The Redmaw, painted (Halloween 'special')

Initially, I was going to paint Bran Redmaw's (post)human figure first, but I wanted to have a thematically appropriate figure to show on Halloween, and The Redmaw's werewolfy appearance fits the bill better than the rest.

 The figure itself was shockingly quick and easy to paint. I simply painted the whole figure with Rhinox Hide, then drybrushed the furry parts with gray shades and the less furry ones with browns and flesh colours.

The only parts that needed any accuracy with the brush were the eyes, mouth and, to some extenct, the claws. I wanted to give the eyes a striking appearance, so I used gold instead of yellow.

The figure was based in my usual fashion, with Stirland Mud drybrushed with Mourn Mountain Snow for the earthy parts and Mechanicum Standard Grey drybrushed with Dawnstone for the rocks, adding some modelling snow and a winter grass tuft to finish the look. Finally, I varnished the figure with Purity Seal.
See the model before painting

Thunderwolf Cavalry with a Bionic Arm

Fun fact: this entry was almost titled as "Lefthanded Thunderwolf Cavalry". Luckily, I stopped to question if left-handedness is really enough of a distinguishing feature for a model of a genetically and bionically enhanced supersoldier, wearing powered armour, wielding an axe with chainblade, and riding on a massive wolf. Feel free to disagree with me on this, but I don't think it is.

 This model has far less custom-sculpted parts than the previous two, with just the mount's armour being made of Green Stuff. Speaking of, I may decide to add a couple of plates more on the hindquarters of the thunderwolf, just to make it seem more balanced.
I wanted to have at least one of the tree models wear a helmet, and since the other two are bare-headed, this guy gets to hide his face. I considered using one of the canid head masks included in either the Space Wolves Pack or Upgrades kit, but decided to go with the Mk.V helmet instead, because I like the look. His bionic right arm is from Forgeworld's Space Marine Character Conversion set, with a Legion Phobos Chainaxe pinned to it.

 The right side of the model is particularly standard, with the Storm Shield being actually from the same kit as the Thunderwolf mount. Other than the chain reins and the helmet for the wolf, one could almost mistake it for a non-converted model.

This brings my total number of modelled Thunderwolf Cavalry to two and three quarters, the first one I blogged about still needing a little bit of decoration and cleanup. I will probably end up buying another Thunderwolf Cavalry kit, to make the total number of the pack up to five and to use the sixth mount for another Iron Priest.

Void Claw with a Cyclone Missile Launcher

Since I had modelled nearly all of my Void Claws anyway, I decided it would be best to do the last one quickly, too.
I usually try to give each model in a pack one gimmick, such as bionics, a particular special weapon etc. This time, as I was running out of Wolf Claws (there are four in a Wolf Guard Terminator kit, two of which are the same), I decided to make one of the arms bionic. In addition to this, I also gave the model a Cyclone Missile Launcher. That's two things, but we'll let it slide.

 Instead of using one of the plastic shoulder shields, I sculpted a round one, to better tie the Tartaros pattern Void Claw in with the group. I also gave this guy an extra crotch plate. Supposedly, the wound that took his arm made him more cautious.

 The bionic arm is mostly made of Adeptus Mechanicus Electro Priest parts. You may notice that, at the time of writing, his right extra cable is still missing.That will be fixed before painting.

His left side is mostly standard parts, except for the shoulder shield.
With this one done, I can move on to painting and, hopefully, to other packs and formations, such as Arjac's Shieldbrothers.

Void Claws Pack Leader

It looks like Void Claws will be the first of the Champions of Fenris formations I will finish, only a little over a year after the supplement came out. It was partially because I came up with a pretty simple and clear theme for the models, but mostly because that theme included wearing helmets.

 The Pack Leader is marked by the back icon from the Space Wolves Upgrades kit. I also wanted to give him a lot of wolf tail talismans, and decided to sculpt them myself. I probably will clean up the sculpts somewhat before painting. Other than that, the model is a fairly standard Void Claw, with the shield with the pack marking and the extra cabling that I imagine somehow helps with teleportation.

 I wanted to give the model a somewhat more interesting pose than to just have him standing around, so I used a set of legs with a bent knee and added some cork under the bent leg. I find it works wonders when trying to pose the models with otherwise standard legs.

 The Pack Leader is fourth of the Void Claws I've modelled so far. The fifth one will have a Cyclone missile launcher, and I may later make a sixth one, in case I want to either field the formation as simply as possible, or if I want to make the pack larger and scarier.

Wolf Scout with a Sniper Rifle

From a narrative standpoint, it makes sense that Wolf Scouts are an Elite choice. They're proven warriors with a natural affinity towards stealth. I just wish the rules reflected this better. I'd welcome a formation that gives Wolf Scouts some more abilities. As it is, I find that sniper rifles are the most appropriate equipment for them.

