Long Fang with a Plasma Cannon

I decided I wanted to sculpt something again for a change. Now, I usually have at least a few projects I'm working on at any given moment, but the amount of time I put into any of them varies. Lately, I've been actively working on two models. The other will need some more work before it's ready to be shown, but this one was done fairly quickly.

 The plasma gun is from the older Space Marine Devastator Squad kit, and as such, didn't have any wolfy bits on it (neither do the newer ones, I understand). I decided that Long Fangs are venerable enough to have a wolf's head mounted on the power pack, so I went on to sculpt one. I don't want to have too many of these on my models, as Logan Grimnar famously has one, as does Njall Stormcaller. However, the large and bulky backpacks that come with heavy weaponry IMO need something to decorate them.

According to the fluff, Long Fangs have centuries of experience and keep their heads cool under fire. A roaring or grimacing face would look off. For that reason, I wanted his head to look calm or even be laughing.It may not look obvious, but the corners of his mouth are turned up.
The pelt covering his left shoulder came from the Thunderwolf Cavalry kit.

I like plasma cannons, as they have high enough strength to pose a threat to most units in the game, and can lay down a template to threaten hordes. The downside is that statistically, one in 18 shots kills the model firing it (assuming standard power armour). With just one of them in a pack, losing a model to Gets Hot! is not a huge risk.

Stormwolf Assault Craft

This is another model I actually mostly finished a long time ago.I hadn't varnished it, though, and I was really unsatisfied with the freehand knotwork I had painted on it. Finally, I decided two things: that I need to finish the model and varnish it, and that I have to read up on Viking artwork to make better knotwork in the future.

 The varnishing process was a little tricky, as I didn't want to apply satin varnish on the windshield. I ended up covering it with some blue-tack.
I used more transfers on this model than most others. While I generally prefer somewhat less boxy shapes, all the straight planes do make applying transfers very easy.

 The Stormwolf/Stormfang kit does include a lot of nice presonalising touches, such as the decorative chains and shields. I thought the chains on a flyer stretched my suspension of disbelief a little further than I'd like, but the shield on front somehow didn't.

 I primarily plan to use this as a dedicated transport for the Blood Claws, once the pack is full, but didn't want to paint Blood Claw markings on the craft, because otherwise, I'd be too hung up on them to use it to transport anything else. Instead, I decided to slap on a bunch of fairly generic Space Wolves symbols.

I did give the craft Ragnar Blackmane's Great Company markings, since most of my other models either have another transport or will be deep striking in.
I do like the way the Hellfrost Cannon looks, with the runes glowing blue. No idea how it's supposed to conduct heat away from enemy troops, but I'm not too bothered. It's 40k universe, somehow even the vacuum of space has the ability to snap-freeze human bodies, despite being a perfect insulator.

Sixth Blood Claw of the Blackmanes, painted

I managed to buy a new bottle of undercoat spray (more of a challenge than it should be, but there are no retailers in my town that stock more than a handful of GW products), so I could get back to painting. I decided to start with the Blood Claw.

I wanted to touch up the face and hair a bit before starting. I added a nasolabial crease on the right side of his face, giving his snarl a little more character. I also added some texture to the top of his hair.

 The kneepads were painted in the usual way, with army badge on one and pack markings repeated on the other.
I decided to go for another ginger model, painting the model's exposed skin in appropriately pale colour, even though Canis Helix probably has more to do with Space Wolves' tendency towards red hair than whatever gene combination is responsible for it in modern human population.

 I knew I wanted the back of the model's head to have some stubble, and decided to also slap some on his face. I like the way it turned out.

The older model power pack and the sawtooth pattern on the helmet's crest differentiate the model from his packmates.
I decided not to have any modelling snow or tufts of grass on the base. I think I can get away with it when the base is this small. Not sure if I'd do it with the newer, 32 mm bases, though.

The Blackmanes' Grey Hunter with a Meltagun

My new undercoat spray should be here tomorrow. In the meantime, I decided to make a post of another older model. Usually, when I do posts on these, I touch up the old paintwork a little, but rarely enough to do a big difference on the overall appearance (though careful application of a shade colour can do a lot for a model).
This is a member of the first proper pack of Grey Hunters I assembled and painted. I originally thought to make the pack as tooled up as possible, with all the possible upgrades. In hindsight, that makes the pack something of a jack of all trades, master of none, though it can be fairly effective when dropped in a pod right next to a deathstar unit. The two meltaguns and the plasma pistol should usually do at least some damage to pretty much anything right from the start, and if the opponent won't react, they'll have to take another turn of shooting and an assault from it, with plenty of attacks, including a power axe and a power fist. Of course, this is pretty expensive points-wise, so I'm not sure it's worth it.

