Avbrytere av Engler - The Breaker of Angels

Hurrah!  After what seems like months (well, it actually was) punctuated by births and holidays and gardening (of all things), I've finally managed to complete my Space Wolves Land Raider Redeemer.

It's the first tank I've painted since doing a couple of Rhinos over twelve years ago, so it was quite daunting.

Still, I wanted to have a go at doing so green work to make the tank a little bit more unique - the furs are a prime example.

In case you were wondering about the name, it's not a Dark Angels dig (despite the doormat on the front ramp, pictured below), but a nod to the tank's main purpose, which is do destroy my best friend's Blood Angels army.

We have our third battle next Saturday (2000 points) and we're currently drawing at one game each...

Hope you like it!

My Little Tank

Well, I thought it was high time I actually put online an update for my much-neglected Space Wolves army.

It's been rather quiet on the Fenris front for a little while now - what with Blood Bowl tournaments and various other projects going on - with very little happening in the way of painting.  I have 1500 points-worth hovering between basecoated and finished (at a ratio of about 80-20 respectively) at the moment, but I'm probably going to ignore the basecoated miniatures for a while (as they're gameable) and concentrate on the few models which haven't even been undercoated yet.

I played a game last week which I managed to lose in spectacular fashion and it highlighted a couple of important points for me.

Mainly, I am no tactician.  I was playing against an Imperial Guard army, so in my close-combat hubris I decided to simply charge in and attack any units that came into range.  Space Wolves?  Against Guard?  In combat?  Easy, I thought...

Ignoring the fact that I would attack last, I stupidly charged my Terminators armed with chainfists into a squad armed with lots of power weapons and led by Straken.

Needless to say, I got slapped around the battlefield in a comprehensive yet entertaining manner.

It really was a brilliant game, though I was wiped out to the man.  It taught me that having a crackling, electrically-charged fist that size of a camel does not automatically guarantee victory in combat.

This was however just one of my mistakes.  The main one I think was not being able to get my close combat army (some of my squads didn't even have guns!) into the heart of the enemy's rather effective gun line quickly enough.

So, here is one way to solve the problem:

MY LITTLE TANK

I've always wanted a Land Raider, so I thought it was about time I bought one for my Great Howling.  As you can see from the pictures, I've added a few touches to make it a beast of Fenris, the main of which are the furs slung across the hull.

Of course, as you can see, I've done it the hard way and have assembled the model in its entirety before actually painting it, but though it'll make it harder when it comes to all the fiddly bits, I think the trade off is worth it in the fact that I needed to see the model as a whole before I was comfortable adding the large amounts of 'green'.

I've added a few bits from the Space Wolves Pack sprues that I have scattered around my house, as you can see in the close-up below:

Here's a closer look at the furs that I greened in.  It's a very simple method of laying a relatively thick skin over the area of the furs and then scoring roughly and quickly with a knife.

One final cheeky touch is on the assault ramp.  I really wanted to highlight the 'friendly' rivalry between the Lion and the Wolf, so this blob, after a little tidying, will be painted as a Dark Angels banner for my Wolf Guard to wipe their filth-caked feet on after a hard day's slaughter...

And that's the easy bit done.  The tough bit is to actually get the beast painted...

Hope you like it so far!

A Savage Maw and a Bloodied Nose

As I looked out of the window this morning and saw a layer of freshly-fallen snow on the ground, I couldn't help but think it was a good omen for my Fenrisian warriors as they prepared to fight their first ever battle.

The last four weeks has seen me spending hour upon hour painting the basecoats on my army - at the moment a humble 1500-odd points' worth - and I thankfully managed to finish them a day before battle.

They weren't pretty, they weren't finished, but they were ready to fight.

In the end, my opponent and I agreed on a 1200 point battle which meant that I had to take a fairly bare-bones force in order to boost the number of models on the field - one special weapon and one heavy weapon in total, the rest mainly boltguns.

I did however manage to field a Wolf Guard pack with Jump Packs and twin Wolf Claws which weighed in at a massive 350-odd points for the five models.

We played a fairly basic scenario with five objectives to capture.  No bells and whistles for our first battle, just a straight fight with a clear mission.

