RuneBrush
Rune's Painting & Miniature Blog

I’ve been having a serious think about how to go about ‘labelling’ up my Space Wolf army and have decided to (sadly) take a change.  I really would like to do an army themed around Egil Iron Wolf’s Great Company, however the standard decal sheet doesn’t have his company symbol on it.  I could create my own decal sheet, but to be honest I’ve spent more than enough cash on my army already and would rather spend time assembling my army in preference to creating decal sheets on the computer.  The standard decal sheet gives a number of different company symbols for shoulder pads – you have “The Wolf that Stalks Between Star” (Great Wolf) – “Blackmane Wolf” (Ragnar’s company) – “Thunderwolf” (Bjorn Stormwolf) – “Deathwolf Moraki” (Erik Moraki’s company) – (Logan Grimnar’s company)

I don’t want to do Ragnar’s as to be honest it’s been done to death and is the GW standard army.  Logan Grimnar’s force would require dozens of Wolf Guard and finally Erik Moraki’s army should be stealthy and small – so hobson’s choice leaves Bjorn Stormwolf’s army.

The military actions of Bjorn Stormwolf’s Great Company are typified by noise, intimidation, and splendour.  Bjorn is a hairy, red-faced mountain of muscle to whom calm and introspection are foreign concepts.  He has taken the Thunderwolf as his symbol, for he too is a creature of might and ferocity over stealth.

Bjorn fills a silence with his booming voice ust as completely as he fills his ornate suit of Terminator armour.  He has been know to interrupt  Imperial dignitaries with a loud belch (or worse) if they begin to bore him.  Bjorn’s spectacular assaults reflect his impatient and aggressive nature, and invariably include lots of heavy weapons, bikes and Vindicators – essentially anything that makes a great deal of noise.  The Great Wolf always employs Bjorn for frontal assaults rather than stealth missions favoured by Erik Morkai, which the Stormwolf dismissively refers to as ‘whelp-work’

So with the exception of a large block of scouts my army isn’t too far off a suitable army.  The other thing that is nice is that I like is that it means that I can have a good bit of fun with converting Wolf Guard in terminator armour.  The conversion of Stormwolf himself should also be an exciting challenge as well.

The handful of bits I ordered over the weekend from Games Workshop arrived yesterday, but due to various reasons I didn’t actually get a chance to open them until tonight.  The techmarine and his servitor retinue are actually quite nice models, though quite fiddly.  To make him suitably Space Wolfy is going to be a bit of a challenge, but not horrific (I hope), numerous wolf skins and pelts are going to be needed, along with using some arms from the Wolf Pack sprues.  One thing that I have realised is that this model is actually 3 or 4mm taller than a regular power armoured marine – the same height as a terminator.

Overall including the Battle Force that I’m getting tomorrow I will only be needing 1 more razorback and a plastic jump pack to have well over a 2,000 point army (17 power armoured marines and two drop pods worth) – the bits for it anyway, I still need to put them together!  It looks like I’ve only got a handful of things that I *have* to do this weekend, so potentially have 2 whole days and 3 evenings which I can use to construct an army – mwu hahaha.  One thing that has dawned on me is that I can actually put out all of my army on the dining room table as nobody is going to be wanting to need it, it should mean that I get a much clearer idea of where I am throughout the weekend.

I have also chanced across quite a clever article on how to make the main weapon of the Razorback magnetised, so that it can be swaped out should I want to.  I’m going to try and make fairly large portions of my vehicles magnetised as it will ultimately give me more flexibility with which to chop and change should the need arise.

I may have already ranted about this in the past, but I fundimentally dislike many of the colour schemes used for Space Wolves.  The standard Games Workshop scheme is far too ‘baby blue’ for what are essentially savage space marines.  Grey is a popular alternative (I even used it for my 2009 Golden Demon entry), but I find that it limits painting other areas on a miniature – for example rocks on the base or grey hair, highlighting pure grey is also a bugger as the paint becomes quite chalky unless special care is taken.

