When the Imperial Knights Renegade box came out I couldn’t resist picking one up with how good of a deal it was for two Imperial Knights with a Knight Warden sprue and some nice terrain. I procrastinated for a while on beginning assembly as I knew I wanted to magnetise the weapon parts to cater to my indecisiveness.
The large task of learning to magnetise things and painting such a large model was very daunting but now that I have finished I think all the effort was worth it. I followed the guide from the blog From The Fang found here. Additionally, I added some magnets to the alternative face plates and shoulder shields for maximum variations. My fingers were coated in a thin later of superglue and I had a lot of frustrating moments with magnets that kept coming loose over and over despite the glue being dry. Gel superglue ended up saving the day with the thicker viscosity and nicer applicator being easier to control.
I chose to paint my first Imperial Knight as Ferrous Maximus, the Princeps of the Mechanicus aligned House Raven. This particular design drew me as House Raven is my favourite house in the law and I plan to them my other knights to fit the House Raven hierarchy. I have painted two Armiger Warglaives to serve as squires to Lord Grevan, the pilot of Ferrous Maximus, which I hope to share soon. The references for this Knight Warden is below:
Using the Leadbelcher base spray made painting a lot quicker as a very large bart of this model is just Ironbreaker layered over Leadbelcher with Nuln Oil shade and Runefang Steel edge highlight. I tried using the Mephiston Red spray on the non-metallic shell, but I found the colour came out a lot darker than the potted paint and I had to coat over it a few times anyway.
The stripes were somewhat intimidating to do. I started out trying to use masking tape to divide the sections bit this ended up being messier than freehanding it with a long lining brush. The large white section in the middle that denotes the princeps rank was a little daunting as I have always had trouble with the White Scar paint. In the end I painted it Ulthuan Grey then layered/highlighted it with White Scar.
I think some of the transfers are slightly rotated and off centre, but it is not too noticeable unless you are looking for it. There is some Blood for the Blood God technical paint splattered over the chain sword which I applied by flicking it from a thick brush, and I really like the effect it gives.
The base was done with crackle paint layered over red and orange streaked base and topped with black paint. If there are any ideas for extra bits of scatter to make it look more interesting, I would love to know as I am coming up blank.
Overall, I am very happy with how this model turned out and I am looking forward to painting the Knight Princeps model when my preorder arrives next week. Thank you for reading!
Lavender Miniature Painting and Gaming 
That looks great! Impressive amount of magnetization work, too.
Mephiston red spray, I think might be a closer match for Khorne red, but I’m not sure. The GW sprays are too expensive for my taste, so I don’t have any experience with them.
Cavalier over at Frontline Gaming turned me on to a good trick for white: Start with Celestra grey, then cover all of that except the crevices and such with Ulthuan grey. You don’t even need to go to White Scar/Ceramite white in most cases, because the Celestra grey makes for enough contrasting shading that the eye registers the Ulthuan grey as white.
The base looks fantastic. I wish I could manage to get crackle paint to work that well for me. As far as little bits to mix it up a bit, what I would do is break up more cork into really tiny pieces, small enough that there’s only one flat side, which gets glued to the base, or to a flat layer of cork. It also helps if you have a couple of different sizes of cork available to mix it up more, and make it less obviously sheets of cork. I might also give the rocks some very light highlights in a dark red/orange. Just enough to give them some definition, not so much that it’s really consciously noticeable.
Even without that, tho, that is excellent work, and I look forward to seeing the whole lot of them together!
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It really is a shame that a spray that is so expensive is so far from the colour it should be. I will have to go back to using just a white spray for coloured bits as that was less frustrating
I will try that white trick! It is very interesting how our eyes process things relating to colour.
The varying sizes of cork sounds like an excellent idea, I will have a look through my materials shelf and see if I have some different sizes of cork. Thank you very much!
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This looks great I have 3 knights to build and 2 to paint myself (converting one for a friend for Christmas). Seeing really nice work like this is a great motivator. Really lovely stuff.
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Very, very impressive once again. I’m yet to even start building a knight, so you’re so far ahead of me that it’s not even funny! The fact that yours look so outstandingly good makes it easier to bear, since I can look at the pictures. 🙂
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