I’ve begun to assemble a pack of Skyclaws now (jump pack marines), and can safely say that the new boxed set integrates with the older plastics without any problems at all – and are infact superior to tidy up as well.  I reckon that 30~35 men and 4~5 tanks will comfortably see me with a 2000 point army – one thing that I do need to do though is to ensure that my actual HQ choices (of which you have double the normal allowed number) are unique and both nicely converted and painted.  I’m aiming to use a Wolf Guard Battle Leader rather than a Wolf Lord, as this would only represent a third of the whole Company.

The topic may have given you a slight indication, but it’s actually my birthday today, sadly I can no longer claim that I’m in my twenties   However due to having quite a cool family I had a number of fantastic pressies.  From a modelling perspective I ended up with a few ‘essentials’ namely glue, undercoat and more snow scatter plus a box of Space Marine Scouts with sniper rifles, another Space Wolf Pack box and a Canis Wolfborn – oh, plus the vouchers for a Space Wolf Battleforce when it comes out this weekend.  More than enough for me to actually get the vast majority of my army done   There are only a couple of things that I will need to buy to get my army to the point I want – namely another box of Wolf Guard in terminator armour and a box of Devastators – however it might be worth just buying the heavy weapons from a Bitz place instead.  Transports I’ll treat as a separate entity.  I think that these pressies are an excellent result   I’m still not conviced about the Canis Wolfborn, but at the end of the day I’ll never look a gift horse in the mouth.  It might be possible to convert the wolf a bit to make it more fitting – watch this space.

Here is the base on it’s newly arrived plinth.  It’s going to look OK.  Not my finest work, but passable.

Tomorrow I’m going to get straight on with the metallics as I feel that’s going to make a hell of a difference.  Cloak needs finishing sculpting as well as a matter of urgency as it needs time to set.

So when I get back tonight, my job is to finish the highlighting and shading (a tall order and late night might be involved).  Tomorrow is out as I have to go out, but Friday should allow me a good chunk of painting time.  Fingers cross that it’s enough!

My deadline is still very tight (verging on the impossible), as the base needs to be painted and the cloak finished, both of which could feasibly be classed as a model in their own right.  Sadly I’m out tomorrow evening at a friends (though am planning on coming home early) and out for a few beers on Thursday and I can’t get out of either – not enough time left!!!  I have two items that I aim to get done tonight – shading and highlighting of the Dreadnought.  I’m going for a pretty simple scheme here, shaded with carefully applied washes (three or four colours), plus lined with a codex grey and charadon granite mix (this looks like lightly weathered dirt).  Highlighting will be fortress grey on a wet pallette (which keeps it moist for longer and help to prevent chalking up) and sharp edge highlights with skull white.

Once that is done I have to finish re-undercoating the metal areas, which roughly break into two items – steel and bronze, then paint these up.  Thankfully metallics are not horrifically complex to paint.  I can then park the body on one side and work on the cloak.

Currently I’m meant to be working on my brothers flat again on Saturday – however I’m toying with the idea of taking another one of my precious days holiday and using this to stand a chance at getting everything painted.

I’ve still got the fur on the cloak to finish (not that much left to be honest), and the Chaos Space Marine on the base to give arms

Overall I’m happy with how it looks.  Had I of had more time then I would have added more detail onto both arms and now that I’m a bit more adept with creating fur, likely would have had small patches of fur over various areas.  Right, off to get dressed and then do some more.  I’d like to get one of the arms of the marine on the base done, before I disemble the Dreadnought from the base to spray it – I’ve decided that the base will be done separately as I need to airbrush the marine to stand a chance of getting it all painted in time.

It’s quite exciting seeing all of the ideas that I’ve had in my head slowly coming to fruition

I think my next task is any filling on the arms, then secure all of the base together.  Although my original intention was a number of assemblies, I’m not going to do this now.  I realised that the weight of the torso, legs and arms is far too much to practically hold and paint, so this is going to get glued along with the base and tackled as a single entity.  I shall be keeping the fur/cloak separate however for ease of painting.  Once the cloak and torso are airbrushed, I’ll glue those together as well.

So I decided to revert back to Plan A and use 0.79mm ball bearings instead.  Though more fiddly and more difficult to manouver due to being glued in place with super glue, the end result is at least more uniform than different sized plastic rivets.

