Legio Mortis Warhounds

The Legio Mortis Warhounds Ferrum Venator and Typhonicus Morte are scout titans of Battlegroup Infidel, a Death's Head Maniple that often fought alongside the Death Guard Legion in larger engagements.
Due to the hostile nature of the environments that the Death Guard were deployed in, and the decline in regular supply lines during the age of darkness, the titans of Battlegroup Infidel accumulated large amounts of superficial damage while deployed. Note the excessive amounts of corrosion present on the titan's weaponry and lower legs, most likely due to the hostile nature they were deployed in, possibly as a result of the weaponry utilised by the Death Guard themselves.
The corrosion on the Inferno Cannons may be a result of chemical munitions, which were heavily utilised by the Death Guard, and by their allies as supply and needs permitted.

These two warhounds have been in my collection for years, and I've been looking forward to painting them up for ages.
Originally I had them painted black with red trim, which was the standard colour for the Death's Heads back in the day. With the release of Book 1 : Betrayal by Forgeworld the look of the Death's Heads was updated to include more heraldry over their base black colour, including red and white striping and checks, with metallic trim. I had a good hard think about what I wanted to achieve for my titan battlegroup, in the end deciding on the scheme you see here.

I decided to keep the red trim for a number of reasons. These were older models and I decided to pay something of a tribute to their pedigree by adding to the older scheme rather than replacing it. If I had been painting one of the contemporary titan models I would have probably been less likely to do this, and more likely to follow the scheme shown in the colour plates in Betrayal more closely.
So I simply added some white checks and stripes to my existing models as a first pass. I decided not to add any red stripes or checks to the model as I reasoned it would have been too much red when combined with the red trim.

I also had a think about how I wanted the models to appear. These models would be used in both 30k and 40k era games, so I wanted something that would suit both. I decided to add a heap of battle damage, rust and corrosion, to represent the fact that the Death's Heads fight in some pretty harsh environments while posted alongside the Death Guard. They might start out as nice environments, but after a healthy dose of rad weapons, phosphex and chem munitions that wouldn't last long!
I resisted the temptation to add anything too chaosy, such as iconography, tentacles, tails etc. This was mainly because I wanted to be able to use these in Age of Darkness games, and reasoned that I could always add in some mutated weapons down the track if I felt the need.

Like all of my titans the weapons are held on with magnets, giving me plenty of flexibility in arming them. However I seem to have misplaced the turbo-laser that I had for them. I'm sure I still have it, I just don't know exactly which little pile of lead it is in. Such is the price of squirreling unpainted things away for a decade or two.
So in the meantime I painted up an additional inferno gun for them, planning to paint up the turbo laser when it shows up.

So that's it for now. The newly refurbished and extremely corroded scout titans of Legio Mortis are ready to walk.