Classically trained animator and professional storyboarder Aaron Davies spent two months building the ultimate carry case for his Warhammer 40k army: a full scale scratch-built model of a Capitol Imperialis. The Capitol Imperialis is a truly monstrous land vehicle that has only ever had an official model in the small scale spinoff game Epic Space Marine. Davies tells us how, and why, he made this monster ‘miniature’.
Davies has been building a custom Warhammer 40k Astra Militarum army for two years. He says “I’ve always wanted to take an 18 sentinel army to a tournament”, admitting “it’s not very good, but I play for shits and giggles and I love sentinels”. That skew list simply could not fit into his current army carry case, so he decided to make a custom build that would accommodate his entire force.
That’s when inspiration struck. “I thought it’d be cool to make it into a Capitol Imperialis”, Davies recalls, with “a drawer for carrying my gaming stuff”. He reasoned that “if I put it on wheels it’d replace my trolley”, and “because it would look awesome I wouldn’t need to carry a display board either”.
Making something that technically served a useful purpose gave him “mental permission to build something large, unwieldy and not very practical”, he explains.
He based the design for the Capitol on the original model that appeared in Epic Space Marine. That was Games Workshop’s second ‘Epic’ scale game, which added tiny models for Space Marines and other infantry, and loads of tanks, to the Warhammer 40k Titans which had appeared in 1988’s Adeptus Titanicus.
Davies wanted to “take this dated design from the early ‘90s” and redesign it so it looked appropriate alongside the modern Astra Miliarum Warhammer 40k faction, while “preserving and honoring” enough of the retro design that people would recognise it.
You can find loads of pictures from the build process on Davies’ Instagram account, @thestoryboardguy.
The model is built “from 3mm pvc foam card over a pop riveted aluminium and pvc pipe frame”. Davies designed and 3D printed some “detail parts, hinge mounts for the front and rear doors, and some structural mounting points to join the shell to the frame”.
The design is extremely functional. Davies explains that “the front and rear ramps open: the front ramp has a magnetic latch; the rear ramp has two spring bolt latches and slides away under the hull for convenience when open”.
Storage space comes from “four slide in steel trays from an Ikea KVISSLE letter sorter”, which provides room “for 36 sentinels, or 24 Leman Russ battle tanks, or six Baneblades”. A rear drawer provides room for gaming accessories “or a seventh Baneblade”, for when you absolutely, positively need to level every structure within a four mile radius.
The model is colossal: it measures “85cm long, 65 cm high and 60cm wide”, and “weighs 14.3kg with a belly full of miniatures”. It is proportionally a little shorter than the original design, so as “not to be completely impractical to transport, lift, or store”.
The Capitol has a carry handle on top, and it can clip onto a wheeled dolly for a rolling configuration. If the cannon barrel looks a bit long to you, Davies says that’s because it “extends to serve as a pull handle when [it’s] on the dolly”.
The project “took a solid two months” to finish, but Davies completed it all in his spare time. “My wife started calling it my second job”, he jokes. That’s an incredible pace for something so huge. “I just broke the build down into lots of little tasks”, Davies says, “that way I always had momentum”.
Davies explains that he “got back into the hobby a few years back when a friend died and I inherited all his hobby stuff”. Initially he was “building things to work through the grief”, as he “almost felt like I owed it to his memory to take all his cool stuff and do something really cool with it that he’d love”. The experience “awoke a creative spark for making tangible cool things that I could hold” that he found “so much more satisfying than drawing or animating”.
‘Creative spark’ feels like an understatement. Davies’ Astra Miliarum army “is all ghost skeletons, like the cursed guys from Dunharrow in The Lord of the Rings”. Initially, all his infantry for the army were “conversions of GW models”, but Davies says he “was never super happy with them” – so he taught himself how to use Blender to custom design his own range of sci-fi skeleton infantry, called GI Bones.
“It’s very satisfying playing games with miniatures that are 100% yours”, Davies says, “I can’t recommend it highly enough”. The Blender skills he gained making the GI Bones range helped him to “create all of the detail parts on the Capitol”.
He thinks of the massive vehicle as “a big rusty ghost ship” for his undead guardsmen. He’s even planning to add a bridge crew when he has an opportunity: “a skeleton crew, if you will”.
Reflecting on the project as a whole, Davies says “I wanted to see if I could make this thing, that many regard as dumb and utterly ridiculous, into something that, when put with the army on a table , would look completely believable and awe inspiring”. We think he’s managed it handily.
Interested in creative scratch builds? Check out this Warhound Titan made from plastic sprue waste. Like the idea of gaming with oversized Warhammer 40k figures? Then you’ve got to see this game of Zone Mortalis played with JoyToy action figures!
Source: Wargamer