And my enemy?  None other than our fellow battle brothers, the Blood Angels!

My Wolf Guard squad worked against me numbers-wise as my twenty-nine models were faced with around forty Space Marines across the board.  Given that I had a combat-geared army, the sheer number of bolters bearing down upon me was a great concern!

To cut a long blog short, we lost in then end - 3 victory points to 2.  It was a close call, but the weight of numbers and some shocking tactical decisions on my part led to something of a massacre.

My enemy fielded a small unit of just four Death Company, and they were complete monsters in combat!  Things started well for me when I charged my Wolf Guard into combat with one of his Assault squads and completely massacred them in one round!  I was quite impressed, but he answered by cutting through a nine-man pack of Blood Claws like they weren't even there!

I wasted one of my Assault Cannon-armed Terminators by putting him with a pack of Grey Hunters and spending the entire game guarding one of the objectives - the only thing that came into range of my one heavy weapon was an empty Rhino - which of course he destroyed.  Still, this warrior had no real effect on the game whatsoever.

Njal performed well, but I managed to lose the game with him in the last turn by forgetting to use the Chain Lightning result on the Lord Of Tempests table on the one Assault Marine that was holding one of the objectives.  If I had managed to kill him with it, the game would have been a draw!!

Still, it was a fantastic game which flowed really well considering neither of us have played 40K in ten years (and therefore never with these rules), and I can't wait for my next battle.

Now to finish those paint jobs...

The Glory So Far...

For the last few days, I've been throwing myself into basecoating my Space Wolves army in preparation for their (and my) first battle on the 27th November.

And what better place to cut their teeth than Warhammer World, in the heart of Games Workshop's HQ?

We really are looking forward to our first battle, despite the main fight being with the rulebook!  It's been over ten years since either me or my opponent have played 40K, so obviously we've never played with this current rule set.  I think I might have to bookmark the important sections of the rulebook, like how to use a Range Ruler* and what the difference is between a chainsword and a lascannon...

*(As a complete aside, a friend of mine recently mentioned that the Games Workshop Range Rulers are not the most accurate measuring devices sometimes.  He took two of them and placed them next to each other, and by the time he got from the base to the tip, there was about half an inch difference between the measurements on them!!)

In all seriousness though, I don't think it'll take us long to pick it up again, especially as our armies don't have much in the way of complicated weaponry or rules.  We'll probably only have one tank on the battlefield - and that's a Rhino, if you want to call it a tank...!

But before that, I have quite a tight painting schedule to stick to.  So far, I've painted the black areas and most of the metallics...

Alright, they don't look like much at the moment (if you read my previous posts, I'm sure you can see the problems I had with the spray gun - meaning hand-painting most of the armour is now on the cards), but I'm pretty confident they'll look good when they're done.

As I said, I have a fairly tight schedule, and here it is...

(DRUM ROLL...)

Wednesday 3rd: Finish metallics

Thursday 4th: Fur, gun straps

Friday 5th: Animal skins & tongues

Saturday 6th-Monday 8th: Bone, stone and parchment

Tuesday 9th: Hair and faces

Thursday 11th: Plasma & power weapons.

Friday 12th-Monday 15th: Reds (AWAY)

Tuesday 16th: Yellows and Purity Seals

Wednesday 17th: Crux Terminatus, Scout trousers, gravel bases

Thursday 18th: Paint bases

Friday 19th-Thursday 25th: Power armour and any extra bits.

 

I'm pretty sure this list covers most of what I need to do, but there will inevitably be the odd bits and pieces that I haven't accounted for.

 

The only unknown element is how long the armour will take to paint.  I've given myself just short of a week, but on thirty-four models, that's still nearly six a night, so I might get a bit pressed towards the end.  The best thing I can try and do is to claw back some time on the smaller, easier bits and then maybe I can get a day or two extra.

 

Of course, that's not even taking into consideration the Drop Pod...

 



Citadel Spray Gun: FAIL.

Hmmm, I'm rather disappointed at the moment with the performance of my spray gun.  I attempted this morning to blast my entire Space Wolves army with their Power Armour basecoat, and the results are patchy (quite literally) to say the least.

