Between No Quarter and the BrushThralls site, we've seen detailed assembly guides to all the new large-sized Apotheosis 'casters...except Darius. Don't think of it as being left out, Cygnar players. Think of it as saving the best for last!

Opening the box

Like the other large 'casters, Darius comes in a bunch of bits and pieces.

Here's the full list of parts. I'm working top to bottom, left to right in the large picture.

• Main crane piece
  
• Right arm
  
• Left leg
  
• Steam cannon
  
• Left arm
  
• Body & right leg
  
• Steam cannon hose
  
• Cockpit hatch
  
• Connector bits (2)
  
• Bases (1 medium, 3 small)
  
• Halfjack arm sprues (3)
  
• Halfjack bodies (3)
  
• Halfjack mines (3—there were 4 in my pack)
  
• Halfjack leg sprues (3)
  

As always, the first step is to file off the mold lines and flash. Do this step and wash the parts in Simple Green (dish detergent will work too) before continuing.

Getting it together

My preference with multipart models is to assemble everything before painting. I'll occasionally paint display models in pieces before assembly, but these are rare exceptions. Assembling the entire model up front makes painting some areas tricky, but I'd rather deal with a few awkward, low-visibility spots than risk damage to the completed model as I try to assemble it. I recognize that this approach doesn't work with everyone, so I'll include occasional notes in italics for the assemble-after-painting folks.

The easy part: attaching the left leg

One of Darius' legs is already attached, so start by attaching the other one. There's a ball & socket joint between the left leg and the body. This allows you a little leeway in posing if you're putting him on a scenic base. The ball and socket are roughly textured and have lots of surface area, so you don't need to pin the join.

The pegs on the bottom of Darius' feet fit nicely into opposite ends of the slot in the large base. Insert the main body piece into the base first, without gluing it. Then put a drop of strong gap-filling CA glue (BSI's Maxi-Cure is my favorite) into the left hip socket. Working quickly, slot the left leg peg into the base and fit the ball into the socket such that the figure is stable on the base. The legs are far enough apart that they don't interfere with painting.

The hard part: steam cannon

Set these components aside to dry and turn your attention to Darius' tricky attachment: the steam cannon. The cannon comes in multiple parts, again with ball & socket joints. At first glance, this seems to indicate that the cannon offers a large range of poseability. Closer examination shows this assumption to be false.

The main cannon attaches to the connector piece just below the barrel.

Carefully drill out the two sides of the join for a small pin. Both sides are extremely thin, so take it nice and slow. Insert your pin and put the two parts together as shown above, but don't glue it yet. The cannon, the connector, and the body have to align in a particular way in order to get the cable piece to fit. If you are a skilled modeller who doesn't mind making new cables, you can disregard the following instructions and pose the cannon however you want. These instructions are specifically for assembling the stock model.

There's a ball & socket joint between the connector and the main body, but this time you'll want to pin it. There isn't enough surface area to support the weight of the cannon. You can see the socket side in the picture above. The picture below shows what the whole thing looks like attached to the body. Remember, don't glue anything yet. You're not done dancing the positioning dance.

OK, now comes the tricky part. If you've dry-fit the model as shown above, your pins provide hinges at the articulated points of the assembly. Carefully rotate the parts around on their hinges such that the "L"-shaped cable piece fits into the socket on the bottom of the barrel and the other socket on the body. This is a tricky process, especially if you've got big fingers like mine. You can use Blu-Tack to give some "stickiness" to the hinge points. This makes it easier to keep the assembly from moving, but means you'll have to clean your joins and pins before you glue them.

Once you've seen how it all fits together, you can go ahead and glue it. If you're using a strong gap-filling CA glue, you'll have 30–45 seconds of curing time in which to wiggle everything around. Recruit a helper if you can; your helper can drop some CA accelerator on the assembly while you hold it steady.

The steam cannon blocks a substantial portion of the body. To paint it separately, you'll want to pin the cable to the steam cannon barrel and glue it in place there. Glue the steam cannon to the connector, but don't glue the connector to the body yet. When you're finished with the painting process, glue the connector and the cable to the body. There's no need to pin the cable at both ends.

The other parts: crane and arms

The crane attaches to its connector just like the steam cannon did.

You can glue this one with just a cursory dry-fit. Insert your pins as hinges and move the assembly around until it looks right. There's a wider range of poseability on crane than there was on the cannon, but not by much. Glue the joins as before and move on to the arms. The crane assembly doesn't block as much as the cannon, but you probably want to paint it separately anyway. Go ahead and glue the connector to the crane, but don't attach the connector to the body yet.

Compared to the attachments, the arms are really easy. More ball & socket joints here, but still worth pinning. The only problem you'll run into is the arm pieces bumping up against the legs. Make sure to position the arms so they're two or three millimeters away from the body. The arms are very bulky, so you'll definitely want to paint them separately. Position and pin them now, but don't glue anything.

At this point you've got a fully-assembled Darius and you're ready to move on to the halfjacks.

The cutest models in WARMACHINE

Each halfjack consists of five pieces: two arms, two legs, and a body. They're a snap to put together—more ball & socket joints for the arms, and cylinder joints for the legs. Assembly will be easier if you attach the legs first. Once they're on and dry, put the arms in. There's enough contact in each of these joints to make pinning optional.

Basing

It's time to play with my all-time favorite basing material: concrete patch! It's a gritty, sticky grey paste used for repairing sidewalks. It smells terrible and looks just like 32mm dirt when it's dry.

The only tool you need to apply this stuff is a popsicle stick or coffee stirrer. Scoop out a blob of concrete patch and smear it on the base. Cover the entire base with it and wipe your stick clean. Then use the edge of the stick to scrape the patch level.

Once the concrete patch is down, forming your basic ground texture, you can add additional texture with different materials. I like corn meal and aquarium rocks on my models. The rocks are nice for simulating small boulders. The corn meal provides sharp, irregular shapes for smaller rocks. Concrete patch is adhesive, so pressing these materials into the patch while the patch is wet will lock the materials down. Be careful not to put any rocks or corn meal where they'll interfere with the model's feet after assembly.

The model looks better if the feet are sinking into the ground—it gives the impression of weight. However, Darius is lumpy enough where you'll want to prime him separately from the base, regardless of whether you're painting him fully assembled or not. You can reconcile these two factors by waiting a half hour or so until the concrete patch is partly cured. Brush the bottoms of the model's feet with a little water to prevent them from sticking to the concrete patch. Then take the model and press it down into the base, fitting the pegs back into the base's slot. You can poke a thin wire up through the bottom of the slot to show you where the pegs should go.

Once you've made your impression, pull the model out and let the concrete patch finish curing for a full eight hours. It may look dry after only two or three hours, but you want to make sure all the moisture has evaporated before you prime it. The procedure is exactly the same with the halfjacks, only their feet don't fit into base slots. Just make the impressions and then glue them to the base once the concrete patch has cured. You can pin them if you like; I didn't bother, and they appear to be holding up just fine after half a dozen games.