Rebuilding My Space Wolves Army Journal.

[DarkReaper40k]

Years ago back at the dawn of the 3rd edition of Warhammer 40,000 when I first got into the Games Workshop hobby, the Space Wolves were my first army. While here on the guild I have only really spoken of my Eldar, that is only because I had focused on them since I tired of using a nearly decade old codex in a 5th edition universe. But at very long last, GW has smiled upon the Sons of Russ once more and with the new codex and miniatures in my grasp at last, it's time to give my pups an over haul with new conversions, new models, new flock and of course new paint jobs!

I'm going to provide here an on-going, detailed journal of everything I do to revise my old army with many tips and tricks that I have learned over the years in the hobby for everyone else to hopefully benefit from in one way or another.

To start off, here is what I've recently purchased to get started on the updates:


The New Space Wolves Codex
1 box of the new Space Wolves Wolf Guard Terminators
2 boxes of the new Space Wolves Packs

and to give you an idea of what I'm tackling, here is a snap shot of my old wolf army which hasn't been painted in over 7 years easily.



Don't worry about how small the image is, as I go from unit to unit updating them, I'll provide good close up shots so you can have a better look at what I had once done and in time what I will do to update them. You'll no doubt notice that several things were never even finished, that is in part because I had always meant to do more modeling before I painted and in other cases, I just got distracted and abandoned ship.

If you want to post in this thread to comment no my progress or ask a question about what I'm doing you are welcome too but please do not turn this into a chatterbox, I'd like to keep this a relatively organized thread if at all possible.

 

[Herr Kaiser]

damn, that's a lot of wolves.  

[DarkReaper40k]

So while I busy myself with cutting out, trimming and organizing the bits from my new wolf boxes (I do a lot of prep work for new models to make the best of each conversion.) I thought I would share with you a snap shot of my old bolter wielding Grey Hunters.



As you can no doubt see, these guys never got finished. A few were experimented on but nothing ever finalized. Partly because I rarely used these guys and partly because for the longest time, I didn't know a safe way to remove paint off plastic mini's and didn't want to just throw them out!

The good news however is that there is an all purpose cleaning solution called which among its label listed abilities, is also fully capable of stripping the GW paint clean off miniatures with minimal fuss! As a huge bonus too, this cleaning solution is non toxic and its odour is not murder on your senses! Keep in mind I must stress "GW PAINT" because in past tries with the solution, I found that paints like Tamiya and Testors are incredibly resilent. Granted those paints are heavy gloss and very thick which I believe is why it doesn't dissolve as well since GW paint is normally matt and thin (assuming you apply thin, even coats when painting that is!)

So for todays' journal entry I'm showing you the Grey Hunters BEFORE being soaked in Simple Green. I currently have them in a plastic jar that has a screw on lid to contain them and they will sit in the solution for the better of the weak to maximize results. This is important because my old Grey Hunters probably have 3 different paint jobs under what you see in that photo since in my earlier years in the hobby I wasn't very good with sticking to a colour scheme.

Later this weak when remove the models from the SG, I'll post more about final clean up, tips on how to achieve the best results and of course images of what the models look like after an SG bath.

A few notes about simple green:

-This cleaning solution is the stuff of champions, that being said NEVER pour it out! One bottle of Simple Green can take on the paint of an entire army and still be potent enough to tackle another one!

-Like any cleaning solution, it is always best to keep it in a sealable container. Even though its odour isn't repelling, over time the fumes can effect you and thus its not a good idea to have an open container of it laying around.

-One spray bottle size of S.G. can be poured into a large sour cream container no problem and can tackle 20 space marine sized miniatures all at once!  

[Hoxtalicious]

That patriotic wolf blanket makes my eyes bleed. ARGH. burning_eyes

Anyway, once Mat is settled in again you'll have a new best friend around here as he is the resident big-time Woof player.  

[DarkReaper40k]

Excellent, my evil plan to defeat my foes by blinding them is taking effect! Now to continuing production of my Terminator armoured Wolf Guard, taking several pictures a long the way and eventually post the results!  

[DarkReaper40k]

I've been itching to figure out how I'm going to repaint my Wolves so I decided to grab a couple of pieces from my bitz box to test out an idea. In the below image there is a standard marine chest piece, power pack and blast shield for a rhino. Unfortunately my camera REALLY whited things, I used levels in photoshop to restore most of the proper colour but its not as good as I'd like. Regardless, this test gave me an idea on how to paint my wolves to have an older, more worn armour.

This is a list of the paint I used:
-Chaos Black
-Scorched Brown
-Shadow Gray
-Space Wolves Gray



1. I started by coated each piece with an even coat of Chaos Black.

2. I brushed slightly watered down coat of Scored brown so that it would better play off the dark qualities.

3. I mixed Scorched Brown with Shadow Gray in a 50/50 mix with a light paint brush dab of water to glaze it on. I made sure to avoid going directly to the edges at this point as I wanted to keep in mind the idea of paint wearing away at the edges.