Now, I know of a lot of people who have had issues with the spray gun, but having used it a few times myself, I always thought that it was okay - you just needed a bit of jiggery-pokery with some of the bits, but then it'd work fine.

So, naturally, when I absolutely needed it to work, it didn't.

The paint flow was very haphazard, sometimes really thick, sometimes like water and sometimes just air.  I was using Games Workshop's own propellant (trying two separate cans) and varying the 'paint thickness' nozzle position, but couldn't get a consistant result, even after changing the paint thickness both ways.

Unfortunately, this has left me with a part-basecoated army (luckily more done than not...), and I must now paint in the rest of the armour by hand as I don't want to use up the last of my colour mix on something that may well not work.

Still, it's not the end of the world as what I did manage to do has saved me a good many days of painting by hand - it just means that the process hasn't saved as much time as it could have done.

Also, in the gun's favour, it was extremely cold and windy outside, and I imagine the low temperature would have had a massive effect on the propellant flow - after all, the can will begin to freeze on the outside in balmy summer weather!

I will still attempt to use the gun when I come to paint my Drop Pod, but I must now put that to the very bottom of my list, lest I should run out of paint for the main force!!

For now, I'm going to put the Power Armour on the back-burner, as I will inevitably need to touch it up after I finish the rest of the basecoat.  I'll paint in everything else and then sort the armour last - it just means that until the very final brush stroke, these Wolves are going to look a MESS!

Anyway, if anyone has any tips on using the gun, or could recomend a similar tool, please let me know!

The Wolves At The Door...

I write this with the heady smell of polystyrene cement still lingering in the air, mixed with the accrid tinge of Chaos Black spray.  Safe to say, my head hurts!

It has been well worth it though, as the last couple of days of hard work, cutting and filing, gluing and spraying, means that I now have about 1500pts of Space Wolves ready to be painted - not forgetting the 350pts already under my belt.

All that remains before the fine brushwork can begin is a liberal blast from the Citadel Spray Gun - which in the space of five minutes should finish eighty percent of the basecoats!  Hurrah!

Mind you, it's after that that the hard work will begin.  I only have a few weeks to get these lupine maniacs up to scratch -  well, to gaming standard - so I'll be burning the brush at both ends come the weekend...

But anyway, I'm going to remain optimistic - because the goal is easily achievable, with a bit of discipline, that is!

Anyway, here are some pictures of The Great Howling before the Chaos Black spray went on:

As you can see, I'm going to complete the spray coats on the Drop Pod before removing it from the sprue - and then I'm going to paint it is stages as I assemble it.  This may take a little longer than is available, so I'm going to leave this one until last.  It's a big model that only makes up 35pts of my army, so fun though it may be, I can certainly do without it...

Here are my Wolf Guard Terminators!  (Thanks again for these, WiredWrong).  You'll notice a couple of hastily-bashed Combi-Flamers in the pack.  I did want to make all of the Storm Bolters into Combi's (Sven Bloodhowl's Great Company love their flame weapons, apparently), but there is a distinct lack of flame weapons in the Space Wolves boxes.  I managed to cobble together two Combi-Flamers by hacking up the Heavy Flamer that comes with the Terminators.

The best thing about this unit is that you can split it up and have each of them accompany one of your other Wolf Packs (except for Scouts), so each of my five-man packs of Blood Claws and Grey Hunters will have a tooled-up Terminator leading them.  Because or the army's lack of heavy weapons at the moment, those four Chainfists (2D6+Strength Armour Penetration) will really help to open up any tanks I come across.  Hopefully.  As with the Combi-weapons, two of the Chainfists have been converted using spare Chainswords.

These guys are the hardest-hitting pack in my army.  Wolf Guard with twin Wolf Claws and Jump Packs.  They are a staggering 70-odd points per model, so hopefully they'll live up to the cost.  Their Wolf Claws, skills and Attacks mean that they should get four Attacks in the first round of combat, being able to re-roll either their To Hit or To Wound rolls.  Oh, and they're Rending weapons as well.

The main bulk of the Howling is made of three five-man Grey Hunters packs and two five-man Blood Claws packs.  The Grey Hunters should have all had a Plasma Gun, Wolf Standard and one member armed with a Plasma Pistol and Power Weapon / Power Fist...

