Wolf Guard Terminator w/ Cyclone Missile Launcher

As can probably be noticed from how many Terminator models I've shown on this blog already, I really like the Wolf Guard Terminators kit. The legs look better than the standard Space Marine Terminator legs, the Assault Cannon is much cooler with the ammunition belt feed, and it includes several close combat weapons, not to mention all the wolf tail talismans, signal horns etc. However, it doesn't include the Cyclone.

 Now, CML isn't the only reason I've bought vanilla Terminator sets. I also like to sometimes decorate the pieces myself to get more unique models. Pre-wolfified parts are nice for a time, but they make repetition more immediately obvious. In this case, I kept it simple: custom-sculpted head, some mail over a pelt, a chain across the chest and a trophy.

 As can be seen, all the custom decorations face the front, with just standard plastic parts on the sides and nothing in the rear. Even the base is simple.

For a long time, I considered giving him a Thunder Hammer / Storm Shield combo instead of the current armament and add him to the Shieldbrothers, but decided against it, thinking that it may not be worth it to give an already expensive close combat unit such an expensive ranged weapon. Ideally, the Shieldbrothers spend much of a game in close combat, and couldn't really fire their ranged weapons if they had them. In a worst case scenario, I'd fire the missile launcher, kill off the two closest enemy models and for that, fail to charge.

By the way, this wasn't the model I planned to show in this blog post, but the other one wasn't quite ready yet. Next time: not a Terminator, for once.

Contemptor-pattern Dreadnought w/ Kheres Assault Cannon

The Contemptor-pattern is a pretty imposing model. It's a fair bit taller than the standard Dreadnoughts, and is more anthropomorphic in shape.  The model is also much more articulated, with separate leg pieces that can be posed pretty much however you want. That much choice can be challenging, though, especially for someone like me, who prefers to glue as few pieces permanently together as possible before painting, so that I easier time painting all the armpits and whatnots on the models. In this case, I had a lot of trouble getting the model to stay in one piece, even with blu-tack. It's very likely that the final positions of the model's limbs will change slightly by the time I'm done.

 The standard Contemptor comes with the Imperial aquila on the front armour, and little other decoration. I decided that a piece as large as this needs plenty of decoration. The twin heads of Morkai was an obvious choice for a Dreadnought, but it left the lower part of the torso lookin somewhat dull. I decided to give it a stylized snarling wolf's face, extending it to cover part of the "stomach" with some extra armour.

 I wasn't that wild about the almost too human look of the Contemptor's feet, so I gave the model some claws. I thought they wouldn't probably be used as weapons so much as they would be for traction in treacherous terrain.

 The left pauldron has no sculpted decoration. I may add some knotwork designs in the painting stage, though.
The base ended up being somewhat more complicated than necessary (which is the way I like them). I added the front half of a Space Marine directly under/ behind the Dreadnought, and had him treading on another skeleton, that of either another Space Marine or an ogryn judging by the size.

The Contemptor pattern has a fearsome reputation among the Space Wolves, to the point where only exceptionally brutal warriors are interred in them. To make that point, I hanged a whole bunch of resin skulls and other heads from the right pauldron.

The chain hanging from the "chest" piece is not very visible in these pictures. I plan to fix that and add some wolf fangs to it to simulate a wolftooth necklace before painting it. I also have to decide which of the model's joints I want to remain fixed. As it is, it would be infuriating to try to paint it, with the model toppling over every few seconds and arms falling off at least once a minute.

Terminator-armoured Rune Priest, work in progress

I originally intended to just make one rune priest in regular Mk.VI power armour. Then, I misplaced that and started to work on one in Mk.V armour while the first one was lost. Then, having already sculpted two psychic hoods, I decided I should have one in Terminator armour as well.

Though I like the frost axe included in the Wolf Guard Terminators kit, I'm having difficulties dealing with the thought of using a piece without modifying it. The storm bolter, on the other hand, is about ready here, with a double drum magazine and customized iron (bronze? Green stuff really, though) sights.