I’ve done a bit of research on this in the past, but have never found anything that for me looks right along with being relativly straight forward to paint.  However ‘Countersunk81′ on the Cool Mini or Not forums recently posted up a classic Sergeant mini with what I think is quite a good ‘middle of the road’ colour scheme.  Being nosey, I asked how he painted the armour which he explains in his reply.  However to repeat it here for convienience, it’s basically a variant on the Games Workshop scheme recently shown in an issue of White Dwarf…

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For the first time this year I actually have a whole weekend entirely to myself!  My Mum and Sister are both away from Friday, with my Sister not being back until Sunday evening.  So much time what do I do?  In all seriousness I’ve got a few things that I need to catch up on, but do intend to spend one of the days working on assembling my wolves.

I’m hoping that somebody will go into GW in Swindon on Thursday and pick up the battle force of wolves.  This will mean that I’ve pretty much got all of the troops that I actually want for my army.  I’m tempted to aim to get my skyclaws (5), bloodclaws (15) and scouts (10) assembled up over the weekend.  The scouts require a significant amount of conversion and I aim to fur up at least 3 of the 5 cloaks that the snipers are wearing, so I would think that they’ll not be completely done.  I also treated myself on Sunday to a Runepriest, techmarine with servitors and a Razorback, plus ordered all of the heavy weapons from an online bitz store.  Off the top of my head that means that I should only need one more Razorback and I’ll have all of the models that I need to make my 2000 point army – that makes it sound much easier than the reality.  I want to do a handful of quite major conversions on characters within the army and things like the scouts and Long Fangs warrant more effort than the rest as there are only a few of them and (fluff wise) they’ve been around for quite a long time.  However the whole thing should be pretty straight forward so a target of next year for a complete army is actually possible.

I just chanced across this link to a long list of Norse names, I thought it was pretty cool for any budding Wolf Lords out there.

I finally managed to get round to taking some shots of the Dreadnought that I entered as my Golden Demon entry.  The paint job let the overall effect down, but overall I’m being positive in that it was a fantastic learning curve.

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.

I happily got home from work yesterday to find a jiffy pad containing a (slightly bent) Space Wolves Codex.  Though £15 is a tad steep for a book, the codex is actually very good.  As with most codices it’s laid out in the familiar format of Background Fluff > Troop Fluff > Coloured Section > Army Selection.  I’ve only flicked through it and so far it seems pretty cool.  They’ve added lots of elements that have in my opinion been missing, such as some of the Rhino varients and Land Raider varients.  Jump pack Blood Claws are now an option which is pretty cool.  One complaint I have is that although there is a great variety of HQ choices, the rest of the army choices seem quite limited, which will mean that most Space Wolf armies are going to look pretty similar in build – especially larger armies.  That said I suppose that the same could be said of many armies.

Another thing that I think is really weird is that they appear to have changed the basic background of Leman Russ.  For those that don’t know, when the Primarchs were scattered amongst the stars, Russ got dropped onto Fenris where he was found by a pack of fenrisian wolves and raised by the she-mother of the pack.  During the time he was growing (Primarchs grew at a rate far in excess of mortals) the pack was attacked by humans who slew the she-mother and another wolf.  Cutting a long story short this same group of humans ended up capturing and ultimately teaching Russ that he was more human than wolf – and naming him Leman of the Russ.  What the new codex implies is that Russ was found by humans and just raised.

The new codex does expand a little on the background of some of the Wolf Lords, with more fluff and background imagry.  There’s actually a banner for Egil Ironwolf’s company   For me it’s fantastic, I’m personally not a big fan of using special characters from codices and would rather just use the generic character’s, so having more background on the other Wolf Lords opens itself up to creating an army founded on a nice bit of background fluff.  This biggest downside to this, is that many of the new plastic’s have Ragnar’s company emblem on them.

All told however I’m quite excited about the prospect of getting a small army put together.  The modelling oportunities are plentyful and being able to mix and match existing space marine boxed sets with the new Space Wolf ones should mean that armies should look varied in style (if not in composition).  However I do need to keep in mind that I want to do something for next years Golden Demon as well

A couple more possibilities to add into the melting pot in regards to some kind of diorama.