...Like the chaps above.

However, as in the example above, I somehow got carried away gluing on Boltguns and completely forgot the Plasma for one of my packs.  Still, I'll probably be grateful for that when the other two Plasma Guns get hot and melt their carriers!  The only thing I'm not overly happy about is that the three Wolf Standards for the Grey Hunters are identical.  It would have been nice to have them all different, but time just doesn't allow it.  I may be tempted to chop a couple of them off after November and convert new ones for them...



And finally, the Wolf Scouts.  I decided to go for a Heavy Bolter and Bolt Guns, again because the army lacks a great deal of punch with regards to firepower.  I was tempted to add lots of icons and pelts and other wolf-y stuff to them, but in the end decided that they're meant to be a stealth unit and nothing gives you away quicker than the approaching sound of your wolf-tooth necklace rattling away...

And that's it, apart from the Blood Claws, which I've already shown, Njal and Lukas the Trickster (who may or may not be painted for this challenge... we'll see what time we get...).

If you're wondering where they are at the moment, they're frantically ringing round to see how many six-seater minicabs they'll need to get everyone back to the Fang.  Njal says they're having trouble finding ones that'll accomodate their mead, spiced meats and severed Ork heads...

Look, Power Armour is 80% of the Model!!

Alright, alright, it's still really slow going!  But I only have one more extreme highlight to add to the armour of my Blood Claws before I can start on the details.

So, although it's taken me almost a week - but please believe me, I've missed a lot of days due to DIY-ing - I should get the rest of the miniatures polished off in short-order.

In fact, I'm determined to get them done before I go to Games Day, after which I'll be on holiday for a week.  It'll be great, but I'll really miss the painting.  I may try and sneak my paints into the car...

I've hit a brick wall with my Treeman as I've run out of Green Stuff and my local Games Workshop is closed for the next THREE DAYS!!  Madness, I know, but hopefully Mail-Order will get my large bases and Green Stuff to me by Tuesday so that I can at least base him before his first try-out Blood Bowl match on Wednesday evening.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is that it all seems to be taking forever at the moment, but it'll be worth it in the end.

It better be worth it in the end...

Slow And Steady May Win The Race...

...But it certainly never got a 3,000 point army painted!

I feel like I've been very slack with the blog just lately.  Much as it may bore and annoy you all, I do quite like making at least one entry a day - but recently I've been busy with other things.

Still, I feel like I'm picking up some small head of steam with my Great Howling, although I did spend the whole night painting the mid-tone onto the armour of THREE Blood Claws.  Hopefully once this stage is complete though, it'll all get much quicker.

As ever, my methods of painting are evolving, and now, when it comes to painting my as-yet-not-owned Battle Forces, I have decided that instead of spraying the basecoat, shading down and then re-applying the base, I'm going to have a go at spraying the shading layer on and then painting upwards from there.

There is of course the danger that the mid-tone will become too dull and muddy, leaving me to apply two or three coats of the Shadow Grey / Space Wolves Grey mix, so I'll definitely try it on just one miniature first...

In other news...

My Blood Bowl Treeman is coming on - well, I won't say 'a treat', more like 'adequately'.  It's always so difficult (to me, at least) to tell how things are looking with Green Stuff until the miniature is actually painted.

I had originally thought that sculpting tree bits would be relatively simple, but I find that my (very inexperienced) sculpting skills lack quite a lot when it comes to giving hard, defined edges.  At the moment, I'm putting on the putty, leaving it to set for an hour or so, then sculpting.  After that, I leave it for twenty-four hours before using a sharp modelling blade carve away any unwanted smoothness:

Above you can see where I've added some extra branches to give the impression of hair and below is a side-on picture showing the work so far on the 'elbow' of the extra branch that will curl around his side.

Underneath you can see quite a nice view of how the branch will be growing out of the Treeman's back...

As you can see from the larger branch, I'm having to build the sculpt up in several sections, so the model will take quite a few days to finish.  I'm not sure this is the normal method of creating something this large, but I am finding it much easier to complete in stages.

