Toll the Great Bell... House Taranis Imperial Knight

Toll the Great Bell Once!

Pull the Lever forward to engage the

Piston and Pump...

Toll the Great Bell Twice!

With push of Button fire the Engine

And spark Turbine into life...

Toll the Great Bell Thrice!

Sing Praise to the

God of All Machines

The Knights of Taranis were a Knight House of the Adeptus Mechanicus, located on Mars. The House remained loyal to the Imperium during the Horus Heresy, taking part in the Battle of Mars on the side of the forces of Kane. All but two of them were killed, fighting the forces of the Dark Mechanicum. Two members of the Knights of Taranis survived and went into hiding, but their later fate is unknown.^[1]

+++Lexicanum//crossrefference; Imperial Knight House designation ++++

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Outside of Forge World releases I can't remember being this excited about a kit in a long time. I know the kit has its detractors, but I think this thing is a must buy for any collector of 40K. When I picked up the kit I had the nostalgic thrill of being a child again picking a toy for Christmas. The frame is divided into three parts and assembly was straight forward (although I won't be glueing the rungs on the top carapace until after the airbrush stage). 

Instead of airbrushing the majority of the miniature and calling it a day I wanted to concentrate on creating the history of this particular knight. You can do this with a cool bit of story that you can tell your friends before you play with the model, but you can also represent the characters back history visually. I wanted this to feel like an old Ford Fiesta (which I drive...piece of shit that it is) not a BMW I8. I wanted this to feel second hand, that it's walked thousands of miles on a hundred different worlds. I wanted you to feel like when the Knight breaks down or runs low of fuel the pilot leap out, swears at it and kick it into functionality. 

So, how do we make this new kit a bit clunky? Well I used a couple of techniques found in the Imperial armour books. After assembling the knight in parts I sprayed the entire thing with tin bits, then highlighted it with VMC Chrome. Masking off the silver parts I then gave the parts of the armour that were to be painted red a heavy coat of hair spray and re-applied white primer. I then painted the red as normal (base of blood red shaded with blue). The black and yellow hazard striping were masked off to create a clean line. However I wanted the top carapace to look like it had been re-painted so I shifted the masking tape, re-sprayed black and run a que tip over the still wet paint to give the faintest outline of a paint that has been blasted off. 

Now the fun begins. I sprayed the entire model with water, loosening the hairsrpray underneath the paint which I then scrubbed with a wire brush. This chips the paint work...it actually chips it and you can see the first layer of silver underneath. If you look at the shielding above the head you can see that some of the scratches haven't made it all the way to the silver layer underneath, but exposes the white primer coat. The entire model looks like it has stood against 100mph winds, it's paint work blasted off, re-applied and blasted off again in the service to the Throne. 

The rivets were spotted with brown oil and allowed to cure for a couple of hours. I then srapyed white spirits over them and pulled them downward with a brush to create a rain streaked rust effect. The heat warping on the thermal cannon was created by first airbrushing purple, then blue, then green ink in smaller circles toward the tip of the weapon. I did not glue the faceplate on, nor did I glue the weapons on so that you may choose whether you want this to be a Knight Errant or a Knight Paladin in your games. 

This model is for sale and an Ebay auction will be put up tonight. 

Myles

EBAY