His right pauldron still needs some work. I'm thinking of including some knotwork decorations. Also, the top of his wrist still needs some fixing.

As it says in the title, this one is still very much work in progress. He's still lacking all the rune medallions, wolf teeth, wolftail talismans etc. a rune priest needs. I also think he should have a pelt somewhere on his armour.
This model's finished version here

Logan Grimnar, the High King of Fenris, painted

Painting my older sculpts is scary. Often a fault may be small enough to be nearly unnoticeable when sculpting, but painting brings it to a painfully clear focus. One example would be the first head I sculpted for my Ragnar Blackmane model, that had perfectly serviceable-looking nose when the whole head was still bright green, but once painted, poor Ragnar looked like he had taken a savage left hook to his nose.
Nothing too bad happened with my Logan Grimnar, though his eyes are somewhat asymmetrical and he could afford to have a little more ferocious look on his face. All that said, there's something that makes up for all this. In my eyes, at least, he looks a little like Christopher Lee. It certainly wasn't something I planned, as I don't think I currently could sculpt portraits in this scale if I tried, but now that it has happened, I can't think of a more appropriate Old Wolf. Rest in peace, Sir Lee.

On to the paintwork. I usually use bronze for the yellow/brown metal parts, but because Having just one part gold-coloured would have looked out of place and I wanted Fellclaw's head to be painted gold, I also decided to repeat the colour on his Belt of Russ, as well as the Imperial Eagle on the base.

 Grimnar has used the Axe Morkai since the first war for Armageddon, which is around 600 years, if I remember correctly, and I think that would be more than enough time to form a patina on the bronze parts. More importantly, the green hue accentuates the red blade nicely. I decided against painting patina on most pieces of his armour, though, since I feel like many of those parts would often require servicing by the Iron Priests and therefore be swapped for other compatible pieces of Terminator armour.

I'm fairly satisfied with my Logan Grimnar model overall. Sure, the sculpt could have been cleaner, but that's the problem with improving your skills; your newer work ends up putting your older work to shame.
 See the model before painting

Swiftclaw Bikers Wolf Guard Pack Leader

The connection between the Marvel character Wolverine and Space Wolves is easy to make. He's hairy, grumpy, his claws are an obvious source of inspiration for Lightning Claw -type weapon and he has facial hair and a crazy hairstyle. Admittedly, in the comics, he's supposed to be a head shorter than many other heroes (or villains), but in the movies, he's been played by Hugh Jackman, who is about 30 cm taller than the Wolverine is supposed to be. Stretching that by a few dozen centimeters more to reach Astartes sizes wasn't too much of a stretch (pun intended, deal with it).
He's also occasionally seen riding a custom bike, which made the choice of putting him in charge of my bikers obvious.

I had an extra Forgeworld Mk. V torso around I had to find a use for, and because the solid resin torsos are tougher than the standard plastic ones and I knew I'd have to fiddle somewhat to fit the Mk.IV Lightning Claw arms on the handlebars, it came in handy. Fixing the arms themselves involved cutting off at the base of the gauntlet and repositioning them horizontally, as well as a hot bath to set the thumbs right.

I used the drum magazines cut off from extra AdMech Ironstrider Ballistarius lascannons I had, using Green Stuff to tidy up the result a little. The hairstyle is closer to the original comic book style than what Hugh Jackman has had in the movies. While I have nothing against his portrayal of Wolverine -- he was basically one of the people who started the current golden age of comic book movies -- I feel like 40k universe is not a good setting for realism or restraint. 

Having Wolverine as the pack leader was also a shortcut to find a theme for the actual Swiftclaw pack. I intend to research some of the fresher faces currently in the X-men and use them for inspiration for my Swiftclaw squad. It would be very easy to have a serious-looking guy with a visor among them, but honestly, if Wolverine is a pack leader, that would make Cyclops at leasts a battle leader. Same goes for the other classic characters

Imperial statue, painted

I thought the box I use for a set could use some more decoration (as well as some vacuuming, but that's beside the point, not to mention not done yet), so I decided to finish the statue I had made.

