Tools of the Trade: essential modeling supplies

A selection of some of the most useful modeling supplies.

A lot of time and effort is spent on blogs and forums detailing armylist building, tactics, and painting, but the basic modeling equipment that made all of this possible is often overlooked and little mentioned. Having been playing Warhammer 40,000 and assembling models for the better part of 16 years, I have accumulated a wealth of knowledge and experience on the matter, and wanted to talk a little about the supplies I use.  I have broken the post up by each tool for ease of navigation. Hopefully you will find some of it helpful. As always, I would love to hear about your thoughts and experiences!

Leviathan Crusader: Assembling the legs

The legs are done!

It has been a bit over a week since I received the impressive Leviathan from DreamForge, and I wanted to let you all know how the assembly has been going and impart a few suggestions for any of you who may be envisioning owning one in the future!

The legs are the probably the most complex part of the kit, and it is what you start assembling first (if you follow their nicely illustrated instructions), so it can be a little bit daunting.  There are a lot of parts (many that you are not to glue), pistons, joints and armour plates, but luckily they all fit flushly together and layer on top of each other easily.  Because of all the parts and the points of articulation, I took my time carefully trimming and sanding the pieces before dry  fitting all of them.  This allowed me to get more familiar with the model and how each part was intended to function, before gluing anything down.  There are a few minor errors in the instructions for the feet (which have been corrected and posted on their blog), but because the sprues are arranged by letter and have all the relevant pieces together, it is easy to find everything that you need.