4. I took pure shadow gray this time and again added a light dab of water to keep the paint light. Coating it over top like in step 3 just to add some more solid areas of colour.

5. Shadow Gray was now mixed 75/25 with Space Wolves gray with and applied with a damp brush.

6. I went back in with some scorch brown dry brushing to give the wear effects before applying a 50/50 mix of shadow gray and space wolves grey to the edges.

7. Pure Space Wolves Gray was used with a damp brush to put in final highlights. Picking at the highest areas quickly, and using a clean wet brush to blend it in just before it dried. The end.

I didn't bother with metalic bolts and the skull emblems in this test because I just wanted to focus on what weathering the armour would look like. Over all I'd say I'm rather happy with the results, I was debating with using a foundation wash but I think I'll save that for another time.

 

[Herr Kaiser]

wow,that actually looks real nice.  

[Lady Blodwynn]

Now that's a handy tutorial! 3nodding  

[Shinobi_8745]

Aye, quite handy I must say. :3  

[DarkReaper40k]

Since my camera's battery died last not I didn't document the building process but with it alive and well today, I decided to take some photographs of my old and newly built wolf lords to compare how things have changed.





Seen to the left in the first snap shots are my original wolf lord armed with Lightning claws, wolf pelt, wolf teeth necklace and Terminator armour which I often called power armour simply because I didn't want to make a second model. If you can't figure it out, the base model was indeed Logan Grimnar and then converting hell ensued. The giant tribal like mask on him came from a kids snap fit model kit.. if I remember correctly it was called a "Z Knight" and well.. I found better use for its face. For the time I remember being very proud of it and the paint job but things are changing and sadly this old wolf is being retired into legend.





To the right is my newly built Wolf Lord from the wolf guard terminator box! I kind of wish I had documented it as there was a lot of decisions that went into making him with a lot of trial and error but I'll explain what I can here to make up for it.

First off, in the new Wolf Codex each leader is to have individualistic weapons, so even if you're a huge fan of lightning claws/wolf claws (which I am!) they slipped that dirty rule in to make you actually try different types of weaponry. *grumbles like a stubborn old wolf*

I knew right away that I wanted to make 2 Wolf Lords, one in Terminator Armour to go with the Terminator armed Wolf Guard and one in power armour should I decide Terminator armour just isn't right. The catch though is should I use both in a game.. they can't be equipped the same as mentioned above. So I spent a lot of time reading over my options and figuring out who would have what. I also had to include my Wolf Priest and Rune Priest in this decision because they are included in the leader count!

What I came to was that the terminator Wolf Lord would have a thunder hammer and storm shield. The Power armoured Wolf Lord would have Wolf Claws. The Rune Priest would go with his standard force weapon (decked out to look awesome) and the wolf priest would take his standard gear (the games day model I have is awesome!)

So now came the real fun, trying to mix and match the darn pieces to FIT! I started with the obvious choice of building up the legs and torso so I had something to work with, already wanting a relatively dynamic pose so he has a bit of a torso twist like he's in motion. Building up the silly 3 piece wolf pelt, I soon realized it would severly complicat attaching and posing the left arm (storm sheild). I'll warn you all now for those looking to tackle the new wolf guard box, the pieces may look fantastic but are not the most friendly when it comes to options. It took about 4 different arms to find one that would pose nicely under the long pelt arm with shield in hand and by this time I knew what I 'wanted' for the thunder hammer arm. Problem is... thunder hammers arms come in two poses. Hammer held across the chest and straight out at the enemy. I really wanted it arced above his head Thor style (yes the comic book hero) but honestly.. the amount of time I'd take carefully cutting, pin-vicing, reattaching and greenstuffing the joints to make it all work wasn't worth it for me. So I stuck with the straight out at the enemy like he's issuing a challenge because not only did it work better with the shield arm but well, across the chest covers up a lot of details that I want to paint later on!

So after I finished building this mean wolf, I realized a set-back in my building. The long, dramatic wolf pelt/cape covers up waaaay too much of the body and yet is angled in such a way that there is a lot you can see but not easily paint. So thanking myself for using only a dab of glue on the back to attach it, I carefully slipped it off again with my knife as you can see in the picture so that I can once again access and paint all angles of the miniature. Upon finishing painting, I'll reattach the pelt/cape and be happy.



Things to note:

I'm not finished with this model, now that I have it built and posed, I plan to remove him from his base and build up a dynamic rocky outcrop for him to stand up on and truly be seen as the Alpha male!