This is another older model that I finished a good while back. I wanted to emphasize the model's stealthy nature, so I sculpted a fur-lined hood over his head. I also chose to leave his rifle's casing black instead of deep red.

 I painted the camo-cloaks grey to fit the terrain I have used on the bases. I did consider painting some actual camouflage patterns, but decided they would too complicated to paint on the wavy surface of the cloaks.

As usual, I assembled the model fully before painting. As a result, I had to paint the face from an awkward angle, between his rifle and the cloak. I'm not too satisfied with how the face and particularly his left eye turned out.

Second of the Void Claws. painted

One model is hardly a formation, and I needed at least five, so I decided it was time to paint another Void Claw.

 The model itself had few distinguishing features, besides the molecular bonding studs, so I decided to differentiate it a little further in the painting stage by leaving his helm black. I did the same to the casings of his Wolf Claws, giving the model a somewhat darker look than most Terminators.

 The extra studs were not only somewhat fiddly to sculpt, but painting them took some time, too. Since I wanted to leave the shoulder pad underneath black, I had to paint each individual stud one by one. Luckily, there wasn't too many of them.

Otherwise, the model was fairly standard Indomitus pattern Terminator. I kept the base simple, as well.
Two Void claws down, three to go. The next steps with the Void Claws are probably going to involve the Tartaros pattern Terminator and the pack leader.

Iron Priest in Mk.IV Armour

Having modeled two Rune Priests and painted one, and modeled a Wolf Priest, my lack of Iron Priests was starting to annoy me. Now, I appreciate minor annoyances as much as the next guy, but I was not lacking in those, so I decided to build myself an Iron Priest

 The torso of the figure is one of the Mk. III "Iron" armour torsos packed in the Mk.IV Power Weapon pack from Forgeworld, which, while making the title of this blog post something of a white lie, does look bulky and tough enough to warrant a 2+ save, especially with some extra decoration to give the impression of higher quality worksmanship. To supplement that, I gave the model's legs (which are Mk.IV, as promised) some extra plating.

 The biggest challenge in building an Iron Priest was the servo arm. I used pieces of AdMech Skitarii Ironstrider Balistarius autocannon barrels for the bulk of the servo arm and pieces of armoured cabling from Fulgurite Electro Priests. The claws are from the Venerable Dreadnought kit, and while they do look pretty big for an infantry model, I sort of like the mean, oversized look.

I added some wolfish decoration to the model's bolt pistol, in the form of a wolftail talisman and a front sight made out of a fang. The bionic arm is from Forgeworld's Space Marine Character Conversion Kit. I added a Fulgurite Electro Priest's backpack on top of the Space Marine backpack to bulk it out with appropriately Mechanicum themed stuff.

I'm thinking of making another Iron Priest in the future, but having that one mounted on a heavily modified Thunderwolf. In the meantime, the next step to build some Servitors to make this one more useful. It will be a challenge to make them, but luckily, there are plenty of pieces left in the Electro Priest sprues, and I don't exactly desperately need those for my AdMech army. Beautiful models, too bad they're the least useful unit in their codex.

Vindicator, painted

I tend to focus more on infantry than on vehicles. Painting vehicles seems to take forever, and the boxes on threads aren't as interesting to me as the (somewhat) human shapes of infantry. Vehicles also take a lot more space on my shelf. Still, I don't want to focus exclusively on either one, and a vehicle every once in a while keeps things fresh.
As far as Space Marine tanks go, Vindicators are particularly brutal with their short range, high power weaponry. The Predator's more typically tank-like shape is IMO more aesthetically pleasing, but the Vindicator looks more threatening.

Generally speaking, I added some decorations here and there, but I didn't depart too far from the tank's basic shape. Since The Blackmanes form the backbone of my Space Wolves army, I wanted to make this tank a part of it, but found it a little tricky to find a space for the company badge. Eventually, I painted a yellow diamond on the siege shield by hand and added the transfer on it.

 I was somewhat unclear as to what sort of colour scheme the model should have, but eventually decided on the black and white markings of Long Fangs, since the model is a heavy support choice.

 The Vindicator kit includes a large shell and a winch, but I broke the winch assembly while fiddling around with an almost empty bottle of super glue. I didn't want to leave the rear of the vehicle completely unadorned, so I included the wolf pelt I had left unused from Bjorn's kit.

 To make the model look a little more interesting, I decided to add a commander to the tank. His body came with the Vindicator kit, with the chainaxe from Forgeworld and the head from AdMech Skitarii Ironstrider kit. I went for the dark South Fenrisian skin tone on the small area of flesh that's visible. He's pointing to the direction of the cannon decoration, as if to say "Look at our sweet figurehead, or I'll hit you with this axe!" No-one tell him he has a Demolisher cannon, that could end badly.

