Space Wolves Dreadnoughts Kit Bashing

I seem to have hit a bit of a ‘bloggers block’ recently, so have decided to write about the couple of Space Wolves Dreadnoughts that I’m currently kit bashing. I think this must be the forth attempt to write this post over the past couple of weeks as my earlier attempts were just creating posts that were as dull as dishwater!

Following the games of 40k I’ve had over the past month or so, I realised that I need to refine my Space Wolves army. It needs more in the way of firepower and speed in order to make it more competitive against opponents such as Tau or Eldar. So I’ve been putting together a pair of Land Speeders and pair of Dreadnoughts and will be working on more Long Fangs too. The Land Speeders aren’t particularly exciting – I’ve magnetised the various weapons and picked up a set of the Forge World Legion Pintle Weapons set, as I prefer the look and they’ll allow me to magnetise the whole gunner.

Dreadnought wise, I treated myself to one of the new Space Wolves Dreadnoughts with the intention of running it with a Great Frost Axe and Blizzard Shield. Because nothing gets put into my army “out of the box” I also grabbed the regular Venerable Dreadnought I had tucked away in a cupboard and have mixed and matched bits – the power plants have been swapped round for example. It just adds that little bit of variety and tones down the quantity of trinkets GW cram onto the model.

One really nice discovery is that with a bit of thought and placement of magnets, you can actually magnetise both dreadnoughts to have almost every weapon output in the box, opening up lots of potential play styles.

Personally the Space Wolves Dreadnought miniature suffers from a number of poorly conceived items. The bare head looks ridiculous and doesn’t fit the fluff and the weapon options just look wrong. Why does a Dreadnought need an Axe and Shield they can pick up? I bought one of the axe arms from the Blood Angel Dreadnought ages ago, so with the Axe from the Space Wolves Dreadnought and a bit of hacking around have ended up with a Great Frost Axe similar to the way Optimus Prime’s axe works :). I’ve still got to finish the back of the axe off, but I’m much happier with the result. A little slither of plastic tube on the body also has allowed me to position the arm a little better too.

I’m still working on the Blizzard shield as I need to fix it to the other arm. I’ll likely keep it simple and fix it to the barrel of the time rather than trying to create a strange “mechanical shield arm”.

I have managed to get on fairly well paint wise. I’ve not started the arms, but the Dreadnought bodies and Land Speeders have all be base coated, shaded and venithal highlighted using may airbrush (the nozzle of which split and meant a £32 replacement). The Dreadnought bodies have been edge highlighted and had the metallics started on and I’m really happy with how they’re looking currently. There have been a lot of interruptions (real life can be such a drag) so I’m not rattling through them quite as quickly as I’d like but still making some progress.