 The head is originally from the Wolf Guard Terminators kit. I really like the brass eyepatch head, and knew I wanted to use it. I imagine he originally came from a different Blooc Claws pack than the others, something he pays homage to on his right kneepad. The left kneepad bears Ragnar Blackmane's army badge.

 I chose not to give his already decorative helmet any extra patterns, as I didn't want it to look too busy. Instead, I just painted the crest between the decorative lists red. As can be seen here, I used to paint much of the power packs in metal colour. Now, I prefer to paint most of them in the armour's main colour, but didn't want to repaint the whole backpack on the model.

The pack is still incomplete, with eight members, if I recall correctly. I think I will complete it at some point, fairly soon at that, since I don't want two members of the pack to have different size bases from the rest.

Wulfen Pack Leader

Like many others, when I first saw the new Wulfen models, I wasn't really sold. When designing werewolf Space Marines, they went for the flatfaced Wolfman type, which I never really liked that much, but more importantly for me, it seemed like GW continued with their style of making models that can only be assembled in one way. Of course, the typical multipart Space Marines are unusually easy to design to be modular, and it doesn't work as well with Wulfen, as they don't have armour plate covering most of their bodies, but looking at the newer Space Wolf character models, the situation doesn't seem to have improved. That's not what this post is about, though, so let's not go there.

 The standard Wulfen Pack Leader pose is, in my opinion, just awful. I can think of no situation where his "who wants a hug?" pose would make any sense, excluding him actually offering to hug someone, which would be just sad, considering that no-one would probably take that offer from a space-werewolf who hasn't showered in 10 000 years. So, I heated up my oven and reposed the torso to hunch over a bit. His loincloth seems to have lost a little detail, but nothing major. To direct attention away from any damage, I glued a medallion from the Wolf Guard Terminator kit next to it.
I hadn't glued his arms or head on at that point, so those were safe.
After reposing the body, I glued on the arms so that they looked like he might actually be fighting, or at least about to fight, with them. I used plenty of green stuff to fill in all the gaps.
Another thing I wanted to redo was the trophy rack. Xenos skulls are nice and all, but this was supposed to be a reminder of the Chapter's past, so I took a Mk. II helmet and remade it into a decorative Thousand Sons helmet. I imagine the Pack Leader having fought him during the burning of Prospero. To tie it in with the "current" 40k universe, I glued a post-heresy Thousand Sons head from the Thunderwolf Cavalry kit on the base.

As customary by now, I glued a Mk. II shoulder pad on his left shoulder and cut some chips on it. The trophy rack behind the helmet came from a ForgeWorld Space Wolves Dreadnought.

At first, I was planning to leave his right shoulder bare, but ultimately sculpted a tri-layered shoulder pad on it.
There's also another Chaos Space Marine helmet hanging from the power pack, to show that at no point after the Heresy did he stop fighting the oathbreakers.
 I may yet continue to add little details to the model before painting, depending on how long it takes before I manage to buy another undercoat spray bottle and how bored I get in the meantime.

Sixth Blackmane Blood Claw

I still haven't bought a new undercoat spray bottle, so while I continue to work on the couple of remaining Wulfen models, it will take some time to finish the pack. In the meantime, I decided to continue to slowly build up my Blood Claws. Slowly, because I still hold on to my decision to hand-sculpt all of my Blood Claws heads. I'd say GW somewhat forced my hand here, though, since so many of the standard Space Wolves heads just don't look like anything that could pass for a youngblood Space Wolf.

 The head admittedly isn't one of my best sculpts, and I may have to improve on it somewhat before painting. Especially the mouth area looks a little off.
The axe is a Phobos pattern chainaxe from Forgeworld, with all the chain teeth taken off and given a slight edge. I wanted at least some of my Blood Claws to have axes, and even if chainaxes would be very Space Wolfy, they're not a valid wargear option in the codex. The next best thing was to modify one. I intend to paint it in darkish metal colour, so it's not confused with a power axe. It also doesn't have the disruption field emitters power weapons have.

