Hudson: Ecclesiarch -- Super Heavy Exorcist, Part II

Wow, it's been over a year... Here's an update on the Ecclesiarch. When I last posted, I had the basic superstructure of this beast built and needed to add details. First up was some over-the-top bling for the sides. I took some inspiration for the side plates from the Fortress of Arrogance field of skulls combined with the Sister's Fleur-de-Lis icon. For the skulls, I made a casting from the Cities of Death Imperial Basilica. I combined the skulls with the Fluer-de-lis from the Immolator kit. To tie it in with the Baneblade chassis, I framed the icons with 0.10" C-channel and added rivets with 1 mm plastic rod.

Next was to add in the extra armor plates from the Exorcist kit. These plates have protrusions on the back that fit into the Rhino chassis. In order to fit to the Baneblade chassis you either have to mill these off or mill spaces into the chassis -- I elected the second option to better secure the plates to the chassis. I started by making templates of the plates and the protrusions. I use these templates to trace out where to mill and also which rivets to trim off for a snug fit.

The hull is pretty well complete now; the fuel tanks will get added after painting as I've done with my other super-heavies. This brings us to the final details on the launcher -- flooring the servitor pit and adding the reload racks. I kept the flooring of the servitor pit simple -- that area will be fairly well obscured once the missile racks are in place. I simply dropped the floor about 3/16" below the deck and used some of the sheet tread plate to create the floor texture. The servitors will get glued in after painting.

The missile racks are really just supersized versions of the reload racks from the original Exorcist kit, scaled up to hold the Hellstorm rockets. I free handed the profile of the rack on card stock to create the templates, then cut the sides and ribs from thick plasticard.

Once the missile racks were in place, I was left with a bit of a quandary, the gap between the two racks just didn't look right. I ended up filling it with some cross-bracing and one of the torches from the Throne of Judgement, It's just enough to fill the negative space without being overwhelming.

Which brings me to the back of the launcher; I wanted to goth it up like the GW model. My wife had found a pewter turn counter with a rather nice angel sculpted on it. I made a green stuff cast of it and tried it on for size -- it looked OK but still seemed tacked on rather than organic. So I decided in the end to replicate details on the back of the GW Exorcist launcher, only 50% larger.

I started by scanning the Fleur-de-Lis from the top hatch of the Immolator and enlarging it 50%, printing it out and separating into the 3 main elements. I used spray mount to attach the templates to plasticard and cut to shape. I attached these pieces to a scrap piece of plasticard and prepared a mold using Insta-mold.

For the scrolls on the pipes, I free-handed the scroll shapes on paper, and attached the templates to thin plasticard. I made the ends over long so that I could fold them under or over to get the appropriate effects. I then prepared molds for these as well.

I then filled the molds with green-stuff and created the castings. I popped the castings out after about 4 hours and attached them to the pipes. One downside here; These banners make me want to redo the Fortress of Arrogance... again. (damn that technique refinement!)

A few more skulls and a few purity seals and it's good to go.

I also decided to add statuary to the front of the launcher -- pieces lifted from one of the Cities of Death kit modified to fit the available space. If I had it to do over, I'd leave out the front-most pipe in the center to make it easier to fit in the statuary.