I wanted the parchment hanging off the statue to have one of those large, decorative capital letters, sometimes seen in Medieval manuscripts. I chose T because of its simple, symmetric shape. I like to imagine the parchment has the lyrics for AC/DC's Thunderstruck, which the Imperial faithful then sing as a Gregorian-style chant.

I had originally planned to paint the statue to look like it's made of weathered bronze, but I noticed the picture this was inspired by featured what looks like a golden statue, so I decided to go for gold, too. It looks a lot darker in the pictures than in real life, which suggests that I could use a little more light on the set. Will look into that.

Getting the snow on the statue look right turned out to be a lot trickier than I thought. At first, I tried to spray a little varnish over it directly from above and then sprinkle the model snow over it, but it didn't really work. Then, I tried to figure out where the snow would naturally collect and place it there, but I wasn't too crazy about the result then, either. It seems like Citadel's snow is too thick to be used like this. I have to take a look at the alternatives, such as Woodland Scenics, when I get the chance.

The Redmaw, Wulfen-kind

I have to say, I enjoyed this project a lot. Sculpting monstrous creatures is, in a sense,  much easier than sculpting human faces. We generally speaking don't have an intuitive understanding of how a post-human that has succumbed to a condition brought on by a flaw in his genhancements should look, and therefore, there's no standard to compare to. I went for a werewolfy look that bears some similarity to dogs and wolves, but not enough to look off, as it does if I had try and fail to sculpt a human visage.

 I wanted to tie the Redmaw form in with the character's human form, and the simplest way to do that was to simply sculpt them to have similar hairstyles (as well as the wolftooth necklace). I actually sculpted most of the Redmaw before the human form and decided to give it braids, because they fit well with the pose of the model. I also felt like they made it clear it was, or at least had once been, a sapient creature.

The tail ended up curving to the left, which gives the impression that the Bloodied Hunter is wagging his tail while hunting. This amuses me to no end.
His hindlegs ended up being on slightly different levels, so I placed some cork under the right paw. I find the pose works better this way. I also decided that even though I'm running low on resin skulls, which is nothing sort of a disaster in 40k modelling terms, the Redmaw if anyone/-thing needed a skull on the base.

The character currently is in a little weird situation rules-wise because the Imperial Armour book 11 refers to the 5th edition Space Wolves codex, but the Curs'd Lord is at his best in narrative games, anyway. I can easily imagine a scenario where both an Inquisitorial warband and a group of Space Wolves try to capture Bran Redmaw and bring him back to study or to put him to his kennel for a time out, respectively.
Speaking of rules, this project again made me sorry that the 7th Edition codex did away with Mark of the Wulfen as a wargear option. It made for some very interesting modelling projects. The Wulfen Stone is a poor substitute.
See the finished model

Bran Redmaw, the Curs'd Lord

As I have written previously, this character took two attempts (so far, knock on wood) to get right. The first one was waaay too pompous to look like a Wolf Lord known to leave the execution of his battle plans to the Wolf Guard, while hunting alone himself.
For the second attempt, the most challengin part proved to be the modelling of the Runic Armour. There is a precedent for just slapping a few Space Wolf pieces with runes in them together and calling that a runic armour, but I felt like the armour should look like it's more protective than the standard power armour.
To achieve this, I used the thicker pauldrons from the Command Squad kit, extra Mk. IV arms I had around and sculpted faulds to give the upper thighs some extra protection. The decorative backpack from the Space Wolves upgrade kit helps give the impression of higher quality armour, too.

 I gave him the Phobos pattern bolt pistol, just because I felt like a Wolf Lord, even one with a sinister reputation, would have access to more revered relic weapons of the Chapter.