 I tried my hand at sculpting what is described as the historical hairstyle as worn by the Normans, ie. a short hair in front and shaved in the back. Historically, this was probably to allow more comfortable wearing of chain coifs, which may not have been worn with padded hood undermeath it back in the 11th century, as weird as that seems. The hair is another thing I may have to improve on before painting.

I wanted to give the model a holster for his bolt pistol. I imagine he prefers to use his axe two-handed on occasion, and doesn't want to just chuck his pistol for that (otherwise, an Iron Priest might chain it to his armour, too, as he did with his packmate) I also noticed that I forgot to include the battle helmet at this point, but will give him one prior to painting (third strike!).

Grey Hunter of the Blackmanes with a Plasma Pistol, painted

Probably the biggest flaw in my Space Wolves army is that I currently have two packs of Grey Hunters, both from different Great Companies. Of course, Curse of the Wulfen brings in Greatpacks that generally allow Land Speeders to be used instead of Grey Hunters, but still, the situation resembles having a Space Marine armour with only two tactical squads. I intend to build at least a couple of Blackmanes Grey Hunter packs, designed for drop pod deployment. In the meantime, here's an older model.

Showing Grey Hunters having close combat weapons can be a little tricky. It's straighforward enough when I model them with chainswords, but if the model is holding shooting weapons in both hands, like here, adding a WYSIWYG close combat weapon takes some more effort. I usually try to model them with at least one combat knife and possibly a bayonet. In this case, I opted to give him two knives on his belt.

 I'm not sure about the bolter's white wolf head. In hindsight, it could have been better if I had also painted the model's hair light gray/white, effectively making him Geralt. As it is, I'll have to leave the witcher-Space Wolf until later date.

I could have made the plasma pistol's glow a little brighter, but again, that's hindsight. I am pretty satisfied with the way the model's pose, with the left arm holding the bolter looking like he actually might be capable of firing it and even hitting something.

Wulfen with a Great Frost Axe and a Stormfrag Auto-Launcher, painted

For once, I'm getting a new unit completed at a fairly decent pace, considering the book only came out last month. With any luck, I'll have my Wulfen unit done by the end of March. Knock on wood, though.

 I wonder if I applied too much spray paint on the model's face, as I seemed to have more trouble getting a clean, detailed paintjob than the previous two. Might be because my spray paint can is nearly empty, and they often act up towards the end. Other than that, though, the model ended up finished in a fairly standard, by now established Wulfen fashion, with a wunjo-rune as the pack marking, a skull on the base and everything as usual.

Still liking the GC marking on the shoulder pad.
I wanted to paint the Great Frost Axe in predominantly cold colours and then contrast those with a bright, fiery red gem in the center. For this effect, I added some Nihilakh Oxide prior to drybrushing with Sycorax Bronze. The oxidisation also works with the fluff, as the Great Frost Axes are supposed to be ancient relics, and the bronze decoration would have somewhat oxidised in 10 millennia, to say the least.

With this model done, I'm 60% through my Wulfen. I still have some work to do to finish the pack leader, and the other model left still needs something to make it a little more interesting.

Why and How to Make a Wet Palette

Acrylic paints, espcially thick kinds, such as the Citadel colours, dry very quickly. This isn't news to anyone who's done any significant amount of painting, but if you use a normal dry palette, you soon stop thinking about how much paint you end up wasting on the palette. The hobby is costly enough if as much as half of your paint ends up drying on a piece of cardboard/plastic/whatever without ever actually contributing to the paintjob.
I must have known about wet palettes longer, but hadn't really thought to make one until recently, and I have to say I feel silly for not having done it earlier.

 All it really is is a shallow plastic container or a tray, some paper towels and a piece of baker's parchment paper. Add water and you're done. I wanted to use a container with a lid, in case I make a larger project with which I have to use mixesd paints. If I stop painting for the night and close the lid, the paint will still be wet enough to paint with the next day, albeit thinned down. It would probably be even better if the container had some sort of seal around the edges when the lid is down, but this works well enough as it is.

The actual "assembly" involves placing the paper towels in the container, getting them wet and laying the parchment paper on top of them. The parchment paper is used as one would use a palette The paper towels will wick water through the parchment paper, keeping the paint from drying. The whole project costs around as much as one or two pots of Citadel's paints, depending on how fancy container you want to use.

