From the above photo I have deepened the shadows further, which has defined the areas further.  I need to push the highlights closer to pure Space Wolf Grey as well which will make the contrast difference between the highlight and shadow significant.  I also think that for future models I will darken the red by adding more Dark Flesh to the mixture.  This should provide a greater contrast for the highlights and also bring the model more ‘earthly’ than it currently is.

Oh, as I’m aware that this is a test piece I’ve actually purchased a spare set of legs, a torso and a head so that I could remake this model

I’ve now started painting the red on the Terminator.  I’m using a recipe that was shown in White Dwarf a few issues back when Space Hulk was re-released.  The biggest drawback with this is that it is taking quite a while to actually paint.  Now in fairness the terminator has a lot of red on it – both wolf claws, a knee pad and a whole shoulder pad.  The overall effect is really smooth though, so it’s worth the time investment.

Although this miniature has consumed upwards of 8 hours time so far, I currently believe that painting power armoured marines will take less time providing I paint them in batches of between 4 and 6.  Many of the issues I’ve come across so far have been technique issues as well – how thin to make the paint, what area to cover to achieve a smooth blend, neatness etc – all of which will improve with practice.  I’ll also mix up a bottle of the base red colour I use which will also save some more time.

One thing that is interesting is that it’s currently rumoured that the Tomb Kings will be getting a new army book during 2010 – in fact it’s currently rumoured that it will be the army released after Beasts of Chaos – which would make it a April/May release I reckon.  On a positive note this means that should I decide to do this as an entry that I could add in lots of nice new miniatures – in other words I have till May to get the scenary done and then June till September to do the miniatures

Useful Links:

http://images.mmosite.com/photo/2009/04/22/warhammerw490CIV48h51S.jpg – Witch Hunter Fighting Tomb Prince
http://www.wouldyoukindly.com/wp-content/uploads/warhammer1.jpg – Knight fighting Tomb Gaurd + interior
http://mythicmktg.fileburst.com/war/us/home/images/newsletter/2009_02/TK_Pendulum.jpg – Pendulum Trap
http://www.ogeworld.com/document_general_info.html?products_id=3366 – Article on planning tomb king expansion
http://war.mmolecule.com/articles/id/2031 – Another article with lots of exterior shots

I have however managed to get some painting squeezed into this last week and a half, so I’m thankfully not having large gaps in my hobby again.  I’ve managed to undercoat a Wolf Guard Terminiator with pair of Wolf Claws as I though that this would allow me to practice one of every item that my marines would have – wolf pelts, lightening weapons, face, armour, etc.  Overall I’m fairly happy with the progress that I’m making, modern terminators are really large models so it’s taking quite a while.  The basing technique that I’ve chosen looks absolutly fantastic and genuinly looks like this Wolf Guard is stood on top slate.

I have however come across a rather annoying item in my armour colour – I use Fenris Grey in the first three phases of painting the armour, this paint is one of Games Workshops Foundation Paint range which have a really good coverage.  The biggest drawback with this range is that as soon as you add water the paint seems to separate into a multitude of hues, Fenris Grey for example ends up with a rich purple sat on top of a mid/light grey.  The real problem comes in that you end up constantly mixing the colour up – normally with your expensive W&N brush in order to maintain a consistent colour ending up on your model.  I need to do some investigation to see if the addition of a flow retarder or similar will slow down the speed of this separation.  The armour on this miniature is far from complete and although it only requires four colours in total, in order to achieve a smooth transition is going to take quite a bit of time for each miniature.  However I’m sure that with a bit of practice I’ll be churning out armour in more of a production line style than this first one.  Justing rethinking I’m probably closer to finishing the armour than I thought as each progressive layer actually covers less area than the one before.

One thing that has just gone through my mind is to expand the Sky Claws by 5 more marines.  I also am thinking to try and replace the meltagun I’ve kitted one of them out, with a flamer (a BS of 3 means a meltagun might not be the best weapon).

