We can eat our enemies, and our enemies can EAT THIS!

Brother Erasmus, Flesh Eaters Terminator

My work on the Warhammer 40,000 ‘Leviathan’ Terminator squad continues this week with Brother Erasmus, a Flesh Eaters Terminator with a LED motorised assault cannon! From the moment the Leviathan contents was previewed, I knew I’d have to give this miniature some special treatment.

Modelling

To make this miniature I followed my own LED Motorised Assault Cannon tutorial, with only one small difference: I placed a miniature slide switch in parallel with the ‘push to make’ switch. With this modification, turning on either switch will activate the assault cannon, regardless of what position the other switch is in. This means I can still use the ‘push to make’ switch to “fire” the assault cannon during a game, whereas the slide switch can be used to keep the assault cannon on for photography and display purposes.

The image on the left below shows the two switches connected in parallel, with the ‘push to make’ switch facing up and the slide switch facing down. The image on the right shows the assault cannon construction in progress. The motor used was 4mm x 8mm so was small enough to fit inside the assault cannon without modifying its shape. The holes you can see drilled in the side were covered up when the magazine was glued into place on the side.

If you’re trying this yourself, just be a bit cautious when attaching the barrels to the shaft of the motor. I used too much force on the shaft and pushed the plastic back off the first motor, destroying it completely. I had to pause work on this miniature while I waited for a replacement to arrive. If it hadn’t done this, then we probably would have seen Brother Erasmus last week. This mistake can be avoided by bracing the plastic back of the motor with a pair of tweezers when you are attaching the barrels.

I decided that an unhelmeted head was the best choice for this model. As there was only room for one CR2032 battery in the base, the motor, the muzzle flare and the helmet eye lenses would have all shared a single battery. This meant that when the assault cannon was operating, the helmet eye lenses would have dimmed, which I felt would have been too immersion breaking.

The head used is from the Leviathan Terminator Captain. I had this going spare as I had already sourced an alternative head for my Captain. I decided to shave off his hair and one of the service studs with a hobby knife, just so it looked like a different head. The Captain’s head is normally facing to his left, but I placed the head facing to the right, following the line of fire of the assault cannon. Unfortunately, some of the detail was missing from the left side of the Captain’s head as that is normally obscured, so I had to sculpt in the missing parts with modelling putty, mainly around his left earpiece.

Painting

As with the rest of the Terminator squad, I painted Brother Erasmus using my normal Flesh Eaters armour, Terminator iconography and freehand check recipes. I’m going to do a post taking a detailed look at my method for painting light skin soon, but you can find a brief rundown of my recipe for painting Space Marine pale flesh towards the end of this post.

It’s often tricky to exactly match Rogue Trader-era Space Marine heraldry (above left) exactly, especially when the design of the weapons has evolved over the years. Instead I tried to capture the feel of it with checks on the magazine (above centre) and around the barrels (above right). If you look very closely, you’ll see a version of the assault cannon ‘lightning bolt’ symbol.

As I suggest in the tutorial, the button that activates the assault cannon is hidden underneath a skull. Pressing down on the central skull (above left) will “fire” the assault cannon. I did briefly consider breaking my War of the False Primarch army theme and using a Tyranid skull for the button as a nod to Leviathan, but in the end decided against it. I’ve come this far on-theme and it would have been a shame to deviate from it now.

So there we are, four Terminators done! The Sergeant is probably going to take the most conversion work out of all of them, so I’m not sure how quickly I’ll get him done. Thanks very much for reading today’s post, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on social media at Instagram, Threads, Twitter/X and Mastodon.

I finished a third ‘Leviathan’ Terminator over the weekend, so Brother Rephas (right) joins the squad with a storm bolter and power fist. Since I’m getting this squad done at a much faster rate than my normal hobby progress, I thought it was worth taking a group picture to celebrate.

Modelling & Painting

If you’ve been building this Terminator squad too, you may have spotted that Brother Rephas has had an arm swap with the sergeant. This is because I wanted another basic Terminator in an active firing position, and also I needed his original arm for a pose I have planned for the sergeant.

The storm bolter LED muzzle flares used the techniques detailed in my LED Muzzle Flare Tutorial, the only difference being that there are two muzzle flares on a storm bolter. This meant two Yellow/Amber 0805 Chip LED (3V) connected in parallel. For the helmet eye lenses I used a TruOpto OSPG7331A-KL 1.8mm Green LED. Due to the position of the Terminator’s head in respect to its body, I found it easier to insert the helmet LED from the rear of the helmet, rather than underneath as I normally do.

After posting the previous Terminators, my good friend Apologist asked whether I’d considered illuminating the small shoulder lights/sensors with LEDs. I had, but decided against it. Actually lighting them up is technically trival, I would have done it in the same way as this servo skull. However, it would have added additional cost per model, and I think it would have drawn focus away from the head and gun effects for no real gain in overall aesthetics. So because of these two reasons I decided against it and to take the approach of painting the shoulder lenses as ‘passive’ sensors. I thought it was worth sharing that answer, in case anyone else was wondering the same thing.

