When I got home, I popped open the box and found some rather full sprues. I'm impressed about how much stuff they squeezed onto the sprue and my wife had to put up with me repeatedly showing her all that the sprues held.
Since I planned on doing some reposing on these guys, I opted to remove the bits one sprue at a time. As I discovered, this is the best way to do this. Each sprue more or less holds all the bits for one Centurion (a couple grav cannon bits excepting) and this helps with how many pieces each model has to put together. Many parts, especially the legs, have a specific way they come together and mixing them can have less than ideal results. I cannot stress how many pieces are in this kit. At the time of this posting, I have one Centurion built, one sitting in a bath, and the final still on the sprue.
The biggest part of this repose was looking at where the cuts needed to be. I did some dry fitting and looked ahead several steps to see what accommodations I needed to make with the various armor bits, and discovered most of the armor would cover any cuts I needed to make. While this didn't mean I could be absolutely careless, it did free me up to trim as I needed without being concerned about a ton of cleanup. One of the best parts of the legs is the ball joint connecting the feet to the leg. By just trimming out the slight bit inside the cup, I was able to adjust the foot to whatever position I wanted. I liked it when GW did this for the Riptide and I love it on this model as well.
One of the challenging aspects about this repose was the fact that there are so many pieces that attach to the legs. The kit is designed around the static poses seen on the box and when changes, even as small as the one in the photo, are made the adaptions needed for each piece increases with each layer. Thankfully, some hot water and a little bit of patience was all that was required to get everything to come together in the right places. If you do some reposing as well, make sure you have a game plan for the back armor piece. It is made to attach in a very specific way and I could have saved myself some extra effort had I planned out my process. It didn't hurt the overall look, but it took more time than I would have preferred to get it to attach and look correct.
While these photos look simple, I opted to take these pics for the sheer ridiculous amount of time I spent trying to get good contact between the torso and the legs. Because of poor (read "no") planning on how I was going to run the readjusted piping, I placed it exactly in the way to get a good solid connection. A little bit of work fixed this and tipped me off to how I should go about this on the next two. I repeat, (mostly for myself) plan out far in advance on this kit when reposing.
The front armor plates required more adjustment in the repose domino effect. This was also pretty simple to do. I was surprised by how much this plate section added to the model. Before, the model felt like an oversized marine, but afterward it felt more like the mech suit it is. Perhaps it's all in my head.
Going in, I decided I was going to magnetize all of the weapon options. At 80 dollars a kit, I could by no means own enough kits to have the different models to play WYSIWYG. I pondered and pondered on how I was going to magnetize the launchers on the torso. With some greenstuff to beef up the insides of the torso, it looked liek it would be doable, but then I thought about how much of a pain keeping track of a bunch of launcher weapons would be. And opted out for whichever option my wife said looked best. As usual, my wife's taste was excellent and I saved myself a ton of effort on the launchers.
While I didn't magnetize the launcher options, I do have the gun and drill options magnetized. The biggest concern I had was that the reposing of the arms would affect the way the hosing would attach. I really like the look of the hose and it really completes the look of a powered suit. Surprisingly, with almost no work, the hose attacked easily. And looks good with all of the weapon options. The couple pics I snapped earlier did not show my magnetizing very well, so I'll be doing a post in the near future explaining my process with better pics.
The posing of the first Centurion was centered around including a Traitor Guardsman I made from things in my bits box. Part of the the model is metal and I spent some time beforehand bending and shaping the legs and torso to look like he was being knocked to the ground. This changed when I realized some of the gun options (the lascannon) would run into the model. I set the guardsman down on the base to position some things and discovered the pose worked perfectly to make the choas traitor look like he is cowering before the Centurion. The pic was taken hurriedly, and future progress pics will better show this model. I'm pleased with the dynamic look the pair makes together.
I imagine that we'll see more of these on the table even with all the grumbling on the internet and in the game shops. With a little creativity, the models look good and I imagine they'll look good on the table. What things are you working on from the new release? What else would you like to see me work on? Leave a comment below and thanks for reading!!!
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