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.