Warhammer 40K: Original Grimdark Titans Weren’t Forge World
We are going WAY back to the 1990s, when enormous resin 40K models came from California and Forge World didn’t yet exist.
Back in the mid-1990s, Games Workshop awarded a license to make 40K-scale models of many of their EPIC scale vehicles to a little operation out of California named ARMORCAST.
These models were resin and pretty much exact scaled-up versions of the EPIC minis. They came in yellow resin, and were actually available in many game stores around the country. The big thing, of course, that captured every 40K gamer’s attention was the Titans. These were the very first warhammer 40K titans ever available, years before GW spun up Forge World.
Several years later, GW discontinued the license and started Forge World, but for a cherished handful of years, these kits were the elite bleeding edge of 40K collecting. The kits were resin and the larger titans held together with large screws and nuts that were partially embedded in the parts when they were cast. It was crude, but it worked well. Armorcast post GW, moved into other ranges after these such as Battletech and they are still around to this day, making a large range of terrain, sci-fi, and fantasy products.
Here is the combo-kit allowing you to build a Baneblade or Shadowsword. These were about 15% smaller than the much later plastic Baneblade by GW.
Here are the original Eldar Tempest, the predecessor to the later Scorpion grav-tank, and the Revenant scout titan.
They were identical to the EPIC versions:
Two Armorcast Titans from our collection.
The Towering Destroyer Eldar Knight and the mighty Phantom Titan. The Phantom is ENORMOUS and was the biggest thing you could buy for 40K back then. It was based on the beautiful EPIC miniature and stood the test of time design-wise for many, years.
EPIC originals – decades ahead of their time.
The Exocrine and Malefactor were from the Tyranid HIVE WAR expansion for EPIC. While the Exocrine would reappear in 40K decades later with a redesign, the unique organic transport Malefactor has never returned.
We are rounding the range off with the Orks. That was the old Battlewagon that could carry as many models you could fit on until they fell off (that was the actual rule), and the monstrous Great Gargant, perhaps the heaviest model made until the Manta appeared.
EPIC: Bad Moons Great Gargant on the far right.
You can still find knock offs of these on eBay to this day (remember the originals were yellow resin), and they a bit smallish compared to the current Forge World titans. But they do make great conversation pieces – and were technically official GW licensed models – so if you got one, play it! Let’s wrap things up with the 1990s pricelist (which was still a stretch for me back in the day).
~Does anyone still see any of these bad boys on mega-battle tables these days? Pics or it didn’t happen!