The tank's brutal nature made the Wolf of the Red Moon, described in the 5th edition codex as a terrible god of vengeance, feel like a natural totem to the vehicle, so I sculpted its badge to the side armour of the vehicle.
I considered sculpting a wolf's maw all around the Demolisher cannon, but that would have required some pretty major rebuilding and wouldn't have been very visible from behind the siege shield anyway, so I decided on a smaller wolf's head.
Obviously, I don't really know where the line after which you've overdone something goes, but when I found myself trying to learn to write Old Norse in Elder Futhark runes so that I could have a slightly more meaningful text on the siege shield, I was pretty sure I had crossed that line. The text is supposed to say "Vengeance of Ironhelm" on the first line, "Burning death to traitors" on the second and "Hail to Russ and Allfather" on the third. I doubt it's grammatically correct, and may very well have some spelling mistakes, but considering it's written in dead alphabet, in a dead language, on a soft sci-fi wargame model, I thought it's accurate enough.
Finally, I wanted to make the rear hatch openable, but able to stay closed, so magnetized it, with a couple of tiny magnets I bought from a local electronics retailer.

Overall, I think the model turned out fairly well. Of course, for gaming purposes, two Vindicators are better than one, but that will have to wait. I think my next tank might well be a Predator.

Arjac Rockfist, work in progress

Arjac was one of the first special characters I started working on when I returned to 40k hobby a couple of years ago. In the fluff, he is described as a huge man, even by Astartes standards, which gave me the interesting challenge of trying to make a model in Terminator armour look bigger than a Terminator. While I managed to clear that hurdle, the relatively crude sculpting I did at the time discouraged me from continuing to work on the model, until now. Rather than just redoing what I don't like, I decided to take a moment to show what I did back then, before going on to redo the parts I'm unsatisfied with.

 The head of the model isn't actually too bad, though the sculpt could definitely be a lot cleaner. It remains to be seen if the head needs to be replaced, or if it will be enough to just fix the eyes and the brow. The blacksmith's apron will need to be redone, but the pelt on his left shoulder looks actually pretty good and may stay as it is. Foehammer's head definitely needs to be redone.
One of the methods I used to give the model more height was adding extra material to the soles of his boots. Arjac used to be an Iron Priest, so I gave the boots Mechanicum's cogtooth pattern decoration.
Another method I used was adding material to the top of the legs piece, lengthening his torso. I also added plenty of ProCreate to the sides of the model's torso, in addition to the guitar strings to emulate extra cabling.

 Anvil Shield needs to be redone, as well. In addition to looking crude, the shield's decoration just isn't great conceptually. I added the shield boss as something of an afterthought. Contrary to GW's official model, I think the shield should be more or less flat, as it's described as routinely being used offensively, which just doesn't work as well with a domed shield. While the final shield may well end up having a picture of an anvil on it, it'll have to be a lot more stylized.
Speaking of anvils, the anvil decoration on top of the torso needs some touching up, as well. Probably just some decoration, though.

The base was one of the first where I thought of putting something under the foot of the bent leg. It probably won't need much improvement.

Remains to be seen how long it takes to get the model to my liking.

Ragnar Blackmane, finished (this time for real)

I'm starting to understand George Lucas. This is the third time I replaced a head on my Ragnar Blackmane miniature, instead of just making a new model and leaving the old one as it was. In my defense, sculpting big chainswords is really fiddly, and this one has a Frostfang I'm reasonably satisfied with.

 When I started sculpting this head, I wanted to pay special attention to making the character's brow. The main problem I had with Ragnar's previous head was that he looked too calm. To make facial expressions visible in this scale, they need to be seriously exaggarated.
Another thing to pay attention to was how clean the sculpt was. It's very easy to leave some areas a little rough, but they become painfully apparent in the painting stage.

I recently learned to use a fairly limited palette when painting flesh. Too wild changes in tone make the model look like it needs to see a dermatologist, and drybrushing is very risky. The character ended up looking much more like a person than many of my earlier models.

 The new head fits the model IMO much better than the previous one, and the Allslayer actually looks more furious than surprised.

I should be done now swapping this guy's head. If I find that I still don't like it, I will just make a new model instead of sculpting a fourth head for the same one, and I don't think I'll be doing that any time soon.
See the first version of the model before painting
See the first attempt at the painted model

Sicarian Ruststalker Princeps, painted

I like that the leader of a group of Ruststalkers is called a 'princeps'. It makes Adeptus Mechanicus' connection to Titans somehow more palpable, even if the stealthy cybernetic assassins are very different from the enormous war-walkers.

 

The long robes over the Princeps' torso are very effective at marking out the leader. The character's chord claw, twin transsonic blades and the dataspike give it a very lethal appearance. 