The Axe of Langnvast started out as a Mk. IV Thunder Hammer. I cut off the hammerhead and replaced it with an axe blade (made of plasticard) with a wolf's head hammer as a secondary striking surface, with the ears elongated to a stabbing point. I generally speaking prefer to give the Wolves single-headed axes, because I think they look much more agile and dangerous as weapons than the double-headed ones Games Workshop seems so keen on.

I may not be entirely finished with the modelling phase. At the very least, I'm probably going to add a mag-locked battle helmet somewhere on his body, and am considering to add some extra decoration to his faulds. However, the overall shape will be more or less like it is now.

Of course, the (mostly) human form of Bran Redmaw is far from being the most interesting side of the character. The real reason people use the character is coming up later.

Arjac's Deathwatch Veteran Shieldbrother, finished

The concept of Deathwatch is interesting from the narrative standpoint. The idea of an all-stars Space Marine taskforce is nice by itself, but the real meat of the concept is the thought of how Astartes from various Chapters need to learn to get over their differences, which are many and various. For example, an Iron Hands marine would have very different idea of how to treat civilians caught in a warzone, when compared to a Salamander, for example. Also, an Ultramarine wouldn't very easily find common ground with a Space Wolf, when it comes to tactical doctrine, and Black Templars won't like how highly White Scars regard psykers.

Having adjusted to life in the Deathwatch, it would be comparably difficult to return to one's own Chapter. Chris Wraight's Blood of Asaheim had this as a central theme, with Arjac Rockfist giving a fellow Wolf Guard advice on how to deal with a returning Deathwatch veteran. I decided Arjac would know what he's speaking of because he's been there, and has learned to appreciate a Deathwatch Veteran's skill and perspective.

 At first, I considered just painting the right shoulderpad black with some silver accents, and leaving the arm grey, but then decided 40k miniatures don't have to be subtle and just painted the whole arm with shades of iron and silver. There was a similar thought behind the red Storm Shield.

 At first, I considered painting the pack marking on the small faulds covering the top of his legs, too, but because he had a knee pad on which to paint, I decided it would be just a little too much.

The Genestealer head was meant to be a memento from his time at the Deathwatch, so I went for an old, faded look. Tyranid organisms are generally too alien for Milky Way bacteria and other germs to digest, so it would just very slowly dry out after death, the colour fading with time.

Imperial statue terrain piece

This piece was inspired by a picture in the 40k 7th edition rulebook. If you have seen the picture, you probably recognised it as soon as you saw the photos. It's not a perfect copy, obviously; the eagle warrior thingy in the rulebook is clearly moving and shouting (screeching?). I did consider sculpting the eagle's mouth open, but decided it would be too fiddly and would limit my posing options later on.

 Finding the right set of legs proved a challenge. At first, I was going to just use a standard Space Marine's legs, but those tend to have too wide stances and would have made the model look more static. Running legs were an option, but there are rarely any of those to spare when your main army is Ragnar Blackmane's Great Company. In the end, I ended up just sculpting an approximation of the legs and covering them with cloth.

 The bolter is the ornamental one from the Command Squad set. There are few uses for a vanilla marine ornamented bolter with Space Wolves, and I decided this would be the best use for it.

I use wine bottle corks to hold my sculpts while I'm working on them, so the pedestal was easy enough to find. I decided to add some sprue rubble (small bits cut from a sprue) and a resin skull to the plasticard base and glued a litany scroll I had lying around to the pedestal.

Painting this should be simple, as I see the main figure to be a single piece of bronze and the pedestal being stone. The only part that takes any accuracy really will be the litany scroll with the purity seal.

Scratch built Eversor Assassin

You can only sculpt so many bearded viking-biker-werewolves before you want to add a little variety to the mix. I have liked Officio Assassinorum since my first foray into 40k during the 2nd edition, and the monstrous Eversor has always been my favourite of the temples. Though Nemesis was pretty far from my favourite Horus Heresy novel, it did manage to inspire me into sculpting an assassin. I may make one of each of the temples in the future, though it's possible, if not even likely, to take so long that the current Assassins codex will be outdated by then.

