Go Marketing Dept.

Okay so here I sit, wallet screaming at me to go and empty it on SW launch day, ready to dive in at unlock till i came across a little note on the release dates. The new box set is out 2 weeks later. For £50 (or £40 if you shop around) you can get a set of scouts, two wolf packs and a drop pod.
My initial thought was why scouts? They look nothing like the sketch out of the old codex, (that guy with the power armour with stripped off arms and furs has always looked awesome, not like the shabby scouts GW keep supplying us with) and sticking a new head on one won't make it a wolf.
Load of crap I thought, then I realised, hang on drop pod, 2 packs, thats £60 just there, so sell the scouts, recoup some of the money and its looking more inviting. Then if you don't need the drop pod ebay that, through in the wolf pack spares and the box set suddenly becomes almost free.
Don't get me wrong, I'm dying to get my boxes of wolf pack so i can finish off my skyclaws and longfangs but I'm not stupid. I'll be sat here waiting for two weeks. Anyone else who is planning an army would do well to do the same. If your just fad collecting for some individual looking characters for your own chapter then yeah, wolf pack release day is the day for you. If your planning an army, wait two weeks and take the time to paint the box of terminators.

Another day at the office

aka very little done.

The weekend brought 12 hour shifts and so little has been added to my company apart from I've painted up the first of my actual long fangs and decided on a shoulder design for them. No picture as yet, want to get all of them together. Having seen the contents of the new space wolf box set (2 packs, 1 scout, 1 drop pod) due out later in october i may go for one of those, sell the scouts and spares and sit on the rest of my long fangs till then.

I've managed to get a few of my skyclaws basecoated in grey, again will probably finish those off with bits from the pack sprues. Also done the first lick of paint in drop pod no 1, just the doors, stanchions, thrusters, weapons, emblems, harnesses to go. Found a nice colour scheme on someone elses blog page (http://weemen.blogspot.com/2009/01/relictors-drop-pod.html ) and will be using the black doors on my drop pods.

Drawn up a plan for the company too which completely overloads a standard set up and points but lets me choose from what I have for the game in hand i.e. more antipersonnel for orcs, heavy armour piercers and ap for nids, etc. I figure this gives me about 100 figures - a full company and plenty of armour options. Only thing i haven't got yet is a dreadnought in there but with so much other mobile artillery its debatable whether i need it or not.

Long Fang Sergeant

Had difficulty getting the light right to photograph this guy, maybe should be on photo lessons not painting ones :)
Anyway, I originally saw this conversion on an Army for sale on ebay by GMM Studios and it made me chuckle so I squirreled the parts away to make my own version and just never put it together. But I got distracted by a girl...story of my life. This time in a painting way. I dropped off my competition piece at the local store and she was painting diamonds on her shoulder pads with varying degrees of success.
So when I came home I decided to see if there was an easy way and yes there was, cut them in with the modelling drill and then black line the grooves - great for those of us who don't have steady hands.
The rest of the figure was fairly easy - its not the actual missile launcher arm as I'd used that for something else but the hand glued onto another one. The gun arm had to be pinned at the wrist and gun to get the pose to hold as its a biker arm cut to position, standard hand and the position was just to weighty to get the gun to sit in place while glue dried. Followed up with my standard wolf colours and tada....one wolf either frightened of his own gun or blasting the lock off a door at close range. They're wolves - lets go for option 2.
All I want to do now is learn how to paint those fantastic glowing plasma guns I keep seeing.

Wolf Pack Herald 2

And after a few days painting this is it - the finished article. Not the best in the world but good for me :)

After trying shadow blue i went back to adeptus grey and having coated all the armour in base coat I attacked him with some black ink and a fine brush - for the first time ever I did some black lining. I was amazed at how the figure changed its look straight away, actually started to look more proffessional and didn't take as long as i thought it would.

Then I systematically attacked all the detail pieces, drilled rivet holes in the side on wolfs head and just started layering up everything but the armour in base tones and highlights.

Once that was done I glued on the arms and started layering shades of greys, then drybrshing fortress grey and finally adding some white highlights.