First off is a Warhammer Quest dungeon scene, but using modern models.  A bit like the one Mike McVey did years back where the whole thing is split into a number of micro-dioramas with different monsters and party members.  For the barbarian I think it would be possible to convert a Chaos Knight into a much more ‘Conan’ style character, Wizard would be the new empire wizard box, Elf could be one of the wood elf range and Dwarf could be converted from any number of Dwarf models.

Whilst searching (the wonders of Google Images) I also came across a number of pretty cool Tomb King landscapes (mostly from Warhammer Online), which would make a quite refreshing backdrop to a diorama as it would use light sandy colours and rich Turquoise and gold’s, plus you could create some pretty cool ’sand effects’ with things bursting out of the sand

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As I’m still in the planning phase with whatever I choose to do for next years Golden Demon, I decided that I’d start to assemble some of the new Space Wolf mini’s I bought at Games Day as it’s my intention to have at least assembled a 1500 point army by the early part of next year.

I’ve finished putting together a Wolf Guard Terminator with Assault Canon.  I will be honest and say that I’m very impressed with the new boxed sets, unlike some other plastics the tidying up is either straight forward or minimal.  The sheer number of weapon variations is also staggering – I think that you have around 3 pairs of weapons for every body so can kit them out in pretty much any variation you fancy.  I think the only slight disappointment is the heads.  Even though there are a dozen on the Wolf Guard sprues and 44 in the Wolf Pack boxed set, you’re actually limited on what is suitable if you want to go for un-helmeted heads and keep some kind of variety without converting any.  Some of the heads are clearly blood claw, some are grey hunter and some would be suitable for any, however a number of the hair styles are truly rediculous.  One has what can only be described as a medieval bob – not exactly feral nor in keeping.  What would have been cool would have been a few bald heads that would have made it really easy to convert (that still had teeth etc).  There is also a distinct lack of beards.  That said, a number of the heads are spot on and a number can be converted pretty simply.  I think that the only other gripe is all of the legs in the Wolf Pack box are standing – none of them are running.

Overall the sprues are fantastic and should add tons of flavour to any Space Wolves army.  Oh and with luck I’ll have a copy of the new codex waiting for me tonight.

Having flicked through the Warhammer Online collectors edition art book, I think that I’ve come up with a potential concept for my Golden Demon entry next year.  Within the book (and indeed the game), there is a Tzeentch bridge, simply put it has a path leading upto and out of what can only be described as an upturned pyramid, which is floating in the air.  At the top of this structure is a large Tzeentch eyeball, surveying all that come and go.

What strikes me about this as a project is that it’s going to be pretty unique.  It’s a massive modelling project in it’s own right and lends itself to a significant portion being airbrushed.  For me it’s quite cool as I enjoyed and spent far more time on the modeling element of my Dreadnought than I did on the painting element.  One of the pretty cool things about Tzeentch is that the structure has to look impossible, unstable and slightly disturbed.    The pyramid is in essence composed of ‘layers’ in a similar design to a flower’s petals.  What I’d love to do, is to have parts of the model floating with the use of magnets (a bit like those levitating pens you can buy).  Some kind of movement would also be pretty cool, but would have to think about both of these items as it could add unecessary weight onto the floating element.

I need to sketch out some sizes, but it would be good to be able to have the paths able to take three or four mounted miniatures – i.e. 4 inches across.  This would likely make the eyeball huge – at least 3 inches in diameter – providing I can paint it well it will make a fantastic feature centre piece of the model.  Once I’ve done a sketch or two, I’ll create a mock out of card and artboard to see what it looks like and it I’ll carry on with it.  I’ll also add some miniatures onto it – probably chaos warriors as they can be painted in the purple hues of the actual structure.  What would be really cool would be to sculpt the bridge over a valley and somehow model false perspective to make it seem like the valley bottom is far away.  In addition to the large eye on the top of the structure, there are also two eye like spheres set in the walls of structure (on either side).  What I want to do is to try and paint them so that they appear to follow you within a relativly wide arc.  If you’ve not already guessed I have plans to make the whole model slightly disturbing, but equally fascinating at the same time.  Now obviously I actually need to work out how and indeed if some of these ideas are actually possible within a modelled world, but fingers crossed and this will become a reality

Useful Links: http://img.war-europe.com/syndic_img/news/maymnl/TheBridge.jpg