Hopefully I'll be adding some more tomorrow, but I'm almost out of Green Stuff and aren't sure when I'll next be able to get into town to replenish my stock.  When I do, I also need to grab a large round base (Blood Bowl uses round instead of square bases) to 'root' him to before I can begin to paint...

In the mean time, if anyone knows of any good articles on sculpting Green Stuff, a link would be very much appreciated!

Back in the Game.

Well, after spending a week away from the painting table, up to my neck in pipes, valves, washers, plaster and flooring, I have to say that I've missed it mightily!

I now have running water in my house, which is lovely, but I can't wait to slip back into the habit of painting every day.

Not that I actually did any painting today though...

I had intended to put the basecoat onto some of my Blood Claws (I'm going to paint the squad in two smaller packs of five Wolves instead of attempting all ten in one go), but the weather was thoroughly against me.  It was in fact pouring down and by all accounts will be for the next few days.  So, I put away my GW spray gun and decided to hand-paint the basecoat.  In all honesty, this probably won't lengthen the painting process much as it cuts out the tidying-up phase of painting all of the non-armour back to black again.

Before I could put paint to Power Armour though, I needed to gravel the bases.  It may seem a bit backwards, but I now tend to model and paint the tops of the bases first because (I may have mentioned this before) I can't help rushing them when they're the last thing to do on the piece.  Unfortunately, although there are a great many beautifully-based miniatures out there, for a lot of people the base tends to be an afterthought.  I like to get them done now while the excitement for the project is uber-fresh - and it also means that there is no danger of me making any slips and splashing paint all over the miniature's feet (we've all done it a million times!).  The best of it is that because I'm going to 'snow' the bases at the end, any slips the other way, from miniature to base, can be easily covered.

As a small asside, in preparation for the upcoming Bunker Bowl Blood Bowl tournament, I also started converting my new Treeman miniature.  Well, I say 'new', but I actually mean 'bought part-painted-yet-cheap on eBay'.

The tricky thing was, I wanted to make him a bit more exciting with a few more branches sticking out for 'hair' and another larger branch to make his body more tree-like and less humanoid - but when it comes to Blood Bowl, large creatures are an absolute pain in the backside because they occupy one square in game terms, yet take up about four physically.  This can make it difficult to get other players into his Tackle Zones (although who'd be stupid enough to stand next to an angry Treeman, I don't know!) so I don't want to increase the actual silhouette size of him.

The three strands of 'hair' certainly won't, but the extra brach might yet - although the twists and bends aren't in their final postion yet - I'll shape it more once the glue has dried...

Wherever the final position of the branch rests though, this will definitely be the most tricky Green Stuff sculpting I've yet attempted.

Wish me luck!!!

My Work Here Is Done...

Finished 'Test' Space Wolf:  PASS.

Ease / Speed Of Painting Full Army:  EPIC FAIL!

I absolutely love the look of the initial Space Wolf Blood Claw that I've painted, and think that when I eventually finish my Space Wolves army, it is going to look stunning on the battlefield.  However, I dread to think how long they're going to take.

After trying to strike a balance between quality and speed, I think that quality won.

But you never know, once I get into the swing of it, and get in some production-line painting, I may be able to get through a squad every couple of weeks.  If not, the next Codex may be out before a single shot is fired!

Rather depressingly, now I should be on a roll with my painting, I have to stop for about a week because I'm fitting a new bathroom.  No idea what I'm doing.  Never done it before.  Might take a little while.

Still, I've got plenty of Green Stuff, so if I get bored I could always convert the bath into a Land Raider.

Not sure how my wife would feel about that...

Anyway, if I do get a chance to blog at all, I may be able to publish a Colour Codex for my army, detailing (as much for my benefit as anyone else's) every colour mix and technique for the various parts of my army.

As well as that, I thought I may do a couple of one-off articles focussing on individuals from my currently-ill-fated Blood Bowl team...

As long as I don't flood the house, of course.

I'll Get Quicker. I Hope.

It's been fairly slow progress on my test-Wolf tonight.

Rather naively, I had hoped to finish him.  Ha!  No such luck!

The problem I had tonight was getting the shoulder pads right.