Although they got rid of the old 'blood feud' rule that I loved so much, I plan on doing an homage to it by leaving a few Thousand Sons helments buried in the rock of his base just to prove that with the wolves, some things will never change!  

[DarkReaper40k]

Battle Report

So a few days ago I tested out the new Wolves Codex in a 1700 point match against Blood Angels. As it turns out, the dice were not with me and 3/4 of my army was obliterated. The irony though is that in proper Space Wolf stubborness, those that didn't die stood their ground and held back the Blood Angel assaults turn after turn tieing them up and preventing them from reaching objectives. With that in play, a long team of blood claws secured one objective while my scouts stole the secondary objective from an enemy unit (brutally murdered them in one turn) and thus won me the game because the big nasty Blood Angels didn't have a single objective to their name!

Here is the army list for the units chosen in that battle:

Wolf Lord: Thunder Hammer, Storm Shield, Wolf Tooth Necklace and Saga of the Warrior Born

Wolf Priest: Wolf Tooth Necklace

Venerable Dreadnought: Twin-linked Lascanon

Dreadnought: Twin-Linked Lascanon

6 Wolf Scouts: Meltagun, 2x Power Weapons and Meltabombs

Lone Wolf: Mark of the Wulfen and Meltabombs

8 Grey Hunters: Meltagun and Powerfist
Rhino Transport
8 Grey Hunters: Meltagun and Powerfist
Rhino Transport

8 Blood Claws: Flame and Power Weapon
Rhino Transport

8 Blood Claws: Flame and Power Weapon
Rhino Transport

Predator: Twin-Linked Lascanon Turrest and Lascanon Side Sponsons

Over all it wasn't a bad army but I'm definitely going back to Wolf Claws for my lord as that hammer slowed him down far too much in combat.

The Priest I never got to see in battle as he guarded an objective with the BC's just in case of an enemy attack.

I think I'm going to try a Rune Priest in my next battle as those psychich powers (storm caller especially) would be really nice should I have to face 2 Baal predator tanks again with their darn rending assault cannons!

The Lone Wolf was surprisingly effective, it took a while to get him into battle but once he charged in and went all Wulfen, things just started dieing! Granted he had both Dreadnoughts backing him up too but even so, I was very impressed by this lone warrior. I would go as far as to call him the Space Wolves equivalent of an Eversor Assasin!

Any who... Tonight I'll be posting up more of my conversions. Been editing the pictures in photoshop and will of course explain how I went about doing everything.

Something to Note: It'd been nearly 2 weeks and those Grey Hunters are still bathing in the simple green, I haven't taken them out yet so I can only expect great things tomorrow when I take on the task of cleaning the old paint off of them!  

[Caleidah]

Just as a heads up, we have a policy against listing specific costs. You can list the total cost for a model with all upgrades, just don't list what the individual pieces of weaponry or wargear cost.  

[DarkReaper40k]

(My bad, edit on army list done!)

Getting ready for conversion projects

No matter what you are planning on doing whether it is just prepping new plastics to build an army, convert or like myself, totally reboot an old army you're going to find in time that no matter how many tools there are out there, a small hand full are all you will ever need. For myself, experience has narrowed down my tool set to these five wonderful things:

An exacto blade
GW super glue
Hobby Craft Insta-Set
Testers Cement for Plastic Models
and a Swiss Army Knife

You can of course what ever you want but in my experience I've come to trust these as my favourite tools of doom. The exacto blade is sharp and thin, making it excellent for trimming flak of models (the excess lines you find after cutting a piece off a sprue) and for doing other more detail based tasks.

When it comes to Super Glue, anything technically works but at my comic shop where I mostly buy 40k stuff, the owner always has GW super glue handy and the viscosity of this particular brand is good for both putting pieces together as well as filling gap imperfections.

HobbyCraft Insta-Set is an amazing little bonus, a quick spray on super glue and as the name suggests, the glue is instantly set. It speeds up drying times immensely and when it comes to something like Eldar War Walkers and other models that aren't quite the easiest to hold in place for an hour while you wait for glue to dry... insta-set does the job quickly and effectively. I don't know if I'll be using it a lot for my wolves since it's mostly plastic now but I always keep it on hand should super glue be needed.

The testers cement for plastic models (glue for plastics) is a lot like GW glue only I find it is thicker and easier to work with since GW plastic glue tends to spew all over the place. There is also the small fact that you can get it for a friendly price if you're on a budget and that is always welcomed.

Finally, my All-Star friend the Swiss Army Knife. I've had it for years and it hasn't let me down yet. The heavier blades compared to the exacto blade make it ideal for cutting out pieces on sprues because you don't run the risk of the exacto blade snapping under pressure and especially when dealing with heavier chunks of plastic (like the imperial sector kits and tanks). It also has other interesting features that you can manipulate to serve you should you wish to get crazy with your conversions!  