So whilst I’ve been looking on the internet, I’ve always had in the back of my mind that it would be nice to have something suitable for this maximum sized cube – and I now think I’ve got it.  Basically it’s a Tomb King dungeon scene, where a party of intreped adventurers have broken into a tomb complex, battled their way past various traps and found that the treasures are actually protected by all manner of undead gribblies.

The concept is that the piece will be a two-level cross-section.  The walls will be embossed in some manner, allowing for all of the various Tomb King murals to be incorporated into the piece.  Painting the environment will be pretty straight forward as all of the sandstone can be done using an airbrush, which should create quite a bit of depth and atmosphere.  There will be an upper level that will contain the ‘outside frontage’, which will lead into a small chamber via a hallway (including devilish traps), at the end of the chamber will be a spiral staircase (because all good dungeons have one) which will then lead down into the lower level and then into a final large chamber with Tomb King and sarcophagus.  One thing that I want to do is to make the last chamber appear untouched by the ravages of time as if preserved by some magical statis field – hopefully I can incorporate water fountains in this as well.  The top level needs to look decrepit, plaster falling off the walls, cobwebs, long dead bodies etc – similar to how ancient egyptian tombs look now (well without bodies).

I will need to investigate a good way of making realistic sand as real sand is too coarse to just glue on and expect it to look right.  I have had some thoughts about the walls as well.  If I get a piece of plasticard and glue on thin wire in the shape of the required embossing (sealing the edges with PVA glue or putty), I could then pour a thin layer of super fine plaster of paris over it.  When this has set I can then grease patches where I want the plaster to fall off (poking a hole through so I know where to bash) and then pour a layer of regular plaster.  Finally once set sand the back off and fix to some plasticard or similar to make a solid wall.  I can poke and gouge the areas that are greased which should flop off as it it had in real life.  I also think that I could get a mini sand blaster and spray the outer layer to weather it (you can get one for around £30).

I think that this could be ‘the one’, in which case I’ll start planning out the construction.  In principal, two 1ft squares of mdf and four corner spacers will be the starting point.

Userful Links:

Inner Lower Chamber
Outside Idea 1
Outside Idea 2
Chamber Idea 2

One of the really nice things about what is in essence a Space Marine vehicle is that it doesn’t need billions of rivets like a Imperial Guard vehicle would.  Although it would be a large project, the most complicated pieces are the two jet engines.  All of the weapons can be purchased from existing plastic kits.

Useful Links
http://www.grafstar.com/wh40k/resources.html – Contains some very rough plans (useful for scale)
http://www.ironhands.com/thawk.htm – A 2001 home grown one, using various plastic toys

I have made a few in-roads into my army however.  The scouts are assembled, although they require extensive conversion and filling – the regular scouts (the ones with bolters) are bloody horrific to assemble.  The legs and torso’s don’t really tie up correctly which limits the assembly possibilities.

Currently I’m assembling the pack of 14 Blood Claws – the chainswords make them a bit more time consuming to put together than Grey Hunters sadly.

As a slight variation I putchased an ‘Aegis Defense’ boxed set – the one that has the quad-linked autocanons and lots of barriers.  The actual molding on these pieces are fantastic – probably the best that I’ve come across on a GW kit.  Should be good practice for airbrushing and some of the weathering techniques within the ForgeWorld masterclass book before I attempt them on a tank.

Pretty much nothing else to say.  I have two days off at the end of this week, so am hopeful that I might get my Blood Claws assembled and perhaps the Long Fangs.  I’ll then go back and bulk out the packs using some of the spare models that I’ve got to give me a greater variety of options.  The current aim is to have an assembled 1000 point army ready to play with for Christmas.

Once they’re all based and ready I’ll go through and add any extra conversions and tweaks, such as fur on the scout cloaks, sand and talus on the bases etc.  The aim at that point is to make the all of the models gel together as units.

Of course I do have to assemble 3 more tanks and paint 4 of them (with a possible two more being repainted).  I reckon the tanks will most likely be my Christmas project!

I’m also currently wondering if I need the Iron Priest or not.  Originally it fitted in with the background fluff of Egil Iron Wolf, but that doesn’t make any difference anymore.  More Wolf Guard might be good – I could have a Lone Wolf, but then that’d end up being quite dull (they’re so good that most armies will have one).