As you can see from the image I’ve got the front of one side done.  The photo picked up a number of glue spots and one or two ball bearings that need popping out and re-positioning.  Before I hit the sack I managed to drill all of the marked positions on the other side, which went more quickly than the first ones.  With hindsight (the most wonderful of things), I should have worked out the positioning on the computer and printed off a ‘ruler’ for each strip of rivets.  This would have resulted in a better distribution of rivets along the length of the edging – that said, providing it looks OK, I’m beyond the point of caring.  I also got two loops cut and drilled that will allow me to ‘fix’ the cloak on, this biggest annoyance is that the holes need a bit of filling after the loops are glued in – which is going to complicate the fact that I wanted the cloak as a separate assembly.

I’m going to plod on with how I always intended to do the cloak I think.  Once dry I’ll have to grease up some wire insert it into the holes, fill them, smooth them off and then pull the wire out.  Although it’s not ideal, I’m happy to prime over small areas of not-quite-set putty.  I’m also pretty sure that there will be some minor work requried after priming, as this will likely flag up a few areas of imperfection.

So my hit list for this afternoon and evening is:

• Finish riveting – including the items along the top
• Coil wire for gun arm ribbing
• Secure the head into the cowling
• Pin the Chaos Space Marine onto the base (possibly gluing)
• Drill hole into other foot and ankle
• Mock the legs onto the stand (bluetak!)
• Fix the torso onto the legs using double-sided tape, the whole assembly needs to be secure enough to work on
• Glue on wolf pelts, following flow of model direction
• Sculpt cloak shape and place under a 40W light bulb to aid curing

Now this is a comprehensive and long list.  I reckon that I’ve got around 4 to 5 hours to get this done, to stand a chance that the cloak will be cured enough to be removed.  This will take me to around 6pm-ish, so I then have the evening to further work on the arms, which filling and armour plates added.  A few hours of that and the cloak should be dry enough to remove, so I can fill the loop holes, clean off any grease and prime the model with grey primer.  That will give it the night to set.

It appears that tomorrow I only have until 5pm as we need to unload the carpet tiles from the car to my brothers flat and likely a number of other things, sadly this only gives me 8 hours to do things, if I get up early and have no lunch… So in reality I’ll have around 6 hours.  I ought to have some time on Saturday afternoon/evening, but don’t know if I’ll be up to it, after a day of fitting carpet tiles.  Mind you, if I can crack out both bedrooms and the hall in one day, I might glean some of Sunday back.  Putting it bluntly, I can’t see me being in a position to airbrush tomorrow unless I get a significant amount of work done on the arms tonight (which is possible).  That said, I may be able to get away with not priming the arms, which will ease this situation.  The real panic begins to set in when I realise that I have to cover the cloak in fur and complete the base :s

Tonight I actually have an unexpected evening to myself, so will begin to make the rivets for the torso – with luck I’ll even get them stuck on   I also want to bend the toes of the feet – notice plural, as the foot that is flat on the base now has one toe over hanging the base :s  I’m planning on cutting them from underneath and bending them.  These bits should stand me in good stead for tomorrow afternoon, where I’m going to have to go at the project full tilt.

Running Totals: Time – ~ 75 Hrs; Cost – £38.92

On a plus point, I have Thursday afternoon, Friday and all of Monday off as holiday where I need to seriously crack on with things.  Last night I managed to squeeze in a bit of filling of the gun arm.  This can be sanded tonight (with luck) and a bit more filling/packing which should result in the shoulder mount for that arm being largely finished.  The Chaos Marine has had both feet repositioned and filled (fingers crossed it’ll look OK as I’m not that great at sculpting).  In order to stand a chance to getting this project done, I need to be in the position to sculpt the cloak on Thursday afternoon, to allow it to dry overnight – giving me Friday to begin spraying the whole thing.  Quite scarily, if I begin with a coat of grey primer, it could be Monday before I actually airbrush anything (ideally 24 hours drying time on the primer).  What this does however is to quite dramatically focus my attention on getting the torso finished.  So it’ll be a matter of adding the stud rivets around the edging tonight or tomorrow and drilling the holes for the wire that will hold the fur/cloak in place.  I also need to make a decision on the exhausts and power plant.

Now if things actually do go to plan (unlikely to be honest), I could potentially get the cloak shape knocked out in an hour or so.  I can then position it near a light in order to cure it more quickly.  If I can get it solid in time to prime it on Thursday, I could potentially grasp back half a day – and airbrush on Friday afternoon.