[DarkReaper40k]

The Dreadnoughts
My Venerable and regular Dreadnoughts needed some updates. A little more space wolf like details, proper weapon arms and updated flock bases.

So that's what I've set out to do here. First off is making a Twin-Linked Lascanon arm from an assault Canon arm. Why? Because I only had 1 Las arm and 2 assault arms... and I like lascanons much more.

Seen here on the right is a quick photo-op of the changes made and below I shall list off the changes that took place so you can better grasp what I did.

1. Cut the barrels of the assault canon clean off. This means the blade cuts along the line that makes up the shoulder of the arm.

2. Cut the ammo crate off the back of the arm, again clean shaven off. In this case along the wide flat surface (where the little skull decoration is).

3. Take 2 lascanon barrels from the Baneblade kit or similar Imperial Guard accessory (my friend used a baneblade for an ork battlewagon, so I scored some bitz!) and glue them one on top of the other just like the actual lascanon arm.

4. Sift through your bitz box or even a friends bitz box if they'll let you and find something that resembles a power core. I say that because I can't remember where exactly the piece I used comes from but I think it was off a Sentinel... or something Imperial Guard anyways!

5. Tag on a little Space Wolves accessory, wolf belt, decal or in my case one of the hang charms as I refer to it as and you're done!




With that done, it was a simple matter of putting the arm back on the dreadnought since his old assault canon arm has been decommissioned.

Next I decided to work more on his physical appearance while comparing it to the Venerable Dreadnought. First thing I noticed was that on the sarcophagus, the ven has a wolf skull and cross bones emblem while the regular has a standard imperial logo. That had to change.

Using my exacto blade, I shaved off the old emblem as best I could and dug out my bitz from the previous space wolves sprue which had a rather useful wolf skull and cross bones emblem that i use on most of my vehicles. Gluing it over the space where the previous emblem was easy enough and with a little adjustment to line it up, it looked good!

The last thing that really bugged me was that on the Ven's left side it has a wolf tooth necklace and my reg has nothing. So on its right side, I glued on this shield from a fantasy Goblins set which has a lightning bolts (elites) and bones with little tails dangling from it which looks rather Fenrisian in style if you ask me.

All and all, I think the edits were rather simple but once painted should look great! I might go back later though and add in some battle damage like scratches and bullet wounds... things to ponder.

oh and yes of course, even though the base is already decorated to be rocky, I plan too glue the flat surfaces and sprinkle a conservative amount of gravel/sand like flock to give it some more texture before spray painting. I do this so that both the glue and spray paint can work together to seal the flock in place before I paint it.




And finally here is my Venerable dreadnought. Now while he didn't get a fancy converted Lascanon arm, he did get a wolf tail decoration and another fantasy Goblin shield that suited the Fenrisian theme.

On top of that, I really don't want my Ven being outdone by the regular in terms of basing. So I've remounted him with some city ruins underneath his one foot so once the gravel goes down, it'll look like he's stomping through a city scape.

Which reminds me to note, when starting an army there is a detail many over look at that is the basing. You're army can had the most amazing paint job but if the basing doesn't suit that theme, the effect is lost or changed in ways you may not want. So do yourself a favour every time and think about what type of landscape you want your warriors battling over and base appropriately.

I know it's traditional for Space Wolves to be on a snowy landscape because of their home world but lets face it, they take the fight to their enemies and that isn't always on a planet like Side Winder where its really effing cold!

Since my latest table top terrain has been turning into a big city (been wanting an awesome cities of death style table for ages) I plan on basing my army to compliment this. It works not only for when I want to photograph the models because I'll already have a nice set-up for them but also since most of my gaming friends play 40k at my place, my army will be on their home turf and really look it!

I'd talk more about basing but I'll save that for later when I actually show my way of putting down flock, setting it and painting it as I think it deserves its very own post.  

[DarkReaper40k]

The Land Speeders



My trio of land speeders don't need much in the line of updates or conversions. I did quite a lot with them when I first built them BUT! They certainly need repairs and clean up. While one of them never got painted (thank goodness) the other two have seen more than one paint job (dear Russ why?!) and will in time have to soak in Simple Green (mentioned earlier in this thread) to help break up the old paint and get the surfaces back to a more manageable state.



The only real repairs I did were gluing the heavy bolters back on as well as the assault canons that I hand converted. It was a really simply conversion which was done to intentionally to raise eyebrows and with any luck get a few chuckles.

Basically all I did was take the large burst canon from a Tau Hammer Head and the ammo drums from a Sisters of Battle tank heavy bolter and combined the two. I didn't really like having only one ammo drum though as it seemed silly considering the fire rate of an assault cannon so I added two, one on either side and well... I'm sure you see what it ends up resembling and I find it childishly amusing. (ke ke ke)