Because the Astartes are canonically always male, I haven't had many chances to try my skill at making female figures. It was mentioned nowhere in the fluff that Assassins had to be of either gender, so I took the opportunity and ran with it. I'm glad I did, too; the skull mask Eversors wear gave me a reason to take a deeper look into the differences between male and female skull shapes. Also, since the model would have to be muscular, it presented me with the challenge of making her body very muscular, yet keep it feminine.

 At first, I tried to make an Executioner pistol and just slap it on the model's back, but as I apparently need to be constantly reminded, green stuff doesn't lend itself well to sculpting mechanical forms or straight lines. So instead, I sculpted a holster on her thigh instead. The power sword ended up being a form of falchion. I reasoned that Eversors are typically dispatched against groups of enemies, and a thrust-centric weapon could easily get stuck in an enemy body. A large, vicious cleaver wouldn't have this problem.

 The sensor array on her back is hidden inside a backpack. I assume it's constantly feeding information directly to her brain and she wouldn't need to look at any kind of screens to receive this information.

The model did end up being a little taller than it should be to seamlessly fit to the scale of 40k, but then again, GW models aren't made exactly to scale either (just try fitting 10 space marine models into a Rhino). I'm reasonably satisfied with how the model turned out, but much more so with how much the project taught me.

Rune Priest in Mk.V power armour, painted and varnished

One of my favourite things about Space Wolves' visual style is how rough and functional pieces of armour and torn pelts are combined with ostentatious decorations. This model represents the cruder end of this spectrum. The psychic hood was intentionally sculpted to look unadorned and functional, and the most striking decorative element on his armour consists of very angular runes.

 I didn't notice the similarity in position to Forgeworld's Sigismund model until after it was already painted. I didn't knowingly imitate the pose, but it's very possible I subconsciously took influence from it.

I like to imagine he has had his nose broken in the past and the piece of metal was originally sort of a splint to help it heal, but he chose to leave it there to work as an additional noseguard. Space Wolves don't like wearing helmets in general, and the Mk.V armour might be more quirky than most when it comes to battle helmets used together with psychic hoods, so connecting extra protection directly to his skull would make sense.

Grey Hunter Plasma Gunner in Mk. V Power Armour

In the 40k lore, Mk. V Power Armour has a sinister reputation, as it's associated with the Horus Heresy. Similarly, Logan Grimnar has the Wolf Priests keep a close eye on Bran Redmaw's Great Company. In my mind, the mean-looking Mk. V Armour fits the most feral of Space Wolves well.

I wanted this pack of Grey Hunters to specialize in killing heavy infantry, which is why they have the maximum number of plasma weapons allowed by the codex (ie. two plasma guns, a plasma pistol and a combi-plasma). This is the first of them.

 Bran Redmaw's GC badge was painted freehand on both the shoulder and the knee pad.

 The crest of fangs on top of his battle helm was made by drilling and gluing a thin iron wire core and forming the fang out of green stuff around it. Visually, it has some similarities with the horned helmets used by Chaos Marines, which is just the sort of vaguely suspicious thing that suits this Great Company.

Ragnar Blackmane, the Young King, painted and partially resculpted

As I mentioned previously, Ragnar Blackmane was one of the first models I started making. I finished his head early on, and then left the model half-done for a long, long time, until I recently finished modelling and started painting. Now, while it's fairly obvious that skills improve by using them, what is easy to forget that your expectations of yourself tend to rise more or less at the same pace. So, what had represented the best of my abilities a couple of years earlier, now looked unacceptable.

 Specifically, the part I wasn't satisfied with was the face. Mostly, his nose was the issue, being just a misformed lump on his face, but the general shape of his head was none too pleasing, either. So, I decided to redo the head. I went with Ragnar's trademark howl for his expression on the new head, and added a couple of braids on him. I wasn't sure if he canonically has any facial hair after rising to a Wolf Lord, but I had always imagined Ragnar with sideburns, so that's what I decided to sculpt. His high top knot is what marks him out as who he is, but I also added a couple of thin braids on the model, just because.

