons and some very basic computery details. I was very good at painting dials at this point, and the two on the back took only minutes. You can also see here the mount, which was sanded to within an inch of its life and decorated with nail art studs, which are an excellent source of rivet heads.

With that done it was time for a brief detail pass and the titan itself was done! I scoured the titan for hatches and vents and these were generally painted brass or bronze. Pistons were painted a bright gunmetal, and some metal details were highlighted silver or chrome. The gattling blaster was very simple, mostly just the armour and the gun barrels. I did consider painting on heat haze, but at this scale I was’t sure it would look right. And the melta cannon cowling got stippled to give it a constrasting texture to the armour, with the interior barrel painted orange-yellow to give a little visual interest and make it clear this thing is HOT.

And so on the 12th of September 2025, the titan was finished and I could properly start paying attention to the base.

Zen and the Art of Battlefield Maintainance

I was worried that with only the knight, the base would look too bare and so I dug through my collection and emerged with a sprue of tech thralls. Some light chopping later and I had four casualties. The tech thralls were chosen for their relative neutrality, I didn’t have to commit to a specific livery for them and also I already had them. They were placed on the base and cork granules were used to build up the dirt around them. I also used the opportunity to use texture paste to unify the texture of the groundwork a little more.

Everything except the knight was sprayed several varying shades of umber and the thralls were given a basic dark bronze paintjob with dark grey-brown tunics and pale deathly skin. No blood, because they’re zombies already. The ground gets unified with a light cream drybrush and we’re almost ready for scenics.

The knight however still needs a pilot. I had several spare sprues from the Preceptor/Canis Rex kit, and lightly converted a pilot to make it clear he was very much dead. He got painted in bright aluminium, with bloody holes in his chest. The cockpit interior was also painted, with the screens showing static, but the buttons still in bright colours for visual interest as it’s clear that there’s still some power coming through from somwhere. The artificial horizon ball was a fun tiny detail and I did my best to make it correct for the current orientation of the knight.

On to scenics. I added some flocking for the grassy bits alongside a few carefully placed tufts, and then doused the craters in Vallejo Still Water. This was a mistake and I should have used UV resin. It took days for each layer to dry, but the effect is great.

There were some leaks from the first pour, but that sealed them and later pours were mercifully leak free. It took four pours in the end, and each successive pour was less pigmented than the last. Finally, I added mod podge gloss over the top, textured using air from the airbrush, to add ripples and then painted those wave crests with dilute ProAcryl heavy gloss white.

With that, the only bits left were painting the rim black and adding a felt base, and securing the titan in place.

On the 28th of September, Vocat Cataegis was complete.

Showcase

Vocat Cataegis is truely a capstone project for my hobby. At least until the next one. But it brings together so many different areas of the skills I’ve developed in doing scale modelling for the last eleven years (and before that as a kid).

1. Mars-pattern Reaver Titans go to battle with ornate scrollwork details on their carapaces. Vocat Cataegis bears her name proudly along with her motto in High Gothic: “It is sweet and proper to die by the god machine’s might”.
2. God machines require constaint adjustment by their tech priests, who guard the inner workings jealously. However this priest appears distracted…
3. Even in the 32nd millenium, DOOM is still a classic. This tech priest is busy exorcising the machine of cacodemons.
4. The melta cannon is, by titan combat standards, a short range weapon. Powered up and ready to turn the enemies of Legio Tempestus to slag, Vocat Cataegis must close in to fully utilise her armament.
5. The cogitators at the heart of the machine serve many purposes, this one ensures that the sacred chants are played at an appropraite volume and in the correct order.
6. The priest is assisted by a free roaming servo-automata who can perform basic repairs. It is resting in its cubby, waiting for instruction.
7. Void shields protect the titan from harm, and the Reaver has four projectors providing overlapping shielding. Anything smaller than a knight that contacts the shield is shunted into the warp, preventing it from harming the god engine.
8. The princeps and his moderati wear uniforms based on the heraldry of their god machine. They are hooked into the very machine spirit of the engine and primarily control its actions with their thoughts, sharing the load of the immense intelligence between them.
9. However one of the moderati appears to be playing an ancient terran battle simulation from a galaxy far, far away.

Conclusion

That’s the reaver finished! In the new year I plan to finish the power fist and build a second carapace weapon (likely a missile rack) but for now, this was over two hundred hours of work. It was one of the most enjoyable projects I’ve done in years and a stark contrast to the mastodon earlier this year (even with the issues with the chest armour and the melta cannon).

Whilst comments aren’t on on this post, I would welcome comments either via email at connor@shearwood.work or on Bluesky at @cj.shearwood.games (this article is posted on this skeet).

I am, at time of writing, finishing the third and final Year of the Bigature project: the stompa, of which I will share a teaser:

In case you’re wondering what happened to the USS Soval, that will be the subject of another blog post but the short version is that the model was bad and on reflection, it didn’t really fit the concept of a bigature. The main reason is that the model isn’t actually that large, and the detail is very fine-to-non-existant. It is a very old model, and it didn’t spark enough joy to go through the effort to bring it to a modern standard.

Finally, I intend to make a short zine in early 2025 about Year of the Bigature. It will be posted in PDF form here, but also I will be printing a small number of them. They will be given out at events I’m at as tournament/event favours, but if there’s interest I may put aside a number to sell.

Until next time.