When it came to painting Brother Rephas, I used my normal Flesh Eaters armour, Terminator iconography and freehand check recipes.

That’s it for today, as always, thanks very much for reading, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on social media at Instagram, Threads, Twitter/X and Mastodon. Next up, assault cannon goes brrrrrrr!

My work on the Warhammer 40,000 ‘Leviathan’ box continues this week with Brother Lazarus, a Flesh Eaters Terminator with storm bolter and power fist.

Modelling

I decided to start with this particular Terminator as he was in a good firing pose, which made it easy to add some LED muzzle flares. I used the techniques detailed in my LED Muzzle Flare Tutorial, the only difference being that there are two muzzles on a storm bolter! This meant two Yellow/Amber 0805 Chip LED (3V) connected in parallel. For the helmet eye lenses I used a TruOpto OSPG7331A-KL 1.8mm Green LED. Due to the position of the Terminator’s head in respect to its body, I found it easier to insert the helmet LED from the rear of the helmet, rather than underneath as I normally do.

Thankfully there was little else to do in terms of conversion work on this model. Regular readers will know that my Flesh Eaters army is based on the War of the False Primarch setting, which takes place in M33. This means that the Primaris models I’ve used in MkX power armour have been converted to give them a more MkVI appearance. However this wasn’t necessary with the Leviathan Terminators, as Indomitus pattern Terminator armour is perfectly in keeping with the time period and ‘Rogue Trader’ aesthetic that I’m aiming for with this army.

Painting

I spent a lot of time thinking about how to paint this model. Although the colour scheme is well established for this army, there are two things I’ve not had to paint elsewhere in the Flesh Eaters – a Crux Terminatus and winged skull on a chest plate. I was certain that I didn’t want to introduce any additional colours into my army’s colour palette if I could avoid it, so I initially decided to paint all of them Corax White. However that much white turned out to be a little visually overpowering, so I changed the winged skull to Leadbelcher instead. This meant that it no longer drew the eye away from more visually interesting areas.

I’ve listed my Crux Terminatus recipe below, primarily as a reminder to myself for when I come to paint the rest of the squad.

Crux Terminatus

• Administratum Grey basecoat
• Contrast Apothecary White shade
• Nuln Oil shade in deepest recesses
• Corax White layer
• Skull White highlight

The other aspect of the paint scheme that caused me a lot of thought was how to pattern the power fist. Other power fists in this army have so far only been carried by sergeants, and I’ve opted for rank insignia as decoration. But Brother Lazarus is not a sergeant, and I wanted to include some traditional Terminator power fist markings. At first, I thought I might paint the classic black and yellow stripes, but I was reluctant to introduce the additional yellow into my army palette as it is not used elsewhere. I also worried that it might make the model read visually as a Blood Angel. I did also consider black and white stripes but wasn’t sure it would have the same visual ‘pop’ – plus it might look like zebra skin!

In the end I settled for green and white checks. This checkerboard pattern is a traditional Terminator decoration, and I’ve used green elsewhere in the army as a spot colour for items like targeting lenses and purity seals. I’m pleased with the results and think I made the right call in the end. I also continued the custom of including the marine’s name under the chapter symbol on their pauldron. I grabbed my old Space Hulk Campaigns book off the shelf and had a skim through for a suitable and storied name for a Terminator, eventually settling on Brother Lazarus.

That’s it for today, but hopefully I’ll be back again soon with more Terminators! As ever, thanks very much for reading, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on social media at Twitter, Mastodon, Threads and Instagram.

Just a short blog post today as I’m still working on the Terminators from the Leviathan box. But in the meantime, here’s the teleport homer that comes in the set, with added flashing LED beacon.

Modelling & Painting

Although I could have easily added a normal LED to the teleport homer (especially given ‘Rule 4′), I decided a flashing LED was the best choice here. The homing beacon is seen flashing in the Leviathan trailer, and I think it helps to give a cinematic sense of urgency and imminent threat.

To create the beacon I just followed the principles of my LED Eye Lense Tutorial, although in this case I made a resin recast of the light bulb rather than a helmet. I had to change the base of the teleport homer to a 32mm from a 25mm to accommodate the required battery holder. If you don’t fancy making a resin recast of the bulb, then I have an alternative method of making LED bulbs in my Ork Comms Boy post.

The LED used is a 1.8mm 3V 1.5 Hz green LED from Small Scale Lights. The “1.5 Hz” or 1.5 hertz refers to the frequency with which it flashes – in this case, 1.5 times every second. The circuitry which allows the LED to flash is built into the LED itself, so no extra electronics were required. The wires from the LED run down through the body of the teleport homer and connect to the battery and switch in the base.

As you can see in the pictures below, I cut off the stabiliser wings to make drilling the hole for the LED easier. I then reattached them once it was successfully installed.

For the paint scheme, I simply followed my standard Flesh Eaters painting recipes that you can see in this post.

That’s it for today – I said it was a short one! But I hope you found that interesting. Please check back for some actual Terminators teleporting onto this beacon soon! As always, thanks very much for reading, and please don’t forget you can also follow my work on social media at Twitter, Mastodon, Threads and Instagram.