Having painted him, I'm still not sure if I like his facial expression, as his eyebrows seem a little too high, and his skull shape could have used some more depth, but I decided this will be good enough for now. This new head is just glued on with superglue, so if I so choose, I can yet again change his head without doing any significant damage to this one.

I felt secure enough with my brushwork to freehand the army badge on his left kneepad (white, fanged skull with crossbones on a black background). Turned out pretty well, actually. Probably because I kept it simple.

  Frostfang turned out well, considering how tough it is to sculpt chainswords by hand. There's probably a trick to it that I don't know, or maybe I should just use different material for weapons.

 His backpack may be my personal favourite part of the finished model. I'm particularly happy with the freehand design on his helmet crest, but the gemstone and the patinated wolf heads worked out well, too.
 See the first version of the model
See the actually finished model

Blood Claw of the Blackmanes & a change to the update schedule

Some time ago, I decided my army needed a large pack of Blood Claws. Fair enough, except that most of the default Space Wolf heads have at least some beard, and in my head canon, Blood Claws are expected to shave their faces until they earn the rank of a Grey Hunter. According to the fluff, most Blood Claw packs are fairly large, and one of the reasons Space Wolves often go bareheaded is so that they can be recognised when accomplishing great deeds. Blood Claws would have greater need to be recognised than most, so it stands to reason that all or nearly all of them would be modelled bareheaded.
Now, that makes a tricky combination: a large group of models, modeled bareheaded, with few heads that fit the bill. I would have to get sculpting.

Sculpting fifteen heads out of Green Stuff was a tall order. I still haven't finished them all, though that was mostly because I got distracted by other projects until now. I decided this one should be the first of the pack to be finished.
I was reasonably satisfied with the sculpt I had previously done, though it did need some cleaning up. I defined his jawline a little more and made his neck a little thicker. I also made his mohawk taller and more hair-like.

 I chose to leave his armour pretty unadorned. I assume that warriors need to earn the pelts, necklaces, totems etc. they wear, and a Blood Claw would have a hard time earning them. On one hand, they are less experienced and skilled, and on the other, their commanders are going to want to keep them hungry for glory. A complacent Blood Claw is not going to be of a lot of use.

 I glued soem pieces of cork to the base, as usual, to make it look a little bit more interesting. It does make him stand out somewhat, which is exactly what a Blood Claw is going to want to do.

His left shoulder pad is from Games Workshop's resin Space Wolf shoulder pad kit that was apparently discontinued when they released the new plastic upgrade kits.

Also, as mentioned in the title, I'm changing the update schedule for this blog. In the future, I'm going to post on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Sundays. This is because on average, it takes me longer than a day to either finish modelling or painting a figure (after all, this is not my job), and I need the days off to have something to show. I was able to keep up daily updates so far because of the models I had already finished, but there's a limited number, and I prefer to have some in the buffer. Also, not having to worry about quantity allows me to focus more on quality.

First of the Void Claws, finished

The first actual model I blogged about is now painted, based and varnished. In a word, finished. More importantly, I'm pretty happy with the way it looks.

 I left the helm more or less undecorated, instead focusing on decorating the body. The combination of the Wolf Guard torso and the customised legs, together with the purity seals and extra cabling, gives the model enough character, without appearing too busy (on 40k scale, at least). 

 I was initially going to just paint the rims on his shoulder guards with a metal colour, but then decided to do a little better and painted the alternating triangles in Wolf Guard colours. I'm glad I did, as this looks a lot more interesting. Also, the studded leg looks good, giving the model some extra edge.

The chains are where I was originally going to connect the extra cables, but the part of the model was a little too flimsy for that. I stuck the chains in to cover up the holes. This way, the model's back has something interesting going on, too, even if they do resemble a tail a little more than I'd like.