Well the last post wasn’t quite two months ago but not too far off. Life is roughly the same, I’m still working very long hours but managing to get a bit of painting done most evenings. I’m continuing to focus on my Space Wolves and this has started to pay off (although it’s really tempting to dive into something else at times . The two Space Wolf Packs have had their bases edged using plain black. I did toy with doing them brown or grey but the black actually finishes off the miniature really nicely (I’ll talk about the black I used in a bit).
I’ve put the flyer to one side and focused instead on the three tanks (Rhino/Razorback, Predator and Vindicator). The reason for this is two-fold. The size of the Stormfang means that you have to sit at a table with it perched on a towel to paint some parts of it (it has an underneath that needs to be painted). In the UK the daylight is really lacking this time of year and since the clocks changed for daylight savings, I get home after it’s gone dark. There is a significant amount of metallic that needs to be primed and painted which I was finding really time consuming. The answer was actually staring me in the face – mask the bugger off and airbrush. This is probably an evening’s worth of masking which you really need to be in the mood to do and then need to be able to do the airbrushing within a few days to make sure the masking tape doesn’t leave any residue behind so it’s going to need preparation.
All three tanks are now at the position where they’ve had their first coat of varnish from a can (the pic above is before the varnish – which has dulled the headlamp OSL down but bumped up the edge highlight contrast). This means that I can now apply decals, do some sponge chipping and then oil washes and so on – in my head it’s the beginning of the end for them. The two packs just need a matt varnish and that’s them finished (well other than a banner). In fact I had the really weird situation earlier this week when I sat down and discovered that I had nothing I could work on in front of the TV…
So rather than sit there twiddling my thumbs I grabbed hold of some more miniatures… Specifically my Long Fangs. So far I’ve ripped the arms and head off the pack leader – there wasn’t any reason for him to have a bolt pistol and power axe (other than the classic miniature having them), so he now has the traditional pointing finger and a Bolter. He’ll also look in the direction he’s pointing. For some reason my long fangs were also only half assembled. I believe I did this to make it easier to access some of the details but to be honest with a tabletop army it just makes things more difficult, so shoulder pads and similar are being put on. I’ve also managed to pick up some more missile launchers so will be able to field a whole pack of them (or my preference five missile launchers and las cannon).
As a small side project, I’ve also started converting a miniature to represent the Wolf Guard leading my Skyclaws and the Wolf Priest for them too. I got the Space Marine character with jump pack (the one in the same range as the Master of the Forge) for my birthday which I’m splitting up the bits and making him more ‘wolfy’ with pelts and similar. This is the first finecast miniature that I’ve tackled and considering the awful press they’ve had I have to say I’m quite impressed. It’s not a patch on plastic or proper resin, but the details are pretty crisp, not too many bubbles and it was blissful to tidy up. My biggest criticism is the couple dozen vents that was cut into the mold, but I pride myself on being quite adept with a scalpel so it wasn’t really much effort to sort.
In addition to the missile launchers I’ve actually had a small spending spree. I’ve managed to pick up a bolter with arm from the Space Marine Veteran squad (now on my Long Fang leader), a couple of different heads and the Heavy Bolter from the Vanguard boxed set (allowing me to field two Long Fang packs if I wanted). I’ve treated myself to a new Needle and Nozzle for my airbrush (the needle is over four years old and the nozzle is the original so at least six years old) which has actually made a massive difference. Last month I managed to get hold of two Krom Dragongaze (the limited edition miniature GW produced) – the second along with fifteen more Space Wolves (ten in Power Armour and five in Terminator Armour). The frost axe from one of them is going to be given to my finecast miniature which makes him look much more imposing.
I also managed to pick up some bits which has allowed me to finally start putting together my Rune Priest. One of the biggest reasons I’ve held back (despite this character being my Warlord in all 1500 point and smaller games), is that I wanted him to have a Psychic Hood and a Rune Staff. Thankfully with a couple of bits from a Grey Knights set I can now start to do this. Using the backpack and shoulder pad from Krom Dragongaze, a Grey Knight torso back, force staff and ‘casting’ hand, along with a very old Space Wolf torso front and the MkIV legs I’ve knocked out what I think is a fairly unique miniature. I’ve not glued everything together and need to putty some gaps where the torso halves don’t fit, but I’m quite happy with the progress so far. I just need to work out what head to use – it needs to be completely unique but also Wolf-esq…