The Void Claws Formation

I have been meaning to do a post on a whole unit or formation for a while now, and thought today is the day. At first I intended to post about my Wulfen unit, but as it turns out, one of the models had lost his backpack and I have no idea where it could have gone and will probably end up just making another one to replace it. So, an older unit it is, and a formation to boot.

 The Void Claws are a unit of Wolf Guard Terminators, who, unusually for Space Wolves, specialize in deploying by teleportation. They are also used for fighting aboard enemy spaceships, hence the name (and my decision to give them all helmets).
I had also originally made a Terminator-armoured Rune Priest to go with the formation, but it is somewhat unclear if a Rune Priest could actually deploy with them, considering the Formation's benefits include being able to Deep Strike on turn 1 and to reroll the scatter dice, something the Rune Priest would not be able to do normally. I don't think this was covered in the Space Wolves FAQ either, so it would pretty much depend on if the opponent would agree to it.

Here's rear view of the unit, which the controlling player would see most often. I rarely put anything too special on the backsides of my units, though I do paint them to pretty much same standard as the front.

On a different note, I have been thinking about changing my update schedule again. I haven't decided anything yet, but there's a fair chance I'd only do one post per week in the future. This weekly post would be somewhat bigger than most of my posts so far, as it might include two or three units, or possibly both assembled and painted pictures of a single model, along with more detailed information.
As I mentioned, I haven't decided anything yet, but it would make sense from my perspective, and I think it might work well for the readers, too.

Void Claw with a Cyclone Missile Launcher, painted

This is my 100th post, and to celebrate that, I'm finishing the first of my formations, the Void Claws. I started painting this model during the weekend, but having been surprisingly busy with other stuff, it took longer to finish than expected. The Cyclone itself adds more to painting time than expected, especially with all those nice, flat surfaces for extra decoration.

 The  first step with all the Void Claws has been to decide the individual colour scheme of the model. With this one, I felt like the model's special weaponry and bionic arm would distinguish him clearly enough from his battle brothers, but I did paint some extra yellow-on-black decorations on his helmet. As for his claws, I painted the casings the chapter's grey and his fingers black.

 The Wolf Claws were painted as usual, with Caledor Sky base, drybrushed with Fenrisian Grey and finally White Scar. I use this scheme for all the frost weaponry (excluding Frostfang), which I count Wolf Claws as.

The wolftail talismans were painted with deeper brown basecoat, then drybrushed with Gorthor Brown and finally with Dawnstone. I use this for most of the talismans, unless I want to make them stand out somewhat.

For the Cyclone itself, I decided on simple knotwork patterns on each side. with the over-under patterns opposite from each other.
This is the final model in my Void Claws, at least for now. I do consider it possible to add more, in case I want to increase the formation's size, or if I want to take them without the Cyclone at some point.

Rune Priest in Terminator Armour, painted

As I have mentioned before, I really like the look of the Indomitus-pattern Terminator armour. Its helmet design looks appropriately angry, and the armour looks massive enough to seem forbidable, but not so massive as to be ridiculous (I'm not saying Space Marine Centurions, but... actually, yes, I am saying Space Marine Centurions).
Generally speaking, the way I see Space Wolves, they prefer to go bare-headed. In part, this is because their helmets would hinder their use of their extraordinary senses, but also because they want to be recognized when they do something worthy of a saga. Decorating your helmet may help with this, but nothing really compares to have your actual face associated with a great kill. Both of these factors would go double for Wolf Guard, who would have learned to really rely on their senses, and who would also want to be recognized as their jarl's greatest warriors. That's why I rarely got the chance to model Terminators with their helmets on, until I came up with the idea of modelling all of my Void Claws and the associated Rune Priest with the battle helmet on.

 The colour scheme turned out simple and effective, with mostly Space Wolves grey armour and deep red pauldrons, weapon coverings and decorations, such as the loincloth and shield. I didn't want to make the model look too busy with too much decorative patterns.

I wanted the gem on the Crux Terminatus to contrast with the deep red of the pauldron, and chose greenish-blue finish. The red glow on the Rune Axe's runes was accomplished with Evil Sunz Scarlet thinned down with Lahmian Medium.

I painted the skull on the right pauldron with bronze, since it complements the deep red of the pauldron well. The wolftail talisman was painted with Rhinox Hide, then drybrushed with Doombull Brown, Stormvermin Fur, Dawnstone and finally Longbeard Grey.

With the Rune Priest painted, the only model missing from my Void Claws force is the Cyclone-armed model (though the Rune Priest isn't actually a part of the formation itself). 

Void Claws Pack Leader, painted

The design choice of adding extra cabling to the Void Claws may make the models look a little bigger and bulkier, but it also makes them somewhat more difficult to paint. I usually prefer to paint the models' arms separately from the body, but with the stiff guitar strings connecting them together, that's not really an option. On the other hand, the decision to have them all wear their helmets also helps paint them, so all in all, the two largely cancel each other out.

