A lot of work done – but still a lot to do!

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I must admit that I’ve had a fantastic weekend modelling and getting my Space Wolves army together.  It’s not been constant (which is a good thing as my brain would likely have melted) and I’ve got a chunk of the army ready.

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.

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