Wulfen with a Great Frost Axe and a Stormfrag Auto-Launcher

I'm continuing my trend of giving my Wulfen the Stormfrag Auto-Launchers. Points-wise, they're cheap, especially considering the total points costs of the models, and having enough of them might offset the low ballistic skill of the Wulfen. The current plan is to give one to everyone in the pack except for the pack leader, who would be the only one with a trophy rack instead. This would help distinguish the pack leader from the rest, and would also mean that the pack won't be left without assault grenades after one unlucky challenge.

 I glued the auto-launcher in a more upward position than on the other models. This was partially to get the right effect, but also because of the guy's wild head of hair, which would have gotten in the way if the launcher was too far forward.

 I glued a couple of pieces of cork to the base, and a skull from the Thunderwolf Cavalry kit. The intention is for the model to seem to be running on rocky ground.

I gave the model's backpack one of the medallions on chain from the Wolf Guard Terminator kit, and glued a wolftooth necklace to the shoulder pad. The latter took some green stuff to get a proper fit.
I'm hoping to get the model painted fairly soon, though I have another project underway (well, I always have way too many of those), so I don't know which will the next post be about.

Wulfen with a Thunder Hammer, Storm Shield and Stormfrag Auto-Launcher, painted

The reason I often leave the pack leaders for the last is that it takes some trial and error to get the right feel to a pack, especially if the models are something I haven't modelled or painted before. This was shown true of the Wulfen, as well. I'm much more satisfied with the way the second model of the pack turned out than the first, and can only hope to continue the upward trend.

 I left this model's hair a lot reddish-browner than the previous one's. One could argue that the Wulfen are approximately 10,000 years old and should all be old and grey by now, but it should be remembered that time in the Warp has little meaning. Also, Njal Stormcaller is a few centuries old, too, and has not gone grey at all, so there is a precedent. Additionally, the whole curse of the Wulfen thing is one huge unknown variable, and finally, Warhammer 40,000 is not exactly hard sci-fi, and things generally tend to work the way they do because shut up, that's why.

 I came up with the idea of a quartered design for the Storm Shield, and have to say I really like the way it turned out. This would be a lot more difficult to pull off with some of the other models for Storm Shields, but the regular diamond shape at the shield's center gave me an easy way to divide it into four equal pieces. The colours were chosen because of their association with the Wulfen through their pack markings as well as the 13th Great Company badge colours.

Speaking of, still liking the GC badge on the left pauldron. It works well as a method of  tying in the otherwise chaotic pack.

Wulfen with Frost Claws and Stormfrag Auto-Launcher, painted

As painting projects, The Wulfen are fairly different from other Space Wolves miniatures. There are few areas of smooth armour plate visible, and the transitions to fur on their elbows, heels etc. offers a challenge not seen on most other miniatures.

At first, I was going to paint the model's hair as blonde, but wasn't really satisfied with the way it looked. I may try it again with some other member of the pack, but considering that the Wulfen have lived for thousands of years, most of them have probably gone well gray.
As the first member in the pack I've painted, I had to choose a pack marking. I decided to go for the runes again, using a white wunjo rune on a red field. The white-and-red pack markings go well with the established 13th Great Company badge of a red wolf's head over a white crescent moon.

 Speaking of, I like the way the model's darker gray left pauldron with the ancient symbol turned out. It does the job I hoped it would, and ties the 40k army in with their 30k counterparts I also like the gray tufts of fur around the heels etc. 

The backpack looks like a fairly standard 40k Space Wolf backpack, which helps with the tying the past in with the present part. I somewhat wish I had used a little more imagination with the basing part, but the relatively open base doesn't look bad, it just doesn't really catch the eye, either.

Wulfen with a Thunder Hammer, Storm Shield and Stormfrag Auto-Launcher

I haven't quite yet finished painting my first Wulfen, so I'll show another member of the pack. As much as I like the look of the bare clawed Wulfen hands, I'm planning to give all members of at least this pack weaponry, and after briefly thinking it over, I decided to have at least one of each weapon.

This model was probably the least converted of his pack. The arms and his pose are all standard, with the only deviation from the assembly manual being the switched head and having the heavy, unwieldy thunder hammer hanging low. I also posed the head in a little more extreme position and gave him a pauldron on his left shoulder, to go with his pack.

The increased survivability provided by the storm shield made this model an obvious carrier for the second Stormfrag launcher. The short length of chain was added for the model's decorative elements.

All of the Wulfen legs have one leg raised high up, which leaves plenty of room on the base.  I added a couple of pieces of cork on it to make it look a little more interesting. I'm considering also adding some shrubberies and/ or roots to the bases of the other pack members.