 I repositioned the model's right arm a little after the previous blog post, as I just wasn't very satisfied with the previous pose. This one isn't as dynamic, but to me, looks more natural and, more importantly, doesn't look like the model is impotently shaking his fist. After some consideration, I opted to paint his helmet in Wolf Guard's typical colours of black and yellow, and went for deep red casings on the Wolf Claws.

 Again, I painted the "runes" (not really runes, but Latin alphabet, just written in a sort-of-runic font) in thinned-down Temple Guard Blue to imply that the weapon is crackling with power. I decided not to highlight them with white, as I felt that the colour followed the recesses  closely enough as it is.

For the bluish-grey Space Wolves colour scheme, I paint a basecoat of The Fang over Chaos Black primer. I then paint over that with Russ Grey, wash it with Nuln Oil and finally drybrush with Fenrisian Grey.
The base was a fairly standard one, with cork stone and grass tufts to give it some character.
See the model unpainted

Tartaros pattern Void Claw, painted

Painting this one took a surprisingly long time. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, since I hadn't actually painted Tartaros pattern armours before, so I couldn't have developed any sort of routine for it. I still prefer the look on Indomitus pattern by far, so I'm not sure I'm going to paint too many of these anyway. Then again, all bets are off once Forgeworld releases Space Wolves for Horus Heresy.

 The model did end up suitably wolfy to not stick out too much from the rest of the army, while still being different enough to keep things interesting. I actually started to consider adding another Tartaros to the pack. I do have plenty of them unused, all it would take is acquiring another set of compatible lightning claws.

My usual method of The Fang -> Russ Grey -> Nuln Oil -> drybrush with Fenrisian Grey worked fine with this armour, too. The longer Tartaros pattern lightning claws look pretty vicious.

The molecular bonding studs give the armour character. I did end up somewhat rushing the base, though. I may add a grass tuft to it at some point to soften the transition from snow to mud.

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.

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.

Tartaros Void Claw

I was going to do stuff other than Terminators for a while, but I can justify this, since it's not the Indomitus-pattern. A good while back, I ordered a set of Tartaros-pattern Terminator Armours from Forgeworld, as well as the set of Power Weapons. As far as I know, they were primarily meant to be used by Forgeworld's Minotaurs chapter in 40k, who can get their hands on the rarer and more advanced armour through their connections to the Inquisition. Space Wolves are sort of the opposite of that, but they are a first founding chapter, and have an armoury that dates back to the Great Crusade, when Tartaros pattern armours were being mass produced.
I decided early on that Tartaros patterns would be mostly used by the Great Wolf's company, with the High King of Fenris also acting as a custodian for the chapter's most prized relics. When I made the decision to have all my Wolf Claws keep their battle helmets on, it made it even easier to find a pack for one of the armours, since the high collar makes it a little difficult to make bare heads fit right on the models.

 Because the armour is as old as it is, I thought it made sense it's been repaired a few times, so I added some molecular bonding studs to the legs. I also added a rondel with my Void Claws pack marking on it to the left shoulder. The chestplate has a simple wolf's head design.

 I kept it simple with the decoration on the claws, too. I scupted two axe heads with a rune on each of them.  He also has the extra cabling helping with the teleporting.

I tried to pose the model so that he's using his right arm to check the opponent while preparing the left for a powerful thrust or slash. Tartaros pattern Terminators give the modeller a little less choice regarding the pose than many other armours in that there's a fairly limited range of motion for the waist, more so than with the standard plastic Terminators.

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.

Another Void Claw

Slowly building up to the Champions of Fenris formation, here is another one of the Void Claws Terminators. Again, I kept it relatively simple, just adding studs to the right shoulder guard and the extra cabling. I also added another extra cable to the side of his helmet to further make him his own individual.

 I opted for a little more aggressive posing this time. He's stepping in while thrusting with his left claw. While his right arm is doing pretty much nothing to cover him, I like to imagine he's currently pulling it down to continue with an uppercut.

 It's also possible that his left attack is actually a feint and what he's really doing is stabbing through an unsuspecting someone on his right. These things depend on context.

First of the Void Claws

To get started, I decided to choose one of my latest projects, a Wolf Guard Terminator armed with Wolf Claws, of Logan Grimnar's Great Company. First of (at least) five, he is the starting point of my Void Claws formation.

 I liked the idea of a group of Terminators specialized for boarding actions, and thought I might want to make use of these guys with the Space Hulk board later on, too. I decided that I would model the whole formation wearing helmets, in part to offset the otherwise very bare-headed appearance of a Space Wolves army, and in part just because I have always liked the way Terminator helmets look.

I also pretty much refuse to make the standard choices when it comes to modelling and painting, and although (or because?) the Void Claws were pictured to be buildable using standard parts, I decided I wanted to make things differently. That's why I decided to sculpt a fur apron with a tooth necklace (loinlace?) and to add extra cabling using guitar strings. I also added extra metal studs on his right lower leg and added a bunch of purity seals.