Space Wolves Legionary, painted

Because 8th edition of 40k will be released soon, I'm probably not going to do any major additions to my 40k armies in the near future, but will focus on 30k instead, as ForgeWorld has stated that Horus Heresy will continue to use 7th edition rules. I alreeady have the Primarch, and the Fenrisian Wolves can be used for either time period. That just leaves everything else, ie. almost the entirety of VI Legion, a much larger fighting force than Space Wolves the chapter.

I wanted to link my 30k and 40k Space Wolves, and the way to do this were the Wulfen. I had previously painted the 13th Great Company badge on my Wulfen shoulder pads, so to tie them in with the 30k army, all I had to do was to have at least some of my models carry the same emblem.

The part I most like about 30k Space Wolves is their dark colour scheme. To that end, I painted the model's armour in Mechanicus Standard Grey, washed it with Nuln Oil and lightly drybrushed with Dawnstone, finally adding a few highlights in Administratum Grey. I also kept the bronze parts of the armour relatively dark.

Adeptus Custodes Custodian, painted

Painting mostly metallic armour is something I have been wanting to do for a while now. I'm not really interested in Age of Sigmar, partially because I hadn't gotten into Fantasy Battle's lore that much before they blew it all up, and am not really into getting into it now. Point is, I don't really have a reason to paint Sigmarines, so this Custodian is the first miniature in golden armour that I'm painting.

I used Retributor Armour for the base colour of the armour, then washed it with Reikland Fleshshade (interesting that I seem to use that for a lot of things, but shading flesh is barely among them) and then highlighted it with Liberator Gold. I could have gone brighter with highlights, but they seemed clear enough already to me, so I decided that was enough.
I painted the severed head on the ground in the Thousand Sons metallic red colour scheme (though my paint mixture could use some brighter red) and added some Blood For the Blood God to the ground around it. While this places the model fairly clearly at the Burning of Prospero (or possibly Terra later on, when the Thousand Sons joined the siege), I don't really mind that. I like to keep my 40k models' bases somewhat ambiguous, but 30k could be considered re-enactment, to a point.

Ahzek Ahriman and one of his little friends

Though I'm generally partial to the Space Wolves chapter/legion, and though in the larger scale they clearly are the good guys and the loyalists as opposed to the Thousand Sons, there really is little question that in the case of burning of Prospero, the VI legion were the bad guys and the barely literate invaders, who attacked the homeworld of the Legion focused on learning and answering questions, killed the world's defenders and committed a genocide. Of course, they were misled, and it wasn't long after that Leman Russ swore off following orders unquestioningly, but that wasn't much comfort to the now crippled legion of Thousand Sons, who only were attacked in the first place because their Primarch had tried to warn the Emperor of the archtraitor.

I recently bought a copy of the Burning of Prospero as a birthday present for myself. I really wanted to use the Forgeworld's colour scheme for my Thousand Sons, as they are not supposed to look like Blood Angels, but I neither have an airbrush nor their Angron Red, so I had to make do with Citadel colours and Lahmian Medium. For that reason, I wanted to try out the colour scheme on an expendable miniature before moving on to Ahriman. There's a fairly decent chance I'll end up buying another Burning of Prospero in the future, so if I decide to try this again with a different execution of the colour scheme, it will be an option.

 The Forgeworld's colour scheme is done by airbrushing the transparent Angron Red over a metal basecoat. I tried to replicate it by painting Mephiston Red thinned down with Lahmian medium over Leadbelcher base. I then proceeded to shade the model with Nuln Oil and to add some similarly thinned down Evil Sunz Scarlet to some of the most raised areas. I then highlighted the edges of the model's plate with Runefang Steel. The end result is more weathered than main GW's overtly clean look, and I like this that way. Confident I could get reasonably pleasing results, I proceeded to get to work with Ahriman.

 As usual, I painted the model in smaller pieces. I first painted most of the base, knowing it would be trickier to paint the slain Space Wolf with the main model standing over it. I also didn't attach the backpack until the very end, once the model was nearly completely painted. The Blood for the Blood God around the Space Wolf's corpse was only added after varnishing.
I also painted some eldritch glow on the model's extended arm's palm. I did that by drybrushing from lighter to darker colours, sort of the opposite it's done when highlighting.

Unlike on the one painted by the 'Eavy Metal team, I painted my Ahriman's cloak and loincloth purple, as he has on the box set. Bone or papyrus coloured fabric might have suited the Space Egyptian look better, but I think the purple somewhat foreshadows Ahriman's future, as if transitioning from red armour to blue.

I will have plenty of models to assemble and paint in the box in the future. I suspect this individual Thousand Sons legionnary will be an exception, and most of them won't be assembled with standard parts. At least not with the Space Wolves, who would not really look the part without at least some pelts and tooth amulets. Similarly, I can give the Thousand Sons some scarabs and other thematic decorations, though I will have to do some research to know what is appropriate for which models.