I did the same to the powerpack then started on with a simple greenstuff cloak. Only about my fourth proper attempt to use this and I was hampered by having left my moulding tools at home, this being done surrepticiously on my desk at work. Surprisingly a pair of tweezers worked well for me and gave me a too layered cloak - I wanted cloth overlain with furs closer to the top. After the paint job it has more of the look of hide with fur and skin. I wasn't happy with the painting on the cloak as it didn't have the cloth look I wanted but decided to go with the result as bare hides are probably more in keeping with wolves anyway.

Once that was done and painted I mounted up the powerpack and rolled out the fine detail brush to touch up the few areas I had managed to knock with the cloak colours.

And so finally my competition piece. Like I said, not the best but will do for me.

Wolf Pack Herald

Finally its here :) The first of the figures from the new wolf pack box.
Well, two of them actually although technically one is my sons. He's decided to enter the Space Wolf painting comp too, all he needs is to convince the GW manager to have an under 14's section too. He's gone for using the new Wolf Claws for his whereas I went with the nice big axe for the pose it creates.
Not sure if he has a finished article in mind. I went in knowing which pieces I wanted from the sprue pics and having handled them earlier in the week. The intention is to create the first of my new Wolf Guard and have him as a Skald (storyteller/history keeper). Thats where the Empire wizard parts come in. One of the arm sets from THAT sprue (yes the one with the flaming sword) have some nice scroll work round the edges so the intention is to trim them down and use a bit of green stuff to mold in the missing sections and have it billowing out behind him.
On the photo from the top you can see our collected parts. Below that are the ones I'm using. Then undercoated and legs based followed by what mine looks like after it's first layer of colour. Still not happy with the shadow grey, may go back to using adeptus, codex and forest grey in layers, it gives a nicer finish to it I think than the bluer shades.

A day off

Life always has a habit of getting in the way.
This time its the complete lack of the arrival of my guns for the Prometheus conversion. So instead spent most of the day painting the bathroom and hallway. As enthralling as that was I suspect no one is interested in the grey and white paint scheme or close up photo's.
In the end I finished up rescuing one of my ebay dreadnoughts. The small picture at the top is the Prometheus and the dreadnought as they were bought. One dash of undercoat and then an attack of codex grey.
I didn't bother doing any individualisations on the dread as its been painted up for my son's Ghostrider chapter. His marines are in grey with yellow pads and black greaves with flames. So after sticking on some plasticard Iron plates to represent extra armour and rebuilding the missing Leg plates with the same I added on the chapter flames around the weapons and legs.
Not my best but he was happy, and so was I - he traded me a drop pod for it so I can remount my Bloodclaws :)

These on the other hand are his Black Reach orc's I painted for him on another bored day. The kopta was no problems but teh Nobz looked boring so out with the bitz box. Some chaos spikes, old school power axe, lightning claw, Tau weaponry and a knife in the back later and they looked more the part than before.
I had intended to paint up all his defkopta's in the same scheme but he's decided he's selling his orcs to fund other projects so I'm just going to sit and twiddle my thumbs till my gun's arrive.
Or I make enough money on ebay to buy a conversion set.

Prometheus Stage Two

With the new rules promoting a rethink on slots and uses I decided that the Prometheus would be Egil's personal one. He's described as charging in with a Landraider adorned with shields from his home village so something distinctive should fit the bill nicely.

As to distinctive, I started with the shields then looked at the ragnar literature which describes many of the thirteenth with scenes of battle and home on their armour. So I've decided to extend this onto Egil's Raider.

One side has a dragon boat across the door, the other a navigational chart. Both sides have shields and pictures of mountains in the two insets. On the top there is a Thor's Hammer to one side, on the other a stone circle and a dragon - all suitably nordic/fenrisian in origin.

Just the guns, the sponsons, the shading, the tracks, the rust, the Company markers to go.

These are some of the Space Wolf models built previously and may or may not stay on for the new force.

I particularly liked the terminator with green stuff furs and spear. With the last codex not specifying a crozium, just a power weapon, fora wolf priest this was going to be him.

A lot of them are now part painted where I had to stop for other projects or replaced some parts as my army morphed.

Finally at the end is the Tempest. With the Forgeworld rules being updated comes the news I can now field these as a squadron of 3. Might look into putting hand in pocket as I'm not altogether happy with th eplasticard finish for the extra armour.