All of the torso’s have been tidied up and gaps filled with green stuff.  The Skyclaws (5) are ready to glue onto their bases (more on that shortly) as is the smaller pack of Grey Hunters (5).  The larger pack of Grey Hunters (8) just need the shoulder pads glued on a few and appropriate heads selected and fitted.  This leaves the large pack of Blood Claws (14) which need a few more legs tidied up and then arms, shoulder pads and heads.  The scouts (10) need to be tidied up and assembled.  Finally the long fangs require quite a bit more work assembling than I originally thought.  So tonight I will be able to base up 18 models and have a futher 30 to so.  So 40% ish of the troop element of the army done.

On the subject of bases (I said in the last paragarh) I’ve worked out what I’m actually going to do.  After seeing a article on the internet I’ve baked a slab of Super Sculpy to about 4mm thick (rolled out with a beer bottle) which I’m snapping off small pieces with a pair of pliers.  I didn’t kneed it very thoroughly, which results in quite nice fracture lines when you snap it – almost simulating slate.  Now some people’s reaction might be “why don’t you just use slate” the answer is quite simple – I can bake Sculpy to have a flat bottom and relativly flat top – which glues onto a base much more successfully than slate does.  It’s lighter, easier to drill/cut/finish and finally more secure when you fix a model to it (which is actually the most important point).  I’m gluing the Sculpy to the base with superglue and putting a small pin into the foot of the marine and through the base (folded over underneath).  This results in a very firm and secure fixing – easily able to sustain being transported around in a case.  Another really nice effect is that the slab of Sculpy has a curved (i.e. not snapped) edge, which will give quite a cool effect when snow flocked.

Sadly I can’t see me making as much progress on my army again as this spurt of activity was due to having the house to myself for a whole weekend (a once a year occurance at best).  However I belive that I’ve broken the back of the task – at least from an assembly point of view.  This might sound peculiar, but the time consuming bit is sorting out the torso’s as they require gluing together, tidying up when dry and then filling – so two long-ish drying times before they can be used.  The Long Fang weapons are multipart and sadly look like they’re going to require quite a bit of green stuff to put together the Lascannons and Heavy Bolters.  The scouts are largely fixed posed (sadly), but this makes the assembly slightly more straight forward.  Blood Claws are pretty straight forward, a matter of gluing all of the bits together (probably an evenings work at a guess).

Now I normally have some kind of moan or gripe on my posts and this one is sadly no exception.  What has baffled me is the selection of regular bolters available on the new Wolf Pack sprues.  You get a total of 4 bolters on each sprue pair (of which you get two in each box).  Of these 4, two are molded on arms which point out in some direction (one up and one out), the other two are like the other tactical marines in that you get a pair of arms and the gun glues on.  What baffles me is the lack of variety that this gives you.  The ones that are the same as tactical arms do have some flexibility, but the arms with the guns attached have no change in them at all – resulting in you having to fix them in the direction the arm has been made in – in one case straight upwards :s  What I don’t understand is why they didn’t have all of the guns detached and arms separate.  The same actually goes for the selection of pistols on the sprue – you have a total of 6 plasma pistols in a box – why there is no pack that can have that many?  Why did GW not just have the arms and pistols separate.  It would have made the whole thing much more straight forward, both the production and construction aspects.  Plus you could have used pistol arms with bolters and had lots of potential.

The other thing that is starting to get my goat a little is that most legs put the emphasis into the left-hand shoulder being put in front – which means the bolter is held in the marine’s right hand and supported by the left – this is logical and it’s easy to put this natural motion into a marine to make it look dynamic and action packed.  However the vast majority of the new Space Wolf heads have pony tails or similar flowing to the left of their face – sounds good until you try and glue the bloody thing into place “Oh my marine is looking to the right, but the gun isn’t”.  The basic dynamism of the marine seems to have been forgotten when creating many of the heads.  I also want to know who the hell thought that a Space Wolf with flowing locks like a Bretonian Knight would be suitable?  It looks bloody rediculous by anybodies standard.