Huge Eldar project underway - the phantom menace...

Greets folks,

A couple of months ago I posted about eldar superheavies, having previously built a revenant and, for that post, a cobra. I also hinted in that post that a 3rd Eldar superheavy would follow, and after a few weeks of tinkering, sanding, drilling, gluing etc it is finally starting to come together. Without further ado, let me introduce you to by far the largest model in my collection - a phantom titan.

I decided before he'd even arrived that, as with my wraithknight and revenant, I wanted him to be in a pose to convey motion rather than a static one. Way I see it is the larger imperial titans and Ork / nid big chaps do static pretty well, but for the Eldar it should all be about graceful, fast movements. To this end I searched for images of non-static phantoms and found none. This should have rang alarm bells in my head but I continued on the path to glory.

It's daunting to take on a project of this scale but I found it useful to separate the phantom into about a dozen seperate bags and tackle one part at a time. The head and body were relatively easy, although sanding everything down takes quite some time. Obviously I washed everything in advance to avoid flaky paint later.

When it came to the arms I had to pin the shoulder joints due to the weight and massive gaps between the body and shoulder parts. This went pretty well and gave enough stability. The right arm I decided would be swappable between glaive and d-cannon, and rather than an elaborate scheme with magnets I simply opted to put a protruding brass rod sticking out from the elbow (with a slight upward incline so the weapon wouldn't slide off) and then slide the weapon on through a pre-drilled hole. The hand and chest gun options will be magnetised though.

So far I had only used 3 metal pins (4mm brass rod) letting gravity and superglue do the rest. Now the real challenge. I had bought a wooden mount to serve as a base and opted to go for a single leg to attach with the other leg trailing as if running. The body would be angled leaning forward slightly to aid balance and give the model the appearance of momentum. The trailing leg went together initially without a pin, but an unfortunate drop broke the knee joint and I ended up putting a pin in for stability.

By far the biggest challenge was that final leg that would make him stand on a base. I pinned both hip, knee, ankle and put an additional horizontal pin in the foot as well as one connecting the foot to the base. After some messing with the hip and especially ankle angles, I finally got him stable. Last thing was to etch some Eldar style swirls onto the wooden base using my new rotary tool, which is a godsend for fine sanding and such things.

Well this is where things stand for now.He's still got a bit to go before being ready to spray. I need to add some chest plates, attach a leg fin and build some Eldar architecture onto the base for decoration. Realistically he won't be ready to undercoated until end of the year I expect. I'm hoping to dabble with an airbrush for all 3 of the eldar superheavies when the weather improves, but for now will focus on Luna Wolves and exams to the end of the year. Cheers.