Now don't get me wrong, it's not going to take a whole night to paint each Marine's shoulder markings, it's just that tonight I had to paint each one about three times before I got the colour right.

I've finally managed to sort out the colour scheme - I just hope that my painting will get both faster and neater by the time I've finished the army.

If you're interested, the reds were painted with a 2:1 mix of Blood Red and Dark Flesh, followed by a shade of 1:1 Dark Flesh and Chaos Black.  They were then line-highlighted with Blood Red, Blazing Orange and finally, Vomit Brown.

The yellows were given a basecoat of Tausept Ochre and then a 1:1 Tausept Ochre and Golden Yellow mix, finally highlighted with a 1:1:1 mix of the previous layer, plus Skull White...

You may have noticed the greenish non-descript tattoos painted onto his face.  Not entirely sure I'm happy with them (anyone seen Braveheart lately?), but as my army is from Sven Bloodhowl's Great Company, the Codex specifically states that they all tattoo their runes and Sagas across their skin.

As they don't look hideous, I've decided that they'll do.

Hopefully, he'll only take a couple more days to finish as I have a week or so (more like three) of DIY which starts on Saturday - so I'll be spending my time replacing the bathroom instead of painting.

Rubbish!

Never mind, hopefully I'll have earned plenty of hobby time by the time it's done...

Bring On The Rats!

I was very excited to find the new White Dwarf on my doorstep this morning - and even more excited after I had taken my first cursory flick through it.

Naturally, given the release of Island of Blood in a few weeks, the majority of the issue focuses on the new Skaven and High Elf miniatures, and very exciting they are too!  I've already picked the Skaven for my next army project once my Space Wolves are finished (not that they ever will be!) and I can't wait to get hold of them.  Still, that's a long time away yet.

Painting-wise, there's a large and varied 'Eavy Metal Masterclass which covers a variety of different subjects, from banners to Space Marine armour to Gretchen skin - far too much to mention here, but I can't wait to sink my painting teeth into what's on offer.

Of course, it's not all been about White Dwarf today.  This evening I've been busy picking away at my 'test' Wolf and the good news is that he's... well... getting there.  Slowly.

Hopefully, a couple more days should have him done!

Although I've got the formula for the Power Armour sorted, I'm still going to go back and neaten it up.  I'm not all that happy with the dry-brushing which I employed in order to save time painting up the huge amount of troops that I hope to field.  However, I'm getting quite quick with my painting now and hopefully, if I layer the highlights instead, it should only take me a day or so longer for each squad.  I hope you'll agree that that'll be well worth it to have a beautiful army on the field.

I decided to paint the accelerator on the plasma pistol green instead of the more common blue because it stands out from the grey of the armour more.  If anyone's interested (and for my own future reference!!), it was painted Dark Angels Green, then Snot Green, followed by Scorpion Green and then highlighted with a 3:1 mix of Skull White and Scorpion Green with an extreme highlight of Skull White.

Oh, and rest assured it was a lot less work than it sounds!

As for the wolf pelts, I painted them very simply with Bestial Brown and gradually built up the highlights to pure Bleached Bone.  I then washed them with Ogryn Flesh and added a Skull White highlight before another wash, this time Gryphonne Sepia.

The actual wolf flesh on the skins and the Marine's tongue were painted with Scab Red and built up to pure Bleached Bone before I added a wash of Leviathan Purple - a wash that I also applied to the golds, after looking at them and deciding that they were a bit too 'fresh from the forge'.  I think that it makes a subtle difference, ageing them up a bit.

I am very happy with things at the moment, but can't wait to get him finished so that I can begin my army in earnest...

Da Red Arra's!!

Well hurrah and hurrah!

That's another fine Blood Bowl team under my belt.  I decided to paint an arrow marking on the armour in the end because I've been lovingly calling these boyz the Red Arra's since before I began painting their red armour.


I'm very impressed with them in the end, despite how tricky it was to get everything just right.


And here they are:

Let me know what you think!

As for my next painting project, I've promised not only myself but my gaming buddy wiredwrong that I'd finally make an effort to get some more of my Space Wolves army painted, so I'll be painting my first pack of Blood Claws over the next couple of weeks.

Of course, updates and pictures will be posted here...