 

 I try to give transsonic weaponry a high-tech, electric appearance by highlighting them from black to white through electric blue. IMO, it works pretty well.

I tried to use the transfer sheets that came with the models, but I just couldn't get them to work to my satisfaction, so the cogtoothed pattern on the hem of the robe is painted by hand.

Blood Claw with a Flamer

One of the nice things about sculpting Space Wolves is that you can sculpt some pretty crazy hairstyles. Everything from a bald head to a foot-tall mohawk is appropriate. This is especially useful with Blood Claws, since I generally keep them clean-shaven. This time, I decided to do a whole bunch of small braids.

 Other than his head, the model is pretty standard. I prefer to not give Blood Claws too many wolfy bits, as they have to earn them, which a pack of whelps haven't had time to do yet.

 Flamers work well for Blood Claws, because they are cheap and bypass the whelps' weak ballistic skill. Blood Claws are also going to want to assault the enemy, so they'll want to get as close as possible anyway.

This is the second Blood Claw model ready to be painted so far. Long way to go, especially since Blood Claw packs have to be large to be of any real use.

Grey Hunter with an Aventail, painted

While Elites are a lot of fun to build and paint, Troops form the backbone of an army, and with Space Wolves, the Grey Hunters are the solid, versatile choice. That doesn't mean they should look boring, though.

 Umbra-Ferrox pattern bolters look a lot meaner than the more common Godwyn IVb pattern models, especially with the chainblade attachment. The irregular shape of the blade makes it a little difficult to design any decorative patterns on it, though.

 I don't think any two of the Redmaw company badges I've hand-painted have looked the same so far. Weirdly enough, it doesn't bother me, though I still wish GW would start making shoulder pads with company badges other than the Blackmanes.

With this one, the strength of the Grey Hunter pack with plasma weapons is now at seven men. Many of the ones so far have had their helmets on. Will probably have to change that for the next one, to keep things interesting.

Wolf Guard Pack Leader, painted

I have struggled with painting flesh in the past. I tried using the same method I use for painting everything else, ie. painting a layer or two, shading with ink and highlighting, usually by drybrushing, but the effect has always been somewhat blotchy. This time, I took a more subtle route, by just using the same fleshtone paint for highlighting I had used for the initial layers. I did end up blending it with a lighter shade, but even before that, the results were far better than before.

 Forgeworld's Legion Combi-Plasma doesn't have the magnetic accelearation coils shown on other plasma weaponry, so I decided to put the blue glow on the seam between the bolter and plasma weapon part.

 I wanted to add some bronze highlights on the model's bionic leg, instead of just painting it in steel/iron tones throughout. This makes the model look more interesting.

The knotwork pattern on the helmet's crest was largely a happy accident. At first, I just tried to paint a pattern yellow X's, but noticed that by adding a few thin black lines, I can make it into a knotwork pattern. I'm very happy with the result.

Having just now learned to paint flesh, I probably will have to go back and redo a few earlier models. I'll probably end up showing them in a single update in the future.

House Taranis Imperial Knight Errant

The Imperial Knight model has a couple of problems. The most obvious one is the price, though you could argue it's pretty much in line with GW's pricing policy in general. The next problem is that there's only one way to position the legs, and while fielding multiple Knights may not be very sportsmanlike in standard-sized games, I'd still prefer to be able to position the legs differently without having to rebuild the model too drastically, or without turning to Forgeworld.
That all said, the model is still very cool-looking. Of course, I still couldn't just build a standard one, and decided to add some LED's.

 I used a multi-tool to drill holes where the model's eyes were, and added two green 3 mm LEDs. I had to slightly modify the diodes so that they would fit in the sockets, but managed to make them replaceable, in case the original pair burns out or is otherwise damaged. There are also two superbright orange LEDs in the thermal cannon, but they are disconnected from the circuit for now.

I included a wolftail talisman and what I imagine was Berek Thunderfist's (Ragnar Blackmane's predecessor) company badge. In my headcanon, the knight and the Thunderfist company served together on a campaign, where they earned each other's mutual respect. I still plan to give one of my Space Wolves models something to tie them together with House Taranis. It will probably be a Long Fang model or possibly a Dreadnought.

The mask is magnetized and removable, as can be seen here. If I buy the new, expanded Knight set at some point, I plan to magnetize the other Mechanicum masks similarly to make them interchangeable.

 I was going to magnetize the main ranged weapon, too, so that it could be changed between a thermal cannon and a rapid-fire battle cannon. However, I would have had to somewhat compromise the appearance of the weapon, and decided against it.

Despite the effort to tie the model in with my Space Wolves, I did eventually end up basing it with the red sands style of my Adeptus Mechanicus army.
I'm reasonably satisfied with how the model turned out, and am tempted to buy the expanded kit, probably making